Picture a town square in 1600s Europe. A smooth talking stranger promises to cure your relative's "folly" by removing stones from their skull, for a fee. Crowds gather to watch as the good "doctor" digs into the writhing, screaming patient's head with crude implements. Now, that's entertainment!
These theatrical "stone surgeons" were really professional con artists who perfected a gruesome road show. They'd convince families that mental illness was caused by stones in the head, then perform a grisly public "operation" — without anesthesia — to remove them. The stones? Usually pre-hidden pebbles they'd dramatically "extract" during their performance.
These quacks traveled constantly, which let them skip town before patients died from infections (a common outcome when you drill into someone's skull without sterilizing your tools). They even brought their own hype men and staged elaborate shows, complete with planted audience members who'd testify to miraculous cures.
The stone extraction scam flourished because it played into the era's medical beliefs about "humors" — the idea that illness came from imbalanced bodily fluids. While legitimate doctors were making real breakthroughs (like figuring out how blood circulation worked), these theatrical frauds kept drilling away.
Thankfully, superstition is no longer a part of medicine. Today we have experts like RFK Jr. to tell us what works, like horse paste to cure COVID-19 and what doesn't work, like vaccines to prevent communicable diseases.
Previously:
• Quack breast enlargement ad from 1924
