Paracelsus, Vesalius, Tagliacozzi, and Wormius. Despite what you may be thinking, these aren't the names of horrible diseases that you may contract in your lifetime. They're actually the names of some prominent figures in the history of medicine. However, if you had any kind of ailment and your local medicine man was any of these lovely gentlemen then you'd have better odds of survival if you just decided to do nothing about your affliction and hope it passes naturally if you ignore it for long enough.
But if you still decided to show up to your appointment on time, you could expect to receive all types of treatment! Ranging from diagnoses that involved water people and gnomes that lived in mines causing venereal diseases that were to be cured by phallic-shaped orchids, to forcing patients to endure a week's-long salute by pinning the patient's arm to his nose to allow face skin grafts to 'take', you would certainly need a strong constitution to put up with some of these crazy procedures. And do you want to know the best part? Those aren't even the weirdest treatments we've got for you this week!
Join Hayley this week for the final installment in her Crazy Medical Procedures series, and we're certainly going out with a bang this week as we once again ask the question "How did we ever survive so long as a species when doctors spent millennia unknowingly trying to send us to an early grave?" And as it turns out, the answer was just incredible luck!
This episode was presented by Hayley O'Connor and joined by Arron Keegan and Conor Daly. The intro and outro music - Strollin' Along - was recorded by David Renda. Make sure to follow us on social media! Just search for "That's Old News" on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter/X, or head to the linktree in the podcast's about section!
========
Chapters
(00:00) Coming Up This Week
(01:08) Intro
(05:33) Paracelsus
(17:46) Vesalius
(25:05) Syphilis
(32:32) Gaspare Tagliacozzi
(43:31) "Cabinets of Curiosities"
(55:30) Medical Museums
(01:08:29) Post Show Banter
