WEBVTT - From the Vault: Tomato, Tomato, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.760 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.280 name is Joe McCormick. Today's the Thursday, and normally on 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.280 a Thursday you'd be getting a brand new core episode 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:17.400 of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, but a couple of 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:19.520 us here on the team are out for a day 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.920 this week, so instead we are moving up the Vault 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.360 episode that was originally scheduled for this Saturday. We'll be 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:29.640 back with new episodes of Weird House Cinema on Friday 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.720 and Listener Mail on Monday, and then all new core 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.440 episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday of 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.640 next week. But for today, we hope you enjoy Part 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:42.159 two of our series on the tomato originally published on 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:50.040 August Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:59.000 My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.400 Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.080 and we're back with part two of our talk about tomatoes. 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.080 You know, there was a question last time that we 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.880 explored at some length, which is, uh, this question you've 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:13.959 had for a while, Robert, I think, based on reading 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.320 a placard at a botanical garden, which is did the 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:22.440 people of the past few hundred years regard tomatoes as poisonous. 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:26.200 Sometimes there's this generalization made that you know, it used 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:28.959 to be that everybody thought tomatoes were poison but now 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.280 we figured out that's not true. Now, of course tomatoes 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:37.360 are not poisonous, but it's also the historical characterization is 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.000 a little more complicated than that, right. Yeah, Again, it 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:44.440 kind of depends on what part of the world you're 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.080 looking at. What say, you're which European nation, and during 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:52.480 what period of the tomatoes um rise to power as 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:57.240 a global food source. But I came across a great 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.520 article that is by the same author as the author 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:02.680 of a book that we talked about in in the 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:06.160 last episode of Book about Tomatoes, Uh, Andrew F. Smith. 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.400 Smith is also the author of an article that was 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:12.800 published in nineteen in the journal Pharmacy and History called 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.679 Tomato Pills Will Cure All Your Ills. And this is 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.799 a fantastic article about, you know, tomato pills for your 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.760 jaundice and your diarrhea. It's a wild ride and I 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:25.920 can't wait to get into it. Well, let's definitely get 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.160 into it. But first, just your reminder, this is a 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.560 part two. We do encourage you to go back and 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.480 listen to part one before proceeding. By all means Part 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:38.639 one first. Okay, So, as we discussed previously, when the 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.280 tomato was first introduced to Europe from meso America. Of course, 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.600 in meso America, among the waddle speaking people, it was 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.799 cultivated as a food crop, and then it's spread from 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:51.239 there to Europe and then to the rest of the world. 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.800 But when this first happened, some European writers did claim 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:58.680 that the tomato was was not good food, it was 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.600 not fit to put in his body. Uh, and they 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.480 wrote as much in their their culinary and horticultural treatises. Though, 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:07.480 as we talked about last time, a lot a lot 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:10.000 of these writers will sort of note that, well, people 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.880 in Spain and Italy somehow eat these things, but uh, 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.280 but nevertheless they are not good to eat or their 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.919 poison or whatever. But this changed over time, and by 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.520 the seventeen hundreds, tomato use was definitely on the rise 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.720 throughout Europe, especially throughout southern Europe, though some of the 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.440 old ideas still lingered here and there. According to Smith, 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.680 though within the culture of the United States specifically, and 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:35.640 I guess this would have been you know, the British 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.040 colonies in the east of the United States, and then 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:42.160 after the Revolution in the early United States, the tomato 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:47.280 was still pretty widely regarded as in some way, you know, 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:49.800 not good to eat. Definitely through a lot of the 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:53.920 eighteenth century, though, that was changing, and then it underwent 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:57.840 a relatively rapid transition during a few decades in the 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.160 first half of the nineteenth century. Uh So, He says 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.280 that