Heroic medicine

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Heroic medicine can either refer to heroic therapy or to heroic drugs. Heroic therapy, also referred to as heroic depletion theory, was a therapeutic method advocating for rigorous treatment of bloodletting, purging, and sweating to shock the body back to health after an illness caused by a humoral imbalance. Rising to the front of orthodox medical practice in North America in the "Age of Heroic Medicine" (1780–1850), it fell out of favor in the mid-19th century as gentler treatments were shown to be more effective and the idea of palliative treatment began to develop. Heroic drugs, also called in English potent medicaments, was also a term used in Europe from the 18th to the 20th century to refer to certain potent pharmaceutical drugs.

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