1
00:00:02,960 --> 00:00:06,800
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:12,880 --> 00:00:14,720
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

3
00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:17,320
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're

4
00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:21,520
Speaker 1: back with part three of our series on the Healing Waters,

5
00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:24,919
Speaker 1: where we have been focusing on beliefs held by many

6
00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:30,600
Speaker 1: people throughout history that you could heal various diseases by bathing,

7
00:00:30,760 --> 00:00:35,240
Speaker 1: by either immersing yourself in the waters of say warm

8
00:00:35,320 --> 00:00:39,240
Speaker 1: or hot mineral springs, or sometimes maybe by drinking those waters. Also,

9
00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:44,920
Speaker 1: we talked about the medicinal theories on which some of

10
00:00:44,960 --> 00:00:47,840
Speaker 1: these practices were based, especially in the ancient world, such

11
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:52,800
Speaker 1: as the ancient Greek and Roman beliefs in hute moral theory. Also,

12
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:55,440
Speaker 1: in the last episode we talked there was a very

13
00:00:55,480 --> 00:00:59,240
Speaker 1: interesting digression you had rob about supposed healing springs that

14
00:00:59,320 --> 00:01:02,360
Speaker 1: have creatures living in them, such as little blood worms

15
00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:06,360
Speaker 1: or fish trapped in the hot waters. Yeah's luck would

16
00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:09,000
Speaker 1: have it. Here in Atlanta, we have a science festival

17
00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:12,760
Speaker 1: here as well, the Atlanta Science Festival, and a very

18
00:01:12,800 --> 00:01:15,840
Speaker 1: cold morning over the weekend, my family went to a

19
00:01:15,959 --> 00:01:19,320
Speaker 1: talk on carnivorous plants about the some of the various

20
00:01:19,319 --> 00:01:23,840
Speaker 1: carnivorous plants that are found internally in the southeastern United States.

21
00:01:24,440 --> 00:01:28,080
Speaker 1: And at the end of it, the children present got

22
00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:31,280
Speaker 1: to feed the carnivorous plants and they were feeding them

23
00:01:31,319 --> 00:01:34,120
Speaker 1: blood worms. So and how it comes comes around. I

24
00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:35,520
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I know these guys. I was just

25
00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:37,240
Speaker 1: talking about these guys. These would be, of course the

26
00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:43,360
Speaker 1: larval forms of little flies rather than the proper worms

27
00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:47,160
Speaker 1: that we also discussed. But there was no no iye squirting,

28
00:01:47,240 --> 00:01:49,360
Speaker 1: no squirting of the worms in the eyes. Now, nobody

29
00:01:49,360 --> 00:01:52,280
Speaker 1: who was putting these in their eyeballs? Good good, Well,

30
00:01:52,320 --> 00:01:55,280
Speaker 1: today I wanted to take a look actually at the

31
00:01:55,360 --> 00:01:59,480
Speaker 1: paper that first got me interested in this subject, in

32
00:01:59,520 --> 00:02:03,120
Speaker 1: the subject of beliefs about the healing powers of balneotherapy

33
00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:06,400
Speaker 1: or immersion in the water. And this is a medical

34
00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:12,320
Speaker 1: history paper concerning the spa at bath Bath, a location

35
00:02:12,919 --> 00:02:17,799
Speaker 1: in southwest England in Somerset that has been used as

36
00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:20,840
Speaker 1: a spa going way back back back into at least

37
00:02:20,840 --> 00:02:23,040
Speaker 1: as far back as Roman times when it was the

38
00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:26,360
Speaker 1: spa of Minerva Sulus. Remember in the previous episode we

39
00:02:26,360 --> 00:02:29,799
Speaker 1: talked about how often these these spa facilities built out

40
00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:32,000
Speaker 1: by the Romans would kind of be under the heading

41
00:02:32,200 --> 00:02:35,200
Speaker 1: of a sort of composite god made of like a

42
00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:38,720
Speaker 1: Roman god like Minerva, and then the local deity in

43
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:40,800
Speaker 1: this case it would be some kind of Celtic goddess

44
00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:44,960
Speaker 1: named Sulus. So these are merged together. Minerva Sulus rules

45
00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:49,280
Speaker 1: over the waters of Bath. And yeah, going way back,

46
00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:53,080
Speaker 1: people thought that various illnesses could be healed there. I

47
00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:55,480
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about a paper making a case that

48
00:02:55,880 --> 00:03:00,760
Speaker 1: maybe for one particular disease there actually is is a

49
00:03:00,840 --> 00:03:05,920
Speaker 1: mechanical healing property at the spring. Oh fascinating. You know.

50
00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:10,519
Speaker 1: I visited Bath many years ago, like fifteen plus years ago,

51
00:03:11,520 --> 00:03:13,919
Speaker 1: and I believe my wife and I went as is

52
00:03:14,040 --> 00:03:15,799
Speaker 1: kind of like a day trip out of London by

53
00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:17,600
Speaker 1: train and then we took one of those bus tours

54
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:19,200
Speaker 1: of the city and then walked around a bit. But

55
00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:21,280
Speaker 1: it was it was really beautiful, and I remember that

56
00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:25,200
Speaker 1: you had this this great layered feeling of history there,

57
00:03:25,280 --> 00:03:28,280
Speaker 1: like the topography of the city, and they like the

58
00:03:28,360 --> 00:03:31,640
Speaker 1: physical building layers of the city revealed, like the deep

59
00:03:31,680 --> 00:03:35,720
Speaker 1: time of the area. I was fascinating totally. I would

60
00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:37,720
Speaker 1: love to go myself, maybe not to get in the water,

61
00:03:37,800 --> 00:03:40,120
Speaker 1: but at least to have a look around. Yeah, I

62
00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:43,040
Speaker 1: don't remember. I mean the tours we were on, the

63
00:03:43,040 --> 00:03:44,840
Speaker 1: tours we could afford at the time. It definitely did

64
00:03:44,880 --> 00:03:47,000
Speaker 1: not have any invitations to get in the water, just

65
00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:48,920
Speaker 1: to like buy a coffee mug at the end, that

66
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:50,960
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So the paper I want to talk

67
00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:54,760
Speaker 1: about is called a Trial of the Bath Waters the

68
00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:59,520
Speaker 1: Treatment of Lead Poisoning by an author named Audrey Haywood

69
00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:03,640
Speaker 1: in the journal Medical History, published back in nineteen ninety.

70
00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:09,400
Speaker 1: And this paper concerns medical clinical research carried out at

71
00:04:09,440 --> 00:04:13,520
Speaker 1: what was called the Bath General Hospital, which opened in

72
00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:17,200
Speaker 1: seventeen forty one. Now at the time, one of the

73
00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:22,479
Speaker 1: major missions of this hospital facility was to mount what

74
00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:26,280
Speaker 1: the authors of this study called a trial of the waters,

75
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:31,360
Speaker 1: which was an attempt to record data to test and

76
00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:35,239
Speaker 1: show whether the spa therapy practiced in the pools of Bath,

77
00:04:36,200 --> 00:04:40,520
Speaker 1: whether that therapy was actually effective against disease. Now, as

78
00:04:40,520 --> 00:04:42,960
Speaker 1: we've talked about, people since antiquity have believed all kinds

79
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:46,360
Speaker 1: of different things that medical complaints could be cured by

80
00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:50,200
Speaker 1: soaking in spas, soaking or bathing in warm mineral springs,

81
00:04:50,279 --> 00:04:53,000
Speaker 1: sometimes drinking the water as well. If you haven't heard

82
00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:55,120
Speaker 1: the last episode yet you should go check that out first.

