Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: A healthy diet is a deceptively complex concept. Many of
Speaker 1: us spend our entire lives trying to find combinations of
Speaker 1: foods that work for our specific lifestyles and metabolisms. Calorie counts,
Speaker 1: vitamins and fats, all the chemistry that goes into food.
Speaker 1: We understand so much of it, and yet that makes
Speaker 1: it an incredibly daunting task to optimize. And that's without
Speaker 1: even mentioning missin information and quack medicine. This may seem
Speaker 1: like a purely modern problem, and it is, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, But like many parts of society, we have
Speaker 1: been struggling with diet almost as long as we've known
Speaker 1: about different types of food groups, and when medical knowledge
Speaker 1: was in its infancy, guess work was all we had.
Speaker 1: In New York in the middle of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: a man named James Caleb Jackson was suffering from a
Speaker 1: series of untreatable health issues. He was likely someone that
Speaker 1: we would refer to today as immunocompromised. An abolitionist newspaperman,
Speaker 1: His frequent sicknesses forced him to sell his share in
Speaker 1: the newspaper, essentially taking retirement at the age of thirty six.
Speaker 1: Things were not looking good for Jackson. He visited doctors
Speaker 1: throughout his entire life, and none of them had been
Speaker 1: able to help him. But he did survive spoiler alerts,
Speaker 1: and part of the reason why is that he finally
Speaker 1: found a medicinal regimen that worked for him. It was
Speaker 1: called hydrotherapy, essentially a series of baths in mineral waters.
Speaker 1: After visiting a spa in the eighteen forties, he felt
Speaker 1: completely restored. The treatment didn't just give him a new
Speaker 1: lease on life, it gave him something to devote his
Speaker 1: life too, and so he became a diehard advocate for hydrotherapy,
Speaker 1: helping to found an institution called glen Haven Water Cure
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven. This place ironically burned down, but
Speaker 1: it didn't slow down his new career. In eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: he obtained a medical degree and eight years after that,
Speaker 1: he moved to Dansville, New York, where he founded Our
Speaker 1: Home on the Hillside, a facility that he would run
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. His patients were like
Speaker 1: himself a decade earlier, desperate people who had exhausted everything
Speaker 1: that traditional medicine could do for them and were seeking
Speaker 1: out alternate cures, and James Caleb Jackson was a reassuring
Speaker 1: presence to these sort of people. He was promising a
Speaker 1: miracle cure, but he was also no showy snake oil salesman.
Speaker 1: He was someone for whom his cure was a lifesaver.
Speaker 1: Now under his supervision, Our Home on the Hillside became
Speaker 1: an incredible success, serving as many as twenty thousand patients.
Speaker 1: Progressive thinkers from around the country even came to give
Speaker 1: lectures there, including Frederick Douglass. When he wasn't looking after patients,
Speaker 1: Jackson spent his time developing his ideas and strategies for
Speaker 1: healthy living. And that's how, in eighteen sixty three, he
Speaker 1: came to introduce a special breakfast that would provide a
Speaker 1: healthy and nutritious start to the day. You see, the
Speaker 1: man had been a farmer before he started his newspaper,
Speaker 1: and so, along with his wife Lucretia, he developed a
Speaker 1: bland but nutritious combination of wheat and grains. It was
Speaker 1: served in the form of cubes that had to be
Speaker 1: soaked in milk overnight to become edible. They called it granula.
Speaker 1: Sold that the affordable price of twenty cents a pound.
Speaker 1: It was a hit with both his patients and New
Speaker 1: York at large. At its peak, our home on the
Speaker 1: Hillside was producing and selling sixty thousand pounds a year
Speaker 1: just to keep up with demand. Over a decade after
Speaker 1: the invention of granula, a man from Michigan came to
Speaker 1: stay at Jackson's facility. A man who had a wellness
Speaker 1: facility of his own back in Battle Creek and was
Speaker 1: interested in studying Jackson's methods. His name was John, and
Speaker 1: by eighteen seventy seven, John was selling a cold cereal
Speaker 1: of his own, which he referred to as granola, legally
Speaker 1: distinguishing it from Jackson's invention in order to protect himself
Speaker 1: in court. Now some retellings of this story say that
Speaker 1: James Jackson sued John for stealing his idea, but the
Speaker 1: actual sourcing for that claim is vague at best, and
Speaker 1: If we know anything about Jackson, it's that he didn't
Speaker 1: seem like the sort of man who aspired to great
Speaker 1: influence over the new field of breakfast cereals, and yet
Speaker 1: in a way, that's what he created. Granula was the
Speaker 1: first cereal, and it grew into an industry worth billions,
Speaker 1: all thanks to John's influence. John Kellogg, So the next
Speaker 1: time you take a bite of cereal in the morning,
Speaker 1: remember that behind all the cartoon marketing, the sugar and
Speaker 1: the wheat products, there is a story of a nineteenth
Speaker 1: century hydrotherapist and his journey to create a healthy breakfast.
