WEBVTT - Southerners Aren’t Lazy and Dumb, They Just Had Hookworm 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:03.600 Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:06.680 what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:11.360 people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:14.400 sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right, it's t r 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.479 y pod still in nascent industry. A lot of people 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.880 don't know what podcasts are and helps everybody out if 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.240 you would go out and just say, hey, family member, 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:26.920 who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.000 should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:30.920 they are, here's a cool show you should try, and 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:32.479 here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.800 to be our show, just any podcast you like in 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.320 general that you think someone else would like to share it. Yeah, 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:44.120 So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:53.920 stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey, 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.000 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:03.240 Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. She goes she just ran 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.680 away after nine years. I knew that would happen eventually. Yep. 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.440 She had a little bendel sack over her shoulder and 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:15.160 she's barefoot, which is dangerous. Jerry, that was a nice 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:19.240 little set up. Yeah, you might get uh, what do 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:24.080 you call it? The do itch? Yeah? Or well that's 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:26.720 the best one, the ground itch do, which is way 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:31.440 better than ground get a little discomfort in the webbing 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:36.440 between your toes, a little scratchy. Maybe a few days 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.440 later you're like, this is this athlete's foot. No, that 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:43.080 doesn't make you cough. Yeah, Plus you're no athlete. Don't 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:46.720 flatter yourself, that's what they would say. And then you 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.960 start coughing a little bit, and a few weeks after that, 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.520 you're just a big dope that can't lift an arm 0:01:53.560 --> 0:02:01.480 to go stand up and do anything. You have hookworm? Yeah, uh, 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:04.760 well there you have it. Were you told as a child, 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.360 like you'll get worms? And you're gonna ask me that 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:09.400 because I grew up in the South, Well, no, I 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.040 mean I was told that too. I don't remember hearing 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:18.680 this stuff. I remember being scared about uh, scoliosis, and 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.800 I remember being scared about nuclear annihilation and so as 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:29.640 I um, and that's about it. Razors and apples at Halloween, yeah, 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:35.000 which is, as we've covered, not true. Any instance that 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:42.000 happened to that happened because of the urban legend. Not Uh. No, 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.240 I've never really heard of this, and what made you 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.760 think of this? By the way, I don't know you 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.080 like the parasites. I love parasites. They're interesting, especially this 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.800 particular parasite, because it turns out the hookworm might be 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:00.880 the most interesting of all of the parasitic war here 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.840 on planet Earth if you ask me, Well, agreed, because, 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.359 as you will see, the social context and the Southern 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:12.639 United States of what the hookworm meant over centuries never 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:15.440 knew about it. And it's pretty astounding. And as someone 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:19.680 who has long had to defend the South as not 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.079 just a backward place with a bunch of dumb yokels, 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.560 I'm just gonna from now on, I'm just gonna say, hookworm. 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:29.960 Look it up. Listen to our episode, and people right 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:31.800 now are going, what in the world, So let's well, 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.360 let's get into it. Let's remove their the fog of 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:39.720 curiosity and maybe irritation a little bit and start talking 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.440 about hookworms. Right, so we said you it starts with 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.400 your foot. Yeah, these are round worms. Yes, they're a 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.080 type of round worm, a nematode, right, yeah, Nematode phyl 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:55.120 um um. They're pretty young, about four million years old, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:58.880 and uh, they have been described in this article you 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:04.120 sent most commonly as a as far as the way 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.520 they look as a tube within a tube like a 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:12.040 pair of socks. And then at one end, right at 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:20.760 one end, they have cutting plates also called fangs or teeth. Mouthparts, yeah, mouthparts, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.520 and as Tracy Wilson would put it, and um, they 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.200 use those things for sucking blood. So that they want 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.360 is your blood because they get nutrients from your blood 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:35.520 and that