Today’s medical practices may be just as barbaric as those of a century ago

It’s easy to shake your head at what doctors did in hospitals over 100 years ago — or longer.

Things like putting mercury on wounds, prescribing heroin for a cough and giving children morphine for colic. Not to mention bloodletting!

And while medical procedures sure have dramatically improved since that time, I started to wonder what future generations will think. What will they “look back on in horror” that we do today?

Well, that’s what a group of doctors were asked. And their answers may shock you.

One, a neuroscience professor at Duke University said “Ninety-nine percent of treatments today will be viewed as harmful or unethical in the future.”

Another, an associate professor of cardiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, said it’s the drugs.

He said that the “one size fits all” way drugs are used causes “damage to healthy systems.” The examples he gave were beta-blockers, statins, antibiotics and NSAIDs (like aspirin and ibuprofen).

He also said this about the drugs we use today: It’s like “spraying a whole rose bush with chemicals to treat one leaf that has a black spot fungus.”

But drugs are only part of the story…

What do you think are some of the medical practices or procedures our great-great-grandchildren will be shocked to hear about? Add your voice to the conversation below.

Sources:
“Is today’s standard care tomorrow’s horror?” Elbert Chu, August 8, 2014, Medpage Today, medpagetoday.com