Speaker 1: Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
Speaker 1: what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
Speaker 1: people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the
Speaker 1: sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right, it's t r
Speaker 1: y pod still in nascent industry. A lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know what podcasts are and helps everybody out if
Speaker 1: you would go out and just say, hey, family member,
Speaker 1: who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you
Speaker 1: should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what
Speaker 1: they are, here's a cool show you should try, and
Speaker 1: here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be our show, just any podcast you like in
Speaker 1: general that you think someone else would like to share it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. She goes she just ran
Speaker 1: away after nine years. I knew that would happen eventually. Yep.
Speaker 1: She had a little bendel sack over her shoulder and
Speaker 1: she's barefoot, which is dangerous. Jerry, that was a nice
Speaker 1: little set up. Yeah, you might get uh, what do
Speaker 1: you call it? The do itch? Yeah? Or well that's
Speaker 1: the best one, the ground itch do, which is way
Speaker 1: better than ground get a little discomfort in the webbing
Speaker 1: between your toes, a little scratchy. Maybe a few days
Speaker 1: later you're like, this is this athlete's foot. No, that
Speaker 1: doesn't make you cough. Yeah, Plus you're no athlete. Don't
Speaker 1: flatter yourself, that's what they would say. And then you
Speaker 1: start coughing a little bit, and a few weeks after that,
Speaker 1: you're just a big dope that can't lift an arm
Speaker 1: to go stand up and do anything. You have hookworm? Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: well there you have it. Were you told as a child,
Speaker 1: like you'll get worms? And you're gonna ask me that
Speaker 1: because I grew up in the South, Well, no, I
Speaker 1: mean I was told that too. I don't remember hearing
Speaker 1: this stuff. I remember being scared about uh, scoliosis, and
Speaker 1: I remember being scared about nuclear annihilation and so as
Speaker 1: I um, and that's about it. Razors and apples at Halloween, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is, as we've covered, not true. Any instance that
Speaker 1: happened to that happened because of the urban legend. Not Uh. No,
Speaker 1: I've never really heard of this, and what made you
Speaker 1: think of this? By the way, I don't know you
Speaker 1: like the parasites. I love parasites. They're interesting, especially this
Speaker 1: particular parasite, because it turns out the hookworm might be
Speaker 1: the most interesting of all of the parasitic war here
Speaker 1: on planet Earth if you ask me, Well, agreed, because,
Speaker 1: as you will see, the social context and the Southern
Speaker 1: United States of what the hookworm meant over centuries never
Speaker 1: knew about it. And it's pretty astounding. And as someone
Speaker 1: who has long had to defend the South as not
Speaker 1: just a backward place with a bunch of dumb yokels,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna from now on, I'm just gonna say, hookworm.
Speaker 1: Look it up. Listen to our episode, and people right
Speaker 1: now are going, what in the world, So let's well,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Let's remove their the fog of
Speaker 1: curiosity and maybe irritation a little bit and start talking
Speaker 1: about hookworms. Right, so we said you it starts with
Speaker 1: your foot. Yeah, these are round worms. Yes, they're a
Speaker 1: type of round worm, a nematode, right, yeah, Nematode phyl
Speaker 1: um um. They're pretty young, about four million years old,
Speaker 1: and uh, they have been described in this article you
Speaker 1: sent most commonly as a as far as the way
Speaker 1: they look as a tube within a tube like a
Speaker 1: pair of socks. And then at one end, right at
Speaker 1: one end, they have cutting plates also called fangs or teeth. Mouthparts, yeah, mouthparts,
Speaker 1: and as Tracy Wilson would put it, and um, they
Speaker 1: use those things for sucking blood. So that they want
Speaker 1: is your blood because they get nutrients from your blood
Speaker 1: and that makes them parasites. Yeah, and they as as
Speaker 1: we sourced a few really great articles on this, but um,
Speaker 1: as one of them points out to that a good
Speaker 1: parasite or a good hookworm doesn't want to kill you because,
Speaker 1: as it says in this article, that means the ride
Speaker 1: is over right exactly. They want to keep you alive
Speaker 1: and lazy so they can just keep reproducing and keep
Speaker 1: sucking on your blood forever and ever and ever. And
Speaker 1: in a very large part, hookworms have covald with humans,
Speaker 1: and they've done so in a way that they get
Speaker 1: the maximum benefit out of infecting a human um without
Speaker 1: the pitfall of killing the human and ending the ride
Speaker 1: for themselves. Right. So um, and they've had four hundred
Speaker 1: million years to do it, and there's two kinds of hookworms. Mainly,
Speaker 1: there's tons of hookworms, Like from what I understand, just
Speaker 1: about every animal, every mammal has its own type of hookworm,
Speaker 1: but they don't infect cross animal typically, And there's two
Speaker 1: types of hookworms that infects humans specifically. There's the new
Speaker 1: world hookworm naricatur Americana is very open minded, and then
Speaker 1: there's the old word world hookworm uh and Solostoma duoden
Speaker 1: all a right, and so both of them thrive in warmer,
Speaker 1: tropical ish climates. And the an AMERICANUS in particular loves
Speaker 1: sandy loami soil, and it just so happens that in
Speaker 1: the American South has just the kind of climate to
Speaker 1: host an American it's and it's around. Yeah, so here's
Speaker 1: what happens. We were kind of kidding around about Jerry
Speaker 1: walking around barefoot, but Jerry's old like me, and she
Speaker 1: grew up in the South. We were all we all
Speaker 1: come from sharecroppers and UH had outhouses. So here's what
Speaker 1: would happen um all the way up until like which
Speaker 1: is kind of distressing. Yeah, I thought so too. You
Speaker 1: could walk around barefoot as uh Southern children were wanted
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, Apparently the chances of your of being
Speaker 1: a kid with shoes, especially in the rural south, was
Speaker 1: like next to nothing up until that, maybe the fifties
Speaker 1: or sixties. Really yeah, uh so they would, like we
Speaker 1: talked about the do uh the do it. You would
Speaker 1: walk around barefoot. These little guys would get between your toes, uh,
Speaker 1: root into your body through the feet, make their way
Speaker 1: to the blood vessels and start the voyage to the lungs.
