Historical story

Purge to Heal the Mind

Crotontiglio oil was often used in the past as a purge to treat mental illness

The ignorance that for centuries has reigned in the knowledge of mental illness , has almost always led, in the past, to treatments that were often worse than the disease.

Or, at best, completely unnecessary care.

According to a medical current that is anything but marginal, at the basis of mental illness there were toxins from the colon , which therefore had to be eliminated if the correct functioning of the brain was to be restored in the patient.

It seems absurd, but this belief, which emerged in the Middle Ages, it lasted until the beginning of the 1900s.

In practice, until the early twentieth century, mental pathologies or supposed such, were treated by inducing the so-called " diarrhea in the subjects who were afflicted by them. therapeutic ” .

The most used laxative, as it was believed to be able to improve a psychotic crisis, was oil of crotontiglio , but hellebore was also widely used and the green hellebore , plant substances capable of lowering the heartbeat and promoting vomiting.

We can only imagine the results of such “therapies”… fortunately.