Bad Air During Surgery

If you needed surgery in the late 1800s or early 1900s, there was a very high risk of death. Doctors at the time didn’t understand the importance of using clean tools or keeping a surgical area clean between surgeries. Surgeons in the late 1800s took pride in their blood-stained clothing after surgeries. There was no worry about infections. Illnesses ran rampant if you survived the surgery. It was common for people to die from having surgery only to be killed by an infection afterwards. Doctors were so misinformed that they believed something like ‘bad air’ could cause diseases, not their soiled clothing or medical tools. It was a dangerous time to go through something that required surgery. Surgical techniques were a guessing game. There was no guarantee of survival like we have today. Simple procedures like removing the appendix could cause a patient’s death.

Morphine for a Child’s Cough

When your children get sick, it makes you feel horrible, and you want to do anything in your power to make them feel better. Nowadays, the best treatment for children includes antibiotics to help flush their systems of illness and kill off the bacteria causing concern. Have you ever wondered what doctors would use to treat coughs in children back in Victorian times? They actually used Morphine to treat a child’s cough. Morphine is a very strong opiate found naturally in opium, which is likely what doctors gave children during Victorian times. Doctors believed this potent opiate could stop the coughing and make the child healthy again. Morphine has a high potential for abuse, making it one of the most dangerous drugs available legally.

Bananas for Fever

When you hear the word plantain, you probably think of the large bananas. However, we’re talking about the broadleaf plantain herb in this case. During Victorian times, doctors used the Broadleaf Plantain to treat hay fever and allergies. The Broadleaf Plantain is native to Eurasia. People believed drinking the herb as a tea would help alleviate the symptoms of allergies or hay fever. Now, we’ll probably never know if it actually helped, but herbalists believe there was a chance it did. They thought the plantain herb would soothe coughing fits as well, making it a good choice at the time compared to other forms of medication or treatment.

Plaster for Pain

In the 19th century Great Britain, doctors used plasters to draw badness out of the body. Plasters are basically band-aids. While it is a plaster in the UK, we call it a band-aid here in the USA and Australia. Plaster had leather and contained traces of opium, wax, lead, and frankincense. They designed the plasters for various body parts and distributed them to the public to help draw out their pain. People believed these plasters could draw out any illness if worn in a specific area that was painful or worrisome. They would wear the plaster for as long as possible to eliminate the disease.

Phenacetin for Sickness

Doctors used various medications in the late 1800s and early 1900s to help relieve pain. One of these was phenacetin. They mainly used phenacetin for fevers during that time. You won’t find it in production because researchers deemed it dangerous for your health. Doctors in the 1970s found that phenacetin contributed to kidney disease. So it was taken off the shelves and replaced with safer alternatives. While many of the drugs we take daily have side effects that can be considered dangerous, this one just didn’t make the cut.

Willowbark for Fevers

While we already discussed one medication used for fevers during Victorian times, there are more. Clearly, these guys had no idea what to do with a fever. Doctors would utilize willow bark and meadowsweet for fevers as well. The willow tree has 400 different species. These medications are plants with medicinal qualities. Meadowsweet is from an herb plant, while willowbark is from the willow tree. Willowbark contains a chemical that helps to reduce fever. People have used these two plants for centuries for their ability to help reduce pain and fever. While this isn’t one of the craziest things on our list, it’s worth mentioning. Nowadays, we can stick to Tylenol and ibuprofen for aches, pains, and fevers.

Camphor For Itchy Skin

Nowadays, if we get itchy, we use Benadryl or creams to help alleviate the itching. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they would use camphor. Camphor is a chemical found in the camphor tree from Southeast Asia. Doctors would distill the bark and create oil from the remnants to put on the skin. The United States banned this substance for its addictive qualities. While they found that camphor actually works, it isn’t the safest thing to use for something like itching. Doctors now believe camphor is a neurotoxin that can cause nausea and diarrhea. Breathing in a small amount of camphor can cause wheezing and coughing fits. It’s much safer to use something like Benadryl or creams that alleviate itching.