makes them parasites. Yeah, and they as as 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.000 we sourced a few really great articles on this, but um, 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.080 as one of them points out to that a good 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:48.159 parasite or a good hookworm doesn't want to kill you because, 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.279 as it says in this article, that means the ride 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:52.960 is over right exactly. They want to keep you alive 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.480 and lazy so they can just keep reproducing and keep 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.920 sucking on your blood forever and ever and ever. And 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:07.120 in a very large part, hookworms have covald with humans, 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.600 and they've done so in a way that they get 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:15.080 the maximum benefit out of infecting a human um without 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:18.520 the pitfall of killing the human and ending the ride 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:22.240 for themselves. Right. So um, and they've had four hundred 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.240 million years to do it, and there's two kinds of hookworms. Mainly, 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.640 there's tons of hookworms, Like from what I understand, just 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:33.360 about every animal, every mammal has its own type of hookworm, 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.720 but they don't infect cross animal typically, And there's two 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:43.440 types of hookworms that infects humans specifically. There's the new 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:47.960 world hookworm naricatur Americana is very open minded, and then 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:53.760 there's the old word world hookworm uh and Solostoma duoden 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:59.960 all a right, and so both of them thrive in warmer, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:07.640 tropical ish climates. And the an AMERICANUS in particular loves 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.719 sandy loami soil, and it just so happens that in 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:16.840 the American South has just the kind of climate to 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.880 host an American it's and it's around. Yeah, so here's 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.320 what happens. We were kind of kidding around about Jerry 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.280 walking around barefoot, but Jerry's old like me, and she 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.880 grew up in the South. We were all we all 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:34.760 come from sharecroppers and UH had outhouses. So here's what 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:39.279 would happen um all the way up until like which 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:41.840 is kind of distressing. Yeah, I thought so too. You 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:46.680 could walk around barefoot as uh Southern children were wanted 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.640 to do. Yeah, Apparently the chances of your of being 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.279 a kid with shoes, especially in the rural south, was 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.000 like next to nothing up until that, maybe the fifties 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:03.479 or sixties. Really yeah, uh so they would, like we 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:05.920 talked about the do uh the do it. You would 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:10.040 walk around barefoot. These little guys would get between your toes, uh, 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.160 root into your body through the feet, make their way 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:17.000 to the blood vessels and start the voyage to the lungs. 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.320 This is it's a fantastic voyage. Well for them, it is. 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:25.400 Um it's like inner space, yeah, um, up through the lungs, 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.160 finally through the circulatory system to the lungs where eventually, 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:33.160 like you said, you then you cough it up with 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:36.400 a dry cough, and then you swallow it into your 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.280 gut and the intestine and that's when it's like, this 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:41.000 is where I wanted to be all along. And the 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.960 nuts they go up through the foot circulatory system to 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.800 the lungs, make you cough, then you swallow them, and 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:49.480 then they finally get to the place where they're supposed 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.360 to be, the small intestine, and they latch on and 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.120 they start second blood. Yeah. And hookworms are interesting tape 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.880 worms or hermaphroditic. But hookworms like a lot of around worms. Uh, 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:02.840 they need to do it. Yeah, it's about to say 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:05.720 they like to who knows, maybe a little bit both, 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.400 depending on the mood. They have to in order to reproduce. 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.440 So what you do is they get into that intestine, 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.400 they find a lover, they take a lover. Excuse me, 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.360 Robert lamb in here, they take a lover, and then 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:24.880 they attach theirselves to the intestinal wall and say, I'm 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.000 here forever, I'm gonna I mean up to I've seen 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:31.600 up to thirty thousand eggs a day. Right, the female 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.120 will will lay thirty thousand fertilized eggs a day. Right, 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.480 And that's on the highest end. But you know, let's 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:40.880 say the low end is ten thousand, and say the 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.520 low end is a thousand. It's still a lot of eggs. 