Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Child's Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry to
Speaker 1: my right. This is Stuffy should Know. Why are your
Speaker 1: eyes closed? A creepy? You sound like shwetty Balls Alo
Speaker 1: Bob swetty Balls get from Saturday Night Live. Man. That
Speaker 1: just that blofted right over here. Now I'm all mellow.
Speaker 1: Yeah you irie, Yes, I love that. The beginning of
Speaker 1: this article UM talks about botox. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a pretty good. Uh it was. It said, like, you know,
Speaker 1: one day we're gonna look back on injecting batolenum toxin
Speaker 1: A into your face and think that's just crazy. Like
Speaker 1: I think it's crazy. Now, Okay, you know I see
Speaker 1: what you mean. Nuts. Yeah, if you step back and
Speaker 1: look at it, for sure, paralyzing your face muscles to
Speaker 1: look younger. Yeah, especially if you've ever seen Dead Calm.
Speaker 1: Did you see that movie? Yeah, with a out on
Speaker 1: the water with the boat. Yeah, I remember he said
Speaker 1: that's what happened to the other people on the bows,
Speaker 1: that they all got baculi um and died. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that. Yeah, that was his whole set up.
Speaker 1: His excuse for his explanation for what happened was baculi
Speaker 1: is um. But yeah, that's what I think of when
Speaker 1: I think baculi is um is dead calm. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: with botox he end up looking like a freak. Oh,
Speaker 1: don't be judgmental, not being judgmental, but it was pretty judgmental. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's judgmental, I guess. But yeah, I think I think it.
Speaker 1: That's my stance is if you want to do that,
Speaker 1: then more power to you. But I think people look
Speaker 1: weird when they look consistently surprised, So they don't. They
Speaker 1: don't use it just for that. They used to treat
Speaker 1: my grains, uh, excessive sweatiness. I should get it also
Speaker 1: known as hyper hydrosis. What what like in the armpit
Speaker 1: or the hands? Yeah, like directly in there. I guess
Speaker 1: this toxin goes in and like deadens the nerve cells.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can't remember. The point is we're both agreed,
Speaker 1: even in a roundabout way, that it is a very strange, bizarre,
Speaker 1: you might say, medical treatment to inject toxin into your
Speaker 1: face to look youthful. Yeah, I was judging. I take
Speaker 1: it all back. People want to do what they want
Speaker 1: to do. That's fine. I just my personal feeling is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't have the desired effect to make you
Speaker 1: look like you think you look proud of you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Uh so, chuck botuli is um batulin botox, we should say,
Speaker 1: is pretty much nothing compared to some of the other
Speaker 1: stuff that we've used the past and in some cases
Speaker 1: still continue to use. Because this is all based on
Speaker 1: an article on Housta Works called tim Bizarre Treatments. Doctors
Speaker 1: used to think we're legit, it turns out that some
Speaker 1: of the stuff actually still is legit. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, we should plug our friends over at Sawbones. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Justin and his wife Dr Sidney McElroy. And Justin does
Speaker 1: My Brother and My Brother and Me podcast with his brothers.
Speaker 1: They have a spinoff, not spinoff, they have their own
Speaker 1: podcast with Sawbones where they talk about antiquated medical Uh
Speaker 1: that's all. They talk about antiquated medical treatments. And they
Speaker 1: said they were inspired by our podcast to start that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But every time we send somebody over to listen to them,
Speaker 1: they don't come back. Yeah, you know, so stop it.
Speaker 1: We created a monster. But anyway, Um, we are in
Speaker 1: turn inspired by them, and uh, it's just a big
Speaker 1: we're blowing smoke each up each other's butt, tobacco smoke.
Speaker 1: I'll hard to see it. That was literally where that
Speaker 1: term came from, to blow smoke ups up your arts.
Speaker 1: But all it did was redirect to the fact that
Speaker 1: people used to do this for real. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's really where the term came from or not.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't either. I can tell you where
Speaker 1: the treatment supposedly came from came from a legend. It
Speaker 1: looks like a legend. I think at the time they
Speaker 1: took it as a factual story that a man rescued
Speaker 1: his drowned wife from a river, I think in France.
Speaker 1: And um, I didn't know what to do when a
Speaker 1: soldiers just happened to walk by and said, take this
Speaker 1: pipe and blow the smoke like stick one end into
Speaker 1: erectum and blow on the lid end until she comes
Speaker 1: to I don't think we've even said yet what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, which is a tobacco enema. We're no sawbones.
Speaker 1: Tobacco enemas literally blowing tobacco smoke up the rectum of
Speaker 1: an individual for a health reason, and in this case,
Speaker 1: the original reason was to revive a drown victim, which
Speaker 1: is apparently what it was initially used for when it
Speaker 1: came into widespread use, and I guess it was in
Speaker 1: widespread use, and apparently it did work. In this initial legend,
Speaker 1: the wife came to on the fifth blow and went
Speaker 1: to a local bar and got a drink and then
Speaker 1: went home after being resuscitated from drowning and then having
Speaker 1: a pipe in erect um with smoke blone up her butt. Yes,
Speaker 1: and um, there there's speculation that if if it did work,
Speaker 1: it was the intrusion of the pipe or later on
Speaker 1: the bellows that probably did it. But the thinking at
Speaker 1: the time was that nicotine was a stimulant and that
Speaker 1: this would directly stimulate the person back to life. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: you mentioned drowning victims. That it was so commonly used
Speaker 1: as a method for helping drowning victims that this equipment
Speaker 1: was um put alongside major waterways, very much like we
Speaker 1: would have a um defribrillator today. They had these along
Speaker 1: like the River Thames, and you had to know where
Speaker 1: they were. And Uh. In seventeen seventy four, doctors William
Speaker 1: Hawes and Thomas Cogan Um in London formed the Institution
Speaker 1: for Affording Immediate Relief two persons apparently dead from drowning,
Speaker 1: and they later changed that name to the Royal Humane Society.
