Shocking a person with electricity doesn't seem like it would help anything, unless you were Frankenstein, but it's been tried for a number of things!  Running electric current through the body has been a treatment for headache, stomach ache, cramps, and mental disorders. 

People of ancient civilizations, up into the Roman times,  used electric eels and fish to treat headaches and seizures. And how did the fish feel about that?

Electroshock became very popular in the 20th century in the treatment of mental illnesses and depression. It is still a very controversial treatment.  Some doctors swear it works and some see it as inhuman and barbaric.

The use of magnets to treat illness goes back thousands of years!  Hindu, Egyptian, Tibetan, and Chinese writings mention using magnetic rock to treat body pains and wounds.

People who use magnets say that they open blood vessels, change the body's electromagnetic field, or stimulate chemical processes in cells.  Nobody knows for sure what's happening.

Magnets can be taped or held next to the skin, put into shoe insoles, sewn into clothes, or even put into mattresses! Talk about a lumpy night's sleep!

It won't do any good to stick refrigerator magnets all over yourself--medical magnets are 10-400 times as strong as those.  Manufacturers will make about $500 million dollars this year selling magnets for health.  Hey, you can even buy a magnetic dog or cat collar for about $20. Then, will they stick to passing cars?

ACUPUNCTURE!

For more than 4,000 years, Chinese doctors have been using acupuncture-the art of needle therapy. Needles traditionally were made of stone, fish bones, or bamboo, but later were made of metal. A tomb from 113 BC contained four gold and five silver needles.  Today, they are steel or silver.  Very thin needles are inserted at certain points of the body, 900 positions that are believed to be where the forces of the body flow. My body forces run from needles! According to one legend, acupuncture began when a hunter, accidentally shot in the bridge of the nose by an arrow, realized his painful headache suddenly disappeared! Clumsy hunter, huh? While the Chinese perfected the art, similar techniques have been used by the ancient Egyptians, Eskimos, and Africans.  One tribe in Brazil used blowpipes to inject arrows into points of the body used for acupuncture! The Mongolians have used acupuncture on animals for centuries. Some of the points seem unrelated to what they are used to relieve.  A headache can be treated by a needle in the toe and indigestion by a needle in the shoulder! Where do you treat a fear of needles? Acupuncture is used often as an anesthetic (pain reliever.)   An American heart specialist once watched an operation in China, in which a man's lung was removed.  The only pain deadener was one needle, inserted into the left arm!  The man was awake and talking during the operation and felt nothing. The needles range from 3-24 centimeters long. Get a ruler and check that out! They are injected and "twirled" until they're in position.  Some are even connected to mild electrical currents. Today in America, there are about 8000 acupuncturists, 16 acupuncture schools, and 2 medical schools teaching acupuncture as a way to maintain health.

TREATMENT OF WOUNDS

Wounds, ("Owies") have been treated through the centuries in dozens of ways-most of them painful!  Here is a library of a few!

• Honey     Honey actually does some strange things.  It is called hygroscopic- which means that it takes water from whatever it touches, even the air!  When it contacts bacteria, which are tiny, wet organisms, it sucks the water right out and kills the germs!  There is even a small amount of peroxide in honey, which is an antiseptic (it prevents infection.)  Honey is always moist, so it won't dry out and make removing a dressing painful. Honey has been used for thousands of years on wounds.

 Even now, there are experiments being done with honey.  Doctors who are doing cancer surgery are coating their instruments with honey, which attracts and kills all the "loose" cancer cells along the edges of the incision.  Even wounds from limb amputations are being coated with honey and seem to heal more quickly! Wow!

• Alcohol     In the old western movies, the doctor gives a bullet wound a good dose of whiskey, both in the patient's mouth and right on the wound! The patient usually yells about that time! Many distilled, fermented drinks with alcohol were used to sterilize wounds and kill germs. It was the beginning of using chemicals to make wound treatment safer.

• Heat     A wound, especially one that bled a lot, was cauterized (burned.)  This sealed the blood vessels and stopped bleeding.  It also prevented infection.  In the 1500's, boiling oil was poured over the wound!  Later, a metal blade was heated in fire and then applied. They did that in the old westerns, too!

• Folk remedies    These were medical ideas passed down through generations-ashes of snakeskin, seeds, herbs, oils,  even a live spider covered in butter!

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