Some of the earliest writings about cockroaches encouraged their use as medicine. Pedanius Dioscorides (first century), Abu Hanifa ad-Dainuri (9th century), and Kamal al-Din al-Damiri (14th century ) all offered medicines that either suggest grinding them up with oil or boiling them, and Lafcadio Hearn claimed, in the 1870s, many New Orleanians had great faith in a remedy of boiled cockroach tea.
Professor Li Shunan, known in China as "the godfather of cockroach research", found that it was regularly being used by an ethnic minority tribe in southern China near the Vietnam border to treat ailments and injuries since ancient times; he studied the medical potentials of the cockroach at Dali University and extracted three key chemical compounds from the roach The process of extracting from the farmed cockroaches and usage of the medical compounds has been patented, and shown to have promise in remedying burns, heart disease, hepatitis, trauma, etc.
Several roach species, notably Blaptica dubia, are raised as feeder insects for insectivorous pets. A few cockroach species are raised as pets, most commonly the Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, Gromphadorhina portentosa.[52]
Given its nature as an extremely resistant creature, they have been notably used for space tests. To note is Nadezhda, a cockroach sent into space by Russian scientists during Foton-M test, and became the first terrestrial creature to give birth in space