Early American Medical Myths
lice, wash your head with whiskey and sand. The lice will get drunk on the whiskey and, thinking that they are on sand, they will fight each other to the death.
Not all of the early medical myths were as unreasonable as they may have seemed. The concept of bleeding a sick person with leeches or by cuts as well as using maggots to eat away dead tissue of an infected area of skin are two old remedies being reevaluated today. And before we dismiss out of hand all colonial cures, we must remember that some treatments were correct in principle, but needed refinement, such as the concept of curing an infected tooth by applying cow manure to the outside of a cheek. Of course, we now know that cow manure was the wrong substance to apply, but the concept of applying warmth to an area in order to draw out infection was correct. However, it was through these pioneering methods that we have been able to achieve modern medical knowledge.
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