Speaker 1: That's a lot better. And they have promoted this method
Speaker 1: by paying people for guineas uh to anyone who could
Speaker 1: successfully revive a drowning victim. Huh. I'll bet in those
Speaker 1: kids along the waterways you go to use it in
Speaker 1: the tobacco would be missing because local twelve year old
Speaker 1: had gotten into it. It's a good point. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there was even a little rhyme at the British Medical
Speaker 1: Association in the seventeen seventy four at the meeting um
Speaker 1: tobacco glister because it was also called glister g l
Speaker 1: y ste er these kids tobacco glister. Breathe and bleed,
Speaker 1: keep warm and rub till you succeed, and spare no
Speaker 1: pains for what you do may one day be repaid
Speaker 1: to you. What is going on? Uh? You know what
Speaker 1: goes around comes around. What's going on? And I think
Speaker 1: trying to England where I guess if you're if you're
Speaker 1: giving a tobacco animal to somebody and you know that
Speaker 1: that little rhymes, you probably would stop because you'd be like,
Speaker 1: I don't want this coming back to me. I just
Speaker 1: rather pass on to the next world. Uh well. Dr
Speaker 1: Richard Mead was the first guy who pioneered this in
Speaker 1: mid seventeen hundreds, and by eighteen eleven it was because
Speaker 1: they were like, no, this is not working and it's
Speaker 1: bad for you and you're blown smoke up. Someone's but right,
Speaker 1: what are you thinking? And then later on doctors were
Speaker 1: used to prescribe cigarettes going through the other end that's right,
Speaker 1: which is all untrue supposedly. Yeah, I guess that was
Speaker 1: the Edward Burney's thing. Oh yeah, intent um, all right,
Speaker 1: Next up, we have our mercury. Um. If you've ever
Speaker 1: heard of you've ever seen the awesome exhibit the terracotta soldiers.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see that? Um? China's first emperor, Qin
Speaker 1: chi Huang Um he was the moment the terracotta soldiers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the one that was buried in like this
Speaker 1: basically underground city that was so vast and had all
Speaker 1: these terracotta soldiers guarding him and his own specific to him.
Speaker 1: They've they've I was about to say rated much of it,
Speaker 1: but they've explored much of it, but not his actual
Speaker 1: tomb still because it has a moat of liquid mercury
Speaker 1: around it, so he's still in situ because of the
Speaker 1: local Yeah, that's pretty neat, pretty neat. And Um, he
Speaker 1: took the stuff as to make himself immortal, um, which
Speaker 1: is ironic because super toxic and it killed him before
Speaker 1: he was forty, but at the opposite effect it did. Um.
Speaker 1: His death didn't apparently get out to the rest of
Speaker 1: the world because mercury was used in other kinds of
Speaker 1: medicines for a very long time, apparently up until the parties. Um,
Speaker 1: if you had syphilis, your doctor would give you some
Speaker 1: sort of ointment, sometimes an injection of mercury to treat syphilis.
Speaker 1: And it may or may not have treated the syphilis,
Speaker 1: but it would definitely make your teeth fall out and
Speaker 1: make you what would I guess generously be called agitated. Yes,
Speaker 1: it had. There's a host of horrible things that can
Speaker 1: happen to you from mercury exposure. Yeah, like death. Um.
Speaker 1: Cinnabar was what they used in China as their or
Speaker 1: mercury for two thousand years. And uh, it's it's just
Speaker 1: I find it crazy that I know it was the
Speaker 1: first Emperor of China, so it was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: but it just seems weird that hey take this thing
Speaker 1: to make you live forever when it's actually one of
Speaker 1: the most toxic things you can put in your body.
Speaker 1: They had it backwards. Supposedly, Jeremy Piven had mercury poisoning
Speaker 1: in two he was eating sushi twice a day. I
Speaker 1: remember that, and then I heard that, and then I
Speaker 1: think I remember hearing that that wasn't true, and it
Speaker 1: was maybe it was like made up to get out
Speaker 1: of a movie or something. I don't know. I've got
Speaker 1: looking at that again. I definitely remember when that happened.
Speaker 1: Thought strange. I mean, I love sushi, like, yeah, anyone
Speaker 1: go back and listen to our sushi podcast. But I've
Speaker 1: never had mercurial or mercury poisoning. So chuck up next
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites. But I could find almost
Speaker 1: nothing more on this. I found that it did in
Speaker 1: fact exist, and there's schematics and stuff on the on
Speaker 1: the internet, but the whirling chair, there's not much to it.
Speaker 1: No um again. Mid nineteenth century when um the mentally
Speaker 1: ill were treated very poorly locked away put in iron cages. Um.
