Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Tracy Vie Wilson and I and you may
Speaker 1: have never heard of today's subject, but Avicenna was one
Speaker 1: of the first and probably the most influential Islamic philosopher scientists.
Speaker 1: He's listed among the great philosophers in Dante's Inferno, and
Speaker 1: in the prologue to the Canary Tales. The doctor of
Speaker 1: physic who was in the party has studied his work.
Speaker 1: There's also a portrait of him hanging in the hall
Speaker 1: of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris.
Speaker 1: He had this expansive, brilliant knowledge, and he was so
Speaker 1: methodical and systematic, and the way that he wrote down
Speaker 1: in cataloged information that his work in medicine became sought
Speaker 1: after basically all over the place. He influenced the field
Speaker 1: of medicine throughout the Islamic and Christian medieval worlds, and
Speaker 1: his influence in Europe in the field of medicine lasted
Speaker 1: well into the seventeenth century, to the point that schools
Speaker 1: based their entire medical curricula on his writings. He was
Speaker 1: also one of the most important philosophers in history. His work,
Speaker 1: which was written mostly in Arabic, was rooted in Islam,
Speaker 1: along with Aristotelian and neo Platonist philosophy in the Muslim world.
Speaker 1: This philosophy continues to be studied today, and the fact
Speaker 1: that Avicenna was influential to both Christians and Muslims makes
Speaker 1: him really unique among ancient philosophers and scholars of his time. Today,
Speaker 1: his work exists in more than two hundred commentaries, annotations
Speaker 1: of bridgements, and translations. So, as we usually do, will
Speaker 1: start at the beginning UH and then Farsi. His name
Speaker 1: is actually Ibn Sina. In Arabic, it's Abu al al Hussain.
Speaker 1: Ibn Sina. Avicenna is actually the medieval latinization of his name.
Speaker 1: We're calling him that instead of calling him even Sina
Speaker 1: because the overwhelming preponderance of information about him, regardless of
Speaker 1: what culture it's written from, UH calls him that. He
Speaker 1: became known by that name a very very long time ago.
Speaker 1: He was born around nine eighty in a village near Bukara, Iran,
Speaker 1: which is now in Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Bukara is
Speaker 1: in south central Uzbekistan at a river delta, and it
Speaker 1: lay along the Silk Road. Today its center is a
Speaker 1: UNESCO World Heritage Site, and at the time it was
Speaker 1: the capital, and it was an intellectually rich place to
Speaker 1: grow up. This was also the fourth century of the
Speaker 1: Islamic calendar, and this part of the world was really
Speaker 1: flourishing in knowledge and intellect at this point. His father
Speaker 1: was a governor and a scholar as well, and Avicenna
Speaker 1: was a very bright and gifted child, and he claimed
Speaker 1: to have memorized the higher Koran by the time he
Speaker 1: was ten years old. His father's position and the number
Speaker 1: of libraries and scholars where they lived meant that his
Speaker 1: precociousness was really encouraged and nourished, and much of his
Speaker 1: early study was an Aristotilian philosophy. But he surpassed his
Speaker 1: teachers when he was quite young, and so he furthered
Speaker 1: his education on his own once they no longer had
Speaker 1: anything they could teach him. At the age of sixteen,
Speaker 1: he turned from studying philosophy to studying medicine, which was
Speaker 1: a discipline that he said he found extremely easy. And
Speaker 1: when he was still quite young, the Sultan of Bukara,
Speaker 1: the city where he was living, got sick and the
Speaker 1: court physicians were not able to cure him, but Avicenna
Speaker 1: did cure him, but as a reward, the Sultan gave
Speaker 1: him access to the royal library, which opened up all
Speaker 1: kinds of avenues for his own personal study. Getting access
Speaker 1: to books and knowledge through his practice of medicine for
Speaker 1: wealthy patrons actually became a pattern that he repeated throughout
Speaker 1: his life. The self taught knowledge that he got from
Speaker 1: all this was so broad that he also claimed to
Speaker 1: have mastered all of the sciences by the age of eighteen.
