Speaker 1: M Hi everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selecta, I've chosen a rather peculiar
Speaker 1: episode that peaks in on a strange and fascinating quirk
Speaker 1: of nature and geography that changed the course of history.
Speaker 1: A lot of the sciences and humanities are covered here,
Speaker 1: and it is a gross episode, but it's also engrossing,
Speaker 1: so please enjoy this one on hookworms and the South.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Rowland. She goes,
Speaker 1: she just ran away after nine years. I knew that
Speaker 1: would happen eventually. Yep. She had her little bendel sack
Speaker 1: over her shoulder and she's barefoot, which is dangerous. Jerry,
Speaker 1: that was a nice little set up. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: get uh, what do you call it, the do itch? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or well that's the best one, the ground itch do,
Speaker 1: which is way better than ground get a little discomfort
Speaker 1: in the webbing between your toes, a little scratchy. Maybe
Speaker 1: a few days later you're like, this is this athlete's foot? No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make you cough. Yeah. Plus, you're no athlete.
Speaker 1: Don't flatter yourself, that's what they would say. And then
Speaker 1: you start coughing a little bit, and a few weeks
Speaker 1: after that, you're just a big dope that can't lift
Speaker 1: an arm. Do you go stand up and do anything?
Speaker 1: You have hookworm? Yeah? Uh, well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: Were you told as a child like you'll get worms?
Speaker 1: And you're gonna ask me that because I grew up
Speaker 1: in the South, Well no, I mean I was told
Speaker 1: that too. I don't remember hearing this stuff. I remember
Speaker 1: being scared about uh, scoliosis, and I remember being scared
Speaker 1: about nuclear annihilation and so as I um, and that's
Speaker 1: about it. Razors and apples at Halloween, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: as we've covered, not true. Any instance that happened to
Speaker 1: that happened because of the urban legend not gi 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 worms here
Speaker 1: on planet Earth. If you ask me. Well, agreed, because,
Speaker 1: as you will see, the social context in 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 phyle
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: set 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 right at and
Speaker 1: in they have cutting plates also called fangs or teeth. Mouthparts, yeah,
Speaker 1: mouth parts, and as Tracy Wilson would put it, and
Speaker 1: um they use those things for sucking blood. So what
Speaker 1: they want it's your blood because they get nutrients from
Speaker 1: your blood and that makes them parasites. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: as as we sourced a few really great articles on this.
Speaker 1: But um as one of them points out to that
Speaker 1: a good parasite or a good hookworm doesn't want to
Speaker 1: kill you because, as it says in this article, that
Speaker 1: means the ride is over, right exactly. They want to
Speaker 1: keep you alive and lazy so they can just keep
Speaker 1: reproducing and keep sucking on your blood forever and ever
Speaker 1: and ever. And in a very large part, fookworms have
Speaker 1: covalved with humans, and they've done so in a way
Speaker 1: that they get the maximum benefit out of infecting a
Speaker 1: human um without the pitfall of killing the human and
Speaker 1: ending the ride for themselves. Right. So um and they've
Speaker 1: had four hundred million years to do it. And there's
Speaker 1: two kinds of hookworms. Mainly, there's tons of hookworms. Like
Speaker 1: from what I understand, just about every animal. Every mammal
Speaker 1: has its own type of hookworm, but they don't infect
Speaker 1: cross animal typically. And there's two types of hookworms that
Speaker 1: infects humans specifically, there's the New World hookworm naricatur Americana
Speaker 1: is very open minded. And then there's the old word
Speaker 1: world hookworm uh and solostoma duodenale minded right, and so
Speaker 1: both of them thrive in warmer tropical ish climates and
Speaker 1: the an AMERICANUS in particular loves sandy, loamy soil. And
Speaker 1: it just so happens that in the America in south
Speaker 1: has just the kind of climate to host an American
Speaker 1: it's and it's around. Yeah, so here's what happens. We
Speaker 1: were kind of kidding around about Jerry walking around barefoot.
