Dragan
I now recall that decades ago the treatment for congestive heart failure was to sit patients with their feet in bowls and cut small slits in their ankles so fluid could drain. That treatment became obsolete with the advent of diuretics which have the same effect except that the fluid drains in a more conventional fashion ;-)
On that basis your "urban legend" is indeed possible... though since thiazide diuretics were invented in WWII and in widespread use in the free world by the 1960's, doctors who trained at the same time as or after me are unlikely to remember the above therapy ;-)
JR
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