Speaker 1: Brilliant slash a little egotistical yes that comes up often
Speaker 1: and writing about him that in addition to being extremely smart,
Speaker 1: he knew he was extremely smart and could be kind
Speaker 1: of conceited about it. Uh So, when he was a
Speaker 1: young man, his father died and he for a while
Speaker 1: held an administrative post. It's possible that he succeeded his
Speaker 1: father and the governorship, but the records are not entirely
Speaker 1: clear on that point. So we knew a fair amount
Speaker 1: about Avison's life because he dictated an autobiography to a
Speaker 1: protege named Algis Johnny, and this protegee also added additional
Speaker 1: biographical information. Some of Avison's own correspondents also survives, but
Speaker 1: we don't really have a whole lot of contemporaneous accounts
Speaker 1: to balance out this perspective. UM, and the existence of
Speaker 1: the autobiography also seems to have had this unintended side
Speaker 1: effect of prompting less scholarship about his life. It was
Speaker 1: basically like, there's already all this information here, so we
Speaker 1: don't need to go on a quest to find more
Speaker 1: of it. And especially when it comes to his youth,
Speaker 1: the autobiography is all we have uh, and its discussion
Speaker 1: of his childhood is really more like the study of
Speaker 1: a scholar set out in such a way as to
Speaker 1: act as evidence of avice and his own thoughts on
Speaker 1: knowledge and wisdom. It basically recounts his learning. It moves
Speaker 1: through increasingly difficult material and sequence uh and often his
Speaker 1: own without instruction, so he basically kind of does maps
Speaker 1: out the natural progression of I learned a little bit,
Speaker 1: I learned some harder things. Eventually I had to seek
Speaker 1: out my own knowledge because no one could teach me right. So,
Speaker 1: rather than sort of being a story about how he
Speaker 1: grew up, this autobiography, when it comes to his youth
Speaker 1: is more like an illustration of how a person can
Speaker 1: acquire wisdom and knowledge through intuition, So it's almost more
Speaker 1: like a curriculum for learning things and an example of
Speaker 1: having done it, rather than an autobiography as we would
Speaker 1: think of it today. And in his adulthood, he was
Speaker 1: known to be a gregarious person who loved life and
Speaker 1: its pleasures, including drinking and sex. He was witty and charismatic,
Speaker 1: and he was often in the company of friends, and
Speaker 1: at the same time, as is often the case with geniuses,
Speaker 1: he could also have periods of brooding and loneliness. So
Speaker 1: go figure, no surprise, really not really, As in many religions,
Speaker 1: excessive sex and alcohol consumption were quite frowned upon among
Speaker 1: strict Muslims where he lived, So there these same traits
Speaker 1: that kind of defined him also put him at odds
Speaker 1: with Islamic conventions and social norms, and they earned him
Speaker 1: a lot of enemies as well. He had to move
Speaker 1: from place to place and from patron to patron as
Speaker 1: he rubbed people the wrong way with his flaunting of
Speaker 1: religious and social expectations and of you know, being kind
Speaker 1: of pretentious and hard to get along way and As
Speaker 1: we said earlier, he was also a little conceited and arrogant.
Speaker 1: He was brilliant and he knew it, and he was
Speaker 1: not afraid to tell people how much he knew or
Speaker 1: how very good he was at any particular thing. And
Speaker 1: this is the one that always makes me go, oh
Speaker 1: no Avicenna. Uh. He was also not shy about embarrassing
Speaker 1: and shaming his rivals if they rubbed him the wrong way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was pretty outspoken about his greatness and everyone
Speaker 1: else's not greatness. Right. He would do things like show
Speaker 1: someone a forgery, knowing that it was a forgery, to
Speaker 1: see if that person would spot that it was a
Speaker 1: fart a forgery in front of others, and when the
Speaker 1: person did not spot that it was a forgery, make
Speaker 1: fun of them. It's kind of a brilliant jerk. Yeah. But,
Speaker 1: as we are about to talk about, extensively, hugely influential
Speaker 1: and important, especially in the worlds of philosophy and medicine.
