Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hi. My name is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and
Speaker 1: moments in time. In June of the international auction house
Speaker 1: known as Bonham's put a rare artifact up forbidding. It
Speaker 1: was an original manuscript of the English physicist and mathematician
Speaker 1: Sir Isaac Newton, dating back to the seventeenth century, containing
Speaker 1: Newton's handwritten notes on a book he had read around
Speaker 1: the time he went into quarantine to avoid the Bubonic plague.
Speaker 1: The book was called The Tumulus Pestis or the Tomb
Speaker 1: of the Plague by the Flemish alchemist and physician Yan
Speaker 1: Baptista van Helmont. In this manuscript, Newton summarizes van Helmont's
Speaker 1: for stand observations and warnings about the plague, which were
Speaker 1: based on his time working as a doctor in Antwerp
Speaker 1: when it was struck by an outbreak in sixteen o five.
Speaker 1: The Tumulus Pestis, of course, predates the germ theory of disease,
Speaker 1: so the advice it gives is of limited scientific value.
Speaker 1: It does recommend avoiding areas crowded with infected people, which
Speaker 1: is sound though pretty obvious, but it also warns, for example,
Speaker 1: that infection could be spread if you were to touch
Speaker 1: a pestilent read with your finger. Newton records Van Helmont's
Speaker 1: prescriptions for treatments and prophylactics against infection as well. Some
Speaker 1: come in the form of amulets made of gems like
Speaker 1: sapphire or amber, but according to Newton's notes quote, the
Speaker 1: best is a toad suspended by the legs in a
Speaker 1: chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth
Speaker 1: and various insects in it onto a dish of yellow wax,
Speaker 1: and shortly after die. Combining powdered toad with the excretions
Speaker 1: and serum made into lozenges and worn around the affected area,
Speaker 1: drove away the contagion and drew out the poison. Today
Speaker 1: we know the plague is caused by a bacterium your
Speaker 1: Sinea pestis, and it can usually be treated with antibiotics.
Speaker 1: I really doubt the lozenge made out of powdered toad
Speaker 1: vomit and toad corpse would be effective at staving off infection,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what would have caused an early
Speaker 1: modern physician like Van Helmont to believe in it. But
Speaker 1: one thing that's absolutely impossible to ignore is that the
Speaker 1: vomiting behavior of frogs and toads, known technically as and
Speaker 1: urine emesis, is a surprising, memorable, and many splendored thing.
Speaker 1: For example, if an untrained observer were to catch some
Speaker 1: species of frogs and toads at the right moment, it
Speaker 1: would look like they were giving birth to live young
Speaker 1: by vomiting them up through the mouth. The species Rhinoderma darwinii,
Speaker 1: also known as the Darwin frog, is native to South America,
Speaker 1: found primarily in the freshwater streams of Chile and Argentina.
Speaker 1: As part of their reproductive cycle, male Darwin frogs eat
Speaker 1: their young. This is not as grim as it sounds.
Speaker 1: There's no chewing, no digestion. Instead, when a male Darwin
Speaker 1: frog swallows his tadpoles, he stores them in a pouch
Speaker 1: known as the vocal sack, where they brood safely until
Speaker 1: metamorphosis occurs. After this, they can be vomited out of
Speaker 1: their father's mouth as fully formed froglets. Other species of
Speaker 1: nurins practice genuine gastric brooding, where a parent stores their
Speaker 1: young not just in a sack access through the mouth,
Speaker 1: but literally in the stomach where the food usually goes.
Speaker 1: But there's a fact about a urine emesis that's even
Speaker 1: more astounding, and it comes not during reproduction, but when
Speaker 1: frogs and toads need to vomit up whatever they just ate.
Speaker 1: And urins have such a strong vomiting reflex that when
Speaker 1: their bodies detect the presence of potentially toxic contents in
Speaker 1: the stomach, they will vomit not only the contents of
Speaker 1: the digestive system, but the digestive system itself, with the
Speaker 1: stomach turning inside out, shooting out of the mouth, and
Speaker 1: hanging out from between the lips like a giant pink
Speaker 1: balloon made of ham. This adaptation is known as gastric aversion.
Speaker 1: Frogs and toads are not the only animals that do it.
Speaker 1: Sharks and rays are sometimes known to barf up their
Speaker 1: own guts when they need to. In fact, this gastric
Speaker 1: aversion adaptation among and urins features in a strange letter
Speaker 1: I found published in the journal Nature in the year
Speaker 1: nineteen six, but authors tomy O Nito and Richard wasser
Speaker 1: Sug called why are toads right handed? In this letter,
Speaker 1: the authors are responding to previous research published in the
Speaker 1: same journal reporting that most toads show a preference for
Speaker 1: using their right foreleg to wipe away material stuck to
Speaker 1: their head or their face. There was a question that
Speaker 1: lingered about this why the preference for right handed grooming behaviors.
Speaker 1: Nito and Wassersug suggested a possible answer rooted in gastric aversion.
Speaker 1: You see, sometimes it's not enough to turn your own
Speaker 1: stomach inside out and dangle it out between your jaws.
Speaker 1: You have to make sure that when you swallow your
Speaker 1: stomach once again, you don't accidentally drag the noxious material
Speaker 1: you were trying to get rid of back inside along
Speaker 1: with your guts. So to prevent this, frogs and toads
Speaker 1: have an instinctive wiping reflex. While the inverted stomach is
Speaker 1: hanging out through the mouth, they will vigorously wipe off
Speaker 1: the inside of their stomach with their forelegs. What Nito
Speaker 1: and wasser Sug pointed out was that the urine digestive
Speaker 1: system is not symmetric because the tissue connecting the digestive
Speaker 1: system to the inside of the abdomen is shorter on
Speaker 1: the right side than on the left. The stomach, when inverted,
Speaker 1: tends to hang out the right side of the mouth,
Speaker 1: sometimes completely out of reach of the left hand. So
Speaker 1: they argue there's a chance that when a toad grooms
Speaker 1: itself with its right hand, it's because that's the hand
Speaker 1: that it can count on to reach the guts. Tune
Speaker 1: into new editions of the Artifact every Wednesday, hosted by
Speaker 1: either Robert or myself. As always, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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