83
00:04:55,200 --> 00:04:57,960
Speaker 1: We talked about plenty of examples in there. But the

84
00:04:58,040 --> 00:05:01,440
Speaker 1: question is why did people think that the waters of

85
00:05:01,480 --> 00:05:05,800
Speaker 1: these spas were curing their diseases. In modern times, it

86
00:05:05,839 --> 00:05:09,360
Speaker 1: has been commonly assumed that this was entirely due to

87
00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:13,560
Speaker 1: the placebo effect. To the placebo effect is a beneficial

88
00:05:13,720 --> 00:05:17,080
Speaker 1: or healing effect caused by a treatment that has no

89
00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:22,400
Speaker 1: actual direct mechanism on the condition itself, and thus, and

90
00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:26,520
Speaker 1: thus the apparent healing or improvement is believed to be

91
00:05:26,560 --> 00:05:30,000
Speaker 1: caused by the patient's belief that they are being treated

92
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:33,680
Speaker 1: or by their expectation of improvement. And we've talked about

93
00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:37,000
Speaker 1: placebo effect plenty of times on the show. It has

94
00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:40,000
Speaker 1: a measurable effect. It is a real thing. And so

95
00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:43,000
Speaker 1: if nothing else is doing anything for you, at least

96
00:05:43,040 --> 00:05:46,880
Speaker 1: the placebo effect maybe kicking in right, So that could

97
00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:49,560
Speaker 1: be an explanation for why people maybe would go soak

98
00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:53,320
Speaker 1: in the water and think, oh my, whatever got better now.

99
00:05:53,320 --> 00:05:57,280
Speaker 1: In the ancient world, there were mechanistic theories of why

100
00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:00,240
Speaker 1: the spa would cure you. One example among many is

101
00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:03,120
Speaker 1: again humoral theory, the theory that, oh, your fluids are

102
00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:05,600
Speaker 1: out of balance. You know, maybe you've got too much

103
00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:08,680
Speaker 1: blood or too much yellow bile, not enough flim or something,

104
00:06:09,080 --> 00:06:12,840
Speaker 1: and you could deal with these imbalances by calibrating the

105
00:06:13,520 --> 00:06:16,080
Speaker 1: two sort of like slider knobs on your body, and

106
00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:19,560
Speaker 1: those knobs were wet and dry and hot and cold

107
00:06:19,720 --> 00:06:23,680
Speaker 1: because wet, dry, hot and cold were each correlated with

108
00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:27,279
Speaker 1: one of the humors. So like, oh, I don't have

109
00:06:27,320 --> 00:06:28,719
Speaker 1: it in front of me now, but I think maybe

110
00:06:28,760 --> 00:06:32,640
Speaker 1: like blood was like hot and wet or something, or

111
00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:35,080
Speaker 1: maybe cool and wet. I don't know anyway, So you know,

112
00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:36,719
Speaker 1: if you have too much of one of those things,

113
00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:41,920
Speaker 1: you adjust the hotness or coldness or dryness or wetness

114
00:06:41,960 --> 00:06:44,520
Speaker 1: of the body in order to get yourself back in balance.

115
00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:47,080
Speaker 1: Now we know today that this is not actually how

116
00:06:47,120 --> 00:06:50,479
Speaker 1: the body works. This is an obsolete theory. It does

117
00:06:50,520 --> 00:06:54,479
Speaker 1: not accurately describe where disease comes from. But having the

118
00:06:54,640 --> 00:06:57,640
Speaker 1: belief in it may have led again to placebo effect.

119
00:06:57,640 --> 00:07:00,280
Speaker 1: People are thinking that they've got a correct way of

120
00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:04,280
Speaker 1: addressing disease, so they're at least having an expectation of improvement. Yeah,

121
00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:07,360
Speaker 1: it's like I'm not doing nothing, I'm doing something. I'm

122
00:07:07,400 --> 00:07:11,480
Speaker 1: following the advice or the know or being treated by

123
00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:15,040
Speaker 1: an expert in their field, and you know, it takes

124
00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:17,440
Speaker 1: some of the pressure off, and it puts you in

125
00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:21,160
Speaker 1: a situation where you're expecting some level of healing, you're

126
00:07:21,160 --> 00:07:25,520
Speaker 1: expecting some sort of positive outcome. Haywood explains the common

127
00:07:25,640 --> 00:07:30,000
Speaker 1: modern understanding of this historical practice as quote, the pleasurable

128
00:07:30,040 --> 00:07:33,120
Speaker 1: activity of immersion in warm mineral water has social and

129
00:07:33,160 --> 00:07:39,800
Speaker 1: psychological benefits but no physiological value. And this probably is

130
00:07:39,840 --> 00:07:44,120
Speaker 1: true for the majority of miracle cures people think that

131
00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:48,120
Speaker 1: they received at the SPA. But Haywood records that there

132
00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:51,080
Speaker 1: is at least one condition where there seems to be

133
00:07:51,200 --> 00:07:55,240
Speaker 1: quite strong empirical evidence that the SPA was doing something

134
00:07:55,360 --> 00:07:58,720
Speaker 1: to heal the sick. Now what was that condition? It

135
00:07:58,760 --> 00:08:02,280
Speaker 1: was what was known as plica pictonum, a type of

136
00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:07,840
Speaker 1: paralysis that you get from chronic lead poisoning. M We've

137
00:08:07,840 --> 00:08:11,600
Speaker 1: talked about lead poisoning on the show before, so yeah,

138
00:08:11,640 --> 00:08:15,240
Speaker 1: certainly has been a widespread problem in the past. We

139
00:08:15,320 --> 00:08:19,680
Speaker 1: talked about lead poisoning, I think most recently, most extensively

140
00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:22,360
Speaker 1: in an episode called Cupid's Lead, an arrow from a

141
00:08:22,360 --> 00:08:25,200
Speaker 1: few years back that was about oh, I don't even

142
00:08:25,280 --> 00:08:27,200
Speaker 1: remember what all we got into, and that that was

143
00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:30,160
Speaker 1: one where we did have a digression about lead acetate

144
00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:32,640
Speaker 1: or sugar of lead, known in Roman times for its

145
00:08:32,640 --> 00:08:35,840
Speaker 1: sweet taste. Yeah, you don't want to eat that. But

146
00:08:35,960 --> 00:08:40,319
Speaker 1: colica pictonum paralysis you get from chronic lead poisoning has

147
00:08:40,800 --> 00:08:45,800
Speaker 1: characteristic symptoms. So it starts with what Haywood calls abdominal colic,

148
00:08:45,960 --> 00:08:49,040
Speaker 1: basically meaning abdominal pain. So what a lot of people

149
00:08:49,120 --> 00:08:51,840
Speaker 1: might call stomach pain, but actually your stomach is higher

150
00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:54,480
Speaker 1: up in your torso you know, pain around the guts,

151
00:08:54,520 --> 00:08:59,920
Speaker 1: the intestines, and then also constipation, the inability to move

152
00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:03,320
Speaker 1: the bowels, and then eventually after that loss of ability

153
00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:07,400
Speaker 1: to control the limbs, but not always with concurrent loss

154
00:09:07,400 --> 00:09:10,640
Speaker 1: of sensation. So sometimes you can feel the limbs, but

155
00:09:10,720 --> 00:09:13,760
Speaker 1: you can't move them or can't move them correctly. Now,

156
00:09:13,760 --> 00:09:17,640
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about Bath is that Haywood writes, because

157
00:09:17,720 --> 00:09:21,200
Speaker 1: symptoms were very well documented when patients were admitted to

158
00:09:21,240 --> 00:09:24,559
Speaker 1: the Bath General Hospital, we are able to look back

159
00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:28,080
Speaker 1: at patients who showed up with this particular condition and

160
00:09:28,160 --> 00:09:31,079
Speaker 1: then keep track through the records of whether or not

161
00:09:31,120 --> 00:09:34,520
Speaker 1: they were cured, which could be measured and according to

162
00:09:34,840 --> 00:09:38,640
Speaker 1: local standards was supposed to be measured rigorously by documented