Speaker 1: By about the age of twenty one, Avicenna had started
Speaker 1: to write, and before his death he had written more
Speaker 1: than two hundred and forty books, treatises, and other works,
Speaker 1: and these spanned all kinds of subjects including math, science, philosophy, music,
Speaker 1: and poetry. And as we just said today, he is
Speaker 1: most known and was most influential for his work in
Speaker 1: medicine and philosophy. So we're going to talk about his
Speaker 1: philosophy first and his medicine second. His most important philosophical
Speaker 1: work is the Katab al Shifa, also called The Cure,
Speaker 1: which was an encyclopedia of logic, physics, math, and metaphysics.
Speaker 1: And this work was modeled after the work of Aristotle
Speaker 1: with a grounding in Islam, and it was translated into
Speaker 1: Latin in Spain during the twelfth and thirteen centuries, after
Speaker 1: which it became hugely influential in Europe. The physics volume
Speaker 1: wasn't just what we think of as physics today. It
Speaker 1: also included what we classify more as biology, meteorology, mineralogy,
Speaker 1: and even psychology. The math volume also includes geography, a star, eontomy,
Speaker 1: and music in addition to the arithmetic and geometry that
Speaker 1: would immediately come to mind when we think about math,
Speaker 1: and he also wrote about dream interpretations, talisman and alchemy
Speaker 1: as well, although in the end he rejected the idea
Speaker 1: that base metals could be transmuted into other things As
Speaker 1: a philosopher. One of his most notable thought experiments was
Speaker 1: called the flying Man, also known as the floating Man,
Speaker 1: which reflected on what a completely blank slate of a
Speaker 1: person could be aware of. So, in this thought experiment,
Speaker 1: imagine that God has just created a fully formed adult
Speaker 1: person and kind of a sensory vacuum. This person has
Speaker 1: no memory, he has no sensory input at all. None
Speaker 1: of his body parts are even touching each other, so
Speaker 1: he's not even aware of his own body. So, in
Speaker 1: this thought experiment, what would this newly minted person be
Speaker 1: aware of. According to Avicenna's philosophy, he would be aware
Speaker 1: that he existed. So to Avicenna the Smith, that self
Speaker 1: awareness is a fundamental part of life, and that also
Speaker 1: suggested to him that the soul is different from the
Speaker 1: body because you could be aware of yourself without being
Speaker 1: aware of your body. And this was significant because it
Speaker 1: was different from much of the theology at the time,
Speaker 1: which largely taught that the soul was a material substance
Speaker 1: that had an atomic makeup like it was an actual
Speaker 1: physical thing. This whole idea also draws a parallel between
Speaker 1: humans and God, because Avicenna saw God as a self
Speaker 1: thinking intellect. So in Avicenna's view, both humans and God
Speaker 1: have this ability for self awareness, and that makes self
Speaker 1: awareness something extremely special. According to ancient and medieval philosophy
Speaker 1: professor Peter Adamson, this is one of the first times
Speaker 1: that philosophy put forth this idea and this connection between
Speaker 1: man and God. And Avicenna also created a proof that
Speaker 1: he believed proved the existence of God, which takes a
Speaker 1: great deal of explaining, so we will link to a
Speaker 1: full explanation of it in the show notes rather than
Speaker 1: kind of taking you through the proof here. Yes, I
Speaker 1: listened to you a thirty minute podcast that was just
Speaker 1: an explanation of this proof, So rather than spending thirty
Speaker 1: minutes on that, we will of all of the various logic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of logic and a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of philosophical groundwork that has to be put down first.
Speaker 1: That if you're not already familiar with the takes explaining itself.