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.079 And that's just one female worm. Right. You can have 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.199 dozens hundreds of these things. They found that, Um, the 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:57.280 human can host up to about five hundred worms and survive. 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.640 You're not living a very fulfilling life, as we'll see, 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.079 but um, you you could have a number of these 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.640 worms all pumping out eggs, and the worm typically lives 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.160 between one and five years in the comforts of your gut, 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.679 and then um, you can also be reinfected. And here's 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:19.080 how right, So, when the females are spreading out a 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.960 thousand to thirty thousand eggs take your pick on a 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:26.040 daily basis, you're pooping those eggs out. And if you're 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:30.280 pooping and say like uh, like by the bushes or 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.600 in some sort of like outhouse, Yeah, it's eighteen seventy 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.800 five in West Virginia. You don't have indoor plumbing, right, 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:40.120 and let's say your outhouse isn't all that great, or 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.559 you're just again pooping in the bushes. You are probably 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.960 not wearing shoes. Those two things usually go hand in hand. 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:51.560 And so you're stepping in your old fecal material that's 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:55.120 still had eggs in it before those eggs have since 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.040 hatched into larva. Larva gone through the first two larval stages, 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.720 entered the third infective larval stage, and now it's crawling 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.679 up into your foot again and you're what's called worm 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.960 burden is expanded even further from one or two to 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.319 ten to twenty two up to hundreds. Yeah, and that's 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.440 if you just accidentally step in old pooh, whether it's 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:21.679 like spread around by animals walking around or by the rain. Um, 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:24.959 the chances of are exponentially more if you have a 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:30.480 good old fashioned poop slanging fight, sure do you You 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:31.880 know you don't want to get hit in the mouth 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.400 with that. God. Um. The other problem that um, well, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.240 it was part of the problem was that, uh, that 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:43.640 was the second version of that even was that people 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.480 were using poop as fertilizer. Now it's one thing again 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.520 you can't really catch I'm sure you can catch some worms. 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:52.720 I know trick nosis is a problem for humans and 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:58.760 that's a pork worm. Um. But you you using say, 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:02.640 horse manure is real satively safe compared to using human 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:07.120 manure as fertilizer in your field. That's a relatively recent discovery. 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:11.560 People were using human manure as fertilizer for very a 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.080 very very long time. And it was called night soil 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.439 because at night the guys would come out and clean 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:23.320 your your privy out and walk them muck your poop, 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.480 your FeCO material down the street and collect more and 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.000 collect more, and then they would turn it into fertilizer. 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.160 Would say release the night soil before they dumped it 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:34.959 exactly and it would be fertilizer, and that'd be great 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.840 to make a crops grow, but it also just contaminate 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:42.560 your entire field with hookworms. And then little kids would 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:45.920 go out and work the field shoeless and they would 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:47.960 become infected from that too. So there were all these 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:53.280 really great opportunities for people to become infected by hookworms. 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:59.360 But there the hookworm habitat followed a certain a certain 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:05.319 line from about West Virginia down to I think East Texas. Uh. 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.200 And beneath that line that was the hookworm belt. Yeah, 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:11.560 they called it that, and above it they used human 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:16.280 manure for fertilizer too, but they didn't have hookworm. It 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:18.760 was in the South that the hookworm was a problem, 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:21.960 and it was a big problem, it turned out. Yeah, 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.000 it just occurred to me. We walked right past maybe 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.120 the best band name of all time in here, what 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.840 worm burden? Oh yeah, Wormburdon is pretty good. Um. All right, 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.440 well that's the the setup, uh, before we hit you 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:38.360 with a social context. So let's take a little break 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.720 here and we'll talk a little bit more about my 0:12:41.880 --> 0:13:08.400 old kin folk right after this. All right, So before 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:10.959 we broke, we talked about what the hookworm is and 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.160 all the different, uh myriad ways which it could spread, 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:19.040 from accidentally walking in poop to poop slanging fights. Night 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.839 Soil Nights released the night soil rolling in it to 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:29.200 ultimate radically increase your worm burden. Um. So you found 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:32.000 this great article called how a Worm Gave the South 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:36.160 a Bad Name by a woman named Rachel Newer. Um. 