Speaker 1: But Jerry's old like me, and she grew up in
Speaker 1: the South. We were all we all come from sharecroppers
Speaker 1: and uh had outhouses. So here's what would happen um
Speaker 1: all the way up until like which is kind of distressing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought so too. You could walk around barefoot, as
Speaker 1: uh Southern children were wanted to do. Yeah. Apparently the
Speaker 1: chances of your of being a kid with shoes, especially
Speaker 1: in the rural South, was like next to nothing up
Speaker 1: until that maybe the fifties or sixties. Really yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: so they would like we talked about the do uh
Speaker 1: the do it? She would walk around barefoot. These little
Speaker 1: guys would get between your toes, uh, root into your
Speaker 1: body through the feet, make their way to the blood
Speaker 1: vessels and start the voyage to the lungs. This is
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic voyage. Well for them it is. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: 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 sucking 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, I was about to
Speaker 1: say they like to who knows, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: both depending on the mood. They have to in order
Speaker 1: to reproduce. So what you do is they get into
Speaker 1: that into ston they find a lover. They take a lover.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, Robert Lamb in here, they take a lover
Speaker 1: and then they attach theirselves to the intestinal wall and say,
Speaker 1: I'm here forever. I'm gonna I mean up to I've
Speaker 1: seen up to thirty thousand eggs a day. Right, the
Speaker 1: female 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: a human can host up to about five hundred worms
Speaker 1: and survive. You're not living a very fulfilling life, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, but um, you you could have a number
Speaker 1: of these worms all pumping out eggs and the worm
Speaker 1: typically lives between one and five years in the comforts
Speaker 1: of your gut. And they in um, you can also
Speaker 1: be reinfected. And here's how right, So when the females
Speaker 1: are spreading out a thousand to thirty thousand eggs, take
Speaker 1: your pick. On a daily basis, you're pooping those eggs
Speaker 1: out and if you're pooping in say, like uh like
Speaker 1: by the bushes or in some sort of like outhouse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's eighteen seventy five in West Virginia. You don't have
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing, right, and let's say your outhouse isn't all
Speaker 1: that great, or you're just again pooping in the bushes.
Speaker 1: You are probably not wearing shoes. Those two things usually
Speaker 1: go hand in hand. And so you're stepping in your
Speaker 1: old fecal material that's still had eggs in it before
Speaker 1: those eggs have since hatched into larva. Larva gone through
Speaker 1: the first two larval stages, entered the third infective larval stage,
Speaker 1: and now it's crawling up into your foot again, and
Speaker 1: you're what's called worm burden is expanded even further from
Speaker 1: one or two to ten to twenty two up to hundreds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's if you just accidentally step in old pooh,
Speaker 1: whether it's like spread around by animals walking around or
Speaker 1: by the rain. Um, the chances of are exponentially more.
Speaker 1: If you have a good old fashioned poop slinging fight. Sure,
Speaker 1: you you know you don't want to get hit in
Speaker 1: the mouth, but oh my god, UM, the other problem
Speaker 1: that um well, it was part of the problem was that, uh,
Speaker 1: that was the second version of that even was that
Speaker 1: people were using poop as fertilizer. Now it's one thing
Speaker 1: again you can't really catch I'm sure you can catch
Speaker 1: some worms. I know trick gnosis is a problem for
Speaker 1: humans and that's a pork worm um. But you you
Speaker 1: using say, horse manure is relatively safe compared to using
Speaker 1: human manure as fertilizer in your field. That's a relatively
Speaker 1: recent discovery. People were using human manure as fertilizer for very,
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 the 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 right before they dumped
Speaker 1: it exactly, and it would be fertilizer and it'd be
Speaker 1: great to make a crops grow, but it also just
Speaker 1: contaminate your entire field with hookworms. And then little kids
Speaker 1: would go out and work the field shoeless and they
Speaker 1: would become infected from that too. So there were all
Speaker 1: these really great opportunities for people to become infected by
Speaker 1: hookworms by but there the hookworm habitat followed a certain
Speaker 1: a certain line from about West Virginia down to I
Speaker 1: think East Texas. Uh, and beneath that line that was
Speaker 1: the hookworm belt. And above it they used human manure
Speaker 1: for fertilizer too, but they didn't have hookworm. It was
Speaker 1: in the South that the hookworm was a problem, and
Speaker 1: it was a big problem, it turned out. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just occurred to me. We walked right past maybe the
Speaker 1: best band name of all time in here, what worm burden?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Wormbirds is pretty good. Um. All right, well
