Medicine

USA physician Samuel Cartwright announced a fake mental illness in 1851 supposedly afflicting only Black slaves: "Drapetomania." Symptom: "the urge to flee the plantation." Cures: whipping and amputating big toes. The term remained in Stedman's Medical Dictionary until 1914.

The claim that the Caesarean section is named after Julius Caesar's birth is almost certainly false—his mother lived for decades after his birth, and no woman could have survived the procedure with the medicine of that era.

Hypodermic injection needles aren't made by drilling holes. A flat steel strip is rolled into a tube, welded, then pulled through progressively smaller holes. Larger gauge numbers mean thinner needles — 18G means the wire passed through 18 holes.

The fact that scurvy can be prevented with citrus fruits was known as early as the 1400s. Yet humanity kept rediscovering and forgetting this cure for over 400 years. Mainstream medicine did not fully accept it until 1907.

The barbershop pole originated from a time when barbers in Europe also performed surgery. Red represents arteries and bleeding, blue represents veins and shaving, and white represents bones and bandages.