There are many terrible diseases and epidemics in human history. Black plague, smallpox, influenza, consumption - all of them were a real misfortune for our ancestors. But there were among these diseases and so strange that it seems as if they came straight from horror films. Exploding teeth, green women, glowing jaws and glass people - and yet it was all real.
Exploding teeth. This disease was observed in the 19th century. All of the patients' teeth began to ache painfully, after which they exploded from the inside. The detonation was sometimes so strong that the patients were thrown to the floor. By the end of the 19th century, exploding tooth syndrome had disappeared. Modern researchers believe that this was the result of a reaction between hydrogen and old fillings, which were made from lead, tin or silver, turning a tooth into a miniature electric bomb.
Chloremia, or "green women". For about 200 years, chloremia, or chlorotic anemia, was a real punishment for women in high society. They fell into severe depression, due to which they could not stand on their feet and constantly slept. Their joints were swollen, heart palpitations began, menstruation stopped, and then the skin began to turn green. All this happened from a lack of iron in the body, but doctors at that time blamed the lack of sex for everything and considered this condition a "virgin disease."
The curse of the National Hotel. In the 1850s, guests at the National Hotel in Washington often developed a strange illness that could last for years after being discharged from the hotel. The patient suffered from a swollen tongue, inflammation of the colon, severe nausea and diarrhea. It was even considered a curse, until it turned out that the reason was extremely commonplace: a bursting sewer pipe polluted the water supply in the building.
Phosphonecrosis of the jaw. An eerie condition in which the patient's jaw began to grow in all directions, and some of the bumps that formed on it also glowed in the dark. The disease was typical for workers in match factories (matches were then made with white phosphorus). Its vapors, penetrating into the body, did not allow the body to destroy the unhealthy bone, and therefore the bones began to grow uncontrollably and in all directions. The disease ended when phosphorus was discontinued in the match industry.
Plague of Athens. Thucydides has a strange description of the disease that afflicted Athens. The sight of the sick was so terrible that the Spartans, who at that time decided to attack Athens, turned around and quickly retreated from the walls of the city. Patients suffered from high fever, redness in the eyes, then they began to vomit blood, and then bloody diarrhea began. The disease disappeared without any trace, and no more traces of it were found in the sources. Oddly, in the description of the symptoms, it is very similar to Ebola.
Glass illusion. A disease that often afflicted people in the Middle Ages, both rich and poor. Patients began to think that their bodies were made of glass, and from any movement they could crumble into millions of fragments. In addition, it arose in fits. The man sat and talked calmly, and the next minute he was firmly convinced that any movement would break into a glass crumb. Scientists think it was a mental epidemic, since Charles VI was the first to suffer from the glass illusion in the 1400s, and then it spread like an epidemic of imitation.
Scientists have already learned the cause of many of these strange diseases, but some remain a mystery to this day.