Speaker 1: that's the setup, uh before we hit you with a
Speaker 1: social context. So let's take a little break here and
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about my old kinfolk
Speaker 1: right after this. Alright, so before we broke, we talked
Speaker 1: about what the hookworm is and all the different, uh
Speaker 1: myriad ways which it could spread, from accidentally walking in
Speaker 1: poop to poop slanging fights, night soil nights released the
Speaker 1: night soil rolling in it to ultimate rotically increase your
Speaker 1: worm burden. Um. So you found this great article called
Speaker 1: how a worm gave the South a bad name by
Speaker 1: a woman named Rachel Newer. Um, it's on Nova. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really good, and she is from the South
Speaker 1: and kind of wrote it from that point of view. Um,
Speaker 1: and I get the feeling like, like me, she kind
Speaker 1: of his long head to defend the American South as Hey,
Speaker 1: we're not a bunch of dumb, lazy yokels. Because that
Speaker 1: was you know, for a long time, um, and still
Speaker 1: continuing today to a certain degree. Yeah, that notion kind
Speaker 1: of exists that if you're from the South, you're kind
Speaker 1: of slow, you may be a little dim witted, you
Speaker 1: may be lazy. And this was you know, for white folks,
Speaker 1: Black folks, Native Americans, just something about the South made
Speaker 1: you lazy and dumb, especially among the lower socioeconomic classes.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't just like off the cuff um stereotyping.
Speaker 1: It was rooted in fact, in reality, there was something
Speaker 1: different about people of a of the lower socioeconomic classes
Speaker 1: in the South. Specifically, if you put them side by
Speaker 1: side among the same socioeconomic classes of the North, the
Speaker 1: ones in the North would be like, let's shovel some
Speaker 1: cold baby, and the ones in the South would be like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna lay here down next to my wheelbarrow
Speaker 1: because I can't I can't get up. And so Southerners
Speaker 1: were came to be seen as lazy, shiftless, couldn't be
Speaker 1: trusted to do an honest day's work, and they just
Speaker 1: thought it was part of the Southern character. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this wasn't just um a perception, like they literally lagged
Speaker 1: 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, right,
Speaker 1: so it would have buried in the South, and it
Speaker 1: would have been for any region right at level of
Speaker 1: devastation and um um death. But coupled with their already
Speaker 1: predisposition to this, that what what came to be called
Speaker 1: the lazy germ Uh it was, it just set it
Speaker 1: back even further. Yeah. And at one point in the
Speaker 1: American South up to fort amazingly of the population, like
Speaker 1: you said, from southeastern Texas to West Virginia and all
Speaker 1: the way down, um was infected with hookworm. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I mean, it's obviously not a majority,
Speaker 1: almost a majority that would have it would have been
Speaker 1: a dumb Southerner. I mean, that's a lot of folks.
Speaker 1: It is a lot of folks, And that was the
Speaker 1: culprit mind 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 nineteen 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 they It says
Speaker 1: in this article that it was almost impossible to avoid
Speaker 1: if you were poor and lived in the South, because
Speaker 1: you also didn't have very good sanitation. No, you were
Speaker 1: just 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. Yeah, 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 symptoms like stomach bloat. Uh what what was
Speaker 1: the the I thing? Like this? The dull, fishy stair
Speaker 1: fishy i'd stare. Yeah, just sort of like they're basically
Speaker 1: described these kids just sort of vacant, right, just staring
Speaker 1: off into space. Um. So you know some of those
Speaker 1: are physical symptoms, but others were literally like a lower
Speaker 1: i Q. Right. And so they believe that an Americans
Speaker 1: 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 by
Speaker 1: hookworm infections. Yeah. Sometimes girls wouldn't begin menstruation. Boys a
Speaker 1: lot of times would not even hit their growth spurts.
Speaker 1: And not only where they had lower i q s
Speaker 1: and learning, uh, you know, development disabilities, but they were
Speaker 1: smaller and weaker. Yeah, and then you combine this loss
Speaker 1: of blood. So so apparently about a hundred worms in
Speaker 1: a in a normal adult will drink about a teaspoon
Speaker 1: a day, which doesn't sound like that much. But if
Speaker 1: you couple it that level of iron deficiency with uh,
Speaker 1: pre existing malnourishment due to poverty or the lack of
Speaker 1: availability of like good food, Uh, then it really becomes
Speaker 1: a huge problem. And it goes from like this is
Speaker 1: a problem to this is this is a catastrophic problem
Speaker 1: that can keep an entire region of a country down
Speaker 1: productive productively. Yeah. And it uh like a lot of
Speaker 1: disease we've talked about, whether it's like famine or lack
Speaker 1: of clean water. It's it's cyclical in nature, so it
Speaker 1: would occur where there was poverty, and then it would
Speaker 1: keep people from working to work their way out of poverty.