Speaker 1: This is it's a fantastic voyage. Well for them, it is.
Speaker 1: Um it's like inner space, yeah, um, up through the lungs,
Speaker 1: finally through the circulatory system to the lungs where eventually,
Speaker 1: like you said, you then you cough it up with
Speaker 1: a dry cough, and then you swallow it into your
Speaker 1: gut and the intestine and that's when it's like, this
Speaker 1: is where I wanted to be all along. And the
Speaker 1: nuts they go up through the foot circulatory system to
Speaker 1: the lungs, make you cough, then you swallow them, and
Speaker 1: then they finally get to the place where they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be, the small intestine, and they latch on and
Speaker 1: they start second blood. Yeah. And hookworms are interesting tape
Speaker 1: worms or hermaphroditic. But hookworms like a lot of around worms. Uh,
Speaker 1: they need to do it. Yeah, it's about to say
Speaker 1: they like to who knows, maybe a little bit both,
Speaker 1: depending on the mood. They have to in order to reproduce.
Speaker 1: So what you do is they get into that intestine,
Speaker 1: they find a lover, they take a lover. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: Robert lamb in here, they take a lover, and then
Speaker 1: they attach theirselves to the intestinal wall and say, I'm
Speaker 1: here forever, I'm gonna I mean up to I've seen
Speaker 1: up to thirty thousand eggs a day. Right, the female
Speaker 1: will will lay thirty thousand fertilized eggs a day. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's on the highest end. But you know, let's
Speaker 1: say the low end is ten thousand, and say the
Speaker 1: low end is a thousand. It's still a lot of eggs.
Speaker 1: And that's just one female worm. Right. You can have
Speaker 1: dozens hundreds of these things. They found that, Um, the
Speaker 1: human can host up to about five hundred worms and survive.
Speaker 1: You're not living a very fulfilling life, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: but um, you you could have a number of these
Speaker 1: worms all pumping out eggs, and the worm typically lives
Speaker 1: between one and five years in the comforts of your gut,
Speaker 1: and then um, you can also be reinfected. And here's
Speaker 1: how right, So, when the females are spreading out a
Speaker 1: thousand to thirty thousand eggs take your pick on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, you're pooping those eggs out. And if you're
Speaker 1: pooping and say like uh, like by the bushes or
Speaker 1: in some sort of like outhouse, Yeah, it's eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: five in West Virginia. You don't have indoor plumbing, right,
Speaker 1: and let's say your outhouse isn't all that great, or
Speaker 1: you're just again pooping in the bushes. You are probably
Speaker 1: not wearing shoes. Those two things usually go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: And so you're stepping in your old fecal material that's
Speaker 1: still had eggs in it before those eggs have since
Speaker 1: hatched into larva. Larva gone through the first two larval stages,
Speaker 1: entered the third infective larval stage, and now it's crawling
Speaker 1: up into your foot again and you're what's called worm
Speaker 1: burden is expanded even further from one or two to
Speaker 1: ten to twenty two up to hundreds. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: if you just accidentally step in old pooh, whether it's
Speaker 1: like spread around by animals walking around or by the rain. Um,
Speaker 1: the chances of are exponentially more if you have a
Speaker 1: good old fashioned poop slanging fight, sure do you You
Speaker 1: know you don't want to get hit in the mouth
Speaker 1: with that. God. Um. The other problem that um, well,
Speaker 1: it was part of the problem was that, uh, that
Speaker 1: was the second version of that even was that people
Speaker 1: were using poop as fertilizer. Now it's one thing again
Speaker 1: you can't really catch I'm sure you can catch some worms.
Speaker 1: I know trick nosis is a problem for humans and
Speaker 1: that's a pork worm. Um. But you you using say,
Speaker 1: horse manure is real satively safe compared to using human
Speaker 1: manure as fertilizer in your field. That's a relatively recent discovery.
Speaker 1: People were using human manure as fertilizer for very a
Speaker 1: very very long time. And it was called night soil
Speaker 1: because at night the guys would come out and clean
Speaker 1: your your privy out and walk them muck your poop,
Speaker 1: your FeCO material down the street and collect more and
Speaker 1: collect more, and then they would turn it into fertilizer.
Speaker 1: Would say release the night soil before they dumped it
Speaker 1: exactly and it would be fertilizer, and that'd be great
Speaker 1: to make a crops grow, but it also just contaminate
Speaker 1: your entire field with hookworms. And then little kids would
Speaker 1: go out and work the field shoeless and they would
Speaker 1: become infected from that too. So there were all these
Speaker 1: really great opportunities for people to become infected by hookworms.
Speaker 1: But there the hookworm habitat followed a certain a certain
Speaker 1: line from about West Virginia down to I think East Texas. Uh.
