HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

what did people do 150 years ago with UC?

Support Forums
>
Ulcerative Colitis
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 1/10/2010 4:42 AM (GMT 0)
People must have had this disease.  What did people do before asacol and prednisone came around?
Posted 1/10/2010 4:50 AM (GMT 0)
well my great grandma was born in 1900, and they always said she had UC,now whether she actually had that or not, im not sure, but she did have severe stomach problems, and when i got sick orignally, my aunt (her eldest daughter) told me that she "cured it with ice" meaning when it got bad, she would eat only ice to rest her stomach until it went away.
there was also surgery to remove the colon which early on, i read that people would wear bandages wrapped around them holding cotton pads to their stomas to catch waste.
not really sure how all that worked.
There were some medicines morphine was probably prescribed, or maybe opium they help with pain and can cause constipation in some people.
Posted 1/10/2010 4:52 AM (GMT 0)
thanks for the post. That is interesting. I wonder why jewish people are more likely to get it. What did people do like 500 years ago or in the time of King David when they had it...
Posted 1/10/2010 6:54 AM (GMT 0)
It is interesting, and I ever wondered it too.
I believe there were some medicines at that time, like Herbal, supplements. Also, the industrialization changed too much our food and living. I have no idea if this change helps or aggravates UC. At last, the first peak of UC happens ~30 years old. Many people died of UC or before UC.
Posted 1/10/2010 7:10 AM (GMT 0)
I also think that people died when their UC got very bad.. That's what my GI told me... Serious inflammation of the colon without meds to calm it must have caused people to suffer from internal bleeding, toxic megacolon and dehydration and malnourishment must have caused them to catch opportunistic infections as well, I think. We are lucky that science got us where we are now, even if theres no cure yet. :)
Posted 1/10/2010 8:20 AM (GMT 0)
I agree that it's been around much longer than what anyone has it documented as (just over 100 yrs), I'm willing to bet for the most part the people that suffered with IBD centuries ago were more often than not, told it was all in their heads (afterall some idiot docs still tell people that)...I'm also willing to guess that alot of naturals may have been used by people to treat it...ginger, chamomile, ect...I'm sure more people died from complications of IBD way back then compared to more recent decades but then again, life expectancy wasn't very long centuries ago either, often why young "tweens" were quickly married off and having babies way too young.

I actually think it's completely pathetic that in this day and age there hasn't been a cure discovered for IBD, and from my experiances the oral RX used to treat it are junk, never did a thing for me but made me sick (due to allergeric responses to them) and the side-effects are ridiculous which IMO also makes it completely pathetic that they haven't found better meds to treat the dang thing they can't even cure yet.

:)
Posted 1/10/2010 8:30 AM (GMT 0)
If I had lived 150 years ago, I never would have got colitis. I would have died of pneumonia at the age of 22 if not earlier. My older daughter would have died too. She got a fever of 106 once due to an ear infection. My younger daughter never would have been born.
Posted 1/10/2010 8:42 AM (GMT 0)
Interesting post..

When you think about how short lifespans were back in those days too... The more modern our medicine and intelligence is with treating illness, the longer we live and we live more comfortably...

I am so glad I live in today's times.. I couldn't imaging having something like this with no real treatments or good pain meds... wow...
Posted 1/10/2010 12:08 PM (GMT 0)
I am a student of some of the poets of the late 1500s, and a few of them died around age 30 of the "ague"..... makes me wonder. Terms like that were pretty inexact, really.....
Posted 1/10/2010 1:10 PM (GMT 0)
My Great Grandmother had either Uc or Cd because my Gma was telling me that she remembered her mother eating a lot of soft foods and having to run to the out house a lot as well as laying down in her bed frequently. This was in the 1900's. But I often wonder about that too. There would be no way in heck that I would ever want to go back in time and have to deal with this! Even though they don't have a cure yet now, at least they have some pretty good pain killers to help us cope as well as the maintenance medications.
Posted 1/10/2010 4:02 PM (GMT 0)
It could just be the habitat we're living in now that causes UC. No one knows from 500 years ago. It could be pollution or the stuff we eat or drink.
Posted 1/10/2010 4:29 PM (GMT 0)
I think Elaine Gottschal mentioned a British royal a several hundred years ago. I can't remember which one, but he apparently cured his colitis by removing milk from his diet.
Posted 1/10/2010 4:31 PM (GMT 0)
     Interesting that you should ask this.  My paternal grandmother died at the age of 65 in 1952.  We lived with her and I can still remember her lying in bed suffering.  My mother said she died from cancer of the rectum which was brought on by nana never having her hemorrhoids "treated".  I think we all know better these days.  My GI doctor said it is most unlikely that she died from untreated hemorrhoids.  She may have had cancer but since my parents said she often bled from the rectum, at least for two years prior to her death, I tend to think that she may have had IBD.  She was a firm believer in chiropractic treatments and seldom saw an M.D..  My father suffered from diverticulitis and had an operation to remove part of his colon about three years before his death.  Guess I inherited my colon problems from that side of the family..ugh.  I am now 63 so it is no wonder I am concerned about developing rectal cancer.  However, I do stay on top of things.  Scheduled for another colonoscopy on Feb. 2nd.  My first since starting Remicade in November.
Posted 1/10/2010 4:36 PM (GMT 0)
When i was looking up the history of ostomies and some other stuff about history, cause im a nerd like that, i found a page about someone in greek times making the first connection with the bowels and the body. He said, The man was stabbed (and i believe gutted) and dark brown earth spilled from his body. Meaning his bowels and the contents. then whoever the man was that figured this out, cant remeber, began to study it and figured out what it did.
And honestly if you take a look back at roman times and such, and they were very advanced, in ways more so than we are. More so than people in say the 1700s in the united states even in terms of indoor plumbing and medical knowledge and knowledge of the world around them. Ok where my nerdiness is going, there may have been a cure or medicines that were used then, because yes people got sick, there is evidence of that, and im sure there is evidence in bones and such of what they were sick from, its amazing what they can tell from skulls and fingernails and hair, if its left.
But anyway, so much of that knowledge was lost, and possibly cures to diseases we have now.
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply