Bizarre images of medical treatments through history, 1900-1940

The history of medicine is full of bizarre healing methods and wild tales of medical procedures aimed at making people feel better.

Some stranger remedies of old-time medicine would prove useful; When scarring—heating an iron rod over hot coal and then pressing it to a person's body—did not heal broken hearts when the rod was pressed against a patient's chest, a practice that was performed using electric surgical instruments. was a precursor.

And while doctors were misled into prescribing the poison arsenic to treat syphilis and skin conditions, a form of the chemical has been used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia.

It also took a long time to figure out how to use the technology safely. Dr. Maxim Maynard, a French physician, had to amputate his finger when he developed cancer from constant exposure to radiation while operating an X-ray machine. (In a striking association with modern medicine, Maynard smoked a cigarette while his offending finger was surgically removed).

When Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, the New York Times was so skeptical that the paper referred to the medical breakthrough as "the alleged discovery of how to paint the invisible."