Early American Medical Myths

Bags of camphor were worn around the neck of healthy residents when they were in public, because they believed that the smell of the camphor was so bad it would keep away other people who might be carrying deadly germs. With such extensive use of garlic, vinegar, camphor, and other odoriferous home remedies, even doctors were becoming nauseous from inhaling so many heavy fumes. Carrying tarred ropes or wearing garlic in the shoes were two other common preventatives. Families were constantly whitewashing the walls of their homes to purify them.

The tremendously unsanitary conditions in early America were actually the cause of a raging typhoid epidemic. The stench of rotting waste in the streets, as well as that of stagnant swamp air, was suspected of being a disease transmitter. The idea of cleaning up waste was proposed by a couple of medical practitioners in the 18th century, but it was voted down. To disburse the "noxious miasma", or bad air, from these two sources as well as the breath of infected people, early Americans would fire gunshots into the air. In 1793 Philadelphians shot at miasmic vapors from their house windows so often that the mayor finally had to forbid the practice, as many residents were wounded from the wild gunshots. At one point, a canon was even brought into the town and fired every few feet, until the mayor declared the practice futile.

Here are just a few of the more outrageous medical myths of America's forefathers:

To cure a goiter or remove a birthmark: Rub with the hand of a corpse. To cure melancholy: Bleed from a vein in the foot. To cure whooping cough: Breathe into your lungs the breath of a fish. For arthritis: Allow honeybees to sting the sufferer, and when the stings disappear, the arthritis will disappear also. To cure chicken pox: Go to the chicken house after the sun has set, lie down, and let a black hen fly over you. To reduce fever: Swallow a spider with syrup. Also for warts: Bury a one year old clean dishcloth the same distance behind the barn as the height of the person who has the wart. Wrap the wart for five days, then dig up the dishcloth and clean it. The wart will be gone. Or you could just sell the wart to someone for a penny.

And my all time favorite, which grants human behavior to the tiniest of creatures:

To be rid of lice,

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