Mercury for Syphilis

Mercury is a dangerous substance you’ve probably seen used in older-style thermometers, but can you believe doctors used it to treat syphilis and other venereal diseases? That’s right. Mercury was used in the late 1800s and early 1900s to treat syphilis. Since mercury is a diuretic, doctors believed they could expel the disease from your body when you ingested it. It seems extremely dangerous to us. Can you believe it was used for over 450 years to treat this? Mercury is the only metal on Earth that is a liquid at room temperature. Once antibiotics appeared, mercury became obsolete, and doctors stopped using it. Medicine has really come a long way since the early 1900s!

Chlorine for Typhoid

It seems like a silly question to ask. Who in their right mind would use disinfectants for medications, right? Well, in the early 1900s, they did just that. Disinfectants like chlorine, carbolic, sulfur, lime, and charcoal were all used to treat certain conditions. Chlorine was first used to treat a water main during a typhoid epidemic. They put it into the water, thinking it could kill the disease. Plus, they added lime to water with the idea of treating illnesses. Lime is nontoxic, but it seems crazy to use it for that specific purpose. As far as sulfur goes, it was used in the rooms of the sick and infected to help cleanse the area of sickness.

Phrenology for Mental Health

Mental Health treatment was kind of hit or miss in the early 1900s. Doctors believed in the power of Phrenology. Phrenology involves feeling the skull to measure bumps and dips that showcase mental traits. Bumps in certain areas would indicate traits such as aggression or sadness. Doctors used this highly irregular method until the 20th century when they finally deemed it no longer usable for the study of mental health. So, if you had bumps in certain areas of your skull, doctors would treat you accordingly, even if you weren’t showcasing symptoms of said bump. If you ask us, it seems like a messy way to diagnose mental illness. Nowadays, doctors treat mental health with a variety of medications and therapies.

Hot Irons for Cauterizing

Back in the early days of surgery, it was touch and go as far as the knowledge needed to perform surgeries to save lives. Doctors didn’t know how to stop bleeding in patients, so they used hot irons to cauterize the wounds. This seems like a crazy way to stop bleeding, and it also seems dangerous. They had no anesthesia to keep patients asleep throughout the surgery, so they likely felt everything was happening. It sounds terrifying! Using a hot iron is not only unsanitary, but it could also damage the nerves in your body, especially if it is a large iron that takes up more space than necessary. This makes us glad to be alive today with our medical advancements!

Treating Only Symptoms = Shorter Life Span

Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, doctors relied on treating symptoms, not the cause of illnesses. Doctors did not widely understand medicine at the time, and each doctor had different training, so it was up to your individual doctor to decide how to treat your particular illness. If your symptoms included diarrhea or constipation, your doctor would treat the symptoms, such as an achy stomach. Medicine has come a long way since the early days. While only treating the symptoms, many patients would come down with other illnesses, only to die before they received proper treatment. This is why the average life expectancy was only 40 years of age. Many of the remedies for treating the ill back in the early 1900s are now illegal.

Cleanliness In Hospitals and At Home

Cleanliness wasn’t next to godliness back in the late 1800s and early 1900s when it came to medical tools, offices, and even homes. Doctors wouldn’t wash medical equipment like saws, scalpels, bedding, and gowns between patients. While medicine wasn’t widely understood, these doctors just did what they could to treat patients’ symptoms. Often, patients would meet with their doctor only to leave with another type of illness from improperly cleaned medical tools. Hygiene wasn’t as important as today, either, or people would go weeks without a bath. We bet it makes you glad you live today with all of our proper amenities!

The Dangers of Surgery

Surgery was dangerous during Victorian times, but not for the reasons you might think. The danger was in the fact that everything was dirty. While a lot of patients passed away on the operating table, some survived, only to die later at home from infection. Doctors didn’t believe in cleanliness back then. Operating rooms would be used repeatedly for different patients without being cleaned. Surgical tools were often left bloody. One of the top priorities at the time was keeping the patient alive when it should have included things to keep them healthy, like cleaning surgical instruments. When a patient would come back to see the doctor with a pus-filled wound, the doctor would believe the wound was healing instead of becoming more infected. It was a dangerous time to be alive! Cleanliness during surgery didn’t become a priority until the early 1900s.

Where Do We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:

Bloody hands, dirty knives: The horrors of Victorian medicine | AAMC

10 Dubious Victorian Cures From the First Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy | Mental Floss

Victorian Medicine – Simple History

What Medicines Were Used in the 1800s?

Health & Medicine in the 19th Century – Victoria and Albert Museum

Gruesome and Shocking Facts About Victorian Surgery