Speaker 1: And beneath that line that was the hookworm belt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they called it that, and above it they used human
Speaker 1: manure for fertilizer too, but they didn't have hookworm. It
Speaker 1: was in the South that the hookworm was a problem,
Speaker 1: and it was a big problem, it turned out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just occurred to me. We walked right past maybe
Speaker 1: the best band name of all time in here, what
Speaker 1: worm burden? Oh yeah, Wormburdon is pretty good. Um. All right,
Speaker 1: well that's the the setup, uh, before we hit you
Speaker 1: with a social context. So let's take a little break
Speaker 1: here and we'll talk a little bit more about my
Speaker 1: old kin folk right after this. All right, So before
Speaker 1: we broke, we talked about what the hookworm is and
Speaker 1: all the different, uh myriad ways which it could spread,
Speaker 1: from accidentally walking in poop to poop slanging fights. Night
Speaker 1: Soil Nights released the night soil rolling in it to
Speaker 1: ultimate radically increase your worm burden. Um. So you found
Speaker 1: this great article called how a Worm Gave the South
Speaker 1: a Bad Name by a woman named Rachel Newer. Um.
Speaker 1: It's on Nova. Yeah, it was really good. And she
Speaker 1: is from the South and kind of wrote it from
Speaker 1: that point of view. Um, and I get the feeling, like,
Speaker 1: like me, she kind of his long head to defend
Speaker 1: the American South as hey, we're not a bunch of dumb,
Speaker 1: lazy yokels. Because that was you know, for a long time. Um,
Speaker 1: and still continuing today to a certain degree. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: notion kind of this that if you're from the South,
Speaker 1: you're kind of slow, you may be a little dim witted,
Speaker 1: you may be lazy. And this was you know, for
Speaker 1: white folks, Black folks, Native Americans, just something about the
Speaker 1: South made you lazy and dumb, especially among the lower
Speaker 1: socioeconomic classes. And this wasn't just like off the cuff
Speaker 1: um stereotyping. It was rooted in fact, in reality, there
Speaker 1: was something different about people of a of the lower
Speaker 1: socioeconomic classes in the South. Specifically, if you put them
Speaker 1: side by side among the same socioeconomic classes of the North,
Speaker 1: the ones in the North would be like, let's shovel
Speaker 1: some cold baby, and the ones in the South would
Speaker 1: be like, I'm just gonna lay here down next to
Speaker 1: my wheelbarrow because I can't I can't get up. And
Speaker 1: so Southerners were came to be seen as lazy, shiftless,
Speaker 1: couldn't be trusted to do an honest day's work, and
Speaker 1: they just thought it was part of the Southern character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this wasn't just um a perception like they literally
Speaker 1: lagged behind the North in terms of productivity, um economic development. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we'll you know, we'll talk about some of these
Speaker 1: statistics as we go. Well. Plus the Civil War didn't
Speaker 1: help anything either. Well, now, that was obviously a big setback,
Speaker 1: right So, and it would have been for any region
Speaker 1: right at level of devastation and um um death. But
Speaker 1: coupled with their already predisposition to this, that what what
Speaker 1: came to be called the lazy germ uh it was,
Speaker 1: it just set it back even further. Yeah, and at
Speaker 1: one point in the American South up to fort Amazingly,
Speaker 1: the population, like you said, from southeastern Texas to West
Speaker 1: Virginia and all the way down, um was infected with hookworm. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people. I mean, it's obviously not
Speaker 1: a majority, almost a majority. That would have would have
Speaker 1: been a tomb Southerner. I mean, that's a lot of folks.
Speaker 1: It is a lot of folks. And that was the
Speaker 1: culprit behind this lazy shiftlessness among the poverty stricken Southern
Speaker 1: poor and the rural. The poverty stricken, rural Southern poor
Speaker 1: was apparently the majority of the South from the end
Speaker 1: of the Civil War up until the I believe the
Speaker 1: mid nineties or mid twentieth century. Um you were if
Speaker 1: you were a Southerner, it was likely that you were
Speaker 1: poor and did not live in the city until about
Speaker 1: the forties. And there's a pretty clear demarcation line if
Speaker 1: you did if you were wealthy in the South, or
Speaker 1: you were lived in the city in the South in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth and early twentieth century, you wore shoes, you
Speaker 1: had bed pans um, and you could probably avoid this.
Speaker 1: But if you didn't like those are It says in
Speaker 1: this article that it was almost impossible to avoid if
Speaker 1: you were poor and lived in the South, because you
Speaker 1: also didn't have very good sanitation. No, you were just
Speaker 1: it was just perfectly set up for you to keep
Speaker 1: getting reinfected. Um. You know, every couple of years you
Speaker 1: shed a dead hookworm, but in that time you probably
Speaker 1: would have taken on several more. All right, so what
Speaker 1: does this mean If you get hookworm, Like we said,
Speaker 1: it's it's likely not going to directly kill you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you might die from a common cold. Um, you might
Speaker 1: die from malaria or typhoid fever, or you know, something
Speaker 1: else may ultimately take you out because your body is
Speaker 1: so weakened. But what it does in large part is
Speaker 1: it causes an iron deficiency. Uh. If you're a pregnant
Speaker 1: woman or a kid, iron deficiency is really bad. Um.
