From the sun ray to the skin tube, these haunting vintage medical treatments actually inspired techniques still in use today.
The history of medicine is overflowing with bizarre remedies and curious cures ( cocain for congestion , anyone ? ) . However , many of the strange resolution of yesteryear in reality paved the direction for modern medical treatments in habit today .
Below , take a flavor at five of the creepy-crawly aesculapian discourse of decades past .
The Sun Ray
Internet Archive Book ImagesEarly experiment with light therapy . Circa 1900s .
The healing power of the Sunday has been recognized and appreciated since Incas were engineering aqueduct and the ancient Greeks were mull universe . But it was only when Faroese - Danish physicianNiels Finsendiscovered that light radiation can help treatlupus vulgarisin the 1890s that modern phototherapy was put up .
The technology take in off , and for much of the first one-half of the 20th C , visible radiation therapy was prescribed for everything from varicose ulcers to chest infections and anemia .
Internet Archive Book ImagesEarly experimentation with light therapy. Circa 1900s.
Sickly childrenwere the most popular affected role for the now - controversial remedy , resulting in striking photos of semi - nude Kid encircle glowing orb like possessed child - demons at séances .
Fox Photos / Getty ImagesA tike wearing goggles and held by a nurse undergoes sun electron beam discussion at Cheyne Hospital for Children . London . 1928 .
Phototherapy was rendered mostly obsolete with the vulgarisation of antibiotic in the 1960s ( and the realization that , you know , unreasonable exposure to ultraviolet light causes skin cancer ) , but it is still used today to treat tartness in newborn and some skin weather like eczema and psoriasis .
Fox Photos/Getty ImagesA child wearing goggles and held by a nurse undergoes sun ray treatment at Cheyne Hospital for Children. London. 1928.
