There are times when you can look back in history and wonder just what people were thinking. The ideas and myths that people believed back in the 1920’s are enough to make you roll your eyes every which way as you wonder just how in the heck anyone could have thought that such things were feasible or even reasonable. But then you have to remember that there was a time when scientific fact and its application wasn’t all that advanced as it is now and they were working with what they had, not what they would eventually have. People back then weren’t fools, well, not all of them were, but they were not as well-informed as they are now. Of course ‘well-informed’ is still a broad term that assumes people know all that much to begin with these days.
Back in the 20’s though any woman that was seen to swear, be overly amorous, or even get into mischief was suffering from hysteria. You know, because real ladies didn’t do things like that without being sick or something. But women would actually undergo treatments for this behavior, and not always the kind of treatments that were particularly nice or pleasant. The only thing that makes this worse is that this kind of development in women was around for centuries before this point and had been attributed to everything from evil spirits to something just being wrong with the woman in question. As of now these kind of behaviors are far more acceptable since many women exhibit such tendencies and are called ‘independent’ rather than hysteric.
Eugenics was another belief that sounded like a good idea at the time but it became a very dark point in American history since the plan was to weed out the ‘wrong’ genes and control the population by allowing only the ‘good’ genes to flourish. If you’re already thinking that this would lead to widespread discrimination then you’re absolutely right. Those that possessed the ‘wrong’ genes were those that were determined to be undesirables, such as criminals, the mental disabled, people of color or other ethnicity, and so on and so forth. If it sounds like something the Nazi’s would have picked up on then once again you’ve nailed it since this point in American history was something that a lot of people would like to forget while in the recent past some folks have tried to bring up again.
Despite the heinous nature of eugenics, the last entry on this list really takes the cake, and it might have even gone into a few since there was an energy drink that used the element called Radium to increase the energy levels of people that used it. Now if you don’t know, Radium was once thought to have curative properties and was used in everything from energy drinks to butter to toothpaste. Yes, toothpaste was invented the 1920’s. But this element was seen to have a major drawback when people started developing massive holes in their jaws and skulls due to overexposure. So if you think the sugary, caffeinated drinks of today are bad just remember that in the 20’s people were being slowly perforated by the energy drinks they had available.
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