Speaker 1: They had one thing I found called a tranquilizing chair,
Speaker 1: and it's basically it looks like an electric chair. You're
Speaker 1: just sitting up completely strapped then, um, but you have
Speaker 1: a box over your head. Well, what's funny is that
Speaker 1: was one of the more humane techniques for treating mental illness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was like the result of the um humanism progressive
Speaker 1: movement from the mid nineteenth century. That's crazy and sad.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the history of the treatment metal mental illness
Speaker 1: not just like yeah, we've talked about it a lot,
Speaker 1: just across the ages. It's really really sad. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: misunderstood and still is in a lot of ways. Um.
Speaker 1: But the whirling chair was it was not all about
Speaker 1: it me. It was not an ice shower or laxative
Speaker 1: or an insulent comma or an insulin comma. It was
Speaker 1: much better. It was a chair with a spring and
Speaker 1: lever system basically where they it looks like they had
Speaker 1: a like it was hooked up to a like a crank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a crank that you basically just spun these people
Speaker 1: around until they passed out. And based on the schematics
Speaker 1: I saw if you were the operator, you had to
Speaker 1: wear pantaloon. Yes, that's right. And apparently they would say
Speaker 1: it would cure your schizophrenia. Um, because it would shuffle
Speaker 1: the contents of your brain and just the right way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like imagine being strapped to a chair that was spun
Speaker 1: around where you became so dizzy that you passed out,
Speaker 1: and on top of it, you have schizophrenia, right, and
Speaker 1: then on top of that they came out and you say,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? Are you cured? I'm cured? Yes?
Speaker 1: Can I please go home now? Yeah? Seriously, they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: at least we're not burning you at the stake for
Speaker 1: being a witch. Um. I wish there was more out
Speaker 1: there on that too, though. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff is just it went the way the dodos,
Speaker 1: So there's, you know, not much info on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's nothing. It's just there was such thing
Speaker 1: as a whirling chair. Here's how it worked, and the
Speaker 1: reason why they used it was to rearrange your brain
Speaker 1: if you had schizophrenia. That's right. So we'll keep going
Speaker 1: because this is a lot of fun. Yes it is,
Speaker 1: but first we have to take a commercial break and
Speaker 1: we will do that right now, and we're back Chuck
Speaker 1: and Chuck, do you remember what are we record on
Speaker 1: yesterday where we were talking about antioch t um. So
Speaker 1: remember we talked about how oxygen goes through and and
Speaker 1: steals electrons from other other atoms and other molecules to
Speaker 1: stabilize itself. And that's the process of oxidation. If you
Speaker 1: take that process and multiply it by powers of millions,
Speaker 1: what you have is radiation poisoning exposure, high levels of
Speaker 1: exposure to high levels of radiation, is what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say. Um. For the most part, we do everything
Speaker 1: we can to avoid this kind of thing. UM. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that in the UM late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: early twentieth century there were a lot of products on
Speaker 1: the shelf that did the opposite, that introduced radiation in
Speaker 1: the form of radium um in the in the hopes
Speaker 1: that it would promote health and cure disease. Yeah, Mary
Speaker 1: and Pierre Cury discovered it. In by UM, the US
Speaker 1: was manufacturing synthetic radium UH to use in such things
Speaker 1: like um radium schokolada from Burke and Brown it was,
Speaker 1: or radium bread from the Hitman block bakery. Radium was
Speaker 1: bread baked with radium water and popular until ninety six,
Speaker 1: and radium water was a big thing. The reason why
Speaker 1: it was a big thing apparently it kicked all of
Speaker 1: this off because there are natural spas in places like
Speaker 1: Hot Springs, Arkansas, UM and somebody started investigating the waters
Speaker 1: and found radon there and they said, well, rd on,
Speaker 1: that's radio active. Where can we find that? And they said,
Speaker 1: how about radium? So they started putting radium in everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had. Here's some of the other products and you
Speaker 1: can look these up. There a lot of fun when
Speaker 1: you look at these old school ads, you know. For
Speaker 1: the relegator, it was a um a radium lace bucket
Speaker 1: basically with a little spigot. It's like a little water tank.
Speaker 1: So it just introduced radiation to whatever water you put in. Yep.
Speaker 1: Or you could get what they called the radium coin
Speaker 1: that you could just drop like an alka seltzer into
Speaker 1: your water. Um. There was the radium scope, which is
Speaker 1: a toy inwo that offered the luminescence in the ad
Speaker 1: also said but also doubles as a wonderful night light
Speaker 1: because it glows. Oh yeah, it was for kids. Wow. Toothpaste, um,
Speaker 1: but from a man named Alfred Cury who was no
Speaker 1: relation really, even though he used that to his advantage
Speaker 1: the Curie name. And he also had the faux radio
Speaker 1: brand of cosmetics UH rejuvenates and brightens the ski in.
