Aphrodisiacs, Elixirs, and Dr. Brodum’s Restorative Nervous Cordial | Hacker News Reader

Aphrodisiacs, Elixirs, and Dr. Brodum’s Restorative Nervous Cordial

mimimatthews.com

8 pointsAvawelles2 comments

Interesting article. The 18th and 19th century are foreign enough to make you smile incredulously -- the overall imagery, cocaine toothache drops, Restorative Nervous Cordials against masturbation -- and are, at the same time, very relatable: a somewhat industrialized world with global travel, universities, advertisements, to name just a few themes that come up in the article. It almost feels like a satire of the modern world.

And of course, as the article points out, quackery is far from dead (though it's a matter of opinion where exactly it starts). Then as now, there's fertile breeding ground: lack of education, lack of resources, a “sufficient number of hypochondriacs” and the legion of bored, unhappy people suffering rather vaguely from “nerves”. Striking, isn't it?

Let me hasten to add that it's very likely that many of those people were genuinely sick, and it just took us another couple of centuries to find the technology to diagnose and treat them. Though if you're of the persuasion that includes Big Pharma in the quackery camp, maybe it's the quackery that got more refined instead.

I feel the same way about the medicine of the 19th century. Just goes to show how far we've come as far as science since then. And maybe Big Pharma has stepped in to fill the void for all the vague nerve complaints? Of course, it was a difficult time back then since even the doctors (if people could afford to hire them) didn't really know that much about actual disease. For instance, no one knew to wash their hands or their medical instruments and bleeding as a cure was still really popular. Even into the 1950s, some of the medicines and practices were pretty bizarre. My parents remember a time when you could X-ray your own feet at the mall to see what your shoe size was. And then, there's a great commercial for face wash where the lady cleansed away dirt combined with nuclear material and then used a geiger counter on her face to show how clean it was. It's both funny and horrifying!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com