9 Disgusting Medical Treatments That Might Just Save Your Life

3. Malaria Therapy

Okay, you probably wouldn't have this prescribed to you today, but this was considered groundbreaking shockingly recently.

Julius Wagner-Jauregg, was the first of the only three people to have ever received a Nobel Prize in the field of psychiatry. This was for developing a novel way of treating his patients for neurosyphilis (that's the type of syphilis that affects the central nervous system, so use protection, kids), which was by infecting them with another deadly disease.

The idea was that the extreme high temperature fever brought on by the malaria would kill off the Treponema pallidum bacteria that cause syphilis in the first place. This is, after all, the reason why we get fevers in the first place.

Amazingly, the treatment was considered a breakthrough, as neurosyphilis was then a terminal disease so there was nothing to lose, and the malaria could later be treated using quinine. Despite this, the 15% mortality rate from malaria was eventually too much and it is no longer in use.