Speaker 1: So um, before we move on to his discussion of medicine,
Speaker 1: let's take a moment and talk about our sponsor. That
Speaker 1: sounds okay, and now we'll get back to some extremely
Speaker 1: important scientific work from very long ago, so Avicenna's most
Speaker 1: influential medical work was the five book work The Canon
Speaker 1: of Medicine Alcanum fiel tib which was influential both in
Speaker 1: his region of the world and in European medical schools.
Speaker 1: And some of this medical writing was based on the
Speaker 1: Greek physician Galen's idea that of the four humors, which
Speaker 1: are blood, flegm, black by and yellow bile, along with
Speaker 1: the Greek idea of four elements of earth, air, fire,
Speaker 1: and water, and the Cannon of Medicine also draws heavily
Speaker 1: on the work of Hippocrates. There's also work on anatomy,
Speaker 1: the causes and treatments of diseases, hygiene, medicines, pathology, basically
Speaker 1: the whole world of known medicine at the time in
Speaker 1: one five volume work. And the fifth book of the
Speaker 1: Cannon of Medicine is actually a drug formulary, which was
Speaker 1: a completely new idea in the field of medicine at
Speaker 1: the time, sort of the first pharmacist manual. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the Canon of Medicine was basically one work that distilled
Speaker 1: the whole of medical knowledge into five volumes. So it's
Speaker 1: really not at all surprising that it became the mainstay
Speaker 1: of medical education and that lasted for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: When schools in Europe finally drifted away from it, it
Speaker 1: was also moving away from the whole idea that humors
Speaker 1: caused disease when they are out of balance. So basically,
Speaker 1: avison Is work was the core of medical education until
Speaker 1: medicine moved away from the entire idea that a lot
Speaker 1: of it was based on. And although this whole idea
Speaker 1: of humors isn't part of mainstream medicine today. Uh. Overall,
Speaker 1: Avicenna's medical writing was well tested and it was evidence based.
Speaker 1: There's some really solid medical thought in there that still
Speaker 1: holds true today. He also kept clinical records which were
Speaker 1: intended to be used as an appendix to the canon
Speaker 1: of medicine. UH. Those haven't survived until today, but we
Speaker 1: do know some specifics about his medical practices. One was
Speaker 1: that he recommended wine as a wound dressing, which was
Speaker 1: a common treatment in medieval Europe and actually since then.
Speaker 1: It contains alcohol can be effective at helping to prevent infection.
Speaker 1: He also used reduction techniques like pressure and traction to
Speaker 1: treat spinal deformities, which is something that Hippocrates had written of,
Speaker 1: and this whole practice disappeared from medicine after Avicenna's time
Speaker 1: until a French surgeon picked it up and then nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: He also correctly used sweet tasting urine to diagnose diabetes.
Speaker 1: So did he taste it? Probably that is the thing
Speaker 1: that people would do, uh, and that is definitely identify
Speaker 1: sugar in it, definitely an indication that a person could
Speaker 1: have diabetes. We know that he performed surgery, and there
Speaker 1: are surgical instruments that belonged to him in museums and
Speaker 1: within the world of surgery. One of the things that
Speaker 1: he did was to describe how to find the healthy
Speaker 1: margins of a surgical site when performing an amputation. He
Speaker 1: also wrote about how to cut an umbilical cord and
Speaker 1: how to clean, swaddle, and feed a newborn baby, so
Speaker 1: this is basically all over all kinds of areas of medicine.
Speaker 1: At this point. A lot of his writing was also
Speaker 1: about generally being healthy, how to get well and stay well,
Speaker 1: and it included the effects of recreation, the home, family life,
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other factors on human health. So
Speaker 1: consequently he's been referred to as the four Runner of
Speaker 1: preventive medicine, which is something we take for granted today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really, uh you know, was the first to put
Speaker 1: forth the idea of sort of a holistic health view
Speaker 1: versus just treating incidents of health issues. So Avirisona was
Speaker 1: extremely influential and extremely important, and unfortunately his life was
Speaker 1: not particularly long. At the age of fifty seven, he
Speaker 1: was traveling with his patron and he developed colicue, which
Speaker 1: he decided to treat himself, and ultimately this wound up
Speaker 1: leading to his death. The course of treatment that he
Speaker 1: wanted to undergo involved getting eight celery seed enemies a day,
Speaker 1: and it's unclear whether this was intentional on the part
Speaker 1: of one of his attendants, but the formula that he
Speaker 1: gave to himself was prepared to contain more than double
Speaker 1: the amount of active ingredient that it was supposed to.