around eighteen twenty, it was still a pretty widespread 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:08.880 belief within the United States that tomatoes were somehow inedible 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.000 and maybe poisonous, is not good to eat. But um, 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:16.279 he says, quote, within three decades after eighteen twenty, farmers 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:19.760 cultivated tomatoes the length and breadth of the country in 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.560 almost every garden from Boston to New Orleans, and Americans 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.560 served them on every table from July to October. According 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:31.719 to a British observer, Americans served tomatoes every day, prepared 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.520 in every imaginable way. And we're the scenic quanon of 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:39.920 American existence. So that that's a pretty dramatic shift. Yeah, absolutely, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:41.599 to go from poison to just the thing that you 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.920 eat like crazy for its entire season, yeah exactly. So 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.880 what led to this change in attitudes over such a 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:52.040 relatively short time. Well Smith notes that there were many reasons, 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.359 but it seems one of the most important was quacks. 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:58.760 I love it, I love it, I love a good 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.599 quacks for goods to worry. Okay, So, as we alluded 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.400 to last time, many books and supposed botanical or horticultural 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.640 experts in Europe in the colonies since the sixteenth century 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.599 seemed to think there was something wrong with eating tomatoes. 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.920 You know, maybe they were poisonous, maybe inedible. Clearly not 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:19.640 everybody in Europe thought this way. Tomatoes were you know, 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.600 very popular in Italy and France and Spain and Portugal 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.200 and more and more. People of course were of course 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:30.320 cooking with tomatoes all the time. But in England, Philip Miller, 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:34.719 who was a superintendent of the Chelsea Physic Garden, wrote 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:40.240 in the seventeen fifties that small yellow love apples were 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.880 starting to be directed for medicinal use by one college 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.880 in their dispensatory, and Miller, even in the seventeen fifties 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:52.080 noted that well even some English people are eating tomatoes 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:55.400 in soup. Uh, though at the same time he says, quote, 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.400 there are persons who think them not wholesome, so this 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.920 ambigue it. He still exists somewhat, but by the seventeen 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:07.240 fifties it's clear that some doctors and medical students or 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.960 trying trying experiments with tomatoes as medicine, and some English 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:14.560 people just straight up put him in the stew uh 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:18.000 And apparently an early evangelist for tomatoes in the British 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:22.600 colonies in America was a doctor named John de Sequeira, 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.240 who was born in London but educated in Leyden, and 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:31.840 who Thomas Jefferson claimed had introduced tomatoes to Williamsburg, Virginia. 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.719 Jefferson also claimed that des Aquaira was fond of saying 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.280 that quote, a person who should eat a sufficient abundance 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:43.720 of these apples would never die. Now I don't know 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:45.880 if he meant that in, you know, with a touch 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.400 of irony, or if he was serious that though it 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.159 does make me think that, hey, what if the humble 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.080 tomato was actually the fruit of the tree of life, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.800 Because there's always been a debate about in the story 0:06:57.800 --> 0:06:59.799 of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis, 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.160 what the fruits of these trees are actually supposed to be. 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:05.760 The Book of Genesis does not say, in this story, 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:08.320 what the fruits of the Tree of Life and the 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.160 Tree of the knowledge of good and evil we're supposed 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.320 to be a lot of people have assumed them to 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.880 be apples, but there it's that's not explicitly stated. So 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.400 people have proposed all kinds of answers to this question. 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:24.760 Maybe they're apples, maybe figs, maybe pomegranate, I think unsurprisingly, 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.520 Terrence McKenna said, the story was supposed to include a 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.960 reference to a mushroom, but what if the forbidden fruit 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:34.640 was a tomato? Yeah? I mean, I don't know that 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:36.920 that actually checks out with what we know about the 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.760 origins of the tomato, but I like the idea. No, 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:42.600 it would certainly not check out, like the authors of 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:44.480 the Book of Genesis would not have known what a 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.840 tomato was, right because it was from South America. But 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.480 Smith points out that many of the early promoters of 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.960 tomatoes in the colonies were doctors, and this is not 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:59.600 all that surprising since tomatoes were becoming accepted during the 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.840 eighteen century as a medical plant. For example, James Mees, 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.680 who published one of the first known recipes for tomato 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.120 ketchup around the year eighteen twelve. He was a medical 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:14.160 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and he wrote about 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.120 how he was familiar with the culinary use of tomatoes 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.400 from French immigrants, who were probably creole refugees from Haiti. 