Speaker 1: And it just kind of compounded on each other. Right,
Speaker 1: and then think about slavery as well. Right, So, not
Speaker 1: only have you been brought over to the US as
Speaker 1: a slave, you're being forced to work against your will
Speaker 1: in these horrific conditions. You're also being forced to work
Speaker 1: and live in the same conditions that promotes hookworm. So
Speaker 1: you're feeling lazy and shiftless. Ts for you you're a slave.
Speaker 1: Add that to your toil and misery, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I could 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 the story of Charles
Speaker 1: Styles and hookworm, it's a big roller coaster, right all right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: nineteen o two, this guy named Charles Styles comes along.
Speaker 1: He's a zoologist from from New York, city, educated in Europe,
Speaker 1: no less, 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. Yeah.
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 I
Speaker 1: was educating by the way, exactly, and the people would
Speaker 1: just walk away all right, is that I went down.
Speaker 1: 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 moment right, because again, you gotta
Speaker 1: you have to be trading in fecal material here. So
Speaker 1: like this guy had his hands on human poop at
Speaker 1: some point, right, or thought to look there? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was in a good old fashioned poop slang. Inte.
Speaker 1: It makes the most sense that he was. He's like
Speaker 1: something's on to god, Oh it's a worm. Uh. The
Speaker 1: point is, though he was not well received, local doctors
Speaker 1: didn't want to hear it. They would listen. They dismissed
Speaker 1: him as you know, this this carpetbag in 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. Yeah, crazy Europe
Speaker 1: your animal expert. Yeah. They really didn't listen to him much.
Speaker 1: So he was like, fine, I'll just go to John
Speaker 1: de rock Feller and tell him I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: on you. That's basically what happened. Yeah, Rockefeller was this
Speaker 1: is at the time when income inequality was about at
Speaker 1: the levels it was now, and the wealthy industrialists of
Speaker 1: the age were really really worried that they were going
Speaker 1: to have the social order overthrown by angry people, so
Speaker 1: they invented philanthropy. Right. Yeah, this is back when they
Speaker 1: worried about that kind of thing, right, And Rockefeller said, well,
Speaker 1: we can't just we can't do anything to actually support
Speaker 1: the problems that capitalism creates, because then we'll just be
Speaker 1: drawing attention to the fact that there are major problems
Speaker 1: with capitalist system. What else can I support? And he
Speaker 1: heard about Styles, and Styles took a meeting with Rockefeller
Speaker 1: and some of his his higher up friends, and apparently
Speaker 1: at that meeting they closed the deal, like we're funding
Speaker 1: this thing with the million bucks right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: which is about twenty six million today and they set
Speaker 1: up the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of hookworm disease.
Speaker 1: That's right. But um, despite the fact that they were
Speaker 1: trying to help Southerners, um, not only with a medical issue,
Speaker 1: but to advance themselves as a people. Um again, the
Speaker 1: Southerners A they didn't want a light being shown on
Speaker 1: this problem because it's gross, uh, and it has a stigma.