Speaker 1: September twenty fifth of nineteen fifty began like any other
Speaker 1: Sunday in Toronto, Canada. The stores were closed, the streets
Speaker 1: were quiet, and families trickled home from church to relax
Speaker 1: and get ready for the week ahead. But in the
Speaker 1: middle of the afternoon, the sunny sky began to darken.
Speaker 1: Massive storm clouds rolled in over the rooftops, and when
Speaker 1: residents squinted out their windows, they saw a pale blue
Speaker 1: disc peeking out from behind the clouds. At first, it
Speaker 1: looked like a full moon hanging in the afternoon sun,
Speaker 1: but in the brief moment when the clouds parted, the
Speaker 1: truth became obvious. That was not the moon, it was
Speaker 1: the Sun, hanging like a big blue circle amid purple clouds.
Speaker 1: At that very moment, one of Canada's most famed astronomers,
Speaker 1: Helen Sawyer Hog, was passing through a park. The sky
Speaker 1: had grown so dark that she saw a gaggle of
Speaker 1: ducks sleeping in the middle of a pond, with their
Speaker 1: heads tucked under their wings, as if they thought that
Speaker 1: it was the dead of night. Helen knew that something
Speaker 1: highly unusual must be happening in the sky, but she
Speaker 1: had no idea what, and so she rushed to her lab.
Speaker 1: She hurried past rows of houses and apartment buildings with
Speaker 1: the lights on in every window, and then suddenly the
Speaker 1: whole streets went dark. Seconds later, a piercing alarm rang
Speaker 1: out in the distance. A police car raced down the
Speaker 1: street with its sirens blaring and lights flashing under the
Speaker 1: swirling purple sky. All across Toronto, the quiet streets devolved
Speaker 1: into pandemonium. The phone lines at the police stations were
Speaker 1: ringing off the hook with panicked residents wondering what was
Speaker 1: going on. Had the sun exploded. Was there a nuclear attack,
Speaker 1: an alien invasion, the apocalypse? But when Helen got to
Speaker 1: her lab, she and her colleagues quickly put together the truth.
Speaker 1: All of this terrifying chaos had a surprisingly mundane cause.
Speaker 1: It seems that the dark clouds were the result of
Speaker 1: a wildfire that was raging in the forests of British
Speaker 1: Columbia and Alberta, almost two thousand miles away from her.
Speaker 1: The smoke particles were unusually large and dense, and they
Speaker 1: scattered certain wavelengths of light from the sun, making it
Speaker 1: appear blue instead of its usual yellow. On top of that,
Speaker 1: as the sky had darkened that afternoon, everyone in Toronto
Speaker 1: had turned on their lights at the same time, and
Speaker 1: the sudden surge in electricity had overloaded the power lines,
Speaker 1: causing a blackout. The electrical failure, in turn, had accidentally
Speaker 1: triggered the alarms at banks all over the city, and
Speaker 1: the police had rushed out to respond to these false alarms,
Speaker 1: filling the darkened streets with a horrid cacophony of sirens.
Speaker 1: In short, the world wasn't ending, even though it sure
Speaker 1: did feel like it was. In the days that followed
Speaker 1: the wildfire, smoke moved eastward, turning the sky blue over
Speaker 1: northeastern United States, the British Isles, and even as far
Speaker 1: east as Denmark. It took another month for the autumn
Speaker 1: rain in the snow to finally put the fire out,
Speaker 1: and once it had stopped smoldering, the sky finally went
Speaker 1: back to normal. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and
Speaker 1: written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by
Speaker 1: Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people
Speaker 1: who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
Speaker 1: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in book stores and online, as
Speaker 1: well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for
Speaker 1: an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all
Speaker 1: the same stories, but without the interruption for a small
Speaker 1: monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.