For thousands of years, humans have been on a quest to find effective disease cures and methods of staying healthy. While modern Western medicine has evolved into a system of doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical drugs, other remedies—from bloodletting to coordinated laughing — are still in use around the world.
A Thai man poses while drinking a glass of rice wine with a scorpion in the village of Baan Niyomchai in Lopburi province, about 250 km (155 miles) north of Bangkok. REUTERSA man holds a terrapin, whose touch believed to cure rheumatism and other bodily ailments, as he prepares to treat the face of a villager in Kandal province, 20km (12 miles) west of Phnom Penh.REUTERSA man is made to swallow a live fish as a form of medicine during a camp in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. REUTERSBulgarians lay in the Bourgas salt-works lake, near the Black Sea town of Bourgas, some 400 km (248 miles) east of capital. REUTERSA Thai nurse removes a bag of maggots from a patient's wound at a hospital in Bangkok. REUTERSA man prepares to swallow a live fish that has been dipped in homemade medicine during a camp in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. REUTERSResidents lie on railway tracks in Rawa Buaya in Indonesia's West Java province. REUTERSA patient receives treatment with bee venom for rheumatism at a clinic in Beijing. REUTERSKatja Horn lies in a copper bath tub full of beer and water in a dimly lit relaxation room at the Hotel Esplanade in the German spa town of Bad Saarow east of Berlin. REUTERSA man covered with mud sits in a medicinal mud pond at the "Lagoon of Miracles" in Chilca. REUTERSPeruvian Iliana Cogan, who is six months pregnant, is touched by a dolphin named Wayra during a therapy for pregnant women in Lima. REUTERSA patient receives a traditional Chinese medical treatment with needles.REUTERSArmy veteran Matthew Doyle, 25, practices paddling on the sand at a surf therapy program for military veterans in Manhattan Beach, California. REUTERS
