10 Worst Treatments in the History of Medicine

Last Updated on January 7, 2021

The actual role of medicine is to deal with the maintenance of health and the alleviation, prevention, or cure of disease.

But some intended medicines ended up ruining humans’ health, causing diseases, or even resulting in numerous deaths.

10 Worst Treatments in the History of Medicine

Check out these 10 medicines that made things worse in human medical history:

1. Paraffin Wax Surgeries

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Nowadays, doctors use silicone inserts to enlarge breast size or Botox and collagen for face lifts.
The first recorded attempts at artificial breast enhancement and wrinkle removal go back to the 1900s. The operation included injecting paraffin wax directly into the breast to boost its volume or into the wrinkled spot to make it smooth.

However, this procedure has soon been rejected for good reason. Harsh infections were a common side effect, and it also resulted in the formation of painful hard lumps called paraffinomas.So instead of enhancing a woman’s breasts, this primitive technique left them hard, hurtful, and misshaped.

2. LSD and Ecstasy Treatments

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LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and ecstasy (MDMA) are psychedelics with a complex history of being used as mental illness treatments since the early 20th century.

In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied the LSD therapy and reported multiple clinical papers after testing over 40,000 patients. The exposed problem was that using psychedelics to treat mental health issues is actually causing psychiatric disorders.

LSD can lead to extreme anxiety and panic attacks, commonly referred to as ‘bad trips’ nowadays.

Mostly, the psychosis-like reaction lasts only for a short period of time, but in other cases, it was chronic!

In fact, users of psychiatric drugs can develop latent mental conditions that wouldn’t have manifested otherwise. Eventually, the drug’s medical use was prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

3. Radium Water Cure