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:26.600 But beginning in the eighteen twenties, American physicians started to 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.760 talk about tomatoes as a cure for what they called, 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:34.280 at the time billious diseases. These would be diseases that 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:38.400 were associated with disorders of the liver or bile, which 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.760 apparently sort of became a catch all category for diseases 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:47.920 involving jaundice, nausea, and vomiting along with fever. You know, 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.480 if there's something wrong with your guts, they thought you 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:54.240 had some kind of bile problem. Smith gives a number 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:58.320 of examples. One is a doctor Horatio Gates Spafford, who 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.000 wrote in the New York Farmer Quote that tomato sauce 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.800 removed headaches, a bad taste in the mouth, straightness of 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:09.720 the chest, painful heaviness in the liver, and improved the 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:13.200 action of the bowels. So hey, that's an all in one. Yeah. 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.280 But probably the single largest influence on the tomatoes image 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:20.880 as a promoter of good health was a man named 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.880 Dr John Cook Bennett Robert I have attached a sketch 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.920 of him, and I noticed he he really kind of 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.400 looks a little bit like Adam Scott, but in a 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:36.160 strange military uniform with epaulets and a sword. Yeah, I 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:38.240 can see the Adam Scott. I also see a little 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.480 bit of of of grandmof Tarke in here, so it's 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:45.840 kind of like a combination of the two for me. Absolutely. So. 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.280 Bennett lived from eighteen o four to eighteen sixty seven, 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.960 and he's actually probably best known for his short tenure 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:57.120 as an associate of Joseph Smith and an early leader 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.640 of the Latter Day Saints movement also known as the Mormons. 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:03.920 Before all that, Bennett was a doctor who Andrew Smith 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.800 claims founded one of the first medical diploma mills in 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.720 US history, So he's a diploma mill pioneer. Apparently, Bennett 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:15.360 would go around the Midwest selling medical degrees for ten 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.559 bucks apiece, and I'm sure that created some awesome doctors, 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.439 but it seems some people didn't really like that practice. 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:25.839 He fell under some criticism for for selling degrees like that, 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.520 so instead he accepted a position as a professor of 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:34.960 midwifery at Willoughby Medical College of Lake Erie University in Ohio, 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.760 where he jumped decisively onto the tomato train. This would 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.880 have been in the early to mid eighteen thirties, and 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:48.360 Smith writes as follows quote in his introductory lecture at Willoughby, 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:54.559 Bennett declared that tomatoes successfully treated diarrhea, violent bilious attacks, 0:10:54.920 --> 0:11:00.480 and dyspepsia or indigestion. He recommended that tomatoes replaced alamel 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.440 because they were less harmful, predicting that quote, a chemical 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:07.920 extract will probably soon be obtained from it, which will 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.920 altogether supersede the use of calamel in the cure of diseases. 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:16.000 Tomatoes were also good for citizens traveling to the west 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:19.760 or to the south, as tomatoes would quote save them 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:24.200 from the danger attendant upon those violent bilious attacks to 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:29.240 which almost all unacclimated persons are liable. So basically saying 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.440 like travel diarrhea, right, I think so, I'm not quite 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:34.960 sure what so is. Was there an idea at the 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:36.880 time that if you go to the south or the west, 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.920 you're gonna have bilious attacks? I've never heard of that before, 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.000 but oh yeah, travel diarrhea would make sense as an interpretation. 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:46.000 But hey, just eat your tomatoes, you know, drink some 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.120 tomato sauce on the train, and you'll be right as 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:52.880 right now. Yeah Bash. To continue with with Smith's paragraph here, 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:57.000 quote Bennett urged all citizens to eat tomatoes raw, cooked, 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.320 or in catchup as they were quote the most healthy 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:05.160 article of all the material alimentary Benet included recipes for 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:09.640 tomato sauce, fried tomatoes, tomato pickles, tomato ketchup, and eating 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.199 raw tomatoes. I don't know what the recipe for eating 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:16.360 raw tomatoes is, but uh, to go back to earlier. 