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.960 It's on Nova. Yeah, it was really good. And she 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.679 is from the South and kind of wrote it from 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.439 that point of view. Um, and I get the feeling, like, 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.240 like me, she kind of his long head to defend 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.199 the American South as hey, we're not a bunch of dumb, 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:55.199 lazy yokels. Because that was you know, for a long time. Um, 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.520 and still continuing today to a certain degree. Yeah, that 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:01.800 notion kind of this that if you're from the South, 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:03.960 you're kind of slow, you may be a little dim witted, 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:06.960 you may be lazy. And this was you know, for 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:11.240 white folks, Black folks, Native Americans, just something about the 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.680 South made you lazy and dumb, especially among the lower 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:20.720 socioeconomic classes. And this wasn't just like off the cuff 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:26.720 um stereotyping. It was rooted in fact, in reality, there 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:30.960 was something different about people of a of the lower 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:34.000 socioeconomic classes in the South. Specifically, if you put them 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:39.800 side by side among the same socioeconomic classes of the North, 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.440 the ones in the North would be like, let's shovel 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:44.760 some cold baby, and the ones in the South would 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.200 be like, I'm just gonna lay here down next to 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:49.840 my wheelbarrow because I can't I can't get up. And 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.840 so Southerners were came to be seen as lazy, shiftless, 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.520 couldn't be trusted to do an honest day's work, and 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.440 they just thought it was part of the Southern character. Yeah, 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.920 and this wasn't just um a perception like they literally 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:11.400 lagged behind the North in terms of productivity, um economic development. Uh. 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:13.120 And we'll you know, we'll talk about some of these 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.040 statistics as we go. Well. Plus the Civil War didn't 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.760 help anything either. Well, now, that was obviously a big setback, 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:26.480 right So, and it would have been for any region 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:30.840 right at level of devastation and um um death. But 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.920 coupled with their already predisposition to this, that what what 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.920 came to be called the lazy germ uh it was, 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:41.960 it just set it back even further. Yeah, and at 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:47.040 one point in the American South up to fort Amazingly, 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.520 the population, like you said, from southeastern Texas to West 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:56.760 Virginia and all the way down, um was infected with hookworm. Yes, 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.240 that's a lot of people. I mean, it's obviously not 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:03.040 a majority, almost a majority. That would have would have 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:08.400 been a tomb Southerner. I mean, that's a lot of folks. 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:11.320 It is a lot of folks. And that was the 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:18.440 culprit behind this lazy shiftlessness among the poverty stricken Southern 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:23.360 poor and the rural. The poverty stricken, rural Southern poor 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:27.040 was apparently the majority of the South from the end 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.000 of the Civil War up until the I believe the 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:34.960 mid nineties or mid twentieth century. Um you were if 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.680 you were a Southerner, it was likely that you were 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.640 poor and did not live in the city until about 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.960 the forties. And there's a pretty clear demarcation line if 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.240 you did if you were wealthy in the South, or 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:48.280 you were lived in the city in the South in 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:53.000 the nineteenth and early twentieth century, you wore shoes, you 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:56.840 had bed pans um, and you could probably avoid this. 0:16:57.000 --> 0:17:00.760 But if you didn't like those are It says in 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.640 this article that it was almost impossible to avoid if 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.840 you were poor and lived in the South, because you 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.439 also didn't have very good sanitation. No, you were just 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:14.160 it was just perfectly set up for you to keep 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:18.399 getting reinfected. Um. You know, every couple of years you 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.960 shed a dead hookworm, but in that time you probably 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.199 would have taken on several more. All right, so what 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.280 does this mean If you get hookworm, Like we said, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.720 it's it's likely not going to directly kill you. Uh, 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.200 you might die from a common cold. Um, you might 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.680 die from malaria or typhoid fever, or you know, something 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.359 else may ultimately take you out because your body is 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:45.240 so weakened. But what it does in large part is 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.560 it causes an iron deficiency. Uh. If you're a pregnant 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:53.399 woman or a kid, iron deficiency is really bad. Um. 