Witches Used To Steal Penises And Keep Them As Pets, Plus 13 Other Things I Can't Believe People Used To Think Were True

Not people being killed by their own wallpaper...

As humans, we've been around for a long, long time. With that comes a lengthy history of different beliefs and cultural practices that nowadays seem, well, bizarre.

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While we now understand that most of these beliefs are historically contingent, it doesn't make them any less strange in the modern world. Here are some of my personal favourites...

1. In 19th century England, many believed that arsenic (in small doses) was safe to use, and it was actually incorporated in a diverse range of products.

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Yup, it was used for everything from rat poison to face powder! It soon found its way into household goods, food, medicine, and even in wallpaper. The wallpaper arsenic was used in was super popular due to its vibrant green and yellow hues, but doctors soon discovered it was deadly. The ink would flake off from the wallpaper, or the heat from the house would cause the release of the toxic vapours, which would then be inhaled by those nearby.

If you ever had to read The Yellow Wallpaper in English class, it's a reflection of the distrust of wallpaper in the 19th century thanks to arsenic usage. Pretty wild, huh?

2. In Medieval Britain, parents lived in fear that their children would be swapped for fairies. The fairies left in place of a human child or baby were known as "changelings".

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It was believed that babies were taken to either be turned into servants for fairies, for malice or revenge purposes, or to become the adopted children of fairies.

There were, of course, many tests that parents used to see if their newborn had been swapped. One of these tests involved placing a shoe in a bowl of soup in front of the baby. If the baby laughed, that meant it was indeed a fairy because it understood the joke. Whereas clearly a real baby would never laugh at such a thing!

It's now believed that 'changelings' was a word given to children who had physical disabilities or were neurodivergent, as during this time medical knowledge in this field was severely limited, in fact, non-existent.

3. Train travel in the Victorian era was believed to cause insanity.

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Fearful Victorians thought that the swaying motion passengers felt while in the carriages led to mental anguish and thus erratic behaviour. They even introduced locked "cages" for these passengers to stay in during their journey! However, this proved unsuccessful, as it was said that those who became aggressive during train rides appeared perfectly calm beforehand, meaning there was no way to tell who to lock up. 

Some also held a belief that womens' bodies were not designed for high-speed travel, with a snippet from a medical gazette claiming: "she will be likely to suffer from some form of uterine flexion or dislocation". Ouch.

4. In the 1400s, witches were actually accused of "stealing" penises and keeping them as pets.

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No, really. Malleus Maleficarum was a witch-hunting guide written in the 15th century, and detailed how witches were able to "take away the male organ." The guide goes on to say: "What shall we think about those witches who somehow take members in large numbers—twenty or thirty—and shut them up together in a birds' nest or some box, where they move about like living members, eating oats or other feed?"

Yes, you read that correctly, the male organ would be fed oats and kept locked up. I have many, many questions, but I don't think I'm ready for answers.

5. Doctors once drilled holes into people's heads to release evil spirits.

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This was also known as "trepanning". Yup, an actual hole was drilled directly into the skull with zero pain relief or anaesthesia. Many civilisations, including the Romans, would use a sharpened piece of wood as their surgical tool. The hole gave the "trapped demon" a chance to escape, but it was also thought to be used as a treatment against migraines. Strangely enough, the survival rate of this procedure was actually quite high. Does anyone else's head hurt??

6. Ice picks were thought to be a novel way to cure depression.

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Walter Freeman coined the idea of a "prefrontal lobotomy" in 1942. Replacing the traditional procedure of drilling into the brain from the top, Freeman thought it best to enter from below. This meant hammering an ice pick just below the eyelid, and using electroshock therapy instead of anaesthesia.

Freeman believed that the root of mental illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety was an excessive number of connections in the brain. He rationalised that "slicing through" these connections with an ice pick would relieve this. One of his patients was 12-year-old Howard Duly, who went on to talk about his experience.

You can watch Howard's story here:

YouTube

7. In the previous century, people used to believe carrots could give you super-human vision.

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This 'fact' started to be spread during WWII as a way to prevent Germany from figuring out that Britain were using radar to intercept air bombers at night. Yup, they released press to say that the British pilots had been eating A LOT of carrots to improve their vision at night! Propaganda posters were even created to encourage consumption of carrots during blackouts. If anything, at least it got people to eat their veggies.

8. Vampires were often used to explain away mystery illnesses.

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Plagues and epidemics, which we now know are caused by diseases spreading, were once pinned on vampires. Without sophisticated medical knowledge, people turned to the supernatural for explanations; indeed, it was often in rural areas that diseases such as The Black Death and porphyria were thought to be the result of vampiric attacks.

9. During periods of mourning, mirrors were covered so that the spirit of the deceased wouldn't become trapped in them.

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Victorians were quite the superstitious people! They believed that the reflection in a mirror could trap a spirit, leaving the deceased stuck in the house. This meant that until the mourning period was over, mirrors were either draped with a black cloth or turned to face the wall. They also believed that curtains had to be shut as windows were also a form of looking glass – spooky!

10. Left-handed people were often accused of affiliating with the Devil.

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Okay, as a left-handed person myself, I'm already offended. In the Middle Ages, anyone who was left-handed was accused of practicing witchcraft, and were sometimes burned at the stake. The Devil was often described as being a leftie, with other evil spirits supposedly using their left hand also. In fact, the word "sinister" comes from the Latin word for "left"! This association most likely stemmed from right-handed dominance, but still, I feel hurt.

11. People thought lambs grew from the ground.

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Sir John Mandeville wrote about his travels throughout the 1300s. He recalled that in Tartary (now known as Russia and Mongolia) they grew a plant that produces gourds, which then turned into tiny lambs you could eat. Medieval Europeans labelled this mysterious plant as the "vegetable lamb", which was believed to be part-animal and part-plant. It also produced a soft, white fibre which was thought to be a type of wool.

Of course, nowadays this plant is known as "cotton" and not a type of lamb at all. So, does lamb count as one of my five-a-day now?

12. Bloodletting was the first option for the treatment of almost every disease.

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This was thought to be founded in ancient Egypt, and is known to be one of the oldest practices in medicine. The idea was that diseases were caused by there being "too much blood" in the body, and so cutting open the skin or using leeches to drain some of the blood was a cure. During medieval Europe, it was used as the standard treatment for gout, epilepsy, and the plague.

13. The sun is actually cold.

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In 1975, the astronomer who discovered Uranus, William Herschel, made a claim that the sun is just one gigantic planet. His theory stemmed from the fact that everything else in our solar system is filled with life, and so the sun must also have living organisms.

Instead of the sun being hot, he claimed that it was cold, and the bright light we see from Earth is actually just a reflection, or from the luminosity of the sun's outer layers. Of course, his theory was never taken seriously, the sun is still considered to be very HOT.

14. A trip to the seaside will cure everything.

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In the late 16th century, it was believed that the shock of the cold water from the sea could even heal tumours. In the 18th century, this belief turned into the practice of basically drowning someone in the sea. Women, in particular, would be dunked into the freezing cold water repeatedly, and the adrenaline of this was thought to have soothing effects on the body. It also became a popular way to treat tuberculosis up until it was eradicated in the 1860s.

Women were also prescribed "sea air" as a treatment for any nervous disorder, including hysteria. I think I'll choose fish and chips by the sea over being dunked repeatedly underwater, thanks.

Do you know of any bizarre things people used to think were true? Let us know in the comments!