Speaker 1: His intestines became ulcerated as a result, and to treat
Speaker 1: the ulceration, he used a mild form of opium, and
Speaker 1: at this time we know that there was a tampering
Speaker 1: that was intentional. A slave laced this opium with an
Speaker 1: extra dose. His health started to go downhill, and he
Speaker 1: refused to leave his patron. He kept traveling with him,
Speaker 1: but his condition got worse and worse, and he finally
Speaker 1: died in ten thirty seven, and Amasona is buried in
Speaker 1: Hamdan and his tomb, which had fallen into disrepair, was
Speaker 1: refurbished in the nineteen fifties and now it's home to
Speaker 1: a mausoleum in an eight thousand volume library. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a big sort of pillared monument there. It's very striking
Speaker 1: to look at. As we said earlier, although his his
Speaker 1: medical writing is not really part of modern medical thought,
Speaker 1: his philosophy is still widely studied among Muslims today. He's
Speaker 1: one of those people that's so influential. It's almost surprising
Speaker 1: that you don't hear of him. I had never heard
Speaker 1: of him before I started. Well, I had heard of
Speaker 1: him because I've read the Canterbury Tales in Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: but his name had not stuck into my head, and
Speaker 1: still until I started doing research on this podcast. It's
Speaker 1: pretty rare that somebody living at that time would have
Speaker 1: been that influential among both Christians and Muslims. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a really interesting story. I actually do kind
Speaker 1: of want to go read his proof, which I have
Speaker 1: not yet. I have only listened to the analysis and
Speaker 1: description of it that that took like thirty minutes to explain. Um,
Speaker 1: perfect lunchtime listening it is. It is pretty pretty perfect
Speaker 1: lunchtime listening. There are some awesome philosophy podcasts, some of
Speaker 1: which I used as sources for this. We will link
Speaker 1: them all up in show notes because I don't have
Speaker 1: them noted right in front of me. But yeah, Avicenna,
Speaker 1: possibly unknown person credited with the health and were welfare
Speaker 1: of much of medieval Europe. All right, do you have
Speaker 1: some listener mail to share with us? I do. I
Speaker 1: have two pieces of listener mail, and they're both about
Speaker 1: the Boston massacre. The first is from Paul, and Paul
Speaker 1: writes to us. It's a rather long letter, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to eat all of it. But he writes
Speaker 1: about where he listens. He apparently cannot listen to us
Speaker 1: while driving because it requires too much of his attention,
Speaker 1: but he has been listening while he runs, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Uh. Then he says, as a history major
Speaker 1: and a trivia aficionado, I particularly look forward to subject
Speaker 1: matter that I think I know well. I'm always pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised by the new facts or perspectives that you bring
Speaker 1: to the shows. Of course, I love hearing about all
Speaker 1: matter of subjects that I knew nothing of. I have
Speaker 1: learned more about communicable diseases than I maybe would have
Speaker 1: cared to learn on my own. For instance, I did
Speaker 1: want to put yeah, I knew you and us both
Speaker 1: we did have a whole run of tuberculosis and small box.
