Speaker 1: It was Halloween night when he decided to strike, which,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you'll agree, made for the perfect backdrop
Speaker 1: for a bloody crime. But before I get ahead of
Speaker 1: myself here, let me assure you that there was no
Speaker 1: one hurt in the making of this new story. But
Speaker 1: as the old adage goes, if it bleeds, it leads,
Speaker 1: and this was certainly true from the robbery at the
Speaker 1: Spokane Blood Bank. Now, at the time, blood bank robberies
Speaker 1: weren't actually unheard of. They often had cash on hand
Speaker 1: and very minimal security. The papers reported that on the
Speaker 1: nine of October thirty one, nineteen fifty seven, a man
Speaker 1: stepped through the Spokane Blood Banks doorway and approached Billy
Speaker 1: Evelyn Miller, the only medical technician on duty. He saw her,
Speaker 1: and she saw him. The man then calmly produced a pistol.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a typical bank robbery, though. He wasn't there
Speaker 1: after some quick cash. No, he was there to find
Speaker 1: something far more valuable to him, human blood. In a
Speaker 1: steady voice, he asked for five units of typo negative
Speaker 1: and four sets of transfusion equipment. Based on the words
Speaker 1: he used, Billy Evelyn thought that he must have had
Speaker 1: a higher degree of medical understanding than your average run
Speaker 1: of the mill thief. He was also polite and, in
Speaker 1: her words, very calm and sweet, telling her, I won't
Speaker 1: hurt you, my dear, just don't be frightened. Do what
Speaker 1: I tell you. And although he was brandishing a gun,
Speaker 1: he was careful not to aim it at Billy Evelyn,
Speaker 1: so she obliged handing the items over. He packed his
Speaker 1: bag full of blood and tubes and needles and asked
Speaker 1: her not to watch as he left, and to wait
Speaker 1: five minutes before calling the police. She complied, and he
Speaker 1: quietly made his smooth escape. What drove the man to
Speaker 1: rob the blood bank would remain a mystery. Six detectives
Speaker 1: were assigned to the case, but they turned up nothing.
Speaker 1: The police speculated that the robber could have needed the
Speaker 1: blood for something that occurred outside the law, a gunshot wound,
Speaker 1: or perhaps in abortion. They noted the typo negative blood
Speaker 1: is often characterized as a universal donor, meaning that it
Speaker 1: can be used in all cases, and is often deployed
Speaker 1: in the direst of situations in which a perfect match
Speaker 1: may take longer to find the value of blood is
Speaker 1: not to be understated. Globally and in a metaphorical sense,
Speaker 1: it represents life itself, the sticky force that keeps us
Speaker 1: all on this earth. Blood is an important component in
Speaker 1: our world religions and foundational tales of civilizations. It's been
Speaker 1: used in rituals across the world as offerings to the
Speaker 1: gods and appeasements to forces beyond our understanding. It's found
Speaker 1: its way from our arteries into larger than life symbolism
Speaker 1: that we live with every day, and the English language
Speaker 1: is ripe with common phrases that invoke the idea of blood.
Speaker 1: These blood born idioms illustrate some of our most intense
Speaker 1: human experiences. For example, something terrifying might make your blood kurdle.
Speaker 1: To have blood on your hands means that you've done
Speaker 1: something irrevocably harmful. To be after blood means that you
Speaker 1: might stop at nothing to get what you want. And
Speaker 1: these are just a few. The list is seemingly endless.
Speaker 1: We can't understand who we are as humankind without first
Speaker 1: understanding more about the substance that flows through our veins
Speaker 1: and keeps us living. We need to wrap our minds
Speaker 1: around how it's been understood and misunderstood across time and place.
Speaker 1: And what happens when that blood is spilled. I'm Aaron Manky,
Speaker 1: and welcome to bedside Manners. Close your eyes and come
Speaker 1: with me. Picture this. You're sitting in a room. It's musty,
Speaker 1: but bright and full of conversation and the occasional moan.
Speaker 1: Beside you. A man is working near someone's head with
Speaker 1: a pair of scissors. You hear the sharp shearing sound
Speaker 1: of metal on metal as he works. Fine hairs catch
Speaker 1: the lights as they fluttered to the ground. Nearby, another
Speaker 1: man is bent over and peering into the gaping mouth
Speaker 1: of a wincing woman. You can smell, even from some
Speaker 1: feet away, that her insides have gone rancid. A shrill
Speaker 1: cry escapes her throat as the metal implement scrapes deeper.
Speaker 1: Looking toward the windows, you spy bowls lined up like
Speaker 1: neat and tidy soldiers, all arranged by size. They're filled
Speaker 1: with a liquid that seems to swallow the sun. Then
Speaker 1: the smell of iron hits you, and you realize that
Speaker 1: those bowls are filled with blood. The scene might have
Speaker 1: the ingredients of a torture chamber, but all of the
Speaker 1: people are there, quite willingly still sitting. You see that
Speaker 1: your hand is stretched out and clutching onto a pole.
Speaker 1: The pole has a dual purpose that helps you keep
Speaker 1: your arms straight and serves as an object to grasp tightly,
Speaker 1: all to make what's about to happen easier. A man
Speaker 1: in an apron approaches you in his hands, he holds
Speaker 1: a small, flat silver box with a hinged top. He
Speaker 1: sets it on the table, then wraps a piece of
Speaker 1: cloth around your arm a tourniquet. The veins in your
Speaker 1: arms start to bulge. The man then opens the box
Speaker 1: he set down, pulls out an instrument, and unfolds it.
Speaker 1: They resembles something like a pocket knife, a white handle
Speaker 1: and a short, double edged metal blade. The practitioner easily
Speaker 1: positions the blade at just the right angle he wants.
Speaker 1: He's done this many times before. But before he makes
Speaker 1: any cuts, he places an ornate pewter bowl beneath your arm,
Speaker 1: and then he slices into your bulging vein. Blood runs
Speaker 1: down your forearm. It feels warm as it begins to
Speaker 1: drip into the bowl in clips and plops. As you
Speaker 1: and the man your barber surgeon watch, your head feels light,
Speaker 1: the room fades, and finally you slump over because you
Speaker 1: have passed out. When you awake, the barber surgeon is
Speaker 1: smiling at you with satisfaction, knowing that he has done
Speaker 1: his job perfectly. You have a bandage on your arm
Speaker 1: and the bleeding has ceased. You'd come to him after
Speaker 1: all because you were ill, and now, with the excess
Speaker 1: blood removed and your humors restored, you are on the
Speaker 1: road toward healing. Blood letting, you see, was fundamental to
Speaker 1: caring for the human body. For over two thousand years
Speaker 1: throughout history, it was practiced in some form by almost
Speaker 1: all cultures and societies. Though it seems like a total
Speaker 1