Do you ever listen to your grandparents talk about the “good old days” and think, “Wait… you did what?” It’s a wild ride to look back and see the things people considered totally normal just a few generations ago. What we call “normal” is really just a set of unwritten rules that a group of us agrees to follow.
And that agreement is powerful. In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch ran a series of famous conformity experiments. He found that when faced with a group of people giving an obviously wrong answer, nearly 75% of participants went along with the incorrect answer at least once, just to fit in.
That’s how “normal” works. It’s a powerful force that can make even the most bizarre, dangerous, or downright weird things seem like just another Tuesday. As social change theorist Margaret J. Wheatley once said, “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” And thankfully, our communities decided they no longer wanted to do these things.
Curing yourself with radioactive “health” drinks
Imagine your favorite energy drink didn’t just promise to make you feel electric—it was literally radioactive. In the early 20th century, that was a selling point. After the discovery of radium, the public became fascinated with its perceived healing powers. This excitement was fueled by the finding that famous health springs were naturally radioactive.
Enter Radithor. It was basically distilled water laced with at least one microcurie of radium-226 and radium-228. Its creator, a Harvard dropout named William J. A. Bailey, marketed it with slogans like “A Cure for the Living Dead” and “Perpetual Sunshine.” And people bought it—around 400,000 bottles were sold between 1925 and 1930.
The tragic poster child for this fad was Eben Byers, a wealthy industrialist who drank an estimated 1,400 bottles. He died a horrific death from radium-induced cancers, and his jaw had to be removed. His death finally spurred the government to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to crack down on such dangerous products.
Giving your kids cocaine for a toothache
Got a fussy, teething baby? In the late 1800s, the solution wasn’t a cold teething ring. It was cocaine. Seriously. “Cocaine Toothache Drops” were sold over-the-counter for as little as 15 cents, with ads promising an “Instantaneous Cure!” for children. Cocaine was the new wonder drug, hailed as the world’s first effective local anesthetic.
It was everywhere. You could find it in throat lozenges, sodas, and medicinal tonics. Even the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was a huge fan, publishing a paper in 1884 called “On Coca” that praised the drug’s virtues. In a world without strong regulations, these expert and celebrity endorsements were all the public needed to embrace cocaine as a safe, family-friendly remedy.
Mailing your children through the postal service
Today, you’d get arrested. But for a couple of years after the U.S. Parcel Post service launched in 1913, some parents actually “mailed” their kids to relatives. It sounds like a joke, but it was a very real, if rare, practice. The first known case happened just weeks after the service began, when an Ohio couple paid 15 cents in postage to send their infant son to his grandmother’s house about a mile away. They even insured him for $50.
The reason? It was cheaper than a train ticket. The most famous case is that of 5-year-old May Pierstorff, who was mailed 73 miles across Idaho with stamps attached to her coat. The most extended trip was made by 6-year-old Edna Neff, who traveled over 720 miles from Florida to Virginia by railway mail train. This wasn’t as reckless as it sounds. In rural America, the mail carrier was a trusted member of the community, not a stranger.
Hanging your baby in a cage outside your window
If you lived in a city apartment in the 1930s and wanted your baby to get some fresh air, what did you do? You put them in a wire cage and hung it out the window, of course. These “baby cages” were a real thing, especially in London. The trend was sparked by Dr. Luther Emmett Holt’s influential 1884 book, The Care and Feeding of Children, which claimed that “airing” babies was essential to “purify the blood” and make them more resistant to colds.
For apartment dwellers without a backyard, the cage seemed like a perfect solution. Emma Read of Spokane, Washington, filed the first patent for a “Portable Baby Cage” in 1922. The trend took off, and soon the Chelsea Baby Club in London was distributing cages to its members.
It’s a terrifying sight to modern eyes, but it highlights an entirely different approach to child safety. Back then, the perceived health benefits of fresh air outweighed the undeniable risk of, you know, a baby cage falling several stories.
Throwing a mummy-unwrapping party for your friends
Forget book club or poker night. The hottest social event in Victorian England was the mummy-unwrapping party. Fueled by “Egyptomania” after Napoleon’s campaigns, wealthy Europeans began traveling to Egypt and bringing back ancient mummies as souvenirs. The go-to party host was Thomas “Mummy” Pettigrew, a surgeon who turned mummy autopsies into public spectacles.
Guests would gather for an evening of food, drinks, and morbid curiosity. Pettigrew would unroll the mummy, and any amulets or jewelry found within the wrappings would be passed around for the audience to inspect. These events were wildly popular, with some drawing crowds of up to 3,000 people.
