Since beginning of the time, people have had illness and doctors have tried to cure them. In the days when people knew very little about medicine, some very strange and horrible cures were tried. Here are some of the worst! Ancient Egyptians who had toothache did not use to go to the dentist because there were not any dentists in those days. So they used to find a dead mouse and put it in their mouth. They left it there for a few hours. Did it take the toothache away? Who knows? But are not you happy that there is a dentist near you?
Backache is no fun at all-people who suffer from it have a lot of pain. Sometimes it is because a vertebra-a bone in the back is out of position. In ancient Greece, doctors used to cure backache like this: they tied the patient to a ladder, pulled the ladder up high and then let it fall to a ground. Bang! The vertebra went back into place. Well, that was the ides, but this ‘cure’ probably just made the backache worse! Now it am pretty sure that it is not a disease at all. But men whose hair is falling out are never happy about it, are they?
The ancient Egyptians had the solution. What did they use to do? They took the fat of a lion, a hippopotamus, a cat and a snake, mixed them together-and then rubbed the mixture into the man’s head. Maybe it stopped baldness, maybe not- but the man’s head certainly did not smell too good afterwards! The Middle Ages was a time when there was a common skin disease called scrofula. People who had scrofula could easily get rid of it- they just had to get the king or queen to touch them! The question is: why would a king or queen want to touch a person who had a skin disease?