Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren voc obamb Here, do you have brown lines crow's feet?
Speaker 1: Now you can make them disappear with the blink of
Speaker 1: a injection. Botox has become a popular cosmetic treatment, and
Speaker 1: while it's pretty common knowledge at this point that botox
Speaker 1: works thanks to a carefully controlled toxin, what's less well
Speaker 1: known is that we know about that toxin thanks to
Speaker 1: a batch of killer sausages. In the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It was this perfectly poisonous tube pork medley, that justin
Speaker 1: Is Kerner, a German physician, first suspected as the source
Speaker 1: of the potentially deadly muscle relaxing botulinum toxin. Sausage of
Speaker 1: questionable freshness was not uncommon in turn of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Germany, but after mysterious outbreaks of sausage poisoning during
Speaker 1: the Napoleonic Wars repeatedly killed scores of people, Kerner got
Speaker 1: wise to the cause. After rigorous testing of hundreds of
Speaker 1: sausages and of injections of the suspected toxin, he became
Speaker 1: the first to identify and publish a clinical description of
Speaker 1: the toxin and its effects. Food born Botulism is caused
Speaker 1: when the things we eat are infected with spores of
Speaker 1: Claustrodium botulinum microbes, a nearly bulletproof bacteria commonly found in
Speaker 1: soil around the globe. When the microbe contaminates meat and
Speaker 1: occasionally produced, it flourishes provided the environment is oxygen depleted.
Speaker 1: This makes it the perfect deadly pairing with poorly preserved
Speaker 1: foods and salted meats. Boche Linum toxin in the wild
Speaker 1: can cause vision problems, difficulties swallowing, vomiting, and severely weakened muscles,
Speaker 1: but people are so resourceful that they've figured out a
Speaker 1: way to harness the toxin and focus its effects in
Speaker 1: specific ways. Case in point the popularity of a wrinkle
Speaker 1: rasing serum known by the brand name Botox, the use
Speaker 1: of which has jumped by more than seven percent since
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, according to the American Society of
Speaker 1: Plastic Surgeons, and this increase only reflects cosmetic use. Bochuallinum
Speaker 1: toxin is quite useful for a range of medical maladies,
Speaker 1: including excessive sweating and migraines, and it can also relax
Speaker 1: the perpetually contracted muscles of people who have cerebral palsy.
Speaker 1: The art of looking good, just like bochuainum toxin, has
Speaker 1: a long and dubious history. Ancient Egyptians painted their eyelids
Speaker 1: with a toxic cocktail of copper or in lead, and
Speaker 1: the exposure lead to insomnia and brain damage. Greeks smeared
Speaker 1: their faces with a lead based cream, which eventually caused madness.
Speaker 1: Going to these great lengths may seem a bit ridiculous,
Speaker 1: especially when one considers sacrificing health for beauty, but it's
Speaker 1: not as far removed as you may think. We still
Speaker 1: use mercury in some eye cosmetics as a preservative, all
Speaker 1: though some states have banned the element, and in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, one third of thirty three red lipsticks
Speaker 1: examined by a Safe Cosmetics advocacy group were found to
Speaker 1: contain lead. As of twenty sixteen, the US Food and
Speaker 1: Drug Administration doesn't have a set limit for lead in cosmetics.
Speaker 1: We do, you have a set of standards for commercial
Speaker 1: cure to meat production, however, making most cases of bachulinum
Speaker 1: toxin poisoning a thing of the past. Though, just to
Speaker 1: be safe, avoid any canned food that's bulging outward or
Speaker 1: that has a dent along one of the cans, seems,
Speaker 1: and don't give honey to babies under one year of age. Yep,
Speaker 1: that is a batual is M safety precaution to Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil and Tyler Clang. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other tight topics, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com