Speaker 1: If you're a child, you need that iron for your
Speaker 1: brain development. So you know, not only would you get
Speaker 1: like physical sin terms like stomach bloat. Uh what what
Speaker 1: was the uh the I thing like this the dull,
Speaker 1: fishy stair fishy i'd stare. Yeah, just sort of like
Speaker 1: they're basically described, these kids just sort of vacant, just
Speaker 1: staring off into space. Um, so you know, some of
Speaker 1: those are physical symptoms, but others were literally like a
Speaker 1: lower i Q. Right, And so they believed that an
Speaker 1: AMERICANUS came over as a result of the Atlantic slave trade,
Speaker 1: that it was imported from Africa. So for centuries generations
Speaker 1: of kids, um we're being born in the South who
Speaker 1: had there, Um, they were physically and developmentally stunted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by hookworm infections. Yeah, it's sometimes girls wouldn't begin menstruation,
Speaker 1: boys a lot of times would not even hit their
Speaker 1: growth spurts. And not only where they had lower i
Speaker 1: q s and learning uh you know, development disability ease,
Speaker 1: but they were smaller and weaker. Yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: combine this loss of blood. So so apparently about a
Speaker 1: hundred worms in a in a normal adult will drink
Speaker 1: about a teaspoon a day, which doesn't sound like that much,
Speaker 1: but if you couple it that level of iron deficiency
Speaker 1: with uh pre existing malnourishment due to poverty or the
Speaker 1: lack of availability of like good food, Uh, then it
Speaker 1: really becomes a huge problem. And it goes from like
Speaker 1: this is a problem to this is this is a
Speaker 1: catastrophic problem that can keep an entire region of a
Speaker 1: country down projectivity productively. Yeah, and it uh like a
Speaker 1: lot of disease we've talked about, whether it's like famine
Speaker 1: or lack of clean water. It's it's cyclical in nature.
Speaker 1: So it would occur where there was poverty, and then
Speaker 1: it would keep people from working to work their way
Speaker 1: out of poverty, and it just kind of compounded on
Speaker 1: each other. Right, and then think about slavery as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So not only have you been brought over to the
Speaker 1: US as a slave, you're being forced to work against
Speaker 1: your will in these horrific conditions. You're also being forced
Speaker 1: to work and live in the same conditions that promotes hookworm.
Speaker 1: So you're feeling lazy and shiftless. Ts for you you're
Speaker 1: a slave. Add that to your toil and misery, you know,
Speaker 1: like it just it just keeps getting worse. All right.
Speaker 1: So I think we've made it clear, big problem in
Speaker 1: the South, But again, no one had any idea why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just you know, the lazy South, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, people have said that it literally set the
Speaker 1: South back like decades and decades from the rest of
Speaker 1: the country. No one knows what's going on. Until nineteen
Speaker 1: o two, this dude came along and they should be
Speaker 1: kind of a weird movie to market, but this would
Speaker 1: be a good movie, I think. Oh, I think that's
Speaker 1: the story of Charles Styles and Hookworm. It's a big
Speaker 1: roller coaster ride, all right. So, uh, nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: this guy named Charles Styles comes along. He's a zoologist
Speaker 1: from from New York City, educated in Europe, no less.
Speaker 1: So he played real well in the South, yeah, which,
Speaker 1: as you'll see, it was a bit of part of
Speaker 1: the problem. Uh. And the Department of Agriculture said, hey,
Speaker 1: we need you to help these farmers down there keep
Speaker 1: their animals healthy. So go down there and check things out.
Speaker 1: And he was like he started to notice. He's like,
Speaker 1: something's going on. These people are physically stunted. They're a
Speaker 1: little off. Yeah, they're mentally stunted. And I don't think
Speaker 1: they're just dumb and lazy. So he started apparently he
Speaker 1: sounds like one of these guys that was just had
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of it something, you know,
Speaker 1: Like he wouldn't just say, you know, oh, well everyone's
Speaker 1: right about how it is down here. So he really
Speaker 1: stuck to his instinct and realized that it was hookworm.
Speaker 1: He literally was the guy who discovered that that was
Speaker 1: the problem exactly. I think he um he did that
Speaker 1: by analyzing stool samples. So he basically just hung around
Speaker 1: men's rooms. He said, like, you're going to use that,
Speaker 1: and they'd say, no, have at it. He just exactly,
Speaker 1: and the people would just walk away. All right. It
Speaker 1: went down. I don't know how it went down. I looked, Actually,
Speaker 1: this guy is not the most celebrated person to ever
Speaker 1: save an entire region from an infection. Um So, there's
Speaker 1: not I didn't find a lot of background information on
Speaker 1: him in particular. Um So, I have no idea how
Speaker 1: it happened. I saw somewhere that said that he became
Speaker 1: accidentally infected, and that's how he understood. Didn't see it
Speaker 1: backed up anywhere else. I have no idea how this
Speaker 1: man came to say, because again, you gotta you have
Speaker 1: to be trading in fecal material here. So like this
Speaker 1: guy had his hands on human poop at some point
Speaker 1: or thought to look there. I'm not sure. Maybe he
Speaker 1: was in a good old fashioned poops. It makes the
Speaker 1: most sense that he he was. He's like, something's going
Speaker 1: on to god, oh it's a worm. Uh. The point is,
Speaker 1: though he was not well received. The local doctors didn't
Speaker 1: want to hear it. They wouldn't listen. They dismissed him
Speaker 1: as you know, this this carpet bag and yankee from Europe,
Speaker 1: who you know, educated in Europe, who's down here telling us,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's an animal expert, and he's telling
Speaker 1: us about our poop, making us lazy europe animal expert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they really didn't listen to him much. So he
Speaker 1: was like, fine, I'll just go to John de rock
Speaker 1: Feller and tell him. I'm gonna tell on you. That's
Speaker 1: basically what happened. Yeah, Rockefeller was this is at the
Speaker 1: time when income inequality was about at the levels it
Speaker 1: was now, and the wealthy industrialists of the age were
Speaker 1: really really worried that they were going to have the
Speaker 1: social order overthrown by angry people, so they invented philanthropy. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is back when they worried about that kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: And Rockefeller said, well, we can't just we can't do
Speaker 1: anything to actually support the problems that capitalism creates, because
Speaker 1: then we'll just be drawing attention to the fact that
Speaker 1: there are major problems with capitalist system. What else can
Speaker 1: I support, and he heard about Styles, and Styles took
Speaker 1: a meeting with Rockefeller and some of his his uh
Speaker 1: higher up friends, and apparently at that meeting they closed
Speaker 1: the deal, like we're funding this thing with the million
Speaker 1: bucks right out of the gate, which is about twenty
Speaker 1: six million today. And they set up the Rockefeller Sanitary
Speaker 1: Commission for the Eradication of hookworm disease. That's right. But um,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they were trying to help Southerners, um,
Speaker 1: not only with a medical issue, but to advance themselves
Speaker 1: as a people. Um. Again, the Southerners A they didn't
Speaker 1: want a light being shown on this problem because it's gross,
Speaker 1: uh and it has a stigma. But they didn't want
Speaker 1: um again. They didn't want these Yankees coming down there
Speaker 1: and saying they can fix you, right, you know. And
Speaker 1: Rockefeller said t s he said, I've got an oyster
Speaker 1: dish named after me, maybe the best oyster dish besides raw.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that. Uh. Should we take a break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, We're gonna come back and talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the road to eradication right after this. What
Speaker 1: I mean, your body don't do what I mean, your
Speaker 1: body don't do you and We're back and Chuck, we
Speaker 1: had a not just a jingle that was a real
Speaker 1: blues song. Yeah, people are like, man, somebody really made
Speaker 1: an authentic old blue sounding jingle just for this episode. No,
Speaker 1: that was the legendary Blind Blake with his song Hookworm Blues,
Speaker 1: which was a real song about the hookworm blues. Right.
