by Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor
International Man
No matter what ailed you, the doctor had one cure: attaching leeches to your body.
In the Middle Ages, doctors used leeches to treat everything from headaches to ear infections, asthma, smallpox, the plague, and hundreds of other diseases. If there was something wrong with you, leeches were the solution. If that didn’t work, the answer was more leeches.
Today, modern medicine has discredited leeches as a cure-all. We look back on it and laugh. “How could we have been so stupid?”
But back then, people didn’t think it was stupid. They thought it was a solution. “Experts” and conventional wisdom endorsed the practice wholeheartedly.