163
00:09:38,679 --> 00:09:42,760
Speaker 1: outcomes like full recovery of limb function. Haywood writes that

164
00:09:42,920 --> 00:09:46,520
Speaker 1: by analyzing the records at this hospital, we can see

165
00:09:46,559 --> 00:09:49,800
Speaker 1: that from seventeen sixty to eighteen seventy nine, the span

166
00:09:49,880 --> 00:09:53,160
Speaker 1: of almost one hundred and twenty years, three thousand, three

167
00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:57,199
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy seven patients presented at Bath with paralysis

168
00:09:57,240 --> 00:10:01,040
Speaker 1: from lead poisoning, and forty five point four percent of

169
00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:05,320
Speaker 1: those patients were documented as cured fully cured, and then

170
00:10:05,360 --> 00:10:09,160
Speaker 1: a further percentage of them were documented as having shown

171
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:12,800
Speaker 1: some improvement. Now, it would be much more helpful to

172
00:10:12,920 --> 00:10:15,559
Speaker 1: evaluate this in the context of control groups, right. It

173
00:10:15,559 --> 00:10:17,760
Speaker 1: would be great if we had control groups that received

174
00:10:17,800 --> 00:10:20,560
Speaker 1: no treatment or received a placebo, so we could see

175
00:10:20,880 --> 00:10:24,120
Speaker 1: is this actually better? But there are some reasons for

176
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:28,960
Speaker 1: thinking that this recovery rate is above chance or placebo

177
00:10:29,080 --> 00:10:31,760
Speaker 1: levels for the same condition, and we'll talk about those later.

178
00:10:32,120 --> 00:10:37,640
Speaker 1: So Heywood quotes some seventeenth and eighteenth century physicians on

179
00:10:37,960 --> 00:10:42,280
Speaker 1: this condition Collico picctonum, to see what they knew about it.

180
00:10:42,480 --> 00:10:46,000
Speaker 1: There is a doctor Rice Charlton actually looks like his

181
00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:50,040
Speaker 1: name could be pronounced Charlatan. I don't know if there's

182
00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:54,720
Speaker 1: any connection there, but he's describing collico picctonum in the

183
00:10:54,800 --> 00:10:58,400
Speaker 1: second edition of a book called Three Tracts on Bathwater

184
00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:02,080
Speaker 1: that's bath with a capital B from seventeen seventy four

185
00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:07,800
Speaker 1: and Charlatan rights quote in consequence of a most obstinate costiveness.

186
00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:13,200
Speaker 1: Costiveness means constipation obstinate costiveness attended with exquisite pain in

187
00:11:13,240 --> 00:11:17,240
Speaker 1: the bowels. Upon the constipation being removed and the pain diminished,

188
00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:20,600
Speaker 1: the patient loses the use of his limbs, the arms,

189
00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:24,920
Speaker 1: and hands. Most commonly, rheumatic pains sometimes attack the limbs

190
00:11:24,920 --> 00:11:29,040
Speaker 1: before they become paralytic. Lead we know is remarkably productive

191
00:11:29,120 --> 00:11:33,199
Speaker 1: of this complaint. Now, outbreaks of symptoms like this had

192
00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:36,480
Speaker 1: been common in Europe for centuries, in fact, going way back,

193
00:11:36,520 --> 00:11:39,079
Speaker 1: going back to Roman times, but for the longest time

194
00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:42,160
Speaker 1: there was no agreement about the cause. So somebody might

195
00:11:42,320 --> 00:11:45,000
Speaker 1: get that, you know, you could recognize what this pattern

196
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,080
Speaker 1: of symptoms were. It's like, oh, you've got the thing

197
00:11:47,520 --> 00:11:50,160
Speaker 1: where you have abdominal pain, your gut's really hurt, and

198
00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:53,320
Speaker 1: then you can't poop, and then your wrist fails and

199
00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:57,319
Speaker 1: you can't use your arms. Candidates for the explanation included

200
00:11:57,520 --> 00:12:02,479
Speaker 1: unresolved fevers. Just quote here from the paper over indulgence

201
00:12:02,520 --> 00:12:05,440
Speaker 1: in acid wines. I don't know how much people do

202
00:12:05,520 --> 00:12:08,520
Speaker 1: they want to indulge in acid wines, Like it's your

203
00:12:08,559 --> 00:12:10,640
Speaker 1: wine is spoiled, but you really just want to get

204
00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:12,880
Speaker 1: in there. I mean, sometimes that's all you have around.

205
00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:15,720
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess that's true. No accounting for taste,

206
00:12:16,400 --> 00:12:20,520
Speaker 1: and other explanations were quote high living and passions of

207
00:12:20,559 --> 00:12:25,600
Speaker 1: the mind, so very broad categories, especially on those last two. Yes,

208
00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:31,160
Speaker 1: But actually in the eighteenth century the real cause was identified.

209
00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:35,000
Speaker 1: In seventeen sixty eight, the British physician Sir George Baker

210
00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:41,040
Speaker 1: correctly traced the origin of a particular epidemic of colicopictonum.

211
00:12:41,440 --> 00:12:45,440
Speaker 1: This epidemic was called the Devonshire colic to lead poisoning,

212
00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:50,520
Speaker 1: specifically caused by the widespread consumption of cider tainted with lead.

213
00:12:50,679 --> 00:12:53,240
Speaker 1: He traced it back to where it came from and

214
00:12:53,280 --> 00:12:55,679
Speaker 1: found out, yes, it's from this cider that's got all

215
00:12:55,720 --> 00:12:57,840
Speaker 1: this lead in it. And when the lead was removed

216
00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:03,120
Speaker 1: from the cider, the outbreak of apictonum was alleviated, but Unfortunately,

217
00:13:03,160 --> 00:13:05,280
Speaker 1: cider was not the only place you could get lead.

218
00:13:05,320 --> 00:13:08,200
Speaker 1: In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, people had a vast

219
00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:11,000
Speaker 1: range of options to explore that would end up causing

220
00:13:11,400 --> 00:13:15,080
Speaker 1: overexposure to lead. There was use of lead hardware in

221
00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:18,560
Speaker 1: the preparation, storage, and transport of food and drink. And

222
00:13:18,679 --> 00:13:22,040
Speaker 1: this is everything everything from lead pipes and lead sinks

223
00:13:22,080 --> 00:13:26,400
Speaker 1: to lead cooking pots, lead glazed earthenware, pewter plates, etc.

224
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:30,800
Speaker 1: There were lead based cosmetics. There was lead as a direct,

225
00:13:30,920 --> 00:13:34,320
Speaker 1: intentional additive to food and drink, maybe as a color

226
00:13:34,400 --> 00:13:38,040
Speaker 1: rent like food coloring, or as a flavor agent. It

227
00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:42,080
Speaker 1: lead in some forms taste sweet, or as a preservative

228
00:13:42,440 --> 00:13:44,960
Speaker 1: and more on this in a second. And then there

229
00:13:44,960 --> 00:13:48,040
Speaker 1: were also lead salts that were used as medicine. In

230
00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:52,200
Speaker 1: less severe cases, lead poisoning would cause a sort of

231
00:13:52,240 --> 00:13:55,680
Speaker 1: like precursor series of symptoms. So lower levels of lead

232
00:13:55,679 --> 00:14:00,160
Speaker 1: poisoning would cause fatigue, weakness, headaches, and what's described as

233
00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:04,120
Speaker 1: a general malaise, just kind of a bad feeling of

234
00:14:04,679 --> 00:14:08,280
Speaker 1: ill health and discomfort that you can't really locate the

235
00:14:08,320 --> 00:14:11,959
Speaker 1: cause of. And while lots of people were dealing with

236
00:14:12,280 --> 00:14:17,079
Speaker 1: minor chronic ill health from these baseline levels of lead exposure.

237
00:14:17,200 --> 00:14:21,080
Speaker 1: Some people got even more vicious doses of lead, often

238
00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:24,640
Speaker 1: from occupational exposure, so you might see referred to colic

239
00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:28,320
Speaker 1: of pictonum referred to as painters palsy. People who were

240
00:14:28,320 --> 00:14:30,640
Speaker 1: dealing with lead based paints a lot in their line

241
00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:34,000
Speaker 1: of work would have higher levels of exposure than everybody else,

242
00:14:34,040 --> 00:14:36,800
Speaker 1: and then they might end up with this form of paralysis.

243
00:14:36,960 --> 00:14:40,280
Speaker 1: But not just that. There was all kinds of manufacturing

244
00:14:40,320 --> 00:14:43,320
Speaker 1: that involved lead at the time. Another major source of

245
00:14:43,520 --> 00:14:49,280
Speaker 1: high exposure to lead came from lead adulterated alcoholic beverages.

246
00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:51,840
Speaker 1: Again coming back to the example of the devonsure colic

247
00:14:52,040 --> 00:14:56,720
Speaker 1: being based insider Haywood Wrights quote, Lead is soluble in

248
00:14:56,800 --> 00:15:00,240
Speaker 1: such weak acids as the acetic acid, that's the acid

249
00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:03,960
Speaker 1: that's in vinegar, formed when alcohol is exposed to the air,

250
00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:08,520
Speaker 1: so alcohol might easily become contaminated. This contamination may occur

251
00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:11,760
Speaker 1: incidentally during distillation when lead is leached out of the

252
00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:16,760
Speaker 1: soldered joints or base metal condensers, or accidentally if sour

253
00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:20,160
Speaker 1: cider or apple must comes into contact with the lead,

254
00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:24,160
Speaker 1: which was often used to repair cracks in the cider press.

255
00:15:24,840 --> 00:15:28,280
Speaker 1: Adulteration could also occur if the cider was stored in

256
00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:33,040
Speaker 1: lead glazed earthenware containers. Poor or acid wines were sometimes

257
00:15:33,120 --> 00:15:38,040
Speaker 1: adulterated deliberately in the Roman tradition of using lead acetate

258
00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:43,840
Speaker 1: as a sweetener improver or fungicide. Got Reading this makes

259
00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:48,560
Speaker 1: me feel so grateful for modern food safety standards and regulations.

260
00:15:48,760 --> 00:15:52,920
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, it's just unbelievable reading like what went into

261
00:15:53,280 --> 00:15:56,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, but this paragraph here from hey

262
00:15:56,560 --> 00:15:59,160
Speaker 1: what also makes me think of the fact that before

263
00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:03,800
Speaker 1: the real cause was known, some people accused those who

264
00:16:03,920 --> 00:16:08,440
Speaker 1: had this paralysis of indulging in quote, acid wines. It's like, oh,

265
00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:11,240
Speaker 1: it's because you drank acidic wine that you have the

266
00:16:11,280 --> 00:16:16,080
Speaker 1: paralyzing colic. Those people actually were probably detecting a real

267
00:16:16,160 --> 00:16:20,600
Speaker 1: correlation but misunderstanding the cause. It wasn't the acidic wine,

268
00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:24,520
Speaker 1: but a heavy metal that, for a couple of different reasons,

269
00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:27,280
Speaker 1: is more likely to end up in sour wines. It

270
00:16:27,360 --> 00:16:32,040
Speaker 1: might be added intentionally to counteract the sourness, or because

271
00:16:32,160 --> 00:16:35,280
Speaker 1: the acetic acid basically the vinegar that forms in a

272
00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:39,160
Speaker 1: sour wine, was a solvent for lead that might come

273
00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:43,840
Speaker 1: from anything. The storage containers or the manufacturing equipment. Okay,

274
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:47,440
Speaker 1: it makes sense. So people who got more severe lead exposure,

275
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:51,000
Speaker 1: whatever the source, whether that's from maybe occupational exposure if

276
00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:53,840
Speaker 1: you're a painter working in one of these factories, or

277
00:16:54,080 --> 00:16:59,440
Speaker 1: from drinking alcoholic beverages adulterated with lead. People with these

278
00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:02,200
Speaker 1: types of exposure could end up not just with the fatigue,

279
00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:05,360
Speaker 1: the headaches, and the malaise, but could end up paralyzed

280
00:17:05,400 --> 00:17:08,560
Speaker 1: with the colica pictonum. And then of course if the

281
00:17:08,600 --> 00:17:11,879
Speaker 1: disease progressed beyond that, it could lead to convulsions, coma,

282
00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:14,560
Speaker 1: and death. And so that's the background. This brings us

283
00:17:14,600 --> 00:17:17,920
Speaker 1: back to bath the spa. Though bath had been used

284
00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:20,560
Speaker 1: as a medicinal spa since at least as far back

285
00:17:20,600 --> 00:17:24,000
Speaker 1: as Roman Britain, according to Haywood, the first documentation of

286
00:17:24,119 --> 00:17:28,240
Speaker 1: spa therapy being used to treat what sounds like chronic

287
00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:31,840
Speaker 1: lead poisoning comes in a book from fifteen sixty eight

288
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:36,240
Speaker 1: by an English doctor, William Turner, with a title that

289
00:17:36,320 --> 00:17:38,200
Speaker 1: really lets you know what the book is all about.

290
00:17:38,320 --> 00:17:42,440
Speaker 1: So it's called a Book of the Natures and Properties

291
00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:45,480
Speaker 1: as well as of the baths in England, as of

292
00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:49,560
Speaker 1: other baths in Germany and Italy. Very necessary for all

293
00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:53,199
Speaker 1: these persons that cannot be healed without the help of

294
00:17:53,359 --> 00:17:58,959
Speaker 1: natural baths. Very mid sixteenth century book title. So in

295
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:02,320
Speaker 1: this mid sixteenth century book with a paragraph for a title,

296
00:18:02,400 --> 00:18:05,920
Speaker 1: Turner chronicled a long list of conditions that he said,

297
00:18:05,960 --> 00:18:09,760
Speaker 1: we're allegedly cured by spa treatment after having surveyed the

298
00:18:09,880 --> 00:18:13,760
Speaker 1: use of public baths in Germany and Italy. And these

299
00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:18,240
Speaker 1: conditions included quote bruising that cometh by falling or beating,

300
00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:23,760
Speaker 1: for green or new wounds, and for quote old wounds

301
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:27,919
Speaker 1: falsely healed. But also he said, you know, there's a

302
00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:31,119
Speaker 1: convergence of symptoms that can be healed in these things.

303
00:18:31,400 --> 00:18:34,399
Speaker 1: And it kind of sounds like colic a pictonum. I

304
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:37,520
Speaker 1: have to say the following sentence from Turner is my new,

305
00:18:37,560 --> 00:18:41,600
Speaker 1: all time favorite description of constipation. You've never heard constipation

306
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:45,639
Speaker 1: in terms so evocative. So this is what Turner calls it.

307
00:18:45,680 --> 00:18:50,480
Speaker 1: He says, the vain appetite of going to stool when

308
00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:53,560
Speaker 1: a man can do nothing when he cometh there, the

309
00:18:53,720 --> 00:18:56,760
Speaker 1: hardness and binding of the belly when as a man

310
00:18:56,960 --> 00:19:04,480
Speaker 1: cannot go to the stool without capital P physics. I'm sorry,

311
00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:06,439
Speaker 1: I don't mean to laugh at lead poisoning, which is

312
00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:11,720
Speaker 1: no laughing matter, but that is good. This sounds like

313
00:19:11,760 --> 00:19:15,600
Speaker 1: upper class constipation to me, the vain appetite of going

314
00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:18,159
Speaker 1: to the stool. It imagine. It makes me think of um,

315
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:22,719
Speaker 1: like the Cooleshov effect. Like you're showing that actor just

316
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:25,840
Speaker 1: gazing at the toilet and you're imagining all of the

317
00:19:25,920 --> 00:19:29,199
Speaker 1: like wheels turning in his head as he yearns. Yeah, well,

318
00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:31,199
Speaker 1: he needs the physics. I should have looked it up.

319
00:19:31,240 --> 00:19:33,439
Speaker 1: I don't know what that word physics refers to. Does

320
00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:36,600
Speaker 1: that mean like the intervention of physicians or maybe some

321
00:19:36,760 --> 00:19:39,480
Speaker 1: kind of like perfect medicine. That's what I take it

322
00:19:39,480 --> 00:19:44,359
Speaker 1: to mean. You need the medical enterprise to intervene. Okay,

323
00:19:44,359 --> 00:19:46,919
Speaker 1: so that's the first part of Turner's description, but the

324
00:19:46,960 --> 00:19:51,120
Speaker 1: text also refers to paralysis of the body and abdominal pain,

325
00:19:51,520 --> 00:19:53,879
Speaker 1: as well as other symptoms that can be caused by

326
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:58,480
Speaker 1: chronic lead poisoning, such as infertility, spontaneous abortion and pregnancy,

327
00:19:58,520 --> 00:20:02,520
Speaker 1: and even gout. So it's possible that Turner is not

328
00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:05,679
Speaker 1: correct about spot therapy healing these conditions, but it is

329
00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:08,600
Speaker 1: interesting that he lists a large number of symptoms all

330
00:20:08,680 --> 00:20:13,800
Speaker 1: associated with lead toxicity as among the things that can

331
00:20:13,880 --> 00:20:26,440
Speaker 1: be cured by these spas. So by the early fifteen hundreds,

332
00:20:26,560 --> 00:20:29,440
Speaker 1: Bath already had a reputation as a place that could

333
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:33,320
Speaker 1: cure paralysis, and one of the iconic images associated with

334
00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:36,400
Speaker 1: this place and its healing powers was a big collection

335
00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:42,120
Speaker 1: of discarded crutches. But it was noticed by physicians even

336
00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:44,520
Speaker 1: as far back as the sixteenth century that there was

337
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:48,240
Speaker 1: one particular type of paralysis which the waters were better

338
00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:52,040
Speaker 1: at curing than other types of paralysis, and this was

339
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:55,359
Speaker 1: what they called palsy after the colic. Again, this seems

340
00:20:55,400 --> 00:20:57,840
Speaker 1: to be referring to the exact same pattern of symptoms.

341
00:20:58,080 --> 00:21:01,960
Speaker 1: It's colic of pictonum. You have severe abdominal pain, constipation

342
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:05,880
Speaker 1: followed by weakness and paralysis of the limbs. Just one

343
00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:09,600
Speaker 1: early case study. This is from a report written in

344
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:13,320
Speaker 1: the early eighteenth century by one doctor Robert Pierce. He

345
00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:17,119
Speaker 1: published accounts of his career in medicine in his memoirs,

346
00:21:17,119 --> 00:21:19,000
Speaker 1: and he wrote of one typical account. He says, a

347
00:21:19,040 --> 00:21:22,880
Speaker 1: guy named a reverend mister Pilkington came to him from

348
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:27,439
Speaker 1: Lincolnshire in sixteen sixty six, and Pierce described this man's

349
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:31,199
Speaker 1: arms as quote hanging like flails, and said he was

350
00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:34,879
Speaker 1: unable to dress himself or eat on his own. He writes, quote,

351
00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:37,639
Speaker 1: although he was a clergyman, the disease had made a

352
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:42,560
Speaker 1: quaker of him. Oh, I don't know. But after he

353
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:44,960
Speaker 1: bathed and drunk the water at bath for six to

354
00:21:45,040 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 1: seven weeks, he finally regained control of his limbs, apparently

355
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:52,080
Speaker 1: including the ability to doff his hat in greeting, which,

356
00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:55,600
Speaker 1: based on this writing, seems was considered very important, but

357
00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:58,960
Speaker 1: at least by this man. Pilkington and a bunch of

358
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:02,240
Speaker 1: sources from the eighteen century reports specific patients who saw

359
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:05,840
Speaker 1: improvement at bath. It was people with paralysis who happened

360
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 1: to be employed as color grinders, pewterers, and chemists, all

361
00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:13,760
Speaker 1: people who would have had exposure to lead through their jobs.

362
00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:16,800
Speaker 1: So it really seems like a convergence is happening here.

363
00:22:16,800 --> 00:22:21,119
Speaker 1: We're seeing a consistent pattern emerging in the records of

364
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:24,679
Speaker 1: who's getting healed at bath. It might be worth noting

365
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,000
Speaker 1: what was standard treatment at the time for people with

366
00:22:28,119 --> 00:22:32,320
Speaker 1: colica pictonum other than going to bath. Well, sometimes when

367
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:35,000
Speaker 1: it was just the colic and constipation stage, so just

368
00:22:35,080 --> 00:22:40,040
Speaker 1: the abdominal pain and constipation. They would prescribe purges and emetics,

369
00:22:40,080 --> 00:22:43,080
Speaker 1: so these would be drugs to help induce defication and

370
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:46,720
Speaker 1: to induce vomiting. Sometimes opiates would be given for pain.

371
00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:51,879
Speaker 1: For paralysis, additional treatments could include confinement to a bland diet,

372
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:55,200
Speaker 1: and in cases after the actual cause was known, removal

373
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:58,000
Speaker 1: of the person from the lead source. That seems pretty important.

374
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: So what was the treatment of bath? How would that

375
00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:04,240
Speaker 1: be different? Well, this treatment involved bathing in the water,

376
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,640
Speaker 1: so you would immerse yourself up to the neck anywhere

377
00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:10,920
Speaker 1: between thirty minutes and several hours, and this would usually

378
00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: be done starting in the morning, with people either standing

379
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 1: or sitting on stone benches or seats in the water

380
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,119
Speaker 1: up to their necks. Starting in the Tudor period, the

381
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:23,840
Speaker 1: water was changed once a day, so they would remove

382
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,280
Speaker 1: the water after the baths closed around noon, and then

383
00:23:27,280 --> 00:23:30,680
Speaker 1: it would take about nine hours for the pools to refill.

384
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:36,280
Speaker 1: Heywood notes that getting there early in the morning was

385
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: popular because it meant that you got cleaner water. Just

386
00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: think about that. I mean, it's still kind of the deal.

387
00:23:44,320 --> 00:23:48,640
Speaker 1: Right earlier you get to the pool, the less less

388
00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:51,680
Speaker 1: time it's had to absorb certain things. It's had less

389
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:54,080
Speaker 1: time to stuff on the bottom to get stirred up.

390
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Oh you're a swimmer, yeah, do

391
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,360
Speaker 1: you try to get there early when you can? I'm

392
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,440
Speaker 1: doing only a morning stone or not for these reasons,

393
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: just for scheduling reasons. But but yeah, there have been

394
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: times where I'm like, oh, they just closed the pool

395
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 1: for a week and now they're reopening. Everything's nice and clean.

396
00:24:10,880 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 1: I want to get in. I want to be Monday morning,

397
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: first thing to get my shot at that clean, clean pool. Nice.

398
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:18,600
Speaker 1: Do you do you have like a waterproof ear buds

399
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:20,439
Speaker 1: or something. Do you listen to music when you swim?

400
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: Or I don't even know if that's a thing. Honestly,

401
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 1: I know it is. I see plenty of people do it,

402
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 1: and I just I've never done it. Yeah, well they so.

403
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: Heywood says in this paper that sometimes there was music

404
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: or other stuff to entertain people while they were bathing.

405
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 1: I guess if you're just supposed to sit in the

406
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: warm water for three hours up to your neck and

407
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,200
Speaker 1: there's no music or anything that might get boring, well

408
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: it makes sense. And you know, I see the same

409
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: thing reflected in the YMCA pool that I go to,

410
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 1: like there's there's often some sort of aquatic aerobics class

411
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 1: going on, there's music playing. And I was just thinking

412
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:55,480
Speaker 1: of this when you mentioned earlier, like the social aspect

413
00:24:56,040 --> 00:25:00,919
Speaker 1: of of healing at bats and spas. That's something I

414
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,360
Speaker 1: think I often failed to think about. But yeah, that's

415
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 1: one of the advantages of going to any kind of

416
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: group exercise scenario is that, yeah, you're doing some level

417
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: of physical exercise, you're being guided in that physical exercise,

418
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: but then you are in the company of other people,

419
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 1: and you're going to get at least some level of

420
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: social boost That's true, and I'm sure there was a

421
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 1: lot of socializing going on, especially since I would guess

422
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:24,840
Speaker 1: a lot of the people bathing together. Probably you know,

423
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: people came there for different reasons, but probably a lot

424
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: of them had similar complaints. It sounds like, and you know,

425
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 1: you can really have a long conversation if you have

426
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:35,879
Speaker 1: like the same medical problem as somebody else. That can

427
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: really be a bonding experience. Yeah, And there's also seems

428
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: like a high probability that you would have encountered people

429
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: from your industry, other color grinders, other pewterers and other chemists,

430
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: in addition to people being treated for other maladies. Of

431
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 1: course exactly so, so that's soaking in the water. What

432
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:58,919
Speaker 1: about drinking the water? So heywood Wrights quote drinking the

433
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: water became more sceptible after sixteen fifty when a clean

434
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: supply was provided which came directly from the spring. And then,

435
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 1: referring to that physician from earlier Pierce Pierce claimed that quote,

436
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: advantage has been found by drinking it. Referring to the bathwater,

437
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: especially in the bilious chalks, I think that means colics

438
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: and the usual effect of them loss of limbs. Interesting again,

439
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:28,160
Speaker 1: I like singling out the people who have the colica

440
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: pictonum as the ones who benefit from drinking the water.

441
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: And Heywood writes one to two pints were consumed each

442
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: morning in divided doses. Sometimes the patients chose to drink

443
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:42,120
Speaker 1: much larger amounts. But this was frowned upon. Has taken

444
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: us back to Plenty again, who was talking about the

445
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 1: people who get in the spring and then they just

446
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,199
Speaker 1: want to drink it until you can't see their jewelry anymore.

447
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:55,119
Speaker 1: The distrust of too much hydration, so bath gained a

448
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: reputation for healing throughout the second half of the seventeenth century,

449
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:01,679
Speaker 1: though at the time it had not yet been revived

450
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 1: as a luxurious spa retreat. Haywood says that the journey

451
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: there was kind of treacherous and accommodations were pretty dank.

452
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, it was not fancy yet.

453
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 1: But by the eighteenth century, the physicians of Bath were

454
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 1: convinced that the waters could hear a number of diseases,

455
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: including colic epictonum and that, and word of these cares

456
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 1: kind of spread around the country, attracting a lot of attention.

457
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 1: So people were making the journey there in some cases

458
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: like royal people. But there were also some doctors from

459
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: outside Bath that were skeptical, including Richard Meade, a physician

460
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,919
Speaker 1: to King George the Second. So there was impetus to

461
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:43,160
Speaker 1: put together a sort of large collection of data of

462
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: like a study that would really convince people to come

463
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: there for treatment. And there's a whole section of this

464
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: paper that I'm not going to get into because it

465
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: concerns the medical aspects lost, but it is very interesting.

466
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 1: It's about the founding of the Bath General Hospital and

467
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: what some of the kind of cold, cruel economic realities

468
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: of that were that, like a lot of this may

469
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: have been driven by locals around Bath wanting their businesses

470
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 1: to benefit from people coming to the springs for medical treatment,

471
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: but also them having a problem that like, oh, a

472
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 1: lot of the people who are coming here for healing

473
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 1: are like poor, and we don't want just poor people,

474
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: so we want to find a way to get the

475
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:27,960
Speaker 1: poor people out of the city and get rich people coming.

476
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: So some less than savory sort of abuse of the

477
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:34,679
Speaker 1: concept of charity here. Yeah, but this does lead to

478
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: this large collection of data at the hospital, and Haywood

479
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 1: notes some very interesting measures that were put in place

480
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: for the evaluation of clinical results at Bath. One thing

481
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: was treatment was regulated, so you're trying to make sure

482
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: that patients were getting basically the same thing. They were

483
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: getting treated in the same way. Also, because to quote

484
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 1: from Haywood quote, at that time, medical practitioners were notoriously

485
00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:02,719
Speaker 1: over optimists when assessing the results of their own treatments.

486
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: Because of this, they had outcomes of treatment assessed by

487
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: a committee of doctors rather than only by the one

488
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: doctor who had managed the case in question. So you're

489
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: not getting to just like ride up the outcomes on

490
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: your own patients. All right, that's good, spreading it around

491
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. They hoped that this would

492
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: lead to quote irrefutable proof of the efficacy of the

493
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: bath waters for healing. Now I think irrefutable proof is

494
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: a little overenthusiastic there, but these are good measures to

495
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 1: put in place, certainly compared to the standards of the day.

496
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: So this is not a double blind, randomized controlled trial

497
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:41,320
Speaker 1: that would really wouldn't become a standard until the twentieth century,

498
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 1: but pretty good for the time. Another thing was that

499
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:47,920
Speaker 1: it was agreed that no patient would qualify as quote

500
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: cured if they still had any trace of the original

501
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: symptoms they showed up with, and they enforced pretty high

502
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: standards of record keeping. Okay, so what did the treatment

503
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: at bath consist of? Well, first, and very important to note,

504
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: patients were extracted from their regular environment for their stay

505
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: in bath, which means they were almost certainly cut off

506
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: from the original source of lead toxicity lead exposure, and

507
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: this in itself is important to keep in mind because

508
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: for all we know, this alone could be causing major improvements. Yeah,

509
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 1: giving them just away from their regular everyday exposure to land,

510
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: and that could be in most cases either occupational or

511
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:34,239
Speaker 1: from food and drink. And on that last note, they

512
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: were given plenty of fresh food at Bath and this

513
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: included home brewed beer made there. The additional drinking of

514
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 1: alcohol beyond what was provided by the hospital was forbidden,

515
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: so this was another way to cut off additional lead exposure.

516
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 1: They were often given purging medication to treat constipation. Bathing

517
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: was generally three days a week in the manner previously described.

518
00:30:57,800 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: So you know, you go sider stand in the water,

519
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: you keep your head above the water line, but it

520
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: goes up to your neck. And then again, patients would

521
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 1: often drink one to one and a half pints of

522
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: the spring water a day, maybe divided into two different doses,

523
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 1: and in some cases they might like sort of pump

524
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: the spring water over the paralyzed limb. So, anyway, what

525
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 1: are the results if we look back on them historically,

526
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: the results are pretty interesting. By analyzing the records kept

527
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: at Bath General Hospital, it seems there is a pretty

528
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,360
Speaker 1: good reason to think that the spa therapy at Bath

529
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: was doing something to relieve the symptoms of this disease,

530
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:40,360
Speaker 1: in particular of Colica pictonum. The paper includes a table

531
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 1: compiling stats on patients admitted to the Bath Hospital from

532
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty one to seventeen fifty eight. Out of one

533
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: five hundred ninety patients total, one hundred and eight of

534
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: them were admitted with symptoms indicating that they had paralysis

535
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 1: to to lead toxicity. Those can be further broken down

536
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 1: into paralyzed patients who had occupational exposure to lead. There

537
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 1: were thirty seven of those including readmission and patients with

538
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: the Devonshire colic meaning paralysis that was preceded by severe

539
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: abdominal pain and constipation, and there were seventy one of

540
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: these including readmissions. In the cases of patients with occupational exposure,

541
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent were completely cured and ninety two percent

542
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: were improved. In the case of patients with Devonshire colic,

543
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 1: forty two percent were completely cured and ninety three percent

544
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: were improved. Now, my initial reaction to this was that's interesting.

545
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 1: But without a control group receiving no treatment or placebo treatment,

546
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: or without different treatment groups to compare, how can we

547
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: know it was the bathwater in the immersion that was

548
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: actually leading to these CUIs what if simply maybe being

549
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: away from the lead exposure on its own would produce

550
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: the same rates of recovery. Well, that is possible, but

551
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 1: the author considers that and offers some evidence based on

552
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: their referral letters correlated with each patient's case in hospital

553
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: records that may give us more confidence in the results.

554
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: So talking about the specifically the workers who had occupational

555
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: exposure to lead, most of them came from London or

556
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 1: the region in the southeast of England, and Heywood writes,

557
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 1: quote fifteen had already been admitted to one of the

558
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 1: London hospitals but had not responded to treatment there. They

559
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 1: were referred to the Bath hospital as quote incurable, but

560
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 1: after treatment in Bath, eight were cured and the other

561
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: seven were said to be improved. These results support the

562
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: view that the treatment in Bath had something special to offer,

563
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: as in London they would also have been removed from

564
00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: exposure to lead and given purges, emetics and a bland diet,

565
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:58,479
Speaker 1: apparently to no avail. So interesting here, this still doesn't

566
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: prove it. It seems we have a kind of crude

567
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: analog of a control group based in the treatment histories

568
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,919
Speaker 1: from these patients referral letters. So in many cases they

569
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: had already been removed from the lead and received other

570
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: treatments for a long time in different hospitals and shown

571
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: no improvement. So this is still not as good as

572
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: a real control group for a number of reasons. For example,

573
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: one I just thought of is that it's not concurrent.

574
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 1: So like, you know, the previous treatment that they got

575
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 1: at the other hospitals happened before and then they came

576
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: to Bath afterwards. So maybe the cumulative time away from

577
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:37,680
Speaker 1: lead exposure could contribute to better outcomes at Bath and

578
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 1: so forth. But interesting results nevertheless, Yeah, yeah, and results

579
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: that would seem to some degree to point back two

580
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: questions about the water, like what is it about the

581
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:52,840
Speaker 1: waters of Bath or what they're doing with the waters

582
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:55,439
Speaker 1: of Bath that may or may not be having an impact, right,

583
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: that's right. So here's another thing that makes these results interesting.

584
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: The Bath General Hospital records spanned many decades, and they

585
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: seem to indicate a consistently higher rate of cure and

586
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: improvement for palsy from colica pictonum. So again, lead exposure

587
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: paralysis than for other conditions such as paralysis from sources

588
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 1: other than lead poisoning. So it's possible that you know,

589
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: maybe the Bath General Hospital doctors were using you know,

590
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: they could have been doing all kinds of tricks, consciously

591
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: or unconsciously to make their treatments look more effective than

592
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: they actually were. Maybe they were using selective admission policies

593
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 1: to improve their outcomes, like picking patients to let into

594
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: the study that seemed more likely to improve, or maybe

595
00:35:41,160 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: they were just overly positive in assessing outcomes. But if

596
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:47,840
Speaker 1: any of that were the case, why would the numbers

597
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: be so much better for patients specifically with lead poisoning

598
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: than for all other conditions. Yeah, because it's the numbers

599
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:59,800
Speaker 1: that really Propoin's interest here, Because if you're just talking

600
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: nottally about like the number of abandoned crutches that they

601
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:06,560
Speaker 1: have there, it's like, oh, that's not very convincing, because

602
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:10,400
Speaker 1: there are two majorly compelling reasons that a sick person

603
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: might abandoned their crutch, and only one of them speaks

604
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,319
Speaker 1: to the effectiveness of the treatment. Yes, that's very good

605
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:19,480
Speaker 1: to point out. So again we get a little bit

606
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 1: of extra confidence just by looking at the difference comparing

607
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: the different conditions in their outcomes. So again, all this

608
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:28,719
Speaker 1: like it would not prove it to the standard of

609
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 1: a modern randomized controlled trial, But I think there's at

610
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,920
Speaker 1: least a solid reason to suspect that SPA therapy at

611
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:38,360
Speaker 1: Bath did have some healing powers for people who couldn't

612
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 1: doff their hats because of lead. And so this was

613
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 1: the paper that initially got me interested in talking about this.

614
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: And the paper finally addresses the question that might be

615
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:51,480
Speaker 1: burning in all of your minds, like if this is

616
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:54,920
Speaker 1: the case, if it was actually effective at curing paralysis

617
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 1: from lead toxicity, how does that work? Well, Heywood's paper

618
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: here speculates the first thing is the immersion. So a

619
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 1: big component of this treatment at Bath was spending a

620
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: lot of time sitting in warm, mineral spring water up

621
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:13,280
Speaker 1: to your neck, and Haywood argues that this in itself

622
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:17,560
Speaker 1: could contribute to the outcomes documented at Bath General Hospital.

623
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: And to back this up, Haywood writes about how in

624
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies some researchers were doing experiments for the

625
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 1: space program for NASA and trying to simulate the effects

626
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: of microgravity, and some of these experiments involved having astronauts

627
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 1: sit up to their necks in warm water for a

628
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 1: long time, and Haywood points to a nephrologist named Murray

629
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 1: Epstein who demonstrated in some papers something kind of interesting.

630
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 1: When you sit around in water up to your neck,

631
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 1: it makes you p more. Specifically, not just p more,

632
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 1: but it increases the rate in which you excrete water,

633
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 1: but not just water, also sodium and calcium. Now, why

634
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: on earth would that be. This is also not something

635
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:03,480
Speaker 1: that's one hundred percent clear, but there seems to be

636
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: a reasonable explanation Haywood offers, which has to do with

637
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: water pressure. So like, if your body is sitting down

638
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: below the waterline, you've got water pressing in on your

639
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: skin from all directions. And when that water pressure is

640
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 1: pressing in on your legs and your abdomen, it causes

641
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: that external flesh to kind of push in some blood

642
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: and interstitial fluid. More fluids are getting pressed into the

643
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 1: body from the outside, and Haywood writes, quote and this

644
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: extracellular fluid moves into blood vessels in the thorax, meaning

645
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:42,280
Speaker 1: the trunk of the body, producing an increase in central

646
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,399
Speaker 1: blood volume of about seven hundred milli leads. Now, it's

647
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 1: interesting that this basically comes back to the idea of

648
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 1: purging fluids from your body, which is something that was

649
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: long thought or understood to have some sort of roll

650
00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: in healing the sick right, and in many cases that

651
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,399
Speaker 1: might not have done anything. But I wonder if this

652
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:06,480
Speaker 1: means that in the case of lead poisoning, the purges

653
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 1: would actually be helpful anyway. But to continue here, so

654
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 1: Heywood rights. The consequent rise in right and left atrial

655
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: pressures is the stimulus that leads to the large increases

656
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:32,399
Speaker 1: in urinary volume and sodium excretion that are observed during

657
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: immersion up to the neck. This is because sensory receptors

658
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:40,759
Speaker 1: for blood volume are apparently situated in the right atrium,

659
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 1: so this relative central hyper volemia, the condition of having

660
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: extra blood volume extra fluid volume in the body deceives

661
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 1: the body which reacts as though there had been an

662
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:56,800
Speaker 1: increase in total body fluid volume, not just a reallocation

663
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,160
Speaker 1: of fluid. So does that make sense that I think

664
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: I'm explaining this right? That The simplified version is when

665
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 1: you immerse your body in water, the water squeezes you

666
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,720
Speaker 1: and essentially squeezes some of your extra body fluid into

667
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: the core of your thorax. It squeezes from the outside,

668
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,759
Speaker 1: so the pressure and the core increases, and because the

669
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:19,840
Speaker 1: pressure in the core increases, this tricks your body's blood

670
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 1: volume sensors into thinking the total amount of fluid in

671
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: your body has increased, and thus to compensate for this,

672
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: it kicks off complex chain reactions in the the renal

673
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 1: system that lead to increased excretion of urine and of

674
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 1: things that get excreted through urine, sodium, and in this

675
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: case calcium. Okay, that makes sense, Yeah, but why would

676
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: this have anything to do with lead poisoning. Well, Heywood

677
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: notes that the human body typically tends to handle lead

678
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: and calcium in a similar way. So when there's lead

679
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 1: in your body, the body treats it kind of the

680
00:40:57,280 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: same way it treats calcium. And so if this is

681
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 1: causing increased excretion of calcium through urine, it may also

682
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:09,320
Speaker 1: be causing increased excretion of lead through urine. And in fact,

683
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 1: Haywood was involved in experiments that were set up at

684
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: the Immersion Laboratory in the Bristol Royal Infirmatory Informatory Infirmary

685
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: to test this hypothesis, and they in fact did find

686
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:27,240
Speaker 1: that urinary lead excretion goes up when the body is immersed.

687
00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 1: So they tested this out on experiments with modern lead

688
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:33,360
Speaker 1: workers who were not suffering from symptoms of lead poisoning,

689
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 1: but still had lead levels much higher than the general

690
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 1: population in their blood. These workers were subjected to three

691
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: hour sessions of soaking up to their necks in water

692
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: that was thirty five degrees celsius or ninety five degrees fahrenheit,

693
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:51,799
Speaker 1: and the experiments found that the immersion did indeed cause

694
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:55,240
Speaker 1: them to pee out higher levels of lead than people

695
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: normally do. Oh wow, okay, haywood Wrights quote. The total

696
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 1: amounts excreted during one three hour immersion period are small

697
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: compared to the total body lead, which is predominantly tissue bound. Okay,

698
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: so not like free in the blood, but bound up

699
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 1: in tissues. Hey, what goes on? However, if these immersions

700
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:16,760
Speaker 1: were continued to the extent described in the bath hospital records, ie,

701
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:20,279
Speaker 1: three times a week for twenty four weeks, an appreciable

702
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 1: proportion of the total body lead would be removed. We

703
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: can therefore suggest that this was a mechanism through which

704
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:33,799
Speaker 1: traditional bath spa therapy could have operated. So that's fascinating.

705
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: Just sitting immersed in the warm water apparently could help

706
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 1: you get more lead out of the body faster than

707
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,240
Speaker 1: you would doing anything else. Yeah, and this, of course

708
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: working in congress with not having a whole bunch of

709
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 1: lead flooding into your system through your occupation or other

710
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: environmental causes exactly. So you're removed from the original exposure

711
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 1: to lead, you'd have less lead coming in, and you're

712
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: increasing the rate at which lead is going out. Okay,

713
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: but there's some other amenities to factor in as well though, right,

714
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 1: that's right. So, as I mentioned, you know, the patients

715
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: at Bath, in addition to being removed from the source

716
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:14,800
Speaker 1: of lead and having the immersion, they also got good food,

717
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: so that may have been a factor. They got gentle exercise,

718
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:19,839
Speaker 1: that may have been a factor as well. So it's

719
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: hard to know for sure with historical cases like this

720
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: because you know, you can't you're not running the test yourself.

721
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,799
Speaker 1: You can't isolate all the variables. You can only deal

722
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,759
Speaker 1: with the data we have from history. But in this case,

723
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:35,840
Speaker 1: I think you could totally plausibly make the argument that

724
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: the immersion was really doing something for the people with

725
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,800
Speaker 1: lead poisoning. It was doing something more than just getting

726
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: them away from the original lead exposure. Now, there was

727
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: another interesting part of this. That's the immersion, which Haywood

728
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: treats is probably the main explanation, Well, what about drinking

729
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: the mineral water Again, hopefully not two levels described by

730
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:02,280
Speaker 1: plenty where your rings disappear, but the level generally prescribed

731
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: to drink was like one point five to two pints

732
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,320
Speaker 1: a day. And Haywood notes that water from the mineral

733
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 1: springs of Bath has elevated levels of calcium and iron,

734
00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 1: and citing a study by Mahafee from nineteen seventy three,

735
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 1: Haywood observes that calcium and iron deficiency actually increase the

736
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 1: body's tendency to absorb lead, and calcium and iron deficiency

737
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 1: increase the toxicity of lead that is already present in

738
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: the body. And this has been shown to the extent

739
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,280
Speaker 1: that calcium and iron supplements have been suggested as partial

740
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: treatment for infants with higher than average levels of lead

741
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: in the blood. So it's possible that the mineral water

742
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:44,760
Speaker 1: pints that patients at Bath were drinking that was helping

743
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: out as well. Yeah, And I mean, on top of that,

744
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: if they're if you're having to if you're having to

745
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 1: pe more because of your soakings in the warm waters,

746
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: you need to be drinking more water as well, like

747
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: you need to stay hydrated and This is something I

748
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:02,759
Speaker 1: saw reflected in some papers. We'll probably discuss in the

749
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 1: next episode that, like, if nothing else, staying hydrated on

750
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 1: clean water like that alone is beneficial for the body,

751
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: like you will because if nothing else, you don't want

752
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: whatever's going on with your body to be exasperated by

753
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 1: also having some sort of dehydration scenario going on as well. Yes, exactly,

754
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: Hydration incredibly important, so that plays a role as well.

755
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 1: Though I want to be clear this is not should

756
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: not be taken as a general endorsement of drinking mineral

757
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: spring water, which could have all kinds of things in it.

758
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,359
Speaker 1: So it seems like in these cases these people were

759
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 1: probably doing all right, but you don't want to be

760
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: drinking water from sources you're not sure or safe, right right, right, Yeah,

761
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 1: But if nothing else, like I say, how much I

762
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,839
Speaker 1: wonder like on a case that case basis, like how

763
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: much of that person's normal liquid intake would have been

764
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: confined to like beers for example, versus you know, they're

765
00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: still having beer, they're having good beer when they go

766
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: to bat, but then they're also having a large amount

767
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,399
Speaker 1: of water as well in addition to that beer. So

768
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:08,839
Speaker 1: it seems like there would be a net positive there. Yeah,

769
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 1: so I would say in conclusion, while bathing in a

770
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:16,840
Speaker 1: SPA probably does only work via placebo effect on a

771
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: number of the conditions we've talked about throughout the series

772
00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:21,399
Speaker 1: so far, on the conditions it was used to treat

773
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: throughout history. I think this paper makes a very interesting

774
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: case that when it came to paralysis from lead poisoning,

775
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: spa therapy was genuine medicine. Yeah, it's fascinating, very fascinating.

776
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and close

777
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: out this episode on that note, but we will be

778
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: back in a part four on baths immersion and also

779
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 1: drinking of naturally occurring spring waters, thermal waters, etc. We

780
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: still have some other important topics to discuss here, so

781
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: come back for that. In the meantime, we'll just remind

782
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:58,880
Speaker 1: you that our core episodes of Stuffed Toable with Your

783
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 1: Mind published on two season Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do

784
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:04,279
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster Factor. Mondays would do

785
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: listener mail, and we're already getting some great listener mail

786
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: in about these bad episodes, by the way, And then

787
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,719
Speaker 1: on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time

788
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about

789
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: a strange film. Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Pauseway.

790
00:47:19,440 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

791
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

792
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

793
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

794
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

795
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart radio,

796
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 1: this is the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're

797
00:47:45,880 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows the first time time by

798
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:03,719
Speaker 1: a p