7 terrible ways to treat mental illness from the past

Medicine is one of the fastest growing areas of human activity. People were sick and needed treatment in all the centuries of their existence. And since demand creates supply, and experience comes only as a result of practice, so quickly, but at the same time risky and sometimes frightening history, there is no longer any industry. Even those diseases that are today considered quite primitive and understandable were once treated with truly brutal and dangerous methods. What can we say about mental illness, always considered mysterious and mystical! Some ways to eliminate or at least stop them, invented by our ancestors, are terrifying.

Electroshock

In the 30s of the 20th century, patients with depression (and sometimes with manic-depressive disorder) were given a current through the brain. This caused convulsions, had a dubious therapeutic effect, and often led to memory loss.

The Great Hemingway is one of the victims of this treatment. The writer laid hands on himself after undergoing electroshock therapy, which seriously affected his memory and ability to write.

Lobotomy

This brutal (and currently prohibited in most countries) method of treatment existed not so long ago as it might seem. There are cases when in the 60s of the last century lobotomy was prescribed as therapy for naughty children. And one of the famous victims of this treatment is John F. Kennedy’s sister, Rosemary, who suffered from developmental disorders. The terrible procedure assigned to the girl due to mood swings made her a 2-year-old child.

Snake pits

Until the 50s of the last century, another method of "treatment" of the mentally ill was practiced, this time having nothing to do with medicine. Those who were not helped by exorcism (and in many cultures it is believed that obsession with evil spirits provokes mental disorders) was held over a pit full of poisonous snakes, thus trying to frighten and drive out demons.

Hydrotherapy

If it seems to you that the word "hydrotherapy" does not contain anything frightening and creepy, then you will change your mind as soon as you learn more about this method. A person with a mental disorder was wrapped in an ice sheet, placed in a bath of ice water and poured out of a fire hose for hours. It is difficult to imagine how such therapy was supposed to help the unfortunate mentally ill.

Trepanation

No matter how strange it may sound, craniotomy is one of the oldest operations practiced by humans. And if today it is an extremely rare type of surgical intervention aimed at gaining access to the patient’s brain for further manipulations, then many centuries ago holes in the human skull were made by everyone who showed “bizarre, strange” behavior to allow demons to leave the patient’s head.

Orgasm

One of the serious mental illnesses of the past was considered to be what we today call ordinary sexual dissatisfaction. Only the fair sex suffered him, and in medical treatises he is listed under the name "hysteria." Is there any need to explain that they treated him with the help of bringing a woman to orgasm by any possible means? Not the worst treatment on our list, but very curious and curious, agree.

Bloodletting

In short, at the dawn of more or less scientific and conscious medicine, the ancient Greeks, and then Europeans, believed that any ailment would occur due to an imbalance of natural fluids in the body. Therefore, in any incomprehensible situation, as they say, the first thing a complaining person feels about is bleeding to balance everything and restore harmony to the body.