There's tons of folk remedies that do absolutely nothing useful at all, too. When you don't have any reliable medicine, you take whatever you have on hand and hope for a placebo effect. Eventually, you find something helpful because even a broken clock is right twice a day.

There are recorded beliefs in medieval Germany, for instance, that carrying or wearing an eye from a bat will make you invisible.

How about blowing smoke up ones ass? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...