So . . . my adult daughter is not only a history nut, but has become a history nut with a penchant for historical medical texts. She's found the occasional questionable book, such as "The Farmer's Own", and squirrel's such books away as the kind of thing that gives their times a bad name in modern medicine. We recently heard about what is deemed to be the first-ever medical text covering medicine in the Americas, back during the days of the Aztec's and Spanish conquerors. People were crowing about a translation of this text and how amazing it was that it named herbs, minerals, trees, and more. The version most were crowing over was difficult to find unless you're willing to visit a university or state library around the world. A second version was easier to find, and then the horror hit!
We scanned several of the "treatments" wondering how on earth human feces might solve an eye problem, how a burned frog might be a suitable stand-in for fried blood, etc. While people crowed about how doctors must have been SO precise using tools such as thorns as surgical instruments, the treatments we saw in just a few pages had us cringing! Some of it was highly superstitious to add to the problem. Sure, other books have shared superstition to be fair, and those treatments are generally glossed over in favour of other treatments in the same books that actually work, have no dangerous ingredients, etc. . . but not this book! I deleted my attempts at obtaining parts of the one translation and closed all tabs related to the one we finally looked at in English.
If you ever hear of the Badaino Codex, it is one historical medical text you do NOT want on your shelf! Horrific doesn't capture the sentiment!