Speaker 1: But they didn't want um again. They didn't want these
Speaker 1: Yankees coming down there and saying they can fix you,
Speaker 1: you know. And Rockefeller said t s. He said, I've
Speaker 1: got an oyster edition named after me, maybe the best
Speaker 1: oyster dish besides raw. I'm glad you said that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back and talk a little bit about the road
Speaker 1: to eradication right after this whom in your body food,
Speaker 1: don't do you good woman, your body and your food,
Speaker 1: don't do your Lona around up, come in a night
Speaker 1: name and we're back and Chuck, we had a not
Speaker 1: just a jingle that was a real blues song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are like, man, somebody really made an authentic old
Speaker 1: blues sounding jingle just for this episode. No, that was
Speaker 1: the legendary Blind Blake with his song Hookworm Blues, which
Speaker 1: was a real song about the hookworm blues. And I
Speaker 1: think blind Blake came up with that song in nineteen six,
Speaker 1: I believe. And the fact that he is singing about
Speaker 1: hookworms um starting in the nineteen twenties represents, or it
Speaker 1: just goes to show, like how much progress was made
Speaker 1: between the time the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission was set up
Speaker 1: and blind Blake had his number one hit, his number
Speaker 1: one and in between that time for for promoting this
Speaker 1: idea that there was such thing as hookworm and that
Speaker 1: it was a real problem. Because when the Rockefeller Sanitary
Speaker 1: Commission was set up in nineteen nine, the South was
Speaker 1: still in face clean the groups of reconstruction. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the reconstruction era anymore is the Jim Crow South, but
Speaker 1: it was still really far behind as a result of
Speaker 1: the war, and there were not a lot of public
Speaker 1: services available. So one thing the rock Feller 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 nine.
Speaker 1: And like you said, they Rockefeller donated a million bucks,
Speaker 1: which is how much today? It's pretty good. Um, And
Speaker 1: they realized, well, I don't assume this was kind of
Speaker 1: a purposeful move, um that they got a Southerner on
Speaker 1: board to kind of help lead the charge. Definitely. Um.
Speaker 1: This person named Wickliff Rose, great name. If there's a
Speaker 1: hero of this 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 Whyecliffe Rose was the one who uh Wyecliffe. That's
Speaker 1: how I 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: write cure people, then it doesn't really help. So this
Speaker 1: would be Matthew McConaughey then in the movie. Yeah so
Speaker 1: and and Paul Giamatti And this is McConaughey coming in now.
Speaker 1: Uh So, they get this southerner east from Nashville on
Speaker 1: board to run the organization. And they had this approach
Speaker 1: where they would go to a town that they would
Speaker 1: go to a town in the South with these doctors.
Speaker 1: But before they did that, they would start this um
Speaker 1: campaign like an awareness campaign, um in schools to get
Speaker 1: and as I think we've talked about in other things,
Speaker 1: you get the kids on board in schools, and they
Speaker 1: kind of helped get the parents on board, and they
Speaker 1: started this campaign to tell children about what's going on,
Speaker 1: and the kids would in turn hopefully go home and
Speaker 1: tell their parents like, you know, my pa, I ain't dumb,
Speaker 1: I got the hookworm. Look my poop is wiggling away exactly,
Speaker 1: and um it was you know, they had a challenge
Speaker 1: in front of him because, um, you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: poop in a bag or something and give it to
Speaker 1: your teacher. Your teacher and entire schools, these one room
Speaker 1: schoolhouses were infected. And this this one kid they talked
Speaker 1: to later on said, uh, well he was a kid
Speaker 1: at the time. Well yeah, he was scared, Like he said,
Speaker 1: he had constipation for a week. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: like you didn't want to have hookworm. I don't want
Speaker 1: my teacher to know me in this way. Yeah, pretty
Speaker 1: much school sample. Um boy, 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 ay 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 have 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 would treat it
Speaker 1: like an event and people would bring picnics. I don't
Speaker 1: know that's a wise thing to do at a hookworm clinic,
Speaker 1: but they would bring picnics. And it says in here
Speaker 1: that they some people even wanted to get married in
Speaker 1: the hookworm tent, and I was like, that seems weird
Speaker 1: and kind of like kitchy. But then I also was like,
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of these people have never seen
Speaker 1: the tent before, so they were like one chance to stay. 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 would. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a couple of parts to it. There was, um,
Speaker 1: the sanitation lecture, which was, here's how you guys are
Speaker 1: getting hookworm. Here's how you build what's called the sanitary privy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they couldn't give him indoor plumbing, but they could
Speaker 1: at least teach them how to have a nice enough
Speaker 1: out house, right, And there's some very very simple principle.
Speaker 1: One is like don't don't dig your latrine down until
Speaker 1: you hit groundwater, don't let it go out into the stream,
Speaker 1: make sure animals can't get into it, and like spread
Speaker 1: it around a good door, make sure your feet aren't
Speaker 1: standing in the same pit that you're pooping in. It's
Speaker 1: really basic stuff. But like that was a big part
Speaker 1: of it, right, Um. And then also explaining how the
Speaker 1: infection process worked. Right, So because they understood very early on,
Speaker 1: um that yes, you can get rid of hook worms
Speaker 1: fairly easily, but you can also get reinfected fairly easy.
