15 Health Fads of the Past That Would Even Give Gwyneth Pause

Right now, we as a culture are experiencing a real health scam renaissance. From soothing clinics offering the Mr. Freeze treatment to child laborers mining pretty rocks to detox kits that contain no food, there’s always someone around the corner offering a longer, healthier life if you just eat/bathe in/rectally ingest whatever they’re selling. It’s such a lucrative racket that Gwyneth Paltrow walked away from a perfectly good acting career just to hawk mushroom water.

But believe it or not, the past was even dumber. For almost all of it, we didn’t even know what germs were, let alone the dangers of radiation or the hilarious useless of fart-sniffing. (Yes, that will be relevant.) You might think it’s just common sense not to drill holes into your skull or stop bathing, but who knows? Maybe in the future, they’ll laugh at us for chugging milk like little babies or swallowing vitamins we may or may not be able to absorb. At least we aren’t letting people literally blow smoke up our asses.