Speaker 1: And I think blind Blake came up with that song
Speaker 1: in ninety six, I believe. And the fact that he
Speaker 1: is singing about hookworms um starting in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: represents It just goes to show like how much progress
Speaker 1: was made between the time the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission was
Speaker 1: set up and Blind Blake had his number one hit,
Speaker 1: his number one and in between that time for for
Speaker 1: promoting this idea that there was such thing as hookworm
Speaker 1: and that it was a real problem. Because when the
Speaker 1: Rockefeller Sanitary Commission was set up in nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: the South was still and basically the grips of reconstruction.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the reconstruction era anymore is the Jim Crow South,
Speaker 1: but it was still really far behind as a result
Speaker 1: of the war, and there were not a lot of
Speaker 1: public services available. So one thing the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission
Speaker 1: had going for it was money and then it was
Speaker 1: going to be money invested in public health. All right,
Speaker 1: So this is how they went about it. Uh it's
Speaker 1: nineteen o nine. And like you said, they Rockefeller donated
Speaker 1: a million bucks, which is how much today? It's pretty good. Um,
Speaker 1: And they realized, well, I don't assume this was kind
Speaker 1: of a purposeful move, um that they got a Southerner
Speaker 1: on board to kind of lead the charge. Definitely. Um,
Speaker 1: this person named Wickliffe Rose, great name. If there's a
Speaker 1: hero of the story, it's him. If you asked me,
Speaker 1: you think so not? What's his face? No? Styles? Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: I mean he did some great work. It was good,
Speaker 1: But Whitecliffe Rose was the one who uh Whitecliffe. That's
Speaker 1: how I've pronounced that he was the one who made
Speaker 1: it happen, because because Styles could have discovered hookworm all
Speaker 1: day long, but if he didn't have the personality to
Speaker 1: to write cure people, then that doesn't really help. So
Speaker 1: this would be Matthew McConaughey then in the movie. Yeah so,
Speaker 1: and and the s would be Paul Giamatti. And this
Speaker 1: is McConaughey coming in now. Uh So they get this
Speaker 1: Southerner east from Nashville on board to run the organization.
Speaker 1: And they had this approach where they would go to
Speaker 1: a town that they would go to a town in
Speaker 1: the South with these doctors. But before they did that,
Speaker 1: they would start this UM campaign, like an awareness campaign
Speaker 1: UM and schools to get and as I think we
Speaker 1: talked about in other things, you get the kids on
Speaker 1: board in schools, and they kind of helped get the
Speaker 1: parents on board, and they started this campaign to tell
Speaker 1: children about what's going on, and the kids would in
Speaker 1: turn hopefully go home and tell their parents like, you know,
Speaker 1: my pa, I ain't dumb, I got the hookworm. Look
Speaker 1: my poop is wiggling away exactly, and um it was.
Speaker 1: You know, they had a challenge in front of him because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta poop in a bag or something
Speaker 1: and give it to your teacher. Your teacher and entire schools,
Speaker 1: these one room schoolhouses were infected. And this this one
Speaker 1: kid they talked to later on said, uh, well he
Speaker 1: was at the time. Well yeah, he was scared. Like
Speaker 1: he said, he had constipation for a week. He didn't
Speaker 1: want to like you didn't want to have hookworm. I
Speaker 1: don't want my teacher to know me in this way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, sap um way. Never mind. But that was
Speaker 1: but that was the whole setup, right yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: like there was there was There was a public information
Speaker 1: campaign that was part of it. There was community involvement.
Speaker 1: That was a really big thing. That why Cliff Rose started.
