The weirdest medieval medicines you could try today…if you dare: Scientists say Dark Age cures were ‘way more sophisticated’ than we thought – so, would YOU try lizard shampoo?

A trip to the doctor in the Dark Ages might sound like a terrifying prospect. 

But researchers now say that medieval medicine was actually ‘way more sophisticated’ than you might think.

In fact, you might just see some cures from the Dark Ages trending on TikTok today.

Dr Meg Leja, an associate professor of history at Binghamton University, says: ‘A lot of things that you see in these manuscripts are actually being promoted online currently as alternative medicine, but they have been around for thousands of years.’

However, you might have to be brave to try out some of these medieval treatments.

One text likely dating back to the fifth century recommends a particularly striking treatment for ‘flowing hair’.

The author suggests: ‘Cover the whole head with fresh summer savory and salt and vinegar. [Then] rub it with the ashes of a burnt green lizard, mixed with oil.’

So, would you dare to try out any of these weird medieval cures?

An international project collecting hundreds of medieval manuscripts has revealed the strangest Dark Ages cures you could try for yourself today, if you are brave enough

While we often view the Dark Ages as a backwards and barbaric time, researchers are now revealing a very different view.

The Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine collates hundreds of medical manuscripts pre-dating the 11th century, doubling the number of known texts.

Just like we are today, people in the so-called Dark Ages were obsessed with their diet, health, hair, and skin.

Dr Carine van Rhijn, a medieval historian from Utrecht University and collaborator on the project, told MailOnline: ‘People took care to look nice, to smell good, to have nice hair, deal with pimples, raw voices, or bad fingernails.

‘This is perhaps not what you would expect to find in the early Middle Ages.’

And while some of these ‘treatments’ might seem wacky, they often have striking modern parallels.

For instance, although lizard shampoo is definitely not a good idea, using vinegar and oils to treat your hair has been a trending hair care ‘hack’ on TikTok for years.

Similarly, one text suggests that you should mix the juice of the herb soapwort with lard to make an ointment for the hands and feet.

Although lizard shampoo is not a good idea, many TikTok accounts recommend using vinegar, salt, or oils to treat your hair 

The weirdest medieval treatments

For flowing hair: Wash your hair with salt and vinegar, then rub it with the ash from a burned green lizard mixed with oil.

Scabs or sores: Rub the affected area with cheese and honey and leave for seven days. 

Headaches: Mix a ground peach stone with rose oil and smear on the forehead.

To ‘loosen the belly’: Mix nineteen parts water, three parts vinegar, and one part salt. Drink the mixture.

 

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Both lard and soapwort are now often promoted as gentle or natural alternatives to soaps and moisturising products.

For anyone suffering from a headache, medieval patients were advised to mix the crushed stone of a peach with rose oil and smear it on their head.

Although that sounds odd, a study published in 2017 found that rose oil really does help alleviate migraine pain.

But not every bit of medieval skincare advice was quite so sensible, such as a treatment for scabs which says to ‘mix old cheese and honey and apply it to the scabby shins for seven days’.  

An even more modern-sounding example comes from the margins of a 6th-century theological text.

In a small blank space, one of the book’s owners had scribbled down a recipe for a ‘posca for loosening the belly’.

The recipe calls for: ‘Nineteen eggshell-fuls of plain water. Of vinegar, three eggshell-fuls. Of salt, one eggshell-ful.’

Although that doesn’t sound pleasant, if you look on TikTok, you will find an endless number of videos advocating the health benefits of drinking apple-cider vinegar and water.

The hundreds of manuscripts collected by The Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine often include recipes scribbled into margins or jotted down in any available space 

Scientists say the medieval approach to medicine was much more scientific than we might think. Medical manuals included detailed theories about how the zodiac signs and position of the moon affects the treatment of various ailments 

Dr van Rhijn says that medieval people were extremely concerned with their diets as a way of staying healthy.

She says: ‘We found many texts that tell you what you should eat and drink to stay healthy in every month of the year.’

However, the motivations of medieval people were a little different to those of people sharing health hacks on social media today.

Dr van Rhijn says: ‘People were not so much concerned with their weight, for instance, but wanted to maintain balance in their body.

‘So: you eat things that cool you down in the hottest months of the year, or things that warm you up in winter. 

‘Sometimes there are such recipes for a kind of “super-potion” intended to do exactly this – and that looks like something you may find on TikTok!’

Some of this advice sounds like something you might be able to read on any modern health blog.

Lentils, for example, ‘move the stomach by making wind but do less for the health of the bowels’, while ‘bread made from barley restricts [constipates] and cools’.

A medieval recipe for the health drink ‘posca’ is remarkably similar to a ‘health hack’ trending on social media, as both suggest drinking vinegar mixed with water. Although medieval people were more concerned with their overall health than with losing weight 

Likewise, one eighth-century text recommends you take hot baths and drink wine in February, while sticking to pennyroyal tea in March.

In a slightly stranger piece of advice, the text also suggests swapping sex for wine throughout the entire month of November.

However, Dr van Rhijn points out that the researchers are ‘historians, not experts on pharmacy’ and wouldn’t encourage anyone to try these cures for themselves. 

Although some of these treatments and their explanations seem odd, these recipes and cures show that medieval medicine was much more scientific than we might assume.

Dr Leja adds: ‘People were engaging with medicine on a much broader scale than had previously been thought.

‘They were concerned about cures, they wanted to observe the natural world and jot down bits of information wherever they could in this period known as the “Dark Ages”.’

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