It seems like back before modern medicine was a thing, prescribing arsenic for almost all ailments was all the rage. I’m going to assume that people weren’t just idiots in the past and that there was a reason for that.
Do small amounts of arsenic make you feel temporarily good or something like that? Is it a case of arsenic being useful for one specific illness and doctors then prescribing it for everything? Basically, why would they prescribe poison to people???
In: 71
An important thing to remember is that for most of human history medicine was just about achieving a result, *any result at all.* If something made you vomit, or poop, or both, then they would prescribe it for a number of ailments because for most of medical history people thought that expelling something from your body was healthy, your body was ridding itself of “toxins” (or at least that’s what was believed). So, for a very long time, people would actively poison themselves believing the effects to be restorative.
Latest Answers