Speaker 1: I did want to put in my two cents about
Speaker 1: your boss the mask per episode. As a proud Bostonian,
Speaker 1: I felt it my duty. I was really excited for
Speaker 1: this episode as a Colonial America buff and a local
Speaker 1: of the Boston area. I did want to add another
Speaker 1: cause for tensions that led to the riot, namely the
Speaker 1: Quartering Acts, where Boston colonists were forced to house the
Speaker 1: British regulars who were sent there to essentially suppress the
Speaker 1: Bostonians and their dissatisfaction with the towns and acts. The
Speaker 1: soldiers were sent in part as a reaction to the
Speaker 1: non importation Acts revived in Boston, where the city refused
Speaker 1: to buy any imported goods as a measure that was
Speaker 1: adopted across the Northern colonies. Eventually This hit the English
Speaker 1: merchants in their wallets, and that had been an effective
Speaker 1: method in repealing the stamp acts. Boston's resistance became a
Speaker 1: spark that eventually ignited the rebellion. The true presence was
Speaker 1: a catalyst that made loyal subjects of the crown rethink
Speaker 1: their positions. Imagine four thousand soldiers of occupying a city
Speaker 1: of twenty thousand. I know the word massacre is an exaggeration,
Speaker 1: but I always wondered why a mob of hundreds didn't
Speaker 1: retaliate more violently against eight soldiers after they had shot
Speaker 1: into a crowd. Certainly, armed people killing unarmed people is
Speaker 1: an act that barrison scrutiny. I always found Adam's description
Speaker 1: of the crowd, which is laden with racial overtones, quite
Speaker 1: illustrative of how at least some of the four of
Speaker 1: others truly did not believe that all men were created equal. Anyway,
Speaker 1: enough rambling, keep up the great works, sincerely, Paul, Thank you, Paul.
Speaker 1: Uh we did not quite say explicitly that, yes, Adam's
Speaker 1: description of the people who writed is quite laced with
Speaker 1: judgment and uh bigotry. I think it's the word um
Speaker 1: so that is that is letter one about the black
Speaker 1: and masker. I have letter to about the Boston massaker,
Speaker 1: and then we will kind of talk about both of them. Uh.
Speaker 1: The second one is from our Facebook while and it's
Speaker 1: from Shawn Sean says Dear Tracy and Holly. I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of the podcast and recently listened to the
Speaker 1: episode on the Boston massacre. During the podcast, you mentioned
Speaker 1: repeatedly how the term massacre seems an odd choice to
Speaker 1: modern ears to describe the event, given the seemingly small
Speaker 1: amount of lives cost and the incident compared to what
Speaker 1: we are sadly used to today. Well, I agree with
Speaker 1: you guys that the use of the term was undoubtedly
Speaker 1: driven by political and propaganda aims. I was also curious
Speaker 1: that somehow the concept of what would pass as a
Speaker 1: massacre in the eighteenth century was influenced by the weapons
Speaker 1: available at the time and the carnage they could dispense.
Speaker 1: Let's keep in mind that the British soldiers involved in
Speaker 1: the event were all armed with large caliber, single shop
Speaker 1: muzzle loading muskets. These were inaccurate at best, and even
Speaker 1: the best trained soldiers, such as the Heshan's the tie
Speaker 1: in another podcast topic, could only be expected to manage
Speaker 1: three shots per minute and the best of conditions. So
Speaker 1: far I can tell none of the soldiers involved fired
Speaker 1: more than once, and some victims were hit multiple times.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it is therefore unlikely to have expected a greater
Speaker 1: number of casualties than what actually occurred, Although estimates ary
Speaker 1: the number of combat dead in the U s Revolution
Speaker 1: may have been less than eight thousand people. I do
Speaker 1: not mean in any way to diminish the loss of life,
Speaker 1: but merely venture the opinion that just as the use
Speaker 1: of the term massacre seems uncalled for to us today
Speaker 1: because of our cultural conditioning, perhaps our forefathers looked upon
Speaker 1: it exactly that because of theirs. At any rate, keep
Speaker 1: up the awesome work. Uh. And then he suggests a
Speaker 1: podcast episode topic for the future. So thank you also,
Speaker 1: Sean Um. We we got a fair amount of flak
Speaker 1: from people about how we talked about the Boston mastheaw um.