Speaker 1: This also kind of brings to focus why little kids
Speaker 1: chemistry sets frequently included radioactive materials like in the middle
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century it glowed well, no, because like
Speaker 1: that you could get it in water if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: or cosmetics or contraceptives or chocolate. So why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: put it in a kid's chemistry set too? So before
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that, Now I understand. So Supposedly the
Speaker 1: trend really started to die off in the thirties though,
Speaker 1: um thanks to something called rate a Thor and ratea
Speaker 1: Thor was a little tincture that you would take these
Speaker 1: little couple fluid ounce bottles that were highly radioactive. They
Speaker 1: had just tons of radium m and what I guess,
Speaker 1: one of the owners or one of the investors in
Speaker 1: the company, his name was Evan Buyers. He was a
Speaker 1: pro golfer too, I believe um. He very publicly died
Speaker 1: of radiation poisoning because he drank three bottles of this
Speaker 1: stuff a day. So after at the public was like,
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't be doing this anymore. Well, another thing
Speaker 1: they used it for between nineteen seventeen and nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: the US Radium Corporation UM used luminous paint to paint
Speaker 1: clocks clock faces so you could see them. And workers
Speaker 1: were even taught to shape paint brushes with their mouths
Speaker 1: to maintain a finer point. So they were sticking the
Speaker 1: paintbrushes with the paint on them in their mouth, and
Speaker 1: they encouraged them to paint their nails, their teeth, uh,
Speaker 1: and to ingest it. But management suspiciously always stayed away
Speaker 1: and avoided exposure themselves. And I know there were a
Speaker 1: bunch of lawsuits because of that. And the other thing
Speaker 1: I found two was they used it before viagran c alice.
Speaker 1: There were um they called them bougies b O U
Speaker 1: g I E s um radioactive wax rods inserted into
Speaker 1: the urethra. Ah isn't that crazy? Yeah, for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. Yeah. Or they had like an athletic supporter
Speaker 1: containing a layer of um radium impregnated fabric that you
Speaker 1: would wear if you had trouble getting an erection. It's
Speaker 1: not nearly as bad as the rods. No, no, all right,
Speaker 1: how about eurotherapy, dude, So this one apparently is labeled
Speaker 1: quack medicine, but there's a lot of there's a lot.
Speaker 1: It makes sense intuitively, so eurotherapy. Drinking or ingesting or
Speaker 1: having your own urine shot into your bloodstream. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I some people injected. Yeah, it's still a thing. It
Speaker 1: is still a thing. Yeah. UM. Here's why. Urine is
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the blood UM and when so in
Speaker 1: your your urine is water two and a half percent
Speaker 1: roughly is uria, which is actually a UM has antimicrobial, antimicrobial,
Speaker 1: anti fungal, and antibacterial product properties and um it also
Speaker 1: has another tune mineral stuff like that, salts, things like that. UM. Apparently,
Speaker 1: if your blood is toxic, you have toxins in your blood,
Speaker 1: your body, your body is triggered to clean it out,
Speaker 1: and your urine is clean. If your urine has toxins
Speaker 1: in it, your blood is cleaned out too. There's like
Speaker 1: the symbiotic um feedback loop where if one's clean, the
Speaker 1: other one's clean. If one's toxic, the other one's toxic,
Speaker 1: and that you can trigger a blood cleaning your blood
Speaker 1: cleaning drive supposedly by drinking your own urine. By reintroducing
Speaker 1: the toxins over and over again. Um, your blood could
Speaker 1: be conceivably cleaner. That's the thinking behind this, and there's
Speaker 1: actually again intuitively it makes sense. Yeah, they they Some
Speaker 1: people still think it can stimulate your immune system and
Speaker 1: actually fight cancer exactly basically by making your your body
Speaker 1: basically your immune system react more vigorously. Um, it's like
Speaker 1: running it through the ring or on purpose. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: problem is is there's no evidence behind it. There have
Speaker 1: been individual reports um of it stopping cancer growth, but
Speaker 1: no scientific evidence um has come out in favor of it.
Speaker 1: But people still do it. Yeah. And there's also been
Speaker 1: tons of stories about people surviving for days and weeks
Speaker 1: by drinking their own urine after being trapped in like
Speaker 1: a collapsed hotel or something like that. Right. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there's still there's still I guess, pockets of people who
Speaker 1: engage in urine therapy. Yeah. And um, also we should
Speaker 1: mention it is does not help your jellyfish sting I
Speaker 1: did it. Don't be dumb on that it actually definitely
Speaker 1: makes your jellyfish thing worse. That's another one. Things like
Speaker 1: why do people say that if it makes it worse?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's not an episode of Friends, for
Speaker 1: God's sake. I know they propagated a lie. Jerks who
Speaker 1: pete On who? I can't remember. I think didn't they
Speaker 1: all pe on Monica? Yeah? I think Monica got pete On,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if it was everybody. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was everybody. Of course you didn't show it. It probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been. I don't know. Yeah, I think it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: Courtney Cox, Alright, This next one UM A bit of
Speaker 1: a warning. It is sexual in nature. So if you're listening,
Speaker 1: maybe you should go ask your mom or dad if
Speaker 1: you should continue listening. If you're a child, yeah, an
Speaker 1: honest kittern't know. If you're an adult, you should call
Speaker 1: up your elderly mother or father. Can I listen to
Speaker 1: something about the female orgasm? Right? Which supposedly, apparently for
Speaker 1: especially in the Victorian Age, but for centuries before that,
Speaker 1: UM was widely considered not to exist. Right um. But strangely,
Speaker 1: there was a medical procedure that women would undergo called
Speaker 1: UM a pelvic massage yes to treat I don't think
Speaker 1: we even said hysteria because women were hysterical quote unquote right.