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:20.000 So so Bennett is setting tomatoes up as a foil 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:24.600 to this substance called calamel, and this reference to calamel here. 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:29.280 Calumel was a mineral form of mercury chloride that was 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.760 widely used as medicine in the nineteenth century, even though 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.559 nobody was quite sure how it was supposed to work. 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:39.200 Apparently primarily what it did was it was what they 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:43.640 called a purgative, basically a laxative um. But it would 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.560 also cause mercury poisoning, and it tended to kill the 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.199 tissue of the mouth and gums. So they're all these 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:53.480 stories of people taking calamel and like their teeth becoming 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.920 loose and their mouths kind of rotting, And even into 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:01.880 the twentieth century, alarmingly, calamel powder was used as a 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.280 as a powder to be applied to children's gums as 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.480 they were teething and led to these horrible conditions as 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:13.000 a result. Benjamin Rush, you know, the physician and one 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.200 of the so called founding fathers, he was a big 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.160 fan of calumel and uh promoted it. I think he 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.199 even tried to give some to Alexander Hamilton's at some point. 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:27.319 Calumel is just terrible medicine, extremely worth replacing with something else. 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.480 For example, calumel was often used to treat dysentery, but 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:36.160 as a diuretic itself, it could speed up the dehydration process. 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.160 So as you already have dysentery, you're also taking a 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:44.280 laxative and this this actually did kill some people. So yeah, 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:46.960 so this is definitely an example of a so called 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.160 medicine that is not only it's not just doing nothing, 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.000 it is it is actively heaping more harm on top 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.920 of whatever you're trying to treat. Yeah, I mean, I 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:01.000 guess I can't verify that it was never doing anything useful, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.720 but I think it's absolutely clear that if it was 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.360 doing anything beneficial at all, the side effects were far 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:11.400 worse than whatever it was trying to treat. Yeah, and 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:14.120 like other, you know, mercury based things, I think it 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.120 was just generally used as a cure all. It was 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.240 a panacea of the time. And anything that is supposed 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:23.600 to cure everything probably cures nothing. So anyway, Bennett is 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.400 offering up tomatoes as an alternative to calamel. He's saying, hey, 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.480 tomatoes can do all the stuff that calamel does, accept 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.520 it without all the side effects. And so Bennett was 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.520 on the tomato train. He was soon forced out of 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:39.400 his professorship, but he did not give up on his 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:43.360 tomato crusade, and in eighteen thirty five he repeated the 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:47.720 claims of his tomato panasy a lecture in dozens of outlets. 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:53.680 He wrote letters forwarding his address to farming and horticultural magazines, 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:57.760 to household magazines, um and he also wrote to other 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:02.280 influential Americans to convinced them of his claims, including somebody 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:06.440 named Constantine Rafinesque who was a medical botanist and who 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.600 promoted a lot of diet based cures. So he got 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:13.160 some followers other medical authorities, or at least people who 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.480 were somewhat perceived as such, jumped on the tomato train 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:19.040 with him. Uh So, I just wanted to list a 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.320 couple more of Bennett's other interesting tomato claims, as as 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.160 relayed by Andrew F. Smith. First of all, he said 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:27.960 that he had studied all of the ancient texts and 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:31.960 he his studies proved conclusively that there was nowhere on 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:36.720 Earth where the tomato was not indigenous. This was not true. