Medical "Cures" People Used to Fall For. We're Goofy Now; We Were Just as Goofy Back i
Face it: adult human primates have pretty much always clopped along like unthinking sheep, lured into whatever freaky fad happens to be going on around them, regardless of how idiotic the behavior might be. And before you're tempted to blurt out, "Not me!" just admit to yourself how long it's been since you last checked your cell phone for that all-important text message that never really is. A whole 5 minutes? Not very likely. Admit it. You're so hooked on that little plastic babysitter that it would scare the Hell out of you to drive away from home tomorrow without it. Go ahead. Prove us wrong.
Or, consider preventable drug deaths, as another stunningly stupid behavior. They have reached an all-time high with no end in sight. In 2016, 54,793 Americans died from preventable drug overdoses. That was an increase of 400% since 1999. The deaths represent 86% of the total 63,632 drug deaths in the United States, which included suicide, homicide and medical screw-ups.
But we keep right on pill-popping, don't we, because somebody in a lab coat - on TV or in person - told us to. We're creeping up on 1,000 drug deaths each and every week. The drug cartels are entirely confident you won't notice all the funerals. Stare at your babysitter and Keep on popping. It makes them very, very rich.
Someday in the future humans of yet another era will look back at the preposterous "healthcare" antics of their ancestors of this, the 21st Century. They'll laugh and shake their heads in wonderment, just the way you're about to do right now, as you read these time-honored traditions.
In ancient Egypt women were prescribed pill-sized tablets of crocodile poo to insert into their nether regions to prevent pregnancy. We suspect it was at least partly effective, because it likely put a stinky bit of a turn-off on romance.
It was 300 years ago in Europe when doctors told balding men that rubbing chicken poo on their heads would help hair row back. And hundreds of thousands of nuts did just that. A 17th-century medical handbook advised men to rub chicken manure on their scalps as a cure for baldness. The Path-Way to Health, written by Peter Levens was published in London in 1654.
No word on what it did for their love-life, but hey! Who were they to argue with an MD?
Women in the 17th Century used poisonous plants as a beauty aid. By chewing the leaves of Belladonna, or sipping it like tea, the drug had the effect of making the pupils of their eyes grow bigger in public. Of course it also caused hallucinations, but hey! Their eyes were mesmerizing.
Back in the 50's doctors thought it was just dandy to use hour-long x-rays to remove leg and arm hair on women. Oh, sure, it caused thousands of cases on cancer, but look at that smooth skin on mommy!
In 19th Century England and France dentists would buy cadaver teeth from grave robbers and then fashion dentures for the toothless wealthy. The sneaky docs made it a point to not ask embarrassing questions, like, who the original owners of the yanked=out teeth were.
And they seriously hoped the new owners wouldn't get too curious, either.
In Medieval times doctors prescribed a concoction of eagle poo and oil to reduce women's pain while giving birth. Munch on that visual for a moment.
Until the middle 1800s, surgical tools were seldom washed much = let alone scrubbed clean -between patient operations. And when British physician Joseph Lister had the nerve to pioneer the matter of killing germs instead of patients (you've heard of Listerine, right?) doctors of the era laughed at the very thought that an MD could ever transmit cooties from one patient to another. What an insult to the profession.
As recently as the 1950's, doctors thought Lysol as a feminine hygiene product, was just dandy. Oh, yes, they did.
Not that they would ever, ever swab their own private parts with a painful concoction of Chlorobenzylphenol and Ethanol. That might just . . . you know . . . hurt.
Now let's fast-forward to modern day USA. Think medical advice can be blindly trusted? If so, you just may be too dumb to cross the street by yourself. Invest 60 seconds glancing at this:
So do yourself a favor next time you blindly follow something that - in the deep recesses of your thinking parts - you suspect is asinine. Rest assured your heirs will laugh uncontrollably about how lame their great-grandparents were, you know . . . back in the day when doctors would look 10,000 patients in the eye each month and steer them into extremely expensive, totally unnecessary, surgeries.
And just like in the old days, a whole shipload of those poor gullible folks never wake up.