Speaker 1: They couldn't have orgasms, but they could have hysteria, which
Speaker 1: we should point out what the hysteria was is normal
Speaker 1: female sexuality. Okay, we know that now, but back then
Speaker 1: it was hysteria. So somehow somewhere along the way, and
Speaker 1: apparently there's um, there's evidence that in ancient Greece the
Speaker 1: pelvic massage was carried out. But in the Victorian Age
Speaker 1: you would go to your doctor if you're a woman,
Speaker 1: and get a pelvic massage, and then you would be
Speaker 1: brought to what was called hysterical paroxysm, which is orgasm, right,
Speaker 1: which didn't exist, that's right. Uh. They also it was
Speaker 1: hysteria or wandering womb um was what it was also called. Well,
Speaker 1: wandering room was different. Oh yeah, that was like um
Speaker 1: the idea and apparently Hippocrates either at least espoused it
Speaker 1: if he didn't come up with it. That was the
Speaker 1: idea that the womb or the uterus floated freely inside
Speaker 1: the woman and if it moved around too far it
Speaker 1: could cause all sorts of other problems. So it's different
Speaker 1: than hysteria. But the treatment was the same, yes, which
Speaker 1: was bringing a woman to climax a doctor hysterical paroxysm. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the doctor would do this um initially using his hands,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I read one article from the
Speaker 1: New York Times about it and said, there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that the male physicians enjoyed this. On the contrary, this
Speaker 1: male elite sought every opportunity to substitute other devices um
Speaker 1: or have the husband or a midwife, uh come in
Speaker 1: and you know, take care of business for them. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't some pervy doctor. This is a lot of
Speaker 1: misunderstanding going on at the time, they said. They said,
Speaker 1: by the end of the nineteenth century, sev of women
Speaker 1: suffered from hysteria, which can also be read as seventy
Speaker 1: of American women were normal sexual human beings. And I
Speaker 1: guess the other we're just repressed and didn't know they
Speaker 1: should be or could be normal sexual human beings. So
Speaker 1: it's just crazy they called the hysteria. It's um then
Speaker 1: that it went up until the nineteen twenties. So you
Speaker 1: were saying that that doctors were looking for any kind
Speaker 1: of substitute that you could get their hands. One well,
Speaker 1: apparently in the late nineteenth century somebody introduced the vibrator.
Speaker 1: After that it became a medical device originally when it
Speaker 1: was introduced, right, Yeah, because it brought that time to
Speaker 1: achieve the hysterical paroxysm down from anywhere up to an
Speaker 1: hour down to about ten minutes UM ideally. And um,
Speaker 1: you could buy him at Sears and Roebuck. You know.
Speaker 1: It was, like you said, a medical device, and women
Speaker 1: loved them. And uh, by the nineteen twenties they started
Speaker 1: to pere in erotic films and that's when people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is not something we should use. This is no
Speaker 1: longer a medical device, which is interesting. It's all sort
Speaker 1: of backwards, isn't it. So this one to me chuck.
Speaker 1: The next one leeches. Yeah, we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about medical leeches before, because they are still around, um,
Speaker 1: which is kind of hard to believe if you've never
Speaker 1: heard that little tidbit. Yeah, this is why in the
Speaker 1: intro I was saying like, hey, some of this stuff
Speaker 1: still works, and leeches are a sterling example of that.
Speaker 1: So for a very long time. You know, barbers were
Speaker 1: originally called barber surgeons, and they were called that because
Speaker 1: they would perform lots of surgery, which is why the
Speaker 1: barber pole is red and white. Hopefully they would hang
Speaker 1: their bloody towels and they would flip around in the wind,
Speaker 1: and the barber pole is symbolic of that bloody towels
Speaker 1: whipped around in the wind outside of barber's. Yeah, supposedly,
Speaker 1: that's the legend as far as I know, that's I
Speaker 1: think it's true. I believe it. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that Barber's would engage in was blood landing. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you remember the old Chiant Life Skit was Steve Martin
Speaker 1: years ago, he was a barber. You know, this is
Speaker 1: in the seventies, I think when he was a guest
Speaker 1: and people come in for everything and he's like, you
Speaker 1: just need a good bleeding, like everything under the sun.
Speaker 1: People would come in for let's just put a lancet
Speaker 1: in there and open up a vein. See what happens.
Speaker 1: And that's basically what they did. They would, you know,
Speaker 1: it was this more spiritual thing, like the evil spirits
Speaker 1: would be out through your blood or like we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the anesthesia episode, they would use that for anesthesia
Speaker 1: and do stupor through blood. Boss. But um, the they
Speaker 1: wouldn't always use lancets. Oh, and apparently that was one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why George Washington may have died, was
Speaker 1: just too much blood blighting. His doctor really really put
Speaker 1: his foot on the gas with blood lighting. And when
Speaker 1: he designed his deathbed. Did she go to Mountain Vernon?
Speaker 1: Didn't you go? Yeah? I've been a couple of times.
Speaker 1: There was like a whole they have, like I think
Speaker 1: there's the blood lighting bowl that they used on him
Speaker 1: still there. Oh, I didn't even notice. There's a separate
Speaker 1: museum that's like brand new. I went to all that stuff.
Speaker 1: That is that where it is? Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's the bed that he died in right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can land blood lighting bowls right there. Yes, you
Speaker 1: can't go l in it. Um. But the the rather
Speaker 1: than lance it's they would also sometimes use are very
Speaker 1: frequently use leeches, which and they've been using them for
Speaker 1: thousands of years apparently for blood lighting. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: was back when they practiced what was known as humorl medicine,
Speaker 1: based on the four humors in the body, which is
Speaker 1: everyone knows because of the popular T shirt we sell
Speaker 1: flam yellow bile, black bile, and blood for the Four Humors? Right?