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.560 we we we I think we we properly debunked that 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:43.880 notion in the first episode. Uh. He also attacked the 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:48.360 process of staking tomatoes. So, Robert, you've got tomatoes growing 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:50.120 in your yard right now, right, what what do you 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.280 do to to get the vines standing upright? Oh, you 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.320 have to use like a metal cage and um. And 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.400 then as that they grow more and more gigantic, you 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.440 end up or these we have to end up reinforcing 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.200 that and and they see and if if you're not 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:06.480 totally on top of it, you'll still end up with 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.720 the vines falling onto the ground and tomatoes just sitting 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.640 there on the ground. Right. So, most people who grow 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:16.440 tomatoes today, they staked them in some way. You put 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:18.720 like a structure up and you allow the vine to 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.080 hang on that off in a metal cage or a 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.680 stick of some kind. But Bennett opposed steaking because he 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:28.120 claimed it was against God and against nature, and that 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:31.960 God had intended for tomato vines to lie on the ground. 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.480 If God had meant for them to be steaked, he 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:36.840 would have had them stand up on their own. Though 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:40.680 I think Bennett might be confused about the fact that 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.840 the tomato, of course, being a cultivated fruit that was 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:46.680 sort of created by humans in a way, The original 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.640 natural form of the tomato is a tiny berry, you know, 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:53.560 it's not this big, heavy, juicy thing that we eat today. Yeah. Yeah, 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:58.200 the fruit of the modern tomato, it's especially it's larger forms. 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.240 I mean, it's it's gigantic, it's and it's breaking apart 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.359 with its own juices, you know, And it's ultimately quite 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:08.440 impressive the amount of biomass that these things produce enough 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:10.720 to wear. You know, when you first stake up that 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.800 tomato plant or or put a cage around it, you're like, 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.920 oh man, this feels like overkill. But then a month 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:20.920 two months later and uh and whatever structure you raised 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:23.879 might be struggling to keep all of that stuff up 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.120 in the air. Yeah, it turns into a precarious tower 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.760 of juice. Yes. Should we take a quick break before 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.880 we come back to discuss Spinnett's encounter with the LDS Church. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:43.160 Let's do it, alright, we're back. We're talking about tomatoes 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:47.639 as a miracle cure that for just about anything that 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:51.040 at the very least was a preferable cure, all to 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:57.640 a calamel, which was a dangerous mercury based cure. All right. Uh, 0:17:57.680 --> 0:17:59.880 And this claim was being made in the eight third 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.840 is by this doctor named John Cook Bennett. Now we 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.080 talked about how he started making all these claims about 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:11.960 tomatoes and their supposed health benefits and curative properties. Apparently 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.080 in eighteen forty, after he'd been making these tomato claims 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:18.960 for a while, he was working in Illinois and Bennett 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.040 got involved with the Latter Day Saints movement. He became 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.760 friends with its leader Joseph Smith, and his claims about 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:30.160 the health benefits of tomatoes actually proved influential within the church. 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:35.080 But tragedy struck and in eighteen forty two Bennett got 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:39.600 excommunicated from the Latter Day Saints movement. He was excommunicated 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.400 by Joseph Smith himself after some kind of ambiguous scandal 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:49.679 involving a bunch of alleged sexual impropriety, including adultery and 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.639 maybe some kind of unsanctioned polygamy, with what Smith viewed 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:59.680 as as dubious spiritual or revelatory justifications. After Bennett was 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.480 banned from the church, he sort of went ballistic on 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.000 Joseph Smith and then published a bunch of allegations against 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.000 him in return. I think he actually accused Smith of 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.000 murder and fraud and a bunch of other things, and 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.040 then the two just win at each other in a 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:18.560 full scale pr war, Joseph Smith versus John Cook Bennett. 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:22.720 But the interesting thing was, apparently this pr war did 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:28.440 not undermine, uh, the the Latter Day Saints movements fondness 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.360 for tomatoes and acceptance of their ideas of the health 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.840 benefits that had come from Bennett. So Bennett's claims proved 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.359 very popular, and they caught on and were repeated in 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:42.159 lots of cookbooks, household manuals, farming and gardening journals, and 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:46.159 even in Latter Day Saints literature. Uh and so so 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.440 there was this whole tomato for health craze that caught 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:52.480 on big in the eighteen thirties and continued into the 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:56.160 eighteen forties. And uh Andrew F. Smith points out that 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.920 whatever his possibly dubious medical or moral credential, Bennett was 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.480 a genuinely, very talented promoter. It seems like he probably 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.040 could have been great in the twentieth century in an 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:12.639 advertising and marketing context, and that this contributed significantly to 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:17.040 the popularization and normalization of tomatoes in the United States. 