Weird Medical History

Handwashing heretics, lobotomobiles, and the doctors who drank bacteria to prove a point.

35 stories

• The Box of Light Bulbs the Corn Flakes Doctor Said Cured a King
• The Dinner Party Where Three Doctors Sniffed Chloroform and Woke Up Under the Table
• The Doctor Who Prescribed 30 Leeches for Everything — and the Paris Dresses Embroidered in His Honor
• The 'Life Energy' Box Einstein Tested for Ten Days — and the Warm Ceiling That Explained It
• The Mechanical Horse That Trotted So You Didn't Have To — and the Doctor Who Invented the Gym Machine
• The Roman Doctor Who Prescribed a Live Electric Fish for Your Headache
• The 3,000-Year-Old Wooden Toe Scientists Test-Drove in Replica Egyptian Sandals
• The Coffin That Waved a Flag If You Woke Up Buried — and Flunked Its Own Demonstration
• The Wound Cure You Rubbed on the Sword Instead of the Patient
• The Peasants Who Ate Arsenic in Front of a Room Full of Scientists — and Came Back the Next Day
• The Tomato Pills That Cured Everything — and Contained No Tomato
• The Ancient Egyptian Pregnancy Test That Asked Women to Pee on Grain — and Sort of Worked
• The Blindfolded Boy Who Fainted at the Wrong Apricot Tree
• The Rooster Diagnosed by Mail With Malaria, Diabetes, Cancer, and Syphilis
• The Senator Who Went to Space and Came Back as a Unit of Nausea
• The Airstream Trailer That Was Supposed to Save Earth From Moon Germs
• The Frog in the Hospital Basement That Told You If You Were Pregnant
• The Beef and Cabbage Lowered Into a Man's Stomach on a Silk String
• The Everlasting Pill That Families Fished Out of the Chamber Pot and Passed Down
• The Goat-Gland Surgery That Ended Up Rewriting American Radio Law
• The Family That Rang Bells and Blindfolded Mothers to Hide a Pair of Tongs
• The Woman Who Convinced the King's Surgeon She Gave Birth to Rabbits
• The Surgeon So Fast He Supposedly Killed Three People With One Amputation
• The 5,300-Year-Old Iceman Whose Tattoos May Have Been Medicine
• The Doctor Who Drank a Beaker of Bacteria to Prove Ulcers Weren't Caused by Stress
• The Doctor Who Toured America in a 'Lobotomobile'
• The Fake Metal Rods That Accidentally Invented the Placebo-Controlled Trial
• The Man Who Took an Iron Rod Through His Brain and Lived
• The Shoe-Store X-Ray Machine That Kids Begged to Use
• The Stone Age Skull Surgery With a Higher Survival Rate Than the Civil War's
• The Summer 400 People Couldn't Stop Dancing
• The Surgeon Who Threaded a Tube Into His Own Heart
• The Watch Painters Who Glowed in the Dark
• The Year in Space That Turned Twin Astronauts Into a Living Experiment
• When Doctors Recommended Cigarettes

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