He promised patients that they would grow amputated legs after taking laxatives. They died after taking hundreds of tablets a day

Throughout history, doctors have often used very bizarre treatment methods. They relied on the help of, for example, venous drainage or consumption of radioactive beverages. James Morrison was one such physician. He became famous for prescribing large amounts of laxatives to patients for any problem. However, it cost some patients their lives.

He treated people with laxatives in the form vegetable tablets

Even today we can not cure everything, but once medicine was at a much worse level. It was treated with leeches, venous drainage, arsenic and other more or less bizarre methods. Often such “treatment” caused the patient even more difficulties than he had before the visit to the doctor, in addition, a number of fraudsters also pretended to be doctors, who only wanted to get rich in this way. It is therefore not surprising that people did not trust doctors too much. As the IFL Science portal writes, Among the infamous fraudsters is James Morrison .

Morrison insisted that all diseases are caused by impure blood. Wondering what could have cleaned it? According to Morrison, it was clearly a bowel movement. The doctor himself had long suffered from constipation, but he was able to solve this problem with the help of laxatives, which he made himself at home. Based on this, he came to the conclusion that if he could cure himself, he would certainly cure smallpox or aneurysm, for example, with the help of laxatives.

If Morrison were a real expert, he knew that diarrhea caused by home-made medicines would not cure people. However, he was not an expert, and the fact that he was cured of constipation was a clear proof to him that he knew what he was doing. And even the desperate patients who sought him believed that he knew what he was doing.

The medicines he produced consisted mainly of vegetables. That’s why he gave them the name Universal Vegetable Pills (translated Universal Vegetable Pills ).

Thanks to them, the amputated limbs were also to grow

The advertisements that were created were hailed by the tablets as a real panacea. One, for example, depicted a man who suddenly no longer needed a barrel after taking vegetable tablets because he had emptied his intestines so well that his amputated legs had grown. Morrison has promised that patients can grow their limbs after taking the tablets on a regular basis. If the patient wanted to swallow ten laxative tablets at once, he said it was perfectly fine. How to learn from the archive , if a patient with diarrhea came to see him, he even prescribed laxatives to it. He admitted that the patient may feel even worse at first than before taking the drug. However, he assured people that it was okay, just let them endure and they would soon feel the miraculous effects of the drug on their own skin.

People died, but the doctor never bore the consequences for his actions

Of course, the consequences did not take long to come and people began to die. Only a 15-year-old girl but also a little boy died in enormous pain due to the pills. However, Morrison successfully avoided any allegations. Instead, people who sold his medicine to patients were accused of killing.

For example, one of the vendors was arrested in 1836 and charged with murder after a 32-year-old man suffering from mild knee pain. He swallowed at least 1,000 tablets in 20 days, which eventually cost him his life. Soon the real doctors who were worried about the situation began to call, but the tablets continued to be sold in bulk.

Morrison finally died in 1840 as a very wealthy man. No accusations were ever made on his head and he did not bear any consequences for his actions. To make matters worse, his son took over the pofider business after him and as the portal writes Wellcome Collection , he got even richer than his father.