What happened to the bodies afterward? It wasn’t pretty. Many were ground up and sold as a pigment called “Mummy Brown,” popular with artists of the day. The linen wrappings were sometimes shipped to America to be made into paper. The practice was only possible because Victorian society saw these ancient Egyptians not as people, but as objects—a colonial trophy and a party trick all rolled into one.
Putting people on display in human zoos
This one is tough to stomach. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, it was common for people from Africa, Asia, and the Americas to be put on display in “human zoos” or “ethnological expositions” across Europe and the United States.
These exhibits were a twisted form of mass entertainment, often built by colonial powers to showcase people from the lands they had conquered. The displays were rooted in scientific racism, usually presenting people of color as being on a lower evolutionary rung, somewhere between apes and white Europeans. The 1889 Parisian World’s Fair, for example, featured a “Negro Village” that was seen by 28 million visitors.
One of the most tragic stories is that of Ota Benga, a Mbuti man from the Congo. In 1906, he was put on display in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo, where crowds of up to 40,000 people a day came to gawk at him. The exhibit was eventually shut down after protests from Black ministers, but the shame of it remains a stark reminder of this dehumanizing practice.
Using asbestos as fake Christmas snow
Dreaming of a white Christmas? In the 1930s and ’40s, you could buy it in a box. The only problem was that the fluffy, fireproof “snow” was made of 100% pure asbestos. Asbestos was a miracle material back then, praised for its fire-resistant properties. Manufacturers sold it under festive brand names like “Pure White” and “White Magic” for decorating Christmas trees, homes, and storefronts.
It was even used on Hollywood movie sets. In the iconic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the snow that falls on Dorothy and her friends in the poppy field scene was pure chrysotile asbestos fibers. The health risks of asbestos were already known, but the material was so common that it was used without a second thought.
The practice only stopped when World War II created a high demand for asbestos in military ships and planes. It’s a chilling reminder that even the most cherished holiday memories can have a toxic past.
Getting a lobotomy for anxiety or depression
In the 1940s and ’50s, if you were suffering from severe mental illness, your doctor might have recommended a procedure that involved severing connections in your brain with an instrument that was literally an icepick. The lobotomy was pioneered by Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, who won a Nobel Prize for it in 1949.
But it was American doctor Walter Freeman who turned it into a widespread practice. Freeman developed the “transorbital” lobotomy, a quick, 10-minute procedure where he would hammer a sharp instrument through the eye socket to access the brain.
He was a showman, traveling the country in a camper he called the “lobotomobile” to perform the procedure. All told, around 50,000 lobotomies were conducted in the U.S., with Freeman personally responsible for at least 3,500. He performed them for everything from schizophrenia to postpartum depression, and even on children.
The press initially hailed it as a miracle cure. A 1941 Saturday Evening Post article described patients entering a world “radiant with sunshine and kindness.” But the reality was often tragic, leaving patients emotionally blunted or severely impaired. The practice finally fell out of favor with the development of antipsychotic medications in the 1950s.
Settling arguments with a literal duel to the death
Today, if someone insults you, you might block them on social media. A couple of hundred years ago, you might have challenged them to a duel with pistols at dawn. Dueling was a deeply ingrained “code of honor” among gentlemen in Europe and America, lasting well into the 19th century. The goal wasn’t necessarily to kill your opponent, but to show you were willing to die to defend your reputation.
The rules were incredibly formal. “Seconds” would negotiate the terms, and duels were held in isolated spots to avoid the law. The most famous American duel, of course, was between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804.
Burr’s shot was fatal, killing Hamilton and ending the life of a Founding Father over a perceived political slight. The practice faded as formal legal systems became more robust, making it unnecessary to risk your life over an insult.
Judging character by the bumps on your head
Think a personality test is revealing? In the 19th century, people believed they could understand your entire character—your intelligence, your morality, your talents—just by feeling the bumps on your skull.
This was the pseudoscience of phrenology, developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall around 1796. Gall claimed the brain was made of 27 different “organs,” each corresponding to a specific personality trait. The size of these organs, he argued, created bumps and divots on the skull that a trained phrenologist could “read.”
It became a massive fad in the U.S., thanks to brothers Orson and Lorenzo Fowler. They promoted it as a tool for self-improvement with the slogan “Know thyself.” People used phrenology for everything: choosing a career, hiring employees, and even finding a compatible spouse. Orson Fowler believed it could reform society, writing that phrenology could be used to “remedy many social conditions and problems.”
