From the sun ray to the skin tube, these haunting vintage medical treatments actually inspired techniques still in use today.
The history of medicine is overflowing with bizarre remedies and curious cures (cocaine for congestion, anyone?). However, many of the strange solutions of yesteryear actually paved the way for modern medical treatments in use today.
Below, take a look at five of the creepiest medical treatments of decades past.
The Sun Ray
Internet Archive Book ImagesEarly experimentation with light therapy. Circa 1900s.
The healing power of the sun has been recognized and appreciated since Incas were engineering aqueducts and the ancient Greeks were pondering existence. But it was only when Faroese-Danish physician Niels Finsen discovered that light radiation can help treat lupus vulgaris in the 1890s that modern phototherapy was born.
The technology took off, and for much of the first half of the twentieth century, light therapy was prescribed for everything from varicose ulcers to chest infections and anemia.
Sickly children were the most popular patients for the now-controversial remedy, resulting in striking photos of semi-nude kids encircling glowing orbs like possessed child-demons at séances.
Fox Photos/Getty ImagesA child wearing goggles and held by a nurse undergoes sun ray treatment at Cheyne Hospital for Children. London. 1928.
Phototherapy was rendered mostly obsolete with the popularization of antibiotics in the 1960s (and the realization that, you know, excessive exposure to ultraviolet light causes skin cancer), but it is still used today to treat jaundice in newborns and some skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.
Radiography
Underwood Archives/Getty ImagesAn early X-ray device called the Roentgen “look through” machine helped prevent injury to the treating physician. Frankfurt, Germany. Circa 1929.
Although early X-ray equipment, with all of its mechanical contraptions and nightmarish gadgetry, may have looked like the torturous imaginings of the mind of a mad scientist, the development of radiography remains one of the most significant advancements in diagnostic medicine.
Like many scientific endeavors, medical-scanning technology was bolstered by the outbreak of war. Less than a year after Wilhelm Röntgen first detected and produced X-rays in 1895, the new technique found its place in a military hospital. Radiographic laboratories began to spring up and before long, the “miracle” technology was being widely used.
Radiography in those early days involved rudimentary machinery and operators draped in dense lead aprons that gave them the appearance of murderous welders (that’s if they donned any protective gear at all — the damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not fully understood back then).
As the technology developed — particularly during World War I, during which radiography saved countless lives by helping doctors to quickly identify shrapnel lodged in the bodies of soldiers — so too did our understanding of it and the dangers involved.
H.J. Hickman/Wellcome LibraryA radiographer in France wears protective clothing and headpiece during World War I. 1918.
Today, the equipment is a lot less frightening, although there is still something unsettling about the dull hums and loud clacks of medical scanning machinery (but at least the operators won’t haunt your dreams).
Spine Straightening
Internet Archive Book ImagesEarly contraption for spinal correction. 1897.
Most early treatments for spinal deformities involved racks and braces that would probably not look out of place today in a torture chamber or the dingy dungeons of avid BDSM fanatics. Imagine patients bound and suspended by hand, hip, and head to medieval-looking, wooden-framed contraptions designed to pull and twist their bodies.
As harrowing as they may seem, these spine-straightening mechanisms may have been of some value to those suffering from conditions like scoliosis. At the very least, they helped to grow our understanding of the most effective methods for treating complex spinal disorders.
Hippocrates described scoliosis back in 400 BC, and since then all manner of spine-tweaking tackle has been invented (most of which likely failed). In 1895, Lewis Sayre — regarded as one of the founding fathers of orthopedic surgery — suggested treating scoliosis with suspension.
According to Sayre, patients should be hung from their arms until they are dangling almost entirely off the ground, at which point their scoliotic deformities could be straightened out and a plaster of Paris cast applied to hold it all in place.
NYU ArchivesSurgeon Lewis Albert Sayre observes the change in the curvature of a patient’s spine as she self-suspends herself prior to being wrapped in a plaster of Paris bandage as a treatment for a spinal deformity. Circa 1870s.
The technique was questionable, but it did serve to help develop modern methods of body casting and bracing (plus it produced some pretty kinky-looking pictures).
The Iron Lung
The U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationAt the height of the American polio outbreak in the 1950s, iron lungs were commonplace in hospitals.
In 1952, when America’s polio outbreak was at its worst, more than 21,000 people contracted a paralyzing form of the disease and at least 3,000 succumbed to it. Victims of the virus experienced flu-like symptoms in the early stages of infection, before the disease claimed crucial nerves in the respiratory system.
For some, the only option was to be placed in an iron lung, an artificial breathing apparatus that looked more like a torture device than a method of treatment.
For some patients, life in the lung was short-lived, and a few weeks of temporary confinement in the metal box was enough to usher them to a full recovery. The less fortunate victims, however, were forced to live out the rest of their days restricted to a respirator.
Tortuous as it may seem, for many, the ventilators were a godsend and without them, it is likely that the polio virus would have claimed many more lives.
Library of CongressAn iron lung at the Scots Mission Hospital. Israel. 1940.
Polio vaccination programs and modern ventilators have rendered the iron lung mostly useless today. In 2014, it was believed that there were just 10 people in the U.S. still living in iron lungs. Mostly, the metal boxes sit vacant in eerie museums like hulking reminders of a grisly past.
Early Plastic Surgery
Wikimedia CommonsWalter Yeo, a sailor injured in battle during World War I, was one of the first modern plastic surgery patients. 1917.
In the pioneering days of early 20th century plastic surgery, when wartime doctors like Sir Harold Gillies were trying to mask the gruesome atrocities of battle, experimentation and medical innovation were the requirements of the day. But that experimentation sometimes turned rather macabre.
Take the case of Walter Yeo, an English sailor who lost his eyelids in battle during World War I. Yeo’s disfigurement called for a novel solution: a skin graft 1916-style. Gillies, who performed the procedure, employed a technique of his own creation called the “tubed pedicle.”
This involved stripping a flap of skin from Yeo’s chest on three sides, peeling it back and flapping it over his disfigured face. The skin remained attached to Yeo’s chest but was stitched into a “tube” of skin connecting his face and chest in order to ensure blood flow and prevent infection at the graft site (it’s also useful for scaring children).
The results of the procedure were unimpressive by modern plastic-surgery standards, but Yeo was able to resume a normal life and even returned to active duty.
Perhaps even more startling than the case involving “the man whose chest became his face” is the one about “the man whose finger became his nose.” Records of a very early rhinoplasty (nose job) operation dating back to 1880 show a series of before and after photos that should not be shown to the kids.
Although some details remain unclear, as is the case with Yeo’s tubed pedicle, this bit of facial reconstruction involved attaching the patient’s finger to his face as a replacement for a missing nose. The finger was later removed once it had fused into a rather crude snout.
O.G. Mason/National Museum of Health and MedicineLoss of nose due to an injury, and replacement by a finger. 1880.
Since then, the development of modern antibiotics to deal with infection means that surgeons no longer need to stitch patients up like Frankensteinian monsters, but these early experiments were vital in our understanding of modern plastic surgery.