Speaker 1: So they had to get that part across as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like again, you can't buy everyone's shoes, but you
Speaker 1: can say maybe don't play near the outhouse. You gotta
Speaker 1: stop the poop slinging fights all together. Yeah, they just
Speaker 1: have to be gone the thing in the past. That's
Speaker 1: the number one thing. They're part of the salad days.
Speaker 1: And then this the sample analysis would begin, and the
Speaker 1: poor doctor would just look with his microscope at each
Speaker 1: poop sample and say past fail, pass fail, well, and
Speaker 1: if the bag was vibrating, they didn't even have to look. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that that cheese in Sardinia. I think that with
Speaker 1: the maggots, the maggot cheese. Didn't we talk about a
Speaker 1: maggot episode. Surely we did. We're both so um. If
Speaker 1: you were found to be infected with worms, you would
Speaker 1: get very simple um pharmaceutical treatment, really simple. Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: this extraordinarily toxic stuff called thyme all yeah t H
Speaker 1: Y M O L Yeah. And it would kill your worms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it could also kill you if you took it
Speaker 1: with the wrong combination of foods or and or alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 1: You wanted to avoid alcohol and fats and oils on
Speaker 1: the day you took it. And then you would follow
Speaker 1: your dose of thyme all with epsom salt, which were
Speaker 1: to remove the thyme all from your body. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: they said at some point, you know what, that stuff
Speaker 1: is super toxic, so why don't we replace that with
Speaker 1: something called carbon tectric chloride um That must be much better? Now,
Speaker 1: it was also very lethal, I guess. I just you know,
Speaker 1: at the time didn't have anything that wasn't also dangerous
Speaker 1: to take, right, And that did the trick and the
Speaker 1: fact that the EPSOM salt would get rid of it
Speaker 1: I think helped quite a bit. Yeah, So the great
Speaker 1: end of this story would be if the Rockefeller's money
Speaker 1: was well spent and five to ten years later they
Speaker 1: eradicated hookworm in the South. But that didn't happen. Um.
Speaker 1: It was successful in a lot of ways. Awareness kind
Speaker 1: of be in the chief way, but as we said
Speaker 1: a few times, reinfection is kind of the biggest problem.
Speaker 1: Like they might have gotten rid of a lot of hookworm,
Speaker 1: only you know, to have these kids who couldn't help
Speaker 1: but have their poop slanging fights, uh, and then get
Speaker 1: hookworm all over again. Exactly. And so but if you
Speaker 1: go and read the Rockefeller's um the Rockefeller Foundations um
Speaker 1: rundown of that program, they basically say it was this
Speaker 1: one guy who lobbied hard to like just move on.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was. Somebody from the Rockefeller founder said, we're
Speaker 1: done with this. We've done our work right. And they had,
Speaker 1: like you said, in a certain way, they had set
Speaker 1: up some of the earliest public health networks in the South.
