These 15 Vintage Medical Photos Will Make You Glad You’re Living in the 21st Century
These 15 Vintage Medical Photos Will Make You Glad You’re Living in the 21st Century
A visit to the doctor can be an anxiety-ridden event. Your doctor may poke, prod and listen to various parts of your body, and you are likely to be sitting awkwardly on the edge of a paper-lined table while waiting for the diagnosis. While none of this is particularly pleasant, modern medicine has become a lot more comfortable than it was in the past.
1. One Night Cough Syrup promised to kick your cough with a special blend of alcohol, morphine, cannabis and chloroform.
2. Doctors have been performing surgery for centuries, but you may have had little more than a stiff shot of whisky or a nice dose of ether or chloroform before people started cutting into you.
3. Icy cold containment baths were just one of the brutal treatments to which psychiatric patients were subjected.
4. These babies were set to bake under sunlamps to get the vitamin D they needed.
5. Male doctors created this handy-dandy anatomical model of a female to simplify touch-free treatment.
6. Collapsing the lungs was once believed to stop TB in its tracks.
7. This handy radioactive water treatment promised not only to cure your headaches, constipation and gout but also to last a lifetime. They just don’t tell you that your lifetime may be severely truncated by using it.
8. This radiation technologist’s uniform is enough to scare anyone back to health.
9. Artificial limbs have come a long way.
10. Who needs a dentist when you have cocaine toothache drops?
11. Too much soda can be bad for you, but Coke was once sold as a brain tonic.
12. Scoliosis treatment was not for the faint at heart.
13. Physiotherapy made you feel boxed in.
14. Early defibrillators looked more like old radios than life-saving devices.
15. Invalid chairs were the precursors of modern wheelchairs but not nearly so easy to use.