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:55.760 If you're a child, you need that iron for your 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.160 brain development. So you know, not only would you get 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:02.840 like physical sin terms like stomach bloat. Uh what what 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:06.240 was the uh the I thing like this the dull, 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.159 fishy stair fishy i'd stare. Yeah, just sort of like 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.159 they're basically described, these kids just sort of vacant, just 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.840 staring off into space. Um, so you know, some of 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:18.800 those are physical symptoms, but others were literally like a 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.080 lower i Q. Right, And so they believed that an 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.760 AMERICANUS came over as a result of the Atlantic slave trade, 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:31.320 that it was imported from Africa. So for centuries generations 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:36.359 of kids, um we're being born in the South who 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:42.800 had there, Um, they were physically and developmentally stunted. Yeah, 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:48.960 by hookworm infections. Yeah, it's sometimes girls wouldn't begin menstruation, 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.840 boys a lot of times would not even hit their 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:57.119 growth spurts. And not only where they had lower i 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.200 q s and learning uh you know, development disability ease, 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.159 but they were smaller and weaker. Yeah, and then you 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:06.320 combine this loss of blood. So so apparently about a 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:10.240 hundred worms in a in a normal adult will drink 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.440 about a teaspoon a day, which doesn't sound like that much, 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.840 but if you couple it that level of iron deficiency 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:23.480 with uh pre existing malnourishment due to poverty or the 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:27.000 lack of availability of like good food, Uh, then it 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.280 really becomes a huge problem. And it goes from like 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:31.640 this is a problem to this is this is a 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:35.879 catastrophic problem that can keep an entire region of a 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:40.919 country down projectivity productively. Yeah, and it uh like a 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:44.359 lot of disease we've talked about, whether it's like famine 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:47.119 or lack of clean water. It's it's cyclical in nature. 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.960 So it would occur where there was poverty, and then 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.320 it would keep people from working to work their way 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.040 out of poverty, and it just kind of compounded on 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.800 each other. Right, and then think about slavery as well. Right, 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.600 So not only have you been brought over to the 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.240 US as a slave, you're being forced to work against 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.480 your will in these horrific conditions. You're also being forced 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.920 to work and live in the same conditions that promotes hookworm. 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.560 So you're feeling lazy and shiftless. Ts for you you're 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.919 a slave. Add that to your toil and misery, you know, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.239 like it just it just keeps getting worse. All right. 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:25.560 So I think we've made it clear, big problem in 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:28.720 the South, But again, no one had any idea why. Yeah, 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:30.880 it was just you know, the lazy South, and it's 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.280 you know, people have said that it literally set the 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:38.440 South back like decades and decades from the rest of 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:42.480 the country. No one knows what's going on. Until nineteen 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.920 o two, this dude came along and they should be 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.880 kind of a weird movie to market, but this would 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:51.680 be a good movie, I think. Oh, I think that's 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:54.400 the story of Charles Styles and Hookworm. It's a big 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.440 roller coaster ride, all right. So, uh, nineteen o two, 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.200 this guy named Charles Styles comes along. He's a zoologist 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.600 from from New York City, educated in Europe, no less. 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:06.920 So he played real well in the South, yeah, which, 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:08.560 as you'll see, it was a bit of part of 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:12.800 the problem. Uh. And the Department of Agriculture said, hey, 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:15.199 we need you to help these farmers down there keep 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.600 their animals healthy. So go down there and check things out. 