These Are The Worst Jobs In History

Of all the jobs in history, potentially the most disgusting was that of the gong farmer. If you were hoping that the job involved either traditional farming or using a gong-type instrument, you are sadly mistaken. Unfortunately, the term gong farmer comes from the word "gan," which means to use the restroom. Back in medieval Europe, they did not have modern plumbing systems like we do today, with toilets, sinks, and underground pipes that transport excrement. 

Instead, for the most part, they used latrines, which were giant pits that people stood over to do their business. Additionally, most families did not have their own individual pits; often entire villages or towns would have a set of communal latrines that they would use together. Enter, the gong farmer. It was the gong farmer's job to empty the latrines overnight, and it was just as foul and vile as you would expect.

Working as a team, several men would storm the pits during the night hours — when everyone was asleep — and shovel and transport the excrement out. Undoubtedly, the worst job was that of the shoveler, who had to actually remove the waste from the latrines and get it ready for transport. Apparently, they would take whatever of value was accidentally dropped into the latrines, which might be the worst form of medieval tipping ever.

Though it is not very widely used today, there was a time when using leeches as medicine was seen as the cutting edge of pharmaceutical technology and used for all sorts of ailments and illnesses. Leeches are small black worms that feed on, of all things, blood. They use incredibly sharp teeth and suckers to penetrate and extract the blood, and some of them have venom that actually prevents clotting, leading to sustained bleeding if untreated.

The leech fever really took off in the 18th and 19th centuries, which caused a huge demand for them in Europe and the United States. This resulted in the unfortunate rise of the leech collector, whose job it was to procure the thousands of leeches needed to satisfy medical demand. While leech bites aren't very painful, it's not exactly fun, and removing the leech from the body is much worse. While some people used horse limbs as bait, others used their bare legs and feet, which was cheaper but also much harder to endure.

Often, collectors would have to let the leech stay attached long enough to acquire a decent amount so they could take them off easier, which also meant the leeches had time to transfer unwanted diseases and illnesses. The collectors had to get the leeches from decidedly objectionable places, like bogs, swamps, and marshes. The job was usually reserved for the poor, the only ones desperate enough to do it.

Fighting in the jungles and rice paddies of southeast Asia during the Vietnam War was incredibly dangerous for virtually everyone in the country, especially those who were fighting in combat. Still, even among combat roles, that of the "tunnel rat" stands out as one of the most physically treacherous and psychologically challenging. Tunnel rats were forced to enter into underground mazes built by the Viet Cong, who were the American's main enemy during the war. 

The Viet Cong used an elaborate series of underground tunnels to sneak around the country, which at first allowed them to remain undetected. However, as soon as the U.S. started sending large amounts of troops over in 1966 they discovered the tunnels, and it quickly became a priority to destroy them and those dwelling inside. The tunnels were built well enough that just bombing over top of them was not good enough to make them collapse, meaning they had to be eradicated from the inside out.

This led to soldiers having to crawl into the tunnels themselves, which were absolutely tiny. Once inside, they faced all kinds of dangers, ranging from enemy soldiers, mines, and booby traps, to poisonous snakes and gas attacks. Armed with only a pistol and flashlight, they had to systemically root out each tunnel one by one, a tedious and arduous task. It was incredibly dangerous and led to a high casualty rate, and was incredibly hard to endure psychologically, as well.

It might sound a bit strange on the surface, but the job of hat-making actually used to be fairly dangerous and unhealthy. While today the job is largely done in factories by machines, it used to be the purview of individual hat makers who were known as hatters. These hatters would hand-produce the hats largely out of the furs of animals, as that was the popular textile of the time.

In order for them to successfully turn the fur from animal skin into soft felt, hatters often used a mixture of chemicals. Often included among them was mercury, which was not known at the time to be poisonous like it is today. As a result, hatters willingly used large amounts of mercury nitrate during their hat making, which in some individuals would lead to mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning often manifests itself in a myriad of ways, including physical tremors and mental hallucinations.

Additionally, the phenomenon also gave rise to the term "mad as a hatter," which was part of the basis for the Mad Hatter character in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Though it was portrayed rather humorously in the book and subsequent films, it was a serious issue for those who were affected, and definitely no laughing matter.

The First World War was one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. Deaths during the war exceeded 16 million, and the countries of France, Germany, Austria, and Russia, were completely devastated by years of destruction. The majority of the war on the western front was fought from the trenches of France, where the French-led Allied Powers took on the German-led Central Powers.

From the beginning, the French soldiers were on the defensive when the war began with a German attack in the summer of 1914. The French casualties were enormous over the next three years, including losing more than 27,000 in one day in southern Belgium and having more than 400,000 during the Battle of Verdun. The trench life they had to live was also unfathomably bad. Disease and infection were lurking everywhere, including being transported in rats and other disgusting creatures. That doesn't even include the occasional artillery barrages and bayonet charges that the Germans would throw at them.

Additionally, the constant bayonet charges that the French soldiers themselves had to embark on were also incredibly unpopular. Many times, they essentially turned into suicide runs, with soldiers running over their fallen comrades on their way to their own certain deaths. Things got so bad, the French army actually mutinied in April 1917, refusing to go on any more suicidal bayonet runs. The army recovered and went on to win the war, but life as a soldier was absolutely brutal.

While most people probably don't think about it until they need to, the world of pest extermination is ever-evolving. Today, exterminators are very widespread and can usually be booked fairly easily over the web or phone. Typically, they use chemicals or humane traps to catch the critters, ending infestations as compassionately and professionally as possible. It's quite a far cry from the previous days of rat catchers, who would employ all sorts of (now) outdated and inhumane techniques.

As Ike Matthews wrote in his 19th-century memoir "Full Revelations of a Professional Rat Catcher, After 25 Years' Experience," rat catchers of old used a litany of approaches to get rid of pests. These included using animals like ferrets and mongooses, baiting them with aniseed oil or rhodium oil, and using fake squeals to force them out of tight places. In addition, most of the places where rats were living were "dirty and obnoxious," making them not fun places to set foot in.

Catchers were usually forced to work at night, and would also be called upon to provide rats as fodder for hunting at beerhouses. They were at times ostracized when they would carry around their trapped rats, getting uneasy looks from people uncomfortable to be around them. Still, even though they had to do these dirty and disgusting jobs, rat catchers could still look at themselves with pride and feel they were contributing a valuable service to their communities.

Most people have probably heard the term "whipping boy" before, usually in the context of being labeled a scapegoat or being blamed for another's problems. But would you believe that it actually used to be a job? The evidence is somewhat circumstantial, but many historians posit that some royal families used to employ whipping boys for their children.

These were the days when corporal punishment was common, and it was the job of the whipping boy to take physical punishment that was meant for a young royal. Compared with a royal, their teachers were rather low on the social scale, making it inappropriate for them to punish one themselves. So instead, they would lay into their whipping boy companion, which would somehow teach the royal his lesson.

The psychology makes basically no sense, and almost seems like it was more to please a sadistic teacher than to help the student. Today, it's impossible to know whether this phenomenon is real, and it has not helped that several popular books, like "Game of Thrones," have included whipping boys in their plots. Whether or not it was a real job, everyone can agree that it does indeed need to stay a part of history, and never return.