Speaker 1: He said, we can't do this without the support of
Speaker 1: the local community. So they built networks with like doctors
Speaker 1: and local health boards. They got the schools involved, um,
Speaker 1: and it became a community thing, right. Yeah. So once
Speaker 1: you had the public on board, they would set up
Speaker 1: these clinics, um not permanent, these kind of temporary clinics,
Speaker 1: and they would It was kind of a big deal
Speaker 1: in the town. It said that they have a treat
Speaker 1: it like an event, and people would bring picnics. I
Speaker 1: don't know that's a wise thing to do at a
Speaker 1: hookworm clinic, but they would bring picnics. And it says
Speaker 1: in here that they some people even wanted to get
Speaker 1: married in the hookworm tent, and I was like, that
Speaker 1: seems weird and kind of like kitchy. But then I
Speaker 1: also was like, I'll bet a lot of these people
Speaker 1: have never seen the tent before, so they were like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: can we get married in the hookworm tent? And so, um,
Speaker 1: there'd be this public information campaign leading up to the
Speaker 1: day of the hookworm Day you can just call it.
Speaker 1: And right, young a young doctor would ride into town
Speaker 1: on horseback and he had a microscope and everything he
Speaker 1: would Um, there was a couple of parts to it.
Speaker 1: There was, um, the sanitation lecture, which was, here's how
Speaker 1: you guys are getting cookworm. Here's how you build what's
Speaker 1: called the sanitary privy. Yeah, like they couldn't give him
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing, but they could at least teach them how
Speaker 1: to have a nice enough out house, right. And there's
Speaker 1: some very very simple principle. One is like don't don't
Speaker 1: dig your latrine down until you hit groundwater, don't let
Speaker 1: it go out into the stream, make sure animals can't
Speaker 1: get into it, and like spread it around, make sure
Speaker 1: your feet aren't standing in the same pit that you're
Speaker 1: pooping in. It's really basic stuff, but like that was
Speaker 1: a big part of it, right, Um. And then also
Speaker 1: explaining how the infection process worked. Right, So because they
Speaker 1: understood very early on, um that yes, you can get
Speaker 1: rid of hook worms fairly easily, but you can also
Speaker 1: get reinfected fairly easy, so they had to get that
Speaker 1: part across as well. Yeah, and like again, you can't
Speaker 1: buy everyone's shoes, but you can say, maybe don't play
Speaker 1: near the outhouse. You gotta stop the poop slinging fights
Speaker 1: all together. Yeah, they just have to be gone the
Speaker 1: thing in the past. That's the number one thing. They're
Speaker 1: part of the salad days. And then this the sample
Speaker 1: analysis would begin, and the poor doctor would just look
Speaker 1: with his microscope at each poop sample and say past fail,
Speaker 1: pass fail. Well, and if the bag was vibrating, they
Speaker 1: didn't even have to look. Yeah, like that that cheese
Speaker 1: in Sardinia, I think that with the maggots, the maggot cheese.
Speaker 1: Didn't we talk about a maggot episode, Sure we did.
Speaker 1: We're both so Um. If you were found to be
Speaker 1: infected with worms, you would get very simple, um pharmaceutical treatment,
Speaker 1: really simple. There's this extraordinarily toxic stuff called thyme all yeah,
Speaker 1: t H y m L Yeah. And it would kill
Speaker 1: your worms. Yeah, and it could also kill you if
Speaker 1: you took it with the wrong combination of foods or
Speaker 1: and or alcoholic beverages. You wanted to avoid alcohol and
Speaker 1: fats and oils on the day you took it, and
Speaker 1: then you would follow your dose of thyme all with
Speaker 1: epsom salt, which would remove the thyme all from your body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, they said at some point, you know what,
Speaker 1: that stuff is super toxic, so why don't we replace
Speaker 1: that with something called carbon tectric chloride um That must
Speaker 1: be much better. Now. It was also very lethal, I
Speaker 1: guess it. You know, at the time didn't have anything
Speaker 1: that wasn't also dangerous to take, right, and that did
Speaker 1: the trick And the fact that the epsom salt would
Speaker 1: get rid of it, I think helped quite a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the great end of this story would be if
Speaker 1: the Rockefeller's money was well spent and five to ten
Speaker 1: years later they eradicated hookworm in the South. But that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. Um. It was successful in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Awareness kind of be in the chief way, but as
Speaker 1: we said a few times, um reinfection is kind of
Speaker 1: the biggest problem. Like you, they might have gotten rid
Speaker 1: of a lot of hookworm, only you know, to have
Speaker 1: these kids who couldn't help but have their poops slanging fights, uh,
Speaker 1: and then get hookworm all over again exactly and so.
Speaker 1: But if you go and read the Rockefeller's um the
Speaker 1: Rockefeller Foundations um rundown of that program, they basically say
Speaker 1: it was this one guy who lobbied hard to like
Speaker 1: just move on. Whatever it was somebody from the Rockfeller
Speaker 1: found that said we're done with this. We've done our
Speaker 1: work right. And they had, like you said, in a
Speaker 1: certain way, they had set up some of the earliest
Speaker 1: public health networks in the South. They had convinced the
Speaker 1: South that there was such thing as hookworm and that
Speaker 1: it was a big problem and that if they were
Speaker 1: able to get rid of it, they could um catch
Speaker 1: up to the rest of the country. And they said,
Speaker 1: now the local doctors, now the local health clinics can
Speaker 1: take over from here. But again, yeah, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the forties that that hookworm really started to be eradicated,
Speaker 1: and it had very little to do with the pharmaceutical treatments.
