Unusual and frightening medicine of the past: photos from the archives (31 photos)

Modern medicine has made tremendous progress in recent decades. But just 100-150 years ago, doctors used methods that today seem strange and look a little scary. This archival footage allows us to look back in time and see what medical practices were like before the era of antibiotics and high technology.





1. Let's start with something funny. X-ray horse for holding children during chest X-rays, 1957



2. A patient in an Iron Lung, a respirator, circa 1938



3. A woman stands in a narrow chamber, her body and limbs secured with steel cables. This is how mental illness was treated in Germany in the late 19th century



4. A doctor in a protective suit during a plague outbreak in Manchuria, 1912



5. Patients during a dance therapy session. New York State Insane Asylum, 1922



6. Dr. Clark's apparatus (circa 1878). The spinal device is one of the strangest and least effective methods of treating scoliosis



7. A chest X-ray in the radiology department of Dr. Maxime Menard at the Cochin Hospital in Paris, circa 1914



Menard would later lose a finger due to side effects from working with the X-ray machine/

8. Tranquilizer (chair (coercion) - a special chair to which violent patients were tied. Dutch psychiatric hospital, 1938.



9. During the Spanish flu epidemic, it was believed that the nose was the main conductor of infection into the body. This is a device for purifying the air entering the nostrils, 1919.



10. Surgeon Lewis Albert Sayer assesses the curvature of a patient's spine during self-traction before applying a plaster of Paris cast as a treatment for spinal deformity



11. A state-of-the-art X-ray machine designed to prevent injury to the attending physician, Frankfurt, Germany, 1929 g.



12. Bergonic Chair for electrotherapy for psychological treatment of psychoneuroses, World War I era



13. Dr. G. H. Byford stands under an optokinetic drum wearing a contact lens with a miniature lamp



Photo taken during an experiment to investigate reflex eye movements and their relationship to visual illusions at the RAF Farnborough Institute of Aviation Medicine, 1960.

14. A cobalt apparatus rotating around a patient's body to target cancerous tumors, 1955



15. A young woman holds her arms and legs in water baths (according to one per limb) with an electric current to improve blood circulation, 1938



16. A patient in a psychiatric hospital in a straitjacket



17. A wire suit designed to measure body temperature in the study of the physiological effects of high-speed and space flights, 1960 g.



18. A patient undergoing light therapy using sun lamps, 1930



19. A device with four flexible rods attached to the brain by electrodes was developed in 1940 to measure brain waves



20. French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne conducts an electrophysiology experiment, using electrical probes to stimulate a subject's muscles to produce certain facial expressions, 1850s



21. A patient undergoing lateral cerebral diathermy treatment in the early 1920s



Diathermy used galvanic current to shock psychotic patients; it was eventually found to be unsafe and unreliable.

22. A patient pumps air into his lungs, keeping the mercury column of the device at a constant height, while a doctor checks his blood pressure, 1932



23. A state-of-the-art X-ray machine, operated by a radiologist in an old-style protective suit. He won't need it anymore, 1934



24. A patient and doctor test a stretching device that claims to increase height by 2-6 inches, 1931



25. A device to stimulate blood circulation in the legs, 1950s years



26. Electroretinogram: a device developed to measure the electrical potential of the retina, 1930s.



27. New "Hip Massager" from the US, circa 1928



28. Woman in Electric Bath at the Institute of Light Therapy, 1900s.



29. Winston Churchill's personal pressure chamber, designed to allow him to fly safely at high altitudes, 1947



30. These are steam baths used for physiotherapy, 1920. Judging by the patients' faces, they weren't particularly comfortable experience