Speaker 1: And after getting this particularly reason the question from Sean,
Speaker 1: I went and did some looking because I wondered I
Speaker 1: was pretty contextually qualified as a massacre. I was pretty
Speaker 1: I was pretty up front at the beginning that I
Speaker 1: think of massacres today is something like horrifying and terrible,
Speaker 1: and it turns out it's always meant something horrifying and terrible.
Speaker 1: So the word massacre comes from French words that relate
Speaker 1: to butcher's knives and blocks, so that's what it meant
Speaker 1: originally before it became something that meant slaughter. Its first
Speaker 1: uses in English came from the sixteenth century and referred
Speaker 1: to the bloody massacre at Paris, and that's the math,
Speaker 1: the massacre of St. Bartholon New's Day. So to catch
Speaker 1: everyone up if you have not heard of this before.
Speaker 1: In this massacre, Catherine Demonici, who was Catholic, orchestrated the
Speaker 1: murder of the Hugueno nobility who were Protestant. And these
Speaker 1: were people who were in Paris for a wedding. It's
Speaker 1: not in any way aggressive. Well, I mean there was
Speaker 1: tension there, but their their visit to Paris was not
Speaker 1: about a wedding specifically, the wedding was of Catherine de
Speaker 1: Medici's daughter Margaret, to Henry of Navarre, who was a
Speaker 1: Hugueno and would later become Henry the Fourth. So the
Speaker 1: final death toll of this massacre was in the thousands,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people who were killed, were
Speaker 1: seriously were in their homes or working in their shops
Speaker 1: at the time. Some of them were even attendants who
Speaker 1: were attending Hugueno aristocrats who were in the louver for
Speaker 1: the wedding festivities at a time. So, like, I see
Speaker 1: what people like. There are people who felt like we
Speaker 1: really treated the massacre and quotation marks too lightly. Massacre
Speaker 1: has really always meant something horrifying, involving either massive carnage
Speaker 1: or the slaughter of innocent people who were doing nothing.
Speaker 1: And that's really not what was happening in Boston on
Speaker 1: that day. In Boston on that day, we had a
Speaker 1: big group of civilians who surrounded a small group of
Speaker 1: armed soldiers and we're like throwing rocks and oyster shells
Speaker 1: and things at them and insulting. So I'm not saying
Speaker 1: anybody should have gotten shot. It's still a huge tragedy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a tragedy. It is also definitely not a
Speaker 1: massacre by the definition of massacre um not even the
Speaker 1: connotations of massacre, like the actual dictionary definition of massacre.
Speaker 1: So while it's definitely not our intent to make light
Speaker 1: of anyone death, there was a whole lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going on in terms of the factors that d to
Speaker 1: the altercation in the first place, and definitely for sure
Speaker 1: the fact that American colonial writers portrayed it as a massacre,
Speaker 1: specifically as spin later on. Uh, because, like we said,
Speaker 1: the first massacre ever described in English, thousands of people
Speaker 1: who were in Paris for a wedding, many of them,
Speaker 1: a lot of them just were living in Paris doing
Speaker 1: their jobs and living in their houses when they got murdered.
Speaker 1: So on that cheerful note. So if you would like
Speaker 1: to email us and share your thoughts, you can do
Speaker 1: so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We also
Speaker 1: have some new ways to connect with us are old
Speaker 1: ways with new addresses. You can connect with us on
Speaker 1: Facebook still but now we're at Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: missed in History. We're still on Twitter at Misston History.
Speaker 1: We're still on Tumbler at Misston History dot tumbler dot com.
Speaker 1: And our pinterest has moved and expanded rather significantly, so
Speaker 1: you can find us there at pinters dot com slash
Speaker 1: mist in history. Do you like to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more about one of the subjects that Avisona wrote
Speaker 1: so much about, come to our website. Put the word
Speaker 1: math in the search bar, you will find how math Works.
Speaker 1: You can do all that and a whole lot more
Speaker 1: at our website, which is how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com,