Speaker 1: It was the fact that indoor plumbing became prevalent, or
Speaker 1: I mean it was literally like better food, better plumbing,
Speaker 1: more shoes, the end of share cropping, which was a
Speaker 1: type of um agricultural system that kept people poor and
Speaker 1: kept people in the fields. So it was it kept
Speaker 1: the same unsanitary conditions for hookworm infection right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what did you call it when they would dump the
Speaker 1: poop night night soil? Yeah, no more night soil dumping. Uh,
Speaker 1: mechanization started and it was kind of a combination of
Speaker 1: all these Just the modernization of the American South is
Speaker 1: really what ended it. Um. And you know, the proof
Speaker 1: is kind of in the pudding in that today in
Speaker 1: conditions similar to the American South a hundred years ago
Speaker 1: plus in other parts of the world, it's still a
Speaker 1: really big problem. It is a really problem, apparently something
Speaker 1: like I saw up to um. In this article The
Speaker 1: War on Hookworms by Andy Borrowitz, he says that up
Speaker 1: to something like seven hundred and forty million people around
Speaker 1: the world are thought to have hookworm infections, right yeah,
Speaker 1: about forty to fifty million, of which are pregnant women,
Speaker 1: which is you know, obviously one of the uh, one
Speaker 1: of the worst. Like we said, kids and pregnant women
Speaker 1: is one of the worst kind of people to get
Speaker 1: to end the status, right and uh, mainly because it
Speaker 1: increases your chances of dying during childbirth because of anemia. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So it is a huge problem around the world. There's there.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of moniker for um hookworm infection along
Speaker 1: with certain other infections. They're lumped together under the umbrella
Speaker 1: of neglected tropical diseases. And the reason they're called that
Speaker 1: is because this is stuff that, like you can easily
Speaker 1: get rid of if you alleviate poverty in the the
Speaker 1: developing world. But we're not doing that, and it's out
Speaker 1: a neglect basically. Yeah, it's not. It's not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where you can just invent the vaccine and
Speaker 1: it's gone again because of the reinfection, because these people
Speaker 1: are still poor and still in those conditions. Um, we're talking.
Speaker 1: It's some of the highest rates are Sierra Leone, Democratic
Speaker 1: Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, Venezuela, Indonesia. UM also interestingly, UM,
Speaker 1: China in Brazil, which kind of surprised me. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's the same thing is like the South back in
Speaker 1: the day, where you have very very um or well
Speaker 1: off urban areas and very very very poor rural areas.
Speaker 1: The same thing in parts of China and Brazil today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think another reason, Um, at least this article
Speaker 1: you sent kind of makes the argument that it's uh
Speaker 1: still a problem. In fact, since nine it's declined globally
Speaker 1: by just five Yes, despite the fact that something like
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty million people have been treated for hookworm,
Speaker 1: but that declines, it's only gone down five percent. And
Speaker 1: all what that's saying is as long as there's the
Speaker 1: unsanitary conditions, there's going to be hookworm, right, so we
Speaker 1: have to alleviate the unsanitary conditions, and you do that
Speaker 1: by alleviating poverty. And there's a group of of foundations
Speaker 1: like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Health Organization,
Speaker 1: they've gotten together to create this End seven program, and
Speaker 1: that's they're trying to end seven of the neglected tropical
Speaker 1: diseases by and hookworm is one of them. And there's treatments.
Speaker 1: There's it's really easy to get rid of hookworm. There's
Speaker 1: actually a couple of ironic treatments for hookworm. One medication
Speaker 1: for getting rid of hookworm UM prevents the hookworms from
Speaker 1: creating a t P, which is like an energy source,
Speaker 1: so they become lethargic and die just like they make
Speaker 1: you lethargic. The other medication, UM attaches the to the
Speaker 1: hookworms intestines and prevents the hookworm from absorbing nutrients, so
Speaker 1: they die of malnourishment, just like they make people malnourished.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's ironic or if they're like,
Speaker 1: we're going to get these things back, you know. So,
Speaker 1: like I was saying a minute ago, part of the
Speaker 1: big problem uh with eradicating this is that it's not, um,
Speaker 1: it's not a big news item. Like you know, a
Speaker 1: lot like Ebola comes along, it grabs all the news,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you have a lot of funding. Um,
Speaker 1: hookworm isn't you know. I don't want to say a
Speaker 1: sexy disease because it's gross, but it's not. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: kind of just off forgotten, and so they don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of funding. I'm glad that Gates Is are
Speaker 1: involved because that, you know, that makes it much more
Speaker 1: high profile. But um, you know, it's still a big,
Speaker 1: big issue, and uh hopefully you know, this will help
Speaker 1: raise a little bit of awareness. Sure well, if if
Speaker 1: hookworm is eradicated by twenty we'll have played a rather
Speaker 1: large role in that. Uh. But now we have a
Speaker 1: final twist. Yeah, there's this really great quote from the
Speaker 1: sixties from a Rockefeller um parasitic worm specialist who said that, um,
Speaker 1: we needed the eventual helmntic defaundation of man, saying getting
Speaker 1: rid of worms from the human race entirely right. And
Speaker 1: he said that for only in a society made up
Speaker 1: of parasite free individuals. Well, we know of what the
Speaker 1: human being is capable, basically saying like, we have no
Speaker 1: idea how much we're being held back as a as
Speaker 1: an entire race by worms, So we need to get
Speaker 1: rid of them. But there's this growing body of research,
Speaker 1: chuck that's showing that we actually need to be infected
Speaker 1: by hookworms. It looks like, well, if it can potentially
Speaker 1: treat a few types of disease. UM, I don't. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that humans need it, but right now there's
Speaker 1: some experimental research going on, and specific to hookworms, it
Speaker 1: seems that it might help asthma. Okay, um, there are
Speaker 1: other worms that they're using that could help with everything
Speaker 1: from ultra to colitis, to Crohn's disease to multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the little hookworm, they think, um,
Speaker 1: it might help asthma. Uh, they're not experimenting on humans yet.
Speaker 1: The United States, I don't think. I think only in
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom right now are they using in humans. Um.