While it’s been thoroughly debunked, phrenology did accidentally stumble upon a correct idea: that different functions are localized to various areas of the brain. But as for your “benevolence” bump? Yeah, that’s not a thing.
“Airing out” a drowning victim with a tobacco smoke enema
If you were pulled from a river unconscious in the 18th century, don’t be surprised if the first thing rescuers did was try to revive you by blowing tobacco smoke up your rectum. Yes, you read that right. The tobacco smoke enema was a mainstream medical procedure used to treat everything from headaches and hernias to, most commonly, drowning victims. The theory was that the smoke would warm the body and stimulate respiration.
Special kits were created with a bellows and a tube for this exact purpose. The practice was so common that these resuscitation kits were placed along the River Thames in London. Thankfully, by the early 19th century, scientists discovered that nicotine was toxic to the heart, and the practice fell out of favor.
It was eventually replaced by much more effective techniques, like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which was proven effective in 1956.
Letting doctors bleed you to cure a common cold
For nearly 3,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the late 19th century, one of the most common medical treatments for almost any ailment was bloodletting. The practice was based on the ancient Greek theory of the four “humors“: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. It was believed that good health required a perfect balance of these humors, and sickness was caused by an excess of one, usually blood. The cure? Drain some of the excess blood using a lancet or leeches.
It was prescribed for everything from the plague to a sore throat. In medieval Europe, barbers also served as surgeons, and the iconic red-and-white striped barber’s pole originally symbolized the bloody bandages from the procedure. Even America’s founding fathers were believers.
When George Washington fell ill with a throat infection in 1799, his doctors drained an estimated 5 to 7 pints of blood in less than 16 hours. He died shortly after, and many now believe the extreme blood loss contributed to his death.
Sending children to work in factories and mines
During the Industrial Revolution, it was entirely normal for children as young as six to work long, dangerous hours in factories, mines, and mills. As industrialization boomed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the demand for cheap labor skyrocketed. Factory owners saw children as ideal employees because they could be paid less and were considered more docile.
By 1900, no less than 18 percent of all children between the ages of 10 and 15 were officially employed in the U.S., with thousands more working uncounted. They faced brutal conditions, working 12-hour days with hazardous machinery and toxic substances.
It took decades of activism, fueled by the shocking photographs of Lewis Hine, to change public opinion. The Keating-Owen Act of 1916 was the first major federal law to restrict child labor, but it wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that the practice was finally and effectively regulated.
Putting animals on trial for their crimes
In medieval Europe, if a pig ate a child or a rooster was accused of laying an egg, they didn’t just get rid of the animal. They put it on trial. Animal trials were a real and surprisingly formal part of the legal system for centuries. There are records of at least 85 animal trials during the Middle Ages, complete with lawyers, judges, and sworn testimony.
Pigs were the most frequent offenders, often charged with maiming or killing children. If found guilty, they could be sentenced to death by hanging or burning at the stake. In one 1386 case, a convicted pig was even dressed in a waistcoat and gloves for its execution.
It wasn’t just livestock. In 1474, a rooster in Switzerland was found guilty of the “unnatural crime” of laying an egg and was burned at the stake. It was a world where the line between human and animal responsibility was bizarrely blurred.
Lighting up a cigarette on an airplane
For anyone who’s flown in the last 25 years, the idea is unthinkable. But for most of aviation history, smoking on a plane was as normal as ordering a drink. From the 1930s all the way into the 1990s, passengers could light up mid-flight. Airlines even provided free cigarettes and had designated smoking sections. Of course, with the poor air circulation on planes, the smoke went everywhere, making it an unpleasant experience for non-smokers.
The tide began to turn in the late 1980s as the health risks of secondhand smoke became undeniable, and concerns grew about the fire hazard in a pressurized cabin. The U.S. began banning smoking on flights in stages, starting in 1988 with domestic flights under two hours.
A complete ban on all flights to and from the U.S. wasn’t put in place until the year 2000. It’s a powerful reminder of how quickly a deeply ingrained social norm can vanish when faced with overwhelming scientific evidence.
Key takeaway
Looking back at these practices, it’s easy to laugh or shudder. But the people doing them weren’t crazy—they were just living by the “normal” of their time, guided by the best (and sometimes worst) science, social pressures, and parenting advice they had.
It all goes to show that what we consider perfectly ordinary today might just be the bizarre history of tomorrow. It makes you wonder… What are we doing right now that will make our grandkids’ jaws drop?
Disclaimer – This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information. It is not intended to be professional advice.
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