Horrific Historical Treatments of Hemorrhoids

I don’t need to warn you that this post is about to be real, not with “Horrific” in the title, do I?

We'll break out the caution tape, just in case

I’m really thankful that I live in today’s medical environment, because as terrible as some things may be right now, they were downright horrific. And not all that long ago, really.

Lobotomies may have fallen out of favor in the 1950s, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t 40,000 of those “procedures” performed, and from what I can collect without anaesthesia. Do you know how a lobotomy is executed? Essentially an ice pick is stuck through your eye socket, and your frontal cortex is “scrambled”. But I’ll do a whole different blog post about what they did to people with mental problems in the future.

Before I begin, let’s just take a look at an old hypodermic needle. The syringe as we know it was essentially created by Dr. Alexander Wood in the 19th century. I’m not sure on the dates of when these were actually used, but take a good look at them:

Oh...Oh my...

Gods, NOOOOOOOO!!!

Holy hypodermic needle, Batman. Do you see how large those needles are? Let’s *completely* eliminate what we know about bloodborne pathogens and contamination of others through needle sharing. Imagine a doctor sticking that *cannon* into your vein.

I’ve had a LOT of bloodwork done, tons of IV’s, just...all kinds of needles (including tattoo needles!), and looking at those massive things makes me want to pass out. And totally sympathetic to the people who *did* pass out. I used to have a needle fear, but it’s so far gone, I can’t really remember being afraid of them. When I look at those, though, they make me shudder in fear.

It’s more real when it’s up close. A lot of hospitals will have displays of their old tools, or old nurse’s uniforms, etc. It’s a lot more horrific when you’re actually looking down the barrel of one of those bad boys. It’s forever in there.

So hallelujah for modern medicine, yes? I’m a fan.

Do you have hemorrhoids? Yes, you do! Everyone does! It’s a trifecta of muscles around the anus, but it’s when they become swollen (kinda like vericose veins, but in your bum), and thrombosed (filled with a blood clot) that they become a real problem. I had mine from hours upon hours of sitting on the toilet (which is not a healthy way to sit and actually makes the problem much worse, but I didn’t know why I had constant diarrhea), and they were *bad*. I knew I had external ones, and I was pretty sure I had internal ones as well. My regular doc sent me to the surgeon, and sure enough - I had both, and both should be removed (people with crohn’s should have as *little* surgery on their rectum as possible, as to not affect their continence, but surgeries happen). He scheduled surgery for the external ones, and told me that the internal ones could be banded in an in-office procedure.

This (banding) has - not surprisingly - been a treatment for hemorrhoids since Hippocrates. Remember him? He’s like...the father of modern medicine. And remember my Rockstar Piercing? Or Part 2? Or even Part 3?? It was all about a seton (or seton stitch), which has been the treatment for rectal fistulas since the man himself had created that treatment as well.

My treatment was older than Jesus Christ. Jesus. Christ.

The dude lacking irises is Hippocrates. The other is really Jesus. Really. 

He also had quite the interest in hemorrhoids, and wrote about them extensively. If you were a sufferer under his care (or a direct student of his), they would hold you down and cauterize (BURN), your rectal tissue with hot pokers - causing you to cry out, and push out more tissue - so he could burn more.

Yowie yowch.

Is...is that guy smiling? Cause that looks horrific. I'm not smiling.

As I mentioned above, he also “banded” the hemorrhoids. He would tie a piece of string around the extraneous tissue, cinching it off, and causing it to wither and die.

Still the treatment today, although I heard that some doctors are refusing to do it, as it’s painful as hell (I sobbed in the bathroom bleeding for a good twenty minutes before I came back to my examination room). He only used this method for my internal piles, but there were three of them. It was intense pain, as was the later (outer) hemorrhoid surgery.

You never think about how much you instinctively flex your rectal muscles until you’ve had them cut. Someone cuts you off in traffic? You flex. Something comes flying at your face? You flex. Using your core to get out of bed? You flex. I’m not even going to bring up shitting. You don’t want to know.

Don't. Wanna. Know.

This didn’t get any better at any point in time. For a long period, it was believed that if you did not pray to the correct saint - in this case being St. Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners and hemorrhoid sufferers (and also apparently fistulas and infertility, amongst a list of other things) - you would end up with said medical issue.

There were two treatments. You could sit on the rock that famously cured St. Fiacre of his hemorrhoids, or you could, y’know, just keep burning them out with red-hot pokers.

At least this guy looks properly terrified...

And...they’re still kinda doing that, too. My silver nitrate treatments are chemically burning my rectal tissue. There’s a tract there that won’t heal, so theoretically if they burn it every other week, it will eventually fuse together. Which I already talked about in this blog post.

So the stem-cell treatment I did was the first real improvement we’ve had since friggin’ Hippocrates. Of course, with modern medicine, a lot of rectal issues are just dealt with under anaesthesia, which is fabulous. You don’t wake up feeling fabulous, but at least you didn’t have people holding you down while another stuck a hot poker up your anus.

I hate to say it like this, but I might have rather died than had hemorrhoids back then. Because fuck that. I was not meant to live in the past.

AGAIN WITH THE FACE!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo