Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Medicine is science. Oftentimes it can take years
Speaker 1: of research and trials for a new medication or procedure
Speaker 1: to make it to patients. On a wider scale, yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't stop people from hunting for miracle cures, those
Speaker 1: one in a million treatments that bypassed the lengthy safety
Speaker 1: tests mainstream drugs undergo. Before the nineteen o six Pure
Speaker 1: Food and Drug Act, there were almost no regulations in
Speaker 1: place to prevent doctors or snake oil salesman from peddling
Speaker 1: whatever tinctures they thought might heal someone, and for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, the science behind medicine was well questionable. King
Speaker 1: Charles the Second, for example, was no stranger to medical curiosity.
Speaker 1: As a child, he'd been tutored by William Harvey, a
Speaker 1: surgeon on the cutting edge of the field who had
Speaker 1: been the first person to detail how the heart pumped
Speaker 1: blood throughout the body. Charles studied many scientific subjects growing up,
Speaker 1: including chemistry and physics, but when it came to medicine,
Speaker 1: especially later in life, he rarely turned anything down. Due
Speaker 1: to his poor health, in the weeks before his death,
Speaker 1: Charles underwent all manner of treatments, including cupping, blood letting,
Speaker 1: and something called the King's Drops. King's Drops were created
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Goddard, a physician and surgeon who had developed
Speaker 1: a unique formula for what he deemed a royal cure all.
Speaker 1: It could help with fainting bladder stones, and it was
Speaker 1: said to be a powerful stimulant as well. Nevertheless, Charles
Speaker 1: wanted to know what he was putting into his body,
Speaker 1: so he paid Goddard for the formula. The King learned
Speaker 1: much about the drops chemical composition. Among its ingredients were
Speaker 1: ivory dried vipers, and heartstorn, an ammonious solution made from
Speaker 1: deer horns. Everything was ground up, liquefied, distilled, and filtered
Speaker 1: through a complex process that eventually yielded an alcoholic solution.
Speaker 1: But there was one ingredient that really pulled the whole
Speaker 1: thing together. It's effecting this however, varied from person to person.
Speaker 1: What was it that Goddard put in his drops? Human
Speaker 1: skulls five pounds of them crushed into a fine powder,
Speaker 1: But not just any skulls would do. Goddard sought out
Speaker 1: the craniums of young men who had been killed violently,
Speaker 1: like soldiers or recently executed criminals for lesser ailments. A
Speaker 1: few drops were administered at a time. For more serious conditions, though,
Speaker 1: such as a stroke or lethargy, forty to fifty draws
Speaker 1: could be ingested at once. Unsurprisingly, this miracle cure didn't
Speaker 1: cure much of anything, and it might have made the
Speaker 1: King's health even worse. He died on February second of
Speaker 1: sixteen eighty five, and it was believed at first that
Speaker 1: he had been poisoned. Today experts are able to tell
Speaker 1: that Charles most likely suffered from kidney disease, which led
Speaker 1: to his passing. Whether the drops had contributed to it, however,
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. It's likely they didn't help. Edward
Speaker 1: Walpole had been a member of Parliament for the town
Speaker 1: of King's Lynn in Norfolk when he took some of
Speaker 1: Goddard's drops in sixteen sixty eight. Walpole died after suffering
Speaker 1: a seizure shortly thereafter, but that didn't stop people from
Speaker 1: believing in the drop's power, especially since they were chock
Speaker 1: full of human skulls. Skulls had been used in medicinal
Speaker 1: treatments from the sixteenth century all the way through the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. In fact, a German Man named Oswald Kral
Speaker 1: developed a concoction in sixteen forty three that was meant
Speaker 1: to cure epilepsy, and like Goddard, he preferred to use
Speaker 1: skulls from men who had died under violent circumstances. But
Speaker 1: corpse medicine, as it was called, extended beyond the bones
Speaker 1: inside the head. Someone with a sore muscle might have
Speaker 1: rubbed belly fat on the offending spot to alleviate the pain.
Speaker 1: People drank blood because they believed it had restored if properties,
Speaker 1: and the poor who couldn't afford expensive medicines, would attend
Speaker 1: executions and pay for a cup of the red stuff,
Speaker 1: freshly squeezed. Of course, other cultures who practiced corpse medicine,
Speaker 1: like the Native Americans, were vilified and called all kinds
Speaker 1: of slurs due to what the Europeans saw as uncivilized cannibalism.
Speaker 1: The hypocrisy was strong back then, and some of those
Speaker 1: stereotypes have lingered to this day. But times changed, and
Speaker 1: with them, so did medicine. Scientific breakthroughs led to new
Speaker 1: remedies like penicillin and vaccines for diseases such as smallpox.
Speaker 1: People stopped eating and drinking skulls to feel better. After all,
Speaker 1: any cures would have been psychosomatic anyway, you know, all
Speaker 1: in their head. Ask anyone today about politics, and they'll
Speaker 1: long wistfully for a simpler time, a time when senators,
Speaker 1: congress people, and even presidents were more civilized in their disagreements.
