A HAREBRAINED THEORY
English writer Samuel Johnson claimed, ‘The cause of baldness in men is dryness of the brain, and its shrinking from the skull.”

OOPSY-DAISY
In 1898, Dr. Heinrich Dreser, head of the drug research laboratory at the Bayer Company in Germany, announced that he had developed diacetylmorphine—a nonaddictive derivative of morphine with four to eight times the painkilling power. The Bayer Company marketed diacetylmorphine under the brand-name Heroin (derived from the “heroic” state of mind the drug purportedly induced), and the new drug was used in cough syrups and pain remedies, and prescribed by doctors for headaches and menstrual cramps. In 1910, after twelve years on the market, doctors realized that heroin is far more addictive than morphine. In 1924, the United States banned the manufacture of heroin, but by then there were plenty of addicts to create a demand for heroin on the black market.

THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH
The Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, considered the father of modern medicine, claimed:
•  The world is composed of four elements: earth (dry), air (cold), fire (hot), and water (moist).
•  You can determine the sex of an unborn child based on which one of the mother’s breasts became larger.
•  People suffering from jaundice are not susceptible to flatulence.
•  People with speech impediments are more likely to get protracted diarrhea.
•  Gout only strikes people who have had sexual intercourse.
•  South winds cause deafness.
•  North winds cause constipation.
•  Bald people who get varicose veins regain their hair.

IDENTITY CRISIS
In 1941, when told that the Japanese had destroyed Pearl Harbor, actress Joan Crawford replied, “Oh dear, who was she?”
MODERN QUACKERY
In his 1811 book The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, German doctor Samuel Hahnemann insisted: “A disease can only be destroyed and cured by a remedy which has a tendency to produce a similar disease, for the effects of drugs are in themselves no other than artificial diseases.” Hahnemann named this process homeopathy, and this alleged science, lacking scientific proof of its effectiveness, is practiced to this very day.

IT AINT NECESSARILY SO
Ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles claimed that everything in the universe is composed of four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), which he insisted were bonded together by love and driven apart by strife.

SOMETHING FISHY
In 1 903, British surgeon Sir Jonathan Hutchinson incorrectly insisted that eating bad fish caused leprosy. Hutchinson had clearly failed to keep up with medical advances. In 1865, Louis Pasteur had proven that germs spread from person to person caused infectious diseases, and in 1874, Norwegian bacteriologist Gerhard Hansen identified a bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae, as the cause of leprosy.