Speaker 1: What t shirt do we sell? I was just kidding.
Speaker 1: We should have one totally the Four Humors. Just have
Speaker 1: that on there and then s y s K on
Speaker 1: the front. Okay, it could be a big seller. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't want a shirt that says black, bile and flam um.
Speaker 1: So with blood lighting or with using leeches for blood
Speaker 1: lighting everyone who. I think it was the Indians originally
Speaker 1: from India who came up with this using leeches for
Speaker 1: blood letting, and they were really onto something because, like
Speaker 1: you said, medical leeches are still in use today here
Speaker 1: in the United States. They're an f d A approved
Speaker 1: medical device, and leeches secrete something called here here Harudin.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going with, Haruden h I r U
Speaker 1: d I. And I'll bet the guests from Sawbones would
Speaker 1: have said it right um, and in in their saliva
Speaker 1: you will find haruden and Harudin is an anti coagulant. No,
Speaker 1: it's a coagulant, so it keeps you from bleeding to death. Um.
Speaker 1: It has antibiotic properties, it's a numbing agent, and it's
Speaker 1: a vasodilator, right, which means that it relaxes your your blood.
Speaker 1: So it can flow more freely. But it also is
Speaker 1: an anti coagulant, so you don't bleed to death. All
Speaker 1: of this in each saliva. And they use it today,
Speaker 1: um for like skin graphs and for um when they
Speaker 1: reattach limbs, that kind of thing. Yeah. I think we
Speaker 1: had someone even right in and send us pictures of
Speaker 1: their medical leeches, which are in little vials. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. But I mean, this is an ancient, ancient,
Speaker 1: millennia old medical technique that is still to this day used,
Speaker 1: and it's an FDA approved medical device. Now, leeches are
Speaker 1: I just think that's really cool. It is super cool, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because it means it's there's still an open
Speaker 1: mind in the medical community. Oh yeah, it's way open.
Speaker 1: You know. Let's try whatever. Uh, we are gonna keep going.
Speaker 1: I say, we do all ten for the first time ever.
Speaker 1: What about you? Yeah, let's do it. All right, We're
Speaker 1: gonna keep going right after this, all right, Chuck, we're back. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: we're taking it home with I'm just I'm doing some
Speaker 1: I'm taking some medicine, man, some some cocaine and opium.
Speaker 1: I bought it at the corner store. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you could buy your rig if you inject it from
Speaker 1: the serious catalog. Yeah, a cocaine kit. Yeah and seen.
Speaker 1: So how are we doing a scene? I was playing myself,
Speaker 1: you know, I was doing a scene. Uh. Apparently you
Speaker 1: could get a morphine, cocaine all this stuff, um, very
Speaker 1: very easily, and in tons of medical or medicine and
Speaker 1: elixers that you would buy over the counter in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Yeah, not just medicines. Um, cocaine was in
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, um, most notably coca cola at first, Um,
Speaker 1: cocaine toothdrops give your kids, Yeah, cocaine throat lozenges. We did.
Speaker 1: You just reminded me. We did a gallery. There's a
Speaker 1: gallery on stuff you should know, Like, um, you have
Speaker 1: the cocaine poster right the kid, Uh yeah, cocaine tooth drops. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's like crazy medical ads or medicine pharmaceutical ads
Speaker 1: from yesteryear. We'll put that up when this is really
Speaker 1: good stuff. Yeah, but that one's in there, the cocaine
Speaker 1: tooth drops. And it's got like a little kid playing
Speaker 1: happy because he's on cocaine, playing vigorously. And look at
Speaker 1: this kid. Did you see Mrs Winslow's soothing syrup for
Speaker 1: teething children. Look at out wasted that kid is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he can't even pick his head up off the pillar. Hilarious.
Speaker 1: His eyes are half lidded. He's like, I love teething
Speaker 1: um for the throat lozenges. The ads as indispensable for singers, teaches,
Speaker 1: and orators to quiet a sore throat and to quiet
Speaker 1: the demons in your head. Yeah, they order to add
Speaker 1: the demons in your head. Or how about this cocaine wine.
Speaker 1: The Oka line market was really big. Um. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: then Marianna was the most recognized and most popular brand
Speaker 1: at the time, but there were a lot of them,
Speaker 1: and that's just cocaine. We also talked about opium um.
