Hemorrhoids Were Burned Off With Hot Irons
The British LibraryMedieval doctors used cautery irons to burn off hemorrhoids — or scraped them off with their fingernails.
While afflictions like cancers or autoimmune disorders left the ancients baffled, may ailments known today were just as notable millennia ago. Medieval doctors may have thought the devil possessed people with epilepsy, but nuisances like hemorrhoids were just as glaring in the Dark Ages as they are today.
Unfortunately for patients in the Middle Ages, hemorrhoid treatment included neither refined approaches nor anesthetics. Medieval physicians used glowing-red pieces of heated iron to burn the hemorrhoids off — or simply used their fingernails to scrape the swollen veins from the patient’s anus.
Those suffering from hemorrhoids in the Middle Ages were commonly referred to as victims of Saint Fiacre’s curse. The moniker was counterintuitive, as the Catholic priest was actually the patron saint of hemorrhoid victims. Legend has it that he once had hemorrhoids too, but sat on a stone and was cured moments later.
Contemporary doctors have long instructed those with hemorrhoids not to directly sit on the swollen group of veins and to let them rest. Saint Fiacre presumably allowed his hemorrhoids to be reintroduced into his anus by sitting on a stone. For medieval patients for whom that didn’t work, other methods were undertaken.
Most physicians initially instructed their patients to sit upon a stone and say their prayers. According to some, the rock that Saint Fiacre sat on remains standing in his garden to this day. When this didn’t alleviate the issue, however, doctors inserted cautery irons into the patient’s anus to burn the veins off.
The more unfortunate patients were treated to an excruciating scraping that involved the doctor’s fingernails. While seemingly primitive and rudimentary, this method was suggested by the renowned Hippocratic Corpus medical works collection from Alexandrian Greece. In the end, it certainly worked — but not without pain.