Speaker 1: But because it took worm, that side effects are basically
Speaker 1: all the things we've been talking about. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: every everything bad about the hookworm is going to happen
Speaker 1: to Hugh. Right. The thinking behind it though, because that
Speaker 1: makes zero sense, like why would that help is that
Speaker 1: for some reason, worm parasitic worms prevent the human immune
Speaker 1: system from going overboard somehow, right, and that the reason
Speaker 1: why we have autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis or um
Speaker 1: Crohn's disease are because of a lack of parasitic worms
Speaker 1: in our bodies because we've eradicated them. So now these
Speaker 1: other diseases that are autoimmune diseases have been able to rise.
Speaker 1: So it kind of is a like you said, a
Speaker 1: weird little twy. Yeah, we'll see. I mean right now,
Speaker 1: they're mainly working in mice and rats, um. But like
Speaker 1: anytime you're working with mice and rats, it's can't exactly
Speaker 1: extrapolate that onto humans. So we shall see. It's only
Speaker 1: one way to find out for you and I volunteer.
Speaker 1: Well they you know I did see some experiments not
Speaker 1: for this, but um, when they were doing hookworm experiments period,
Speaker 1: they would infect people with hookworm and you know volunteers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, I mean like, it's not like a hookworm
Speaker 1: is gonna kill you. And if you are not going
Speaker 1: to get reinfected because you wear shoes and use like
Speaker 1: a toilet with running water, Um, it's sure. Why not
Speaker 1: you do it for science and money? Yes? Are you
Speaker 1: got anything else? I do not what we want to
Speaker 1: recommend the articles How a Worm Gave the South Bad
Speaker 1: Name by Rachel Newer and war on Hookworms from Andy Borrowitz.
Speaker 1: They're both well worth reading. Uh and Uh, since I
Speaker 1: said they're well we're reading, it's time for listening to mail.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this uh follow up from
Speaker 1: a very sweet couple I met at the airport. I
Speaker 1: think I talked about them after our one I think
Speaker 1: the Midwestern tour UM or no, no, no, it was
Speaker 1: Louisiana New Orleans show. I met this very nice couple
Speaker 1: who had been to the show. Um. They were I
Speaker 1: think one of our more veteran and wise UM listeners
Speaker 1: and show attendees. They were wonderful, uh, and they stopped
Speaker 1: me in the airport. We talked for a little bit
Speaker 1: and this is from them. Hey, Chuck, I wanted to
Speaker 1: follow up. After the show in New Orleans, we talked
Speaker 1: to you at the airport while we were waiting for
Speaker 1: our flight back to Minneapolis. You were very gracious talking
Speaker 1: to us when we had clearly interrupted you on your
Speaker 1: way to do or get something, probably had a poop.
Speaker 1: We told you our new hobby was going and following
Speaker 1: you guys around the country. Uh, and making vacations that
Speaker 1: out of your shows on tour, remember that. But we
Speaker 1: haven't made it to a live show since. Um, we
Speaker 1: haven't done a lot of shows since that. Uh, that's true. Well,
Speaker 1: we've done a handful. We've both been slacking both parties. Yes,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna hit the road for some shows later
Speaker 1: this year, by the way, Uh, stay tuned for that.
Speaker 1: So you and Josh did, however, inspire us in our
Speaker 1: new venture. We started a podcast. Just before we left
Speaker 1: to drive to Alaska in May. Joyce, who was the
Speaker 1: lady in the couple, um, downloaded a bunch of podcasts
Speaker 1: on how to make a podcast. By the time we
Speaker 1: got back to Minnesota, we were well on our way
Speaker 1: to starting Tall Tales and Travel, our podcast about adventures
Speaker 1: in the outdoors. Uh, Lair and I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's l A R R E. And I can't remember
Speaker 1: if it was Lair or Larry. Layer's probably short for Larry,
Speaker 1: maybe short for Lawrence, so it's doubly short. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call him Lair just l Uh. He has decades worth
Speaker 1: of stories which have mostly taken place in Alaska. He's
Speaker 1: been a bush pilot, charter boat captain, a police officer,
Speaker 1: and general outdoorsman, to name a few adventure settings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a Layer. If I've ever heard on Lair, it
Speaker 1: does most of the talking and Joyce does most of
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes tasks. Uh. It's a division of
Speaker 1: labor that we've mastered over the last thirty odd years. Together.
Speaker 1: We have a website, Tall Tales and travel dot Com
Speaker 1: where we post photos and videos from Lair's huge archive.
Speaker 1: Now that we're up and running, we'll be putting more
Speaker 1: work into sorting and sharing the collection more regularly. By
Speaker 1: the way, we used square space. Thanks for the tip.
Speaker 1: Nice anyway, guys were just writing into thank you for
Speaker 1: the inspiration to let you know that we haven't given
Speaker 1: up on seeing you live again. We're gonna keep our
Speaker 1: ears open and here where Stuff you Should Know will
Speaker 1: be up next, plan an adventure to see you there.
Speaker 1: All the best that is Joyce Olsen and Lair Broward
Speaker 1: and again check it out um Tall Tales and Travel
Speaker 1: dot com or at Tall Tales and Travel dot Libson
Speaker 1: l I B s y N dot com. And they
Speaker 1: were just really sweet and nice and supportive. And the
Speaker 1: notion that these people in their retirement would follow us
Speaker 1: around the country just kind of knock my socks off. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I haven't listened to the show yet because this
Speaker 1: just came in, but I'm gonna give it a whirl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks you guys in congratulations. It's pretty awesome. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: I guess if we've inspired you, like Joyce and Layer
Speaker 1: to do something neat, let us know about it. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email The
Speaker 1: Stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, is that how Stuff Works dot com.