Medicine
Throughout history medications were typically sold by physicians in stores, by mail or in traveling medicine shows, long before clinical trials and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval were required to ensure the safety and effectiveness of treatments given to the public. Below you'll find some medicinal oddities that may have you cringing.
Opium Pills
In 1527, opium is referred in European medical literature by Paracelsus as laudanum. The black pills or "Stones of Immortality" were prescribed as painkillers. Given to childern to silent their cries and killing many infants.
Details
Laudanum
-10% opium
-90% alcohol
Mercury & Arsenic
Heavy metals such as mercury, lead and silver; calcium and zinc; manganese and potassium, and arsenic with some samples of radioactive thorium. Could be found in Hollister's Golden Nugget Tablets, Dr. F.G. Johnson's French Female Pills, Reynolds and Parmley's Female Health Restorative, and DeBell's Kidney Pills.
Details
-Heavy metals (mercury, lead, silver, zinc. ect.)
-Radioactive thorium
Corpse Medicine
A mixture of crumbled up skull and alcohol. Given to King Charles II during his long likely painful death.
Details
-Alcohol of choice -Crumbled up skull
-Variety of animal remains (optional)
Tobacco
Around the 1930's tobacco, now considered to be healthy and detrimental to your health, used to once we advertised to have positive effects. Pysicians would recommend brands and took over advertising spots in newpapers.
For Native American societies, tobacco was considered one of the best medicinal remedies for anything from chronic pain to tuberculosis. The leaves were smoked, eaten, or ground up and applied.
Details
Tobacco leaves
Brands
-Old Gold
-Lucky Strikes
-Camels
-Chesterfield
Grub Worms
Grind up and use to salve for skin lesions, burns other wounds. In all of it's quirk grub worms actually contained.
Details
-Only a few smashed up grubs needed
Mouse Paste (toothaches)
In ancient Eygpt , a dead mouse was placed on a tooth of a person having dental aches.
Pliny the Elder wrote, in ancient Rome, they thought similarly to the Eygptians. Toothaches were treated by rubbing the patients mouth with a hippopotamus's left tooth and eatng the arches of a wolf's head.
Applying rotting tissue to exposed nerves and blood vessels is a good way to turn a toothache into a infection.
Details
-1 mouse
-Ashes of a wolf's head and hippoptamus's left tooth