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.000 Uh So, Bennett eventually predicted that you know you're you're 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.479 going to be able in the future to get the 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.800 health benefits of tomatoes without even having to eat a tomato. 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:29.840 You can just take a miracle pill that will be 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:33.800 made from a from a tomato extract. And this prediction 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.879 actually came true. In eighteen thirty five, a doctor A. J. 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:43.720 Holcomb of Glassboro, Alabama, started producing pills made out of 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:47.240 a tomato extract, and other pills also came on the market. 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.800 Smith quotes advertising for one brand of tomato pills from 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:53.960 a doctor named Dr. Miles, and it goes like this, 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:58.760 the tomato used as an article of refection is highly 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:06.600 medical highly medical and doubtless prevents many bilious attacks. We 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.840 inferred from this fact the possibility of preparing from it 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:14.160 a medicine of great virtue. Dr Miles and his associates 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:18.720 have spent years and fortunes we understand and experimenting, and 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.440 finally have produced the compound extract. It has been used 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:24.719 by many in the city and out of it, and 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:29.600 is as near we can learn, generally approved. But then 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.679 I thought this was interesting. Apparently so Smith's sites. Some 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:35.399 of the other packaging copy, and some of this copy 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:41.320 attacks calamel directly. So it says, for example, humane physicians 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:46.199 deplore the sad evils resulting from the mercurial practice, and 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.760 remember this because calamel is mercury chloride, and will gladly 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.520 hail the introduction of an article that can safely be 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.200 substituted for calamel. And it goes on about how people 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.600 just know in their hearts that mercury is ad, even 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.120 if they can't explain why um, and that you may 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:07.840 have to choose between two evils of having of taking 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:11.920 mercury or having a torpid liver. But now they're saying, hey, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:13.919 you don't have to have a torpid liver, and you 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.840 don't have to take mercury. You can fight your torpid 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:20.800 liver with tomato pills. Well, that would certainly be ideal 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.800 if you wanted to consume the medicinal essence of tomatoes 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.160 out of outside of tomato season. Oh yeah, I hadn't 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:30.240 thought about that. Yeah, you wouldn't. You wouldn't have to 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:32.479 go through eating a mealy one in the winter if 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:35.840 you wanted to fight your torpid liver. Um. But but 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.080 I will say that so while I think the tomato 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:43.720 pill probably had very little actual medical merit, especially for 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:47.320 the billious diseases that they were said to counteract, it 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:50.800 seems to me that simply by being offered as an 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:55.800 alternative to calamel, tomato pills or or just tomatoes might 0:22:55.800 --> 0:23:00.639 have done significant medical good just because calamel was so bad. 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.560 Like so, if you're taking something that does nothing instead 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:08.560 of taking calamel and getting mercury poisoning and gangrenous flesh 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:11.360 and rotting gums and all that, that that actually does 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:14.920 seem like an upgrade, even though this is probably not 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.439 useful as medicine. Plus, there's a hint of tomato to it, 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:21.040 so it's got that going for it. Oh yeah. I 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:22.760 mean I wonder if you you know, if you're actually 0:23:22.800 --> 0:23:26.479 eating any tomato flesh, I wonder if if you can 0:23:26.560 --> 0:23:28.760 get some placebo effect just from the fact that it 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.719 tastes nice. Maybe not, I don't know, that might be reaching, 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:35.480 but anyways, it's still the placebo effect is powerful. So 0:23:35.840 --> 0:23:37.560 I mean, that's that's always going to be a part 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:40.880 of any of these considerations. Oh absolutely, I mean that 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:43.520 that might be something that was at work in calamel 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:47.200 and in tomato and tomato pills, except uh, you know, 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:51.480 the tomatoes aren't full of mercury um. So it seems 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:55.760 that some of the attacks against tomato pills did not 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:59.000 make the accurate charge that or at least I would 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:01.080 guess what is accurate it, which is that they probably 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:04.920 just didn't do much, but instead accused them of, say, 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:09.600 being inferior to calamel and effectiveness. And there were some 0:24:09.680 --> 0:24:14.119 that accused tomatoes and tomato pills of bringing on implausible 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:17.440