My grandmother recently gave me the book The Housewife's remedies and good advice published in 1934 (Original Swedish title: Husmoderns hemkurer och goda råd by Kerstin Wennström) which contains advice for women on how to cure certain illnesses. A lot of the advice is very bad, for example: The book gives the advice that if someone suffers from a sore throat, it is good to drink a mix of hot water, honey and turpentine(!). If it is a small child, you should use smaller amounts of turpentine.
Now today we know that this is not very good for sore throats or people in general, but did people really not know better at the time? Or were doctors aware of the problems in these so-called remedies, but thought them the best solution? I'm also thinking of practices such as draining the patient of blood. Did doctors really think that was a great way of curing sickness, or was it more like we view chemo today, a bad solution to an even worse problem?
I posted this question a few days ago and din't get an answer so I'm trying again to see if maybe I posted at a bad time. If i still don't get an answer I won't post again :)
If I may merely address your question in part; perhaps you ought not be so hasty in dismissing the good advice of housewives!
Belief has always been a pillar of healing practice; today as much as before. As Patrick Logan, a medical doctor who documented many traditional healing practices in Ireland, notes in his Making the Cure, the belief that a healer was capable of curing the suffering person was often as, or more, important than the cure itself.
Nowadays, even with all the wonder drugs, antibiotics, steroids, tranquillisers and the like, the patient's greatest need is still reassurance, and before the days of modern therapy, this was even more important. At a time when few drugs had any curative effect, it mattered little if they were prescribed by a qualified doctor or a 'wise woman'; the confidence which went with the treatment made all the difference.^1
As Logan further notes, the recognition of the limitations of medicinal practices was an important tool in the curative arsenal of a healer both of the folk and official modern varieties;
Now, anyone who treats disease has certain advantages which his patients may not realise. Almost all physical illnesses—over 80% of them—will get better no matter what treatment is given, so it is only common sense on the part of the medical attendant to make sure that he will be given the credit for the favourable result. It must be realised that more than one third of the people who seek medical advice cannot be found to have any physical cause for their complaints. This is not to imply that these patients are malingering or are dishonest—they are not—but they may be tired or over-worried and they will be greatly helped by being able to tell all their worries to a sympathetic listener.^2
Nor should this suggest the role of healer as a manipulative one; the genuine belief that they are able to heal their patient is very rarely absent—one testimonial from a traditional healer in Ireland typifies this view:
I have been doing what I am doing now since I was a child: I don't see anything extraordinary in it. What we do around here is what generations of people have done before us. People come to me and ask for help and I willingly give it. I don't see myself as being superior to any of them because the following day I might have to go to them for help. I can't explain why coming to me helps them to get well. To be honest. I don't bother my head about these things. I just get on and do it.^3
Others would have to explore the nature of confidence and practice in the official medical tradition; however for your own Husmoderns hemkurer och goda råd cure, of all the countless traditional cures for this ailment I know of, this one is quite practical indeed. Hot water with honey is certainly a relief to the symptoms of a sore throat (tea with honey being my preference). The prescription of turpentine might seem unusual given its toxicity, but it is a fixture of traditional medicinal elixirs, with its stimulating vapours and antiseptic properties. This curative is likely to be very efficacious to the patients suffering ...if not particularly friendly to their renal system. Still, even in the modern mind, the treatment of symptoms and treatment of cause are nearly always conflated.
^(1 • Patrick Logan. Making the Cure. Dublin, Ireland: Talbot Press, 1972.)
^(2 • Ibid.)
^(3 • Peter Nolan. "Folk Medicine in Rural Ireland". In: Folk Life, Journal of Ethnological Studies, Volume 27, 1988-1989.)
I just started listening to an audiobook (actually a series of lectures) from Audible called "The Great Courses - Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography" by Prof Sherwin B. Nuland.
The lecture on Galen, the father of modern medicine, suggests that before Galen, there were many different schools of interpretation and application of the teachings of Hippocrates. Galen codified what he thought were the true teachings and that became standard for something like 1200 years. Extrapolating from that, if there were previously many schools of thought and then one was held to be official, I imagine that there would always be some who disagreed with the "official" view. On the other hand, even Galen's mistakes were passed on for over a thousand years so maybe people just really did not know better.
It's a very interesting series of lectures though and while I'm only a little way in I would recommend them if you want more info and especially if no-one qualified answers your questions here.
A lot of the advice is very bad, for example: The book gives the advice that if someone suffers from a sore throat, it is good to drink a mix of hot water, honey and turpentine(!).
Terpin hydrate, derived from oil of turpentine et al, is prescribed as an expectorant. It was banned by the FDA in the 1990s (lack of evidence of effectiveness) but it is still available elsewhere in the world.