What are some of the weirdest medical practices that have ever happened before science came in and found a better way?

Historically, there have been plenty of ridiculous medical practices. At their best they were simply unhelpful and at their worst they were harmful.

Whenever I think about strange medical practices, I first think about the 19th century concept of “female hysteria”.

Although at multiple times prior to the 19th century societies recognized that women experienced sexual desire, by the 19th century this information was largely forgotten. Women were thought to entirely lack sexual desire and merely be receptacles for male lust.

So women complained to their doctors and midwives of a broad range of symptoms including a heaviness in the pelvis, wetness between the legs, insomnia, restlessness and frustration.

Gee, I wonder what that could possibly represent?

There was really no good excuse for not knowing this information. The Quakers and the Puritans all recognized female sexual desire (within a marriage). But this information conflicted with the 19th century view of women as pure and the moral core of society.

Doctors to the rescue!

Doctors and midwives massaged vegetable oil on the clitorises of women suffering from hysteria as well as inserted fingers into their vagina. They did this until the woman reached “paroxysms”.

Paroxysms weren't orgasms of course. Women couldn’t have orgasms.

The woman would leave feeling better for a period of time until she required a repeat treatment.

Flashback.com

This was really a win-win for physicians. It provided a reliable income stream. It was one of the few times they weren’t actively harming patients with a proposed treatment.

Naturally, all of that masturbating was pretty tiring. Luckily, necessity is the mother of all invention.

So doctors decided to outsource this tiring work to technology.

That’s right, you can thank the repressive sexual ideas of the 19th century for the vibrator currently sitting in your nightstand drawer! (I hope it doesn’t look like this one).

Cabinet magazine

In fact, the vibrator was only the fifth household appliance to be electrified, arriving immediately after the toaster. It beat vacuums to the house by 100 years.

And of course, science didn’t really ‘find a better way’ as indicated in the question. We just got less oblivious to the realities of female sexuality and then the entire diagnosis of female hysteria disappeared.

"Hysteria" and the Strange History of Vibrators

Edit:

Multiple people have pointed out in the comment section that as of last year there is some suspicion that some or all of the story is apocryphal. I haven’t had a chance to read through those links yet. I do know I’ve read about this in multiple sources including medical texts (but of course inaccurate information can get propagated). I have also read descriptions of vibrators that were water-based at home to be attached to a faucet prior to electricity.

So I will do some more reading. The concept of female hysteria is well-documented as is the “wandering uterus” theory. It never fully went away until Freud (and of course his ideas weren't accurate either)