18 Creepy Vintage Medical Photos that Show How Patients Were Treated Before

When you’re at a clinic or visiting someone in a hospital, do you ever wonder how they used to diagnose and treat patients back in the old days?

With all the state-of-the-art medical equipment that are available today, it’s often difficult to imagine (and sometimes even horrifying) how diagnostic procedures were performed when MRIs, CT-scans, and X-ray machines were still non-existent.

Whenever we see old pictures and videos of patients being treated for a certain disease or condition hundreds of years ago, the images seem like they were taken from a horror film. And then a mad doctor or looney scientist will suddenly appear, ready to inflict excruciating pain on their patients.

But as creepy and cold as these medical devices look, they helped save thousands of patients before.

Here are 18 vintage medical photos that will amaze and creep you out at the same time.

#18. Surgery performed using ether for anesthesia, 1855.

#17. Multi-person iron lung for polio sufferers.

#16. Walter Reed Physiotherapy, 1920.

#15. An adjustable birthing equipment, 1750.

#14. Mental institutions used wet blankets to restrain patients.

#13. Dr. Lewis Sayre’s method of treatment for scoliosis.