The human body is a mystery to us.

Well, for most of recorded history, at least.

Yes, we've done our best to explore and decipher the secrets inside ourselves,

but so much of it has been pure guesswork.

Thankfully, the past century of medical research has multiplied our understanding exponentially.

But for a very long time, we've been a slave to assumption.

No matter where you look, early folklore always had a focus on our well-being.

Folklore dictated our agricultural techniques, our personal safety, and, of course, our health.

And thanks to folk wisdom, our ancestors did incredibly unusual things to fight illness and pain.

They cut themselves to let the sickness out.

They gave themselves mercury enemas for their constipation.

They drank their own urine, drilled holes in their skulls to stab seizures,

and chewed tree bark to relieve pain.

If someone said it worked, they were always people willing to try it for themselves.

Then, of course, we've learned a lot since then.

We now know that mercury is highly toxic, and that drinking your own urine has zero benefit to our bodies.

Plus, it's just gross.

And while there's a lot of archaeological evidence that drilling holes in skulls rarely killed people,

it also failed to help them.

Sometimes, old folk remedies actually worked, though.

Ancient Egyptians discovered that the bark of the willow tree was the best way to relieve pain.

It turns out that willow bark is rich in salicylic acid,

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