Speaker 1: But the fact is, the political landscape has always been
Speaker 1: a hotbed of shady campaign tactics and even shadier players.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty eight, the Detroit Free Press published heinous
Speaker 1: insults about presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant. He was described
Speaker 1: as and I quote, a drunkard, a man of vile habits,
Speaker 1: and my favorite, as brainless as his saddle. Louis cass
Speaker 1: isn't a name most people know today, but in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight he ran against Zachary Taylor for presidents of
Speaker 1: the United States. He also got on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of a newspaper magnet name Horace Greeley, owner of the
Speaker 1: New York Tribune. In fact, Greeley once referred to the
Speaker 1: Democratic candidate as that potbellied, mutton headed cucumber sold casts.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say, cast did not farewell in the election,
Speaker 1: but one man put all others to shame when it
Speaker 1: came to outlandish political behavior. We might look back on
Speaker 1: his actions today as reason for disqualification, but if anything,
Speaker 1: they only made him more popular. His name was Dan Sickles,
Speaker 1: born in New York City in eighteen nineteen. He was
Speaker 1: raised by his mother and father, who worked as a
Speaker 1: patent lawyer and politician. It's no wonder Dan followed in
Speaker 1: his footsteps later in life, earning a law degree and
Speaker 1: getting himself elected to the New York State Assembly in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty seven. It was around this time when sickles
Speaker 1: questionable behavior started to gain him notoriety. He joined up
Speaker 1: with Tammany Hall, a cutthroat political organization that had controlled
Speaker 1: New York for decades. Though he was considered an ally,
Speaker 1: there were a few times when he found himself on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of their wrath. Once he was giving
Speaker 1: a speech when a gang of rivals physically removed him
Speaker 1: from the stage and threw him down a spiral staircase.
Speaker 1: On another occasion, he fled through an open window and
Speaker 1: down a fire escape to get away from their assault.
Speaker 1: When he was thirty two years old, Sickles married a
Speaker 1: girl named Teresa Baggioli, who was no more than fifteen
Speaker 1: at the time. Both her family and Sickles protested to
Speaker 1: their nuptials, but it didn't matter. The two were wed,
Speaker 1: and the assemblyman continued to work his way up the
Speaker 1: New York political ladder. After a series of positions in
Speaker 1: both New York and London, Sickles returned home in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty six and was elected to the New York State Senate. Now,
Speaker 1: while he was pursuing his career, the newly elected senator
Speaker 1: was also pursuing extracurricular activities outside of his marriage, but
Speaker 1: kind of got him censured by the New York State
Speaker 1: Assembly around eighteen fifty nine. However, even though Sickles was
Speaker 1: allowed to covert with whoever he saw fit, that didn't
Speaker 1: mean his wife was afforded the same luxuries. He found
Speaker 1: out that she was having an affair with another man
Speaker 1: and confronted her lover in broad daylight, Sickles shot him dead.
Speaker 1: The man he killed happened to be Philip Barton Key,
Speaker 1: the second U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
Speaker 1: and the son of National anthem composer Francis Scott Key.
Speaker 1: Sickles turned himself in and hired a team of lawyers
Speaker 1: for his defense. It took over two weeks of testimony,
Speaker 1: but in the end Sickles was acquitted. He submitted a
Speaker 1: plea of temporary insanity. For the first time in the
Speaker 1: history of the U. S. Court system, the jury believed him.
Speaker 1: Rather than run for re election in the Senate, Sickles
Speaker 1: sought to rehabilitate his image by building up an army
Speaker 1: of volunteer soldiers in New York. The Civil War had
Speaker 1: just started and the Union was in need of recruits.
Speaker 1: His efforts earned him the rank of colonel, despite having
Speaker 1: no military background whatsoever. He eventually graduated to brigadier general,
Speaker 1: and his conduct throughout most of the war earned him
Speaker 1: high marks. For one, Sickles never turned over the runaway
Speaker 1: slaves who found their way to his camp. In fact,
Speaker 1: he employed a lot of them to work as servants.
Speaker 1: The men who were able to fight were trained as soldiers,
Speaker 1: but he was also a man who hated to be
Speaker 1: told what to do. During the Battle of Gettysburg, for example,
Speaker 1: he defied a direct order from his commander to hold
Speaker 1: his current position. He instead sought higher ground. His cavalier
Speaker 1: nature nearly led to defeat for the Union Army, and
Speaker 1: perhaps were sick cost him his leg, which was destroyed
Speaker 1: by a cannon ball and had to be amputated. Sickles
Speaker 1: donated the shattered bone from his leg to the Army
Speaker 1: Medical Museum in Washington, d c. He even visited it
Speaker 1: each year on the anniversary of the battle, sometimes bringing
Speaker 1: his dates there to see it. After the war, he
Speaker 1: returned to New York and led the committee on creating
Speaker 1: the city's most iconic park, Central Park. Post war, Sickles, however,
Speaker 1: might have been even more brazen than his younger self.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty nine, he took position as u s
Speaker 1: ambassador to Spain, where he and Queen Isabel the Second
Speaker 1: began a toward affair, one that ended with Sickles marrying
Speaker 1: one of her attendants instead. The whole ordeal led to
Speaker 1: his eventual resignation from the position, and finally, in nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: he was arrested yet again, not for killing anyone. This
Speaker 1: time he'd been accused of stealing almost thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: from a Civil War monuments commissioned fund that he had
Speaker 1: been put in charge of, And, just as he'd done
Speaker 1: with his murder trial fifty years earlier, Sickles got away
Speaker 1: scott free. He had apparently built up enough goodwill with
Speaker 1: friends and supporters to have the money paid back in full.
Speaker 1: Sickles died two years later in New York City at
Speaker 1: the age of ninety four. For a man who survived
Speaker 1: being tossed down a flight of stairs, tried for murder,
Speaker 1: and losing his leg to a cannonball, he survived much
Speaker 1: longer than most of his generation. As the artist David
Speaker 1: Hockney once said, I prefer living in color. Well, a
Speaker 1: few people live more colorfully than Daniel E. Sickles. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the world
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.