Speaker 1: They had convinced the South that there was such thing
Speaker 1: as hookworm and that it was a big problem, and
Speaker 1: that if they were able to get rid of it,
Speaker 1: they could um catch up to the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: And they said, now the local doctors, now the local
Speaker 1: health clinics can take over from here. But again, yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the forties that that hookworm really started
Speaker 1: to be eradicated, and it had very little to do
Speaker 1: with the pharmaceutical treatments. It was the fact that indoor
Speaker 1: plumbing became prevalent or I mean it was literally like
Speaker 1: better food, better plumbing, more shoes. The end of share cropping,
Speaker 1: which was a type of um agricultural system that kept
Speaker 1: people poor and kept people in the fields. So it
Speaker 1: was it kept the same unsanitary conditions for hookworm infection
Speaker 1: right there. What did you call it when they would
Speaker 1: dump the poop 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 mo dternization of the American South
Speaker 1: is really what ended it. Um. And you know, the
Speaker 1: proof is kind of in the pudding in that today
Speaker 1: in conditions similar to the American South a hundred years
Speaker 1: ago plus in other parts of the world, it's still
Speaker 1: a really big problem. It is a really problem, apparently
Speaker 1: something like I saw up to um. In this article
Speaker 1: The War on Hookworms by Andy Borrowitz, he says that
Speaker 1: up to something like seven hundred and forty million people
Speaker 1: around the world are thought to have hookworm infections, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: about forty fifty million of which are pregnant women, which
Speaker 1: is you know, obviously one of the uh, one of
Speaker 1: the worst. Like we said, kids and pregnant women is
Speaker 1: one of the worst kind of people to get to
Speaker 1: end the saddest, right and uh, mainly because it increases
Speaker 1: your chances of dying during childbirth because of anemia. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: So it is a huge problem around the world. There's
Speaker 1: there there's this kind of moniker for um hookworm infection
Speaker 1: along with certain other infections. They're lumped together under the
Speaker 1: umbrella of neglected tropical diseases. And the reason they're called
Speaker 1: that is because this is stuff that like you can
Speaker 1: easily get rid of if you alleviate poverty in the
Speaker 1: the developing world. But we're not doing that, and it's
Speaker 1: out of neglect basically. Yeah, it's not. It's not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where you can just invent the vaccine
Speaker 1: and it's gone again because of the reinfection, because these
Speaker 1: people are still poor and still in those conditions. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking at some of the highest rates are Sierra Leone,
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, Venezuela, Indonesia. UM.
Speaker 1: Also interestingly, UM, China in Brazil, which kind of surprised me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's the same thing as like the South back
Speaker 1: in the day, where you have very very um or
Speaker 1: well off urban areas and very very very poor rural areas.
Speaker 1: 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 that's gross, but it's not. It's kind
Speaker 1: of just off forgotten, and so they don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of funding. I'm glad that gates Is are involved
Speaker 1: because that, you know, that makes it much more high profile.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, it's still a big, big issue,
Speaker 1: and uh hopefully you know this will help raise a
Speaker 1: little bit of awareness. Sure well, if if hookworm is
Speaker 1: eradecated by twenty we'll have played a rather large role
Speaker 1: in that. Uh. But now we have a final twist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this really great quote from the sixties from a
Speaker 1: Rockefeller um parasitic worm specialist who said that, um, we
Speaker 1: needed the eventual helmntic defaundation of man saying getting rid
Speaker 1: of worms from the human race entirely right. And he
Speaker 1: said that for only in a society made up of
Speaker 1: parasite free individuals. Well, we know of what the human
Speaker 1: being is capable. Basically saying like, we have no idea
Speaker 1: how much we're being held act as a as an
Speaker 1: entire race, Yeah, 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 ulstra 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
Speaker 1: yet the United States, I don't think. I think only
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom right now are they using this
Speaker 1: in humans. Um. But because it's hookworm, that side effects
Speaker 1: are basically all the things we've been talking about. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, every everything bad about the hookworm is going
Speaker 1: to happen to you. Right. The thinking behind it though,
Speaker 1: because that makes zero sense, Like why would that help
Speaker 1: is that for some reason worm parasitic worms prevent the
Speaker 1: human immune system from going overboard somehow, right, and that
Speaker 1: the reason why we have autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis
Speaker 1: or um Crohn's disease are because of a lack of
Speaker 1: parasitic worms in our bodies. Because we've eradicated them. So
Speaker 1: now these other diseases that are autoimmune diseases have been
Speaker 1: able to rise. So it kind of is a like
Speaker 1: you said, a weird little twist. Yeah, we'll see. I
Speaker 1: mean right now, they're mainly working in mice and rats. Um.
Speaker 1: But like anytime you're working with mice and rats, it's
Speaker 1: can't exactly extrapolate that onto humans. So we shall see,
Speaker 1: it's only one way to find out for you, and
Speaker 1: I volunteer. Well they you know, I did see some
Speaker 1: experiments not for this, but um, when they were doing
Speaker 1: hookworm experiments period, they would infect people with hookworm and
Speaker 1: you know volunteers. Yeah, and again, I mean like, it's
Speaker 1: not like a hookworm's gonna kill you. And if you
Speaker 1: are not going to get reinfected because you wear shoes
Speaker 1: and use like a toilet with running water. Um, it's sure.
Speaker 1: Why not you do it for science and money? Yes?