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.639 And he was like he started to notice. He's like, 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:23.479 something's going on. These people are physically stunted. They're a 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.640 little off. Yeah, they're mentally stunted. And I don't think 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:30.480 they're just dumb and lazy. So he started apparently he 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.440 sounds like one of these guys that was just had 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:35.000 to get to the bottom of it something, you know, 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.639 Like he wouldn't just say, you know, oh, well everyone's 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.800 right about how it is down here. So he really 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:48.280 stuck to his instinct and realized that it was hookworm. 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:50.919 He literally was the guy who discovered that that was 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:54.680 the problem exactly. I think he um he did that 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:58.600 by analyzing stool samples. So he basically just hung around 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.560 men's rooms. He said, like, you're going to use that, 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:07.400 and they'd say, no, have at it. He just exactly, 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:12.720 and the people would just walk away. All right. It 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:15.920 went down. I don't know how it went down. I looked, Actually, 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:18.840 this guy is not the most celebrated person to ever 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:23.320 save an entire region from an infection. Um So, there's 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:27.000 not I didn't find a lot of background information on 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.360 him in particular. Um So, I have no idea how 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.000 it happened. I saw somewhere that said that he became 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.760 accidentally infected, and that's how he understood. Didn't see it 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.400 backed up anywhere else. I have no idea how this 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:46.359 man came to say, because again, you gotta you have 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:49.959 to be trading in fecal material here. So like this 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:53.080 guy had his hands on human poop at some point 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.199 or thought to look there. I'm not sure. Maybe he 0:22:56.240 --> 0:22:58.600 was in a good old fashioned poops. It makes the 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:02.720 most sense that he he was. He's like, something's going 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:07.480 on to god, oh it's a worm. Uh. The point is, 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:11.400 though he was not well received. The local doctors didn't 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:13.640 want to hear it. They wouldn't listen. They dismissed him 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:17.480 as you know, this this carpet bag and yankee from Europe, 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:20.919 who you know, educated in Europe, who's down here telling us, 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:23.480 you know, he's he's an animal expert, and he's telling 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:29.600 us about our poop, making us lazy europe animal expert. Yeah, 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:31.639 they they really didn't listen to him much. So he 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:33.840 was like, fine, I'll just go to John de rock 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:37.040 Feller and tell him. I'm gonna tell on you. That's 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.359 basically what happened. Yeah, Rockefeller was this is at the 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:44.879 time when income inequality was about at the levels it 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:48.240 was now, and the wealthy industrialists of the age were 0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:51.520 really really worried that they were going to have the 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:55.840 social order overthrown by angry people, so they invented philanthropy. Right. Yeah, 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:57.880 this is back when they worried about that kind of thing, right, 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:01.560 And Rockefeller said, well, we can't just we can't do 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:06.000 anything to actually support the problems that capitalism creates, because 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:09.159 then we'll just be drawing attention to the fact that 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:12.840 there are major problems with capitalist system. What else can 0:24:12.880 --> 0:24:16.720 I support, and he heard about Styles, and Styles took 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:19.919 a meeting with Rockefeller and some of his his uh 0:24:20.280 --> 0:24:24.480 higher up friends, and apparently at that meeting they closed 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:27.080 the deal, like we're funding this thing with the million 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:29.320 bucks right out of the gate, which is about twenty 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:33.359 six million today. And they set up the Rockefeller Sanitary 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:40.320 Commission for the Eradication of hookworm disease. That's right. But um, 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:45.080 despite the fact that they were trying to help Southerners, um, 0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:48.440 not only with a medical issue, but to advance themselves 0:24:48.480 --> 0:24:52.720 as a people. Um. Again, the Southerners A they didn't 0:24:52.720 --> 0:24:56.200 want a light being shown on this problem because it's gross, 0:24:57.040 --> 0:24:59.080 uh and it has a stigma. But they didn't want 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:02.760 um again. They didn't want these Yankees coming down there 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:06.720 and saying they can fix you, right, you know. And 0:25:06.880 --> 0:25:10.520 Rockefeller said t s he said, I've got an oyster 0:25:10.600 --> 0:25:14.200 dish named after me, maybe the best oyster dish besides raw. 0:25:14.720 --> 0:25:17.760 I'm glad you said that. Uh. Should we take a break, Yeah, 0:25:17.840 --> 0:25:19.760