Yeah. Maybe someone who got rubbed with snow got randomly better completely unrelated to the treatment and then superstition run wild with that coincidence.
Or maybe people understood initially that you should do the rubbing next to a fire. And then the rubbing only has positive efect because it lets the person administering it feel when the heat is too much, and naturally adjusts the distance to prevent burns or injury from too fast warming up.
Or maybe someone told people to do it because they thought it might help and never bothered to check if it does anything or not.
Or maybe people did know it does nothing but there was no other option and doing something about the injury felt better than doing nothing.
Maybe it was doing mechanically nothing but the care and personal touch had a beneficial effect due to placebo.
Maybe it made the injury worse, thus more likely that they amputated and paradoxically that saved the injured from worse outcomes like gangrene.
There is so many other possibility than “if they did it it must have worked”. Who knows.
Or maybe people understood initially that you should do the rubbing next to a fire. And then the rubbing only has positive efect because it lets the person administering it feel when the heat is too much, and naturally adjusts the distance to prevent burns or injury from too fast warming up.
Or maybe someone told people to do it because they thought it might help and never bothered to check if it does anything or not.
Or maybe people did know it does nothing but there was no other option and doing something about the injury felt better than doing nothing.
Maybe it was doing mechanically nothing but the care and personal touch had a beneficial effect due to placebo.
Maybe it made the injury worse, thus more likely that they amputated and paradoxically that saved the injured from worse outcomes like gangrene.
There is so many other possibility than “if they did it it must have worked”. Who knows.