Speaker 1: Are you got anything else? I do not what we
Speaker 1: want to recommend the articles how a Worm gave the
Speaker 1: South Bad Name by Rachel Newer and war on Hookworms
Speaker 1: from Andy Borrowitz. They're both well worth reading. Uh and Uh,
Speaker 1: since I said they're well worth reading, it's time for
Speaker 1: listening to mail. All right, I'm gonna call this uh
Speaker 1: follow up from a very sweet couple I met at
Speaker 1: the airport. I think I talked about them after our
Speaker 1: one I think the Midwestern Tour UM or No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was Louisiana New Orleans show. I met this very
Speaker 1: nice couple who had been to the show. Um. They
Speaker 1: were I think one of our more veteran and wise
Speaker 1: UM listeners and show attendee's. They were wonderful. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they stopped me in the airport. We talked for a
Speaker 1: little bit, and this is from them. Hey, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: wanted to follow up after the show in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: We talked to you at the airport while we were
Speaker 1: waiting for our flight back to Minneapolis. You were very
Speaker 1: gracious talking to us when we had clearly interrupted you
Speaker 1: on your way to do or get something, probably head
Speaker 1: to poop. We told you our new hobby was going
Speaker 1: and following you guys around the country. Uh, and making
Speaker 1: vacations that out of your shows on tour, remember that,
Speaker 1: m But we haven't made it to a live show since. Um,
Speaker 1: we haven't done a lot of shows since it. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's true. Well, we've done a handful. We've both been
Speaker 1: slacking both parties. Yes, but we're gonna hit the road
Speaker 1: for some shows later this year, by the way, Uh,
Speaker 1: stay tuned for that. So you and Josh did, however,
Speaker 1: inspire us in our new venture. We started a podcast
Speaker 1: just before we left to drive to Alaska, and May Joyce,
Speaker 1: who is the lady in the couple, UM, downloaded a
Speaker 1: bunch of podcasts on how to make a podcast. By
Speaker 1: the time we got back to Minnesota, we were well
Speaker 1: on our way to starting Tall Tales and Travel, our
Speaker 1: podcast about adventures in the outdoors. Uh. Lair and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's l A R R E. And
Speaker 1: I can't remember if it was Lair or Larry Layers
Speaker 1: probably short for Larry. Maybe it was short for Lawrence,
Speaker 1: so it's doubly short. I'm gonna call him Lair just
Speaker 1: l Uh. He has decades worth of stories which have
Speaker 1: mostly taken place in Alaska. He's been a bush pilot,
Speaker 1: charter boat captain, a police officer, and general outdoorsman to
Speaker 1: name a few adventure settings. Yeah, that's a layer. If
Speaker 1: I've ever heard on Lair. It does most of the
Speaker 1: talking and Joyce does most of the behind the scenes tasks.
Speaker 1: It's a division of labor that we've mastered over the
Speaker 1: last thirty odd years together. We have a website, Tall
Speaker 1: Tales and travel dot Com where we post photos and
Speaker 1: videos from Lair's huge archive. Now that we're up and running,
Speaker 1: we'll be putting more work into sorting and sharing the
Speaker 1: collection more regularly. By the way, we used square space.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the tip. Nice anyway, guys, were just writing
Speaker 1: into thank you for the inspiration to let you know
Speaker 1: that we haven't given up on seeing you live again.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep our ears open and here we're
Speaker 1: stuff you should know will be up next. Plan an
Speaker 1: adventure to see you there. All the best that is
Speaker 1: Joyce Olsen and Lair Broward and again check it out
Speaker 1: at um Tall Tales and Travel dot com or at
Speaker 1: Tall Tales and Travel dot libson l I B s
Speaker 1: y N dot com and they were just really sweet
Speaker 1: and nice and supportive. And the notion that these bowl
Speaker 1: in their retirement would follow us around the country just
Speaker 1: kind of knock my socks off. Yeah. So I haven't
Speaker 1: listened to show yet because it just came in, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to give it a whirl. Yeah, thanks you guys,
Speaker 1: and congratulations. It's pretty awesome. Um and uh, I guess
Speaker 1: if we've inspired you, like Joyce and Lair to do
Speaker 1: something neat, let us know about it. You can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You could send us an email. This stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
Speaker 1: at our home on the web with Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.