Academic Medicine Open Forum

Did you know that cigarettes and chloroform were used-experimentally-as treatments for asthma? Cocaine was believed to be a treatment for seasonal pollen allergies. And in the early days of research into blood substitutes for transfusions… milk was used. (Spoiler: It didn't work.)

The Library of Congress offers this entertaining list of "10 Strange Medical Practices from History," reminding us to be grateful for the wide body of medical knowledge and rigorous scientific process that we enjoy today.

Some prompts for further discussion:

• What other *interesting* historical medical practices you are aware of?
• This topic naturally raises the question: What practices of today may look as strange to future generations as these do to us? (Of course, it is difficult to answer that question without the knowledge that future generations will discover from standing on our shoulders, but I think it can still be helpful to consider it.)

I'll kick off the discussion by answering my own prompts. Abu Bakr al-Razi, also known as Rhazes, was a remarkable and pioneering physician who lived in the 9^th and 10^th centuries. One of his works was a home medical manual for those who did not have access to a physician. One of his recommendations for melancholy? Opium (Papini, 2018, p. 82).

For the second question, I thought about something that the COVID-19 pandemic has made clearer that we're doing: creating environments where breathing gets people sick. While the health toll of poor indoor (Jones, 1999) and outdoor (Kinney, 2008) air quality and airborne pathogens (Eames et al., 2009) has long been clear, the pandemic brought the link between air and transmissible disease into the public consciousness. Yet while we have tools to protect against the airborne transmission of disease-including respirators like N95s, filtration, ventilation, UV-C lighting, and vaccination-in many settings, little seems to have changed since before the pandemic. This includes some health care settings, as many infections continue to be nosocomial (McNeil et al., 2023). I have sometimes wondered if future generations might look at us like we look at Ignaz Semmelweis's contemporaries who rejected his findings about handwashing reducing maternal mortality (Best and Neuhauser, 2004).

Did you know that cigarettes and chloroform were used-experimentally-as treatments for asthma? Cocaine was believed to be a treatment for seasonal pollen allergies. And in the early days of research into blood substitutes for transfusions… milk was used. (Spoiler: It didn't work.)

The Library of Congress offers this entertaining list of "10 Strange Medical Practices from History," reminding us to be grateful for the wide body of medical knowledge and rigorous scientific process that we enjoy today.

Some prompts for further discussion:

• What other *interesting* historical medical practices you are aware of?
• This topic naturally raises the question: What practices of today may look as strange to future generations as these do to us? (Of course, it is difficult to answer that question without the knowledge that future generations will discover from standing on our shoulders, but I think it can still be helpful to consider it.)

This is so interesting, @Lee Crowther - thanks for sharing! Related to maternal health - my money is on the possibility that many of the medical practices that pregnant people go through today will look "strange" to future generations. My own experience over the past few years at times made me feel like I was living in the past with my prenatal care, and I'm personally very excited for some more advancements to be made in that area of medicine and health.

I'll kick off the discussion by answering my own prompts. Abu Bakr al-Razi, also known as Rhazes, was a remarkable and pioneering physician who lived in the 9^th and 10^th centuries. One of his works was a home medical manual for those who did not have access to a physician. One of his recommendations for melancholy? Opium (Papini, 2018, p. 82).

For the second question, I thought about something that the COVID-19 pandemic has made clearer that we're doing: creating environments where breathing gets people sick. While the health toll of poor indoor (Jones, 1999) and outdoor (Kinney, 2008) air quality and airborne pathogens (Eames et al., 2009) has long been clear, the pandemic brought the link between air and transmissible disease into the public consciousness. Yet while we have tools to protect against the airborne transmission of disease-including respirators like N95s, filtration, ventilation, UV-C lighting, and vaccination-in many settings, little seems to have changed since before the pandemic. This includes some health care settings, as many infections continue to be nosocomial (McNeil et al., 2023). I have sometimes wondered if future generations might look at us like we look at Ignaz Semmelweis's contemporaries who rejected his findings about handwashing reducing maternal mortality (Best and Neuhauser, 2004).

Did you know that cigarettes and chloroform were used-experimentally-as treatments for asthma? Cocaine was believed to be a treatment for seasonal pollen allergies. And in the early days of research into blood substitutes for transfusions… milk was used. (Spoiler: It didn't work.)

The Library of Congress offers this entertaining list of "10 Strange Medical Practices from History," reminding us to be grateful for the wide body of medical knowledge and rigorous scientific process that we enjoy today.

Some prompts for further discussion:

• What other *interesting* historical medical practices you are aware of?
• This topic naturally raises the question: What practices of today may look as strange to future generations as these do to us? (Of course, it is difficult to answer that question without the knowledge that future generations will discover from standing on our shoulders, but I think it can still be helpful to consider it.)