Wolf Broth for Arthritis

An ancient Greek doctor named Paul of Aegina treated patients for arthritis by stewing them in wolf broth. He made the broth by boiling whole wolves in oil. Today the standard treatment for arthritis still includes heat. Instead of hot wolf oil, doctors use electric pads and artificial fever machines. About the cause & cure of most arthritis they know little more than did Paul of Aegina.

Last week, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Robert Spaulding Hormell of Boston City Hospital told about this and other old treatments for arthritis. It made interesting if not very encouraging reading for patients of Paul's present day successors.

For hundreds of years medicine men believed that arthritis was caused by watery "humors" which settled in the joints. The ancient Romans burned the flesh over the afflicted joints, kept the ulcers open to drain off the humors. Other doctors worked on the principle of "no movement, no pain." They carved stone foot casts, not unlike modern plaster casts, into which patients thrust their aching feet. Paul placed great faith in "dragon's blood," but of course, he remarked, it "is difficult to procure."

Medieval Arabian physicians foreshadowed Boston's famed Dr. Stanley Cobb in believing that much of arthritis is psychological. In the 9th Century, the great physician Rhazes attended an emir who was so badly crippled that he could not walk. First Rhazes ordered the emir's best horse to be saddled and brought into the court yard. Rhazes gave the emir hot showers and a stiff drink. Then, brandishing a knife, he cursed his patient, threatened to kill him. Furious, the crippled man sprang to his feet. With his patient hot on his trail, the doctor leaped on the horse and escaped. From a safe distance, he sent an explanation: the patient's fiery temper had dissolved the already softened humors. No one knows whether he enclosed a bill. But he added diplomatically that it would be "inexpedient" for them ever to meet again.

A contemporary of Rhazes was called to the king's court to treat a lady in waiting for stiff joints. He tore off her veil and skirt, left her hot with shame. Her heat, wrote the doctor, dissolved the "rheumatic humor." She was cured.

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