Old-school is new-school
When you’re sick, you probably want the best, most advanced treatment available. But in some cases, doctors are still using old-school procedures that have been around for thousands of years, because they sometimes work better than anything else available. From leeches to maggots, here’s a look at some ancient medical practices doctors still use today.
Leech therapy
The first use of leeches in medicine dates back to 800 B.C., according to the British Medical Journal, when they were used in bloodletting — a practices that doctors believed would cure fevers, headaches and serious illnesses. Today, leeches are used to stimulate blood circulation after skin grafts and reconstructive surgery. “If someone goes outside and gets into a fight and loses their ear, when we replant their ear we need to re- establish blood supply,” says Stephen Kovach, an assistant professor of surgery in Penn Medicine’s Division of Plastic Surgery. “We call on leeches to help with that. They serve as a bridge until the body can re-establish vascular connections.”
Maggot therapy
Maggots are usually associated with dead bodies, but they can also do wonders for the living. Reportedly first used by Native Americans, Army medics turned to maggots during the Civil War to help keep wounds clean — preventing tissue infections — and promote healing. The first study on maggot therapy was presented in 1929, and today, they’re used on wounds with large surface areas when a surgeon feels they’re a better option than continuously cleaning out a wound manually. “The maggots are an incredible debriding machine,” Kovach says, “and you’ll never see a cleaner wound than one that has maggots in it.”
Transsphenoidal surgery
Transsphenoidal surgery is a minimally- invasive procedure where doctors can go through the nose to remove tumors from certain areas of the brain. Even though it sounds like a new procedure, Raj Sindwani, an otolaryngologist with Cleveland Clinic, says it has been done for thousands of years. “The ancient Egyptians found that the access point to the brain was the nose,” he says. “They used to remove the brain through the nose before mummification. We now take advantage of this technique by removing brain tumors in that area.”
Fecal transplant
This sounds gross, but fecal transplants can actually be something of a miracle cure. Introducing foreign stool into the colon changes the makeup of the gut bacteria. The practice has shown to be an effective treatment for Clostridium difficile, an infection that causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. “The Chinese were the first to recognize that changing the bacterial flora of the colon could be a beneficial treatment,” says Bret Lashner, a gastroenterologist with Cleveland Clinic. “Stool extract was administered orally in the form of ‘yellow soup.'”
Trepanation
Ever hear the expression, “I need this like I need a hole in the head”? Well sometimes, doctors think you really do need a hole in your head. It’s called trepanation, and it dates back to prehistoric times. In the Middle Ages, trepanation was used to relieve “bad spirits,” which tended to be a catch-all term diagnosis for when doctors didn’t know what was wrong with you, says Ty Thaiyananthan, a neurosurgeon with the Brain and Spine Institute of California. Today, the practice is still used, only without the hammer and chisel.”We take a power drill and drill holes into the skull,” he says. “What we most commonly use it for is to relieve pressure after someone has trauma to the brain.”
C-section
While not a treatment, per say, a Cesarean section, also known as a C-section, may seem commonplace today. But C-sections are actually one of the oldest medical procedures, dating back to 320 B.C. There are numerous references to C-sections throughout history, but the mortality rate for the procedure was often very high. It wasn’t until the 1880s when a technique was developed to minimize bleeding that the procedure became as popular as it is today, with nearly one-third of all babies delivered via this method in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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6 Ancient Treatments Doctors Still Use originally appeared on usnews.com