Speaker 1: There was something I saw another ad for something called
Speaker 1: stickney and pores paregoric and McCormick made that the popular
Speaker 1: spice maker and they even have the recommended doses for infants,
Speaker 1: children and adults, and it was alcohol and the rest
Speaker 1: was opium ninety two proof man and that is that
Speaker 1: looked on them or laudanum laudanum. No, but that was
Speaker 1: like an alcohol mixer. Yeah, maybe I guess it was
Speaker 1: laudanum um. Is that how you say it? Laudanum? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. It's not the same as de lauded, right,
Speaker 1: it's different, but de lauded isn't opiate. But it's like
Speaker 1: a it's just a straight up opiate that's used for medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy. People just used to like to
Speaker 1: put a few drops under their tongue and like it
Speaker 1: would start their child or like, uh, I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about the Soderberg's TV show. Is that on still?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't kept up with it lately,
Speaker 1: but in the opening episodes, I mean, the doctor what's
Speaker 1: his face is like shooting cocaine between his toes on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. I watched Edwood again the other day.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's even better than ever. It's great
Speaker 1: movie Hill Murray so great. Yeah. Uh and then uh,
Speaker 1: I've I forgot Martin Landa was like a junkie in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's an opium p and yeah, but he injects
Speaker 1: it using his sears in Roebuck opium injection kill but
Speaker 1: probably yeah, lest just lots of crazy things. Uh So Yeah,
Speaker 1: strong drugs available over the counter until people wised up,
Speaker 1: uh and started making strong drugs pharmaceutical style. They're like,
Speaker 1: you can't have this anymore unless you come to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Then we'll hook you up. How about trepid nation, man,
Speaker 1: which you pointed out we talked about before in the
Speaker 1: lobotomy episode. I think so, it's just I know we've
Speaker 1: mentioned it at some point because we talked about the
Speaker 1: movie Pie. Yeah. Where um spoiler alert, Oh yeah, big spoiler.
Speaker 1: That's how it ends. Yeah, it turns out that um
Speaker 1: people have done that. There was a guy named um
Speaker 1: Bart Hughes who was a I guess kind of like
Speaker 1: a crazy genius from the nineteen sixties. He decided that
Speaker 1: um our brains originally were constructed for us to be
Speaker 1: walking on all fours, and once we started walking upright,
Speaker 1: the blood supply to our brain was diminished. Makes sense
Speaker 1: in a weird way. He also decided that our skulls
Speaker 1: had grown to decrease blood flow in the brain, and
Speaker 1: that the best way to counteract this was to cut
Speaker 1: a hole in your skull to allow more blood flow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what trepid nation is. Drilling a hole in your skull, right,
Speaker 1: or cutting a whole piece a square, a circle, like
Speaker 1: removing a sizeable chunk. There's um evidence of trepid nation
Speaker 1: that goes back thousands of years years. Yeah, and some
Speaker 1: of these skulls show almost half the skull removed. But
Speaker 1: what's crazy is with trepid nation, including Bart hughes own
Speaker 1: self trepen nation, the patient frequently survived. And this is
Speaker 1: long before anesthesia. We're talking again ten thousand years ago UM,
Speaker 1: where people were basically held down and somebody in say
Speaker 1: Peru or Mesoamerica, or India or Russia, all over the place,
Speaker 1: this this practice was carried out. They would grab an
Speaker 1: obsidian rock and start shaving away at the scalp and
Speaker 1: then basically chisel out a portion of the skull and
Speaker 1: remove it to allow the brain to um well, either
Speaker 1: to allow evil spirits out. Yeah, back then that was
Speaker 1: more of the line of thought. Or it's possible that
Speaker 1: they were treating an injury and this would reduce brain swelling.
Speaker 1: I found a great article a vice Um. They did
Speaker 1: an interview with Amanda Fielding, who in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: Tree banned herself. She was a follower of Bart. He
Speaker 1: was all bet she was. I think she's a director
Speaker 1: of the Beckley Foundation, UM who does research into consciousness
Speaker 1: man and um, she actually made a little film of
Speaker 1: her doing it. You can watch. Um it's it looks
Speaker 1: like super eight and it's like super choppy. It's not
Speaker 1: very uh intensive, but two and a half stars, but
Speaker 1: two and half stars to two tomatoes. But um, it
Speaker 1: does show her drilling herself in the head. Um. She
Speaker 1: said she was very cautious and prepared very carefully, but
Speaker 1: she used an electric drill with a flat bottom and
Speaker 1: a foot pedal, tested the drill on the membranes of
Speaker 1: my hand to see would damage the skin, and then
Speaker 1: did it, made a film about it, and then she
Speaker 1: said afterward, I wrapped my head in a scarf, ate
Speaker 1: a stake to replace iron for moss blood, and went
Speaker 1: to a party. And she points out that she's not
Speaker 1: advocating self trepidation at all, but she said a benefit her.
Speaker 1: She said there was a feeling of of the tide
Speaker 1: coming in slowly and gently, very subtly. And one thing
Speaker 1: she really noticed was a change in her dream patterns.
Speaker 1: Her dreams became much less anxious. But she also says
Speaker 1: that it could be a placebo as well. She acknowledges
Speaker 1: all that but it was interesting. I mean, this was
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and I think she was a follower
Speaker 1: of that guy because she said that the loss of
Speaker 1: pulse pressure UM in the brain when you're Fontanelle's clothes
Speaker 1: basically is the reason that she did it, like she
Speaker 1: fully believed that. But that's part hughes all over the place. So, UM,
Speaker 1: don't do it people, No, did we need to say that?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I hope not. All Right, we
Speaker 1: got one more. He thought it couldn't get any weird er.
Speaker 1: Corpse medicine a k a. Cannibalism, Yeah, that's another way
Speaker 1: to put it. So we did not cover in cannibalism weirdly,
Speaker 1: did we. I'd be surprised. I think that's pretty comprehensive.
Speaker 1: If we didn't, I don't remember doing it. Of course
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean anything. Um. So, corpse medicine or cannibalism
Speaker 1: is basically eating human flesh to cure disease. And apparently
Speaker 1: it started out with the Egyptians who decided that um,
Speaker 1: if you ate mummies, yeah, or mummy powder at least, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it could cure a lot of different diseases, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: muscle aches and headaches. Uh. They also would rub human
Speaker 1: fat on, like topically on your body, and they thought
Speaker 1: something was wrong. Drinking the blood of a gladiator in
Speaker 1: ancient Rome was supposedly enough to cure your epilepsy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how about that. Yeah, drinking blood is a big one
Speaker 1: just throughout the ages. Um And speaking of mummies, also,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just food. There's is awesome cult of weird
Speaker 1: article about mummy brown where up until the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: I think maybe even the twentieth century, um mummies were
Speaker 1: used to make a specific type of brown pigment used
Speaker 1: in paints called mummia. Interesting. Yeah, and then the artists
Speaker 1: started to figure out where it was actually coming from
Speaker 1: and they stopped using it. But mummy and brown came
Speaker 1: from mummies. Is that still a color? I think? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you can get like Bear Premium plus mummy and brown. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's made with mummies anymore. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen it before. I've seen it before I read
Speaker 1: the article, So it's out there somewhere. Uh. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: else would they eat? Fat bones? Yea fat bones. Grind
Speaker 1: it up and eat it and you'll be cured. There's
Speaker 1: there's a pretty cool Smithsonian article called the Gruesome History
Speaker 1: of Eating Corpses of Medicine. If this kind of thing
Speaker 1: rings your bell, if you just gotta no more? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? You ready for? Nap? Hey? This one? Yeah? Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about bizarre stuff, type
Speaker 1: the word bizarre in the search bar how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com and it will bring up this and who
Speaker 1: knows what else. Yeah, we got a lot of bizarre
Speaker 1: things in there. Yeah, and both of us just said bizarre.
Speaker 1: So now it's magic listener mail time. Hey, before I
Speaker 1: read listener mail, I want to ask a favor. Uh. First,
Speaker 1: My Songs for Kids is a great foundation run out
Speaker 1: of here in Atlanta. And what they do is they
Speaker 1: put musicians and children's hospitals and camps for kids with
Speaker 1: special needs and basically play music form. It's that simple
Speaker 1: and it's really neat and um. You can start a
Speaker 1: fundraising page through your band, So I thought, let me
Speaker 1: try and raise two thousand dollars. WHOA, that's lofty goal.
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty small. Oh yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: it is. So my old man band, El Cheapo, we
Speaker 1: started a page and you can donate as little as
Speaker 1: ten dollars and that would really mean a lot to
Speaker 1: me and those kids. So just go to Songs four
Speaker 1: Kids Foundation dot org slash l cheap oh E L
Speaker 1: c h E A p O. That's the band. Do
Speaker 1: you have a song in particular you want to play. No,
Speaker 1: you'll play any of the songs. I'll play any of them.
Speaker 1: That's a great attitude. Yeah, just go to Songs for
Speaker 1: Kids Foundation dot org slash el chiepo and like I said,
Speaker 1: donate ten dollars or more if you want and help
Speaker 1: l Chiepo reach their goal of two thousand and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it, folks. Alright, so listener, mail, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this the or the the the or the Greetings
Speaker 1: from Manhattan, guys. I just finished catching up on a
Speaker 1: few weeks of podcasts. I was excited to hear you
Speaker 1: mentioned the pronunciation of the in the folklore episode. I
Speaker 1: studied vocal music throughout my youth and in college, and
Speaker 1: one of the more important rules for my teachers that
Speaker 1: stuck out with me was about the word. The word
Speaker 1: and word combinations can sound surprisingly different when they're sung
Speaker 1: versus spoken, So there are a bunch of interesting tricks
Speaker 1: he used to counteract this diphthongs are used to emphasize
Speaker 1: two adjacent vowels so a listener can hear both, while
Speaker 1: glottal stops create a discreet stop between words so they
Speaker 1: sound distinct rather than like a big old mess of sounds.
Speaker 1: With the word the the trick is to slightly adjust
Speaker 1: how it's pronounced. These should be used when it precedes
Speaker 1: a word beginning with a consonant and uh, the sorry,
Speaker 1: and these should be used when it precedes a vowel.
Speaker 1: May sound silly and bourgeois, but there is a reason
Speaker 1: for this. Like Josh guests, a phrase like the apple
Speaker 1: sounds normal when it's spoken, but when you're singing in
Speaker 1: your words are strung together, it starts to sound a
Speaker 1: lot more like the apple makes sense, which is weird
Speaker 1: and a made up word. But switched to the apple
Speaker 1: and suddenly you've got yourself two fine words that sound
Speaker 1: recognizable even when sung. Next time you're listening to any
Speaker 1: vocal music, keep an ear out for this. I bet
Speaker 1: you'll start to notice this use everywhere. Big shout out
Speaker 1: to my former vocal teacher Mrs Alphart A U F
Speaker 1: F A R T H Alphart, So you would say
Speaker 1: the alphar that's right, Alfar. So she thanks her for
Speaker 1: making her such a nut about pronunciation, and that is
Speaker 1: from Nicole. Thanks a lot, Nicole, very nice. We appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Um more knowledge, just we just keep packing it in.
Speaker 1: If you want to impart some more knowledge, if you
Speaker 1: want to inject it like some sort of yearine therapy
Speaker 1: into our vein or botulis um in our face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us via 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 to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
Speaker 1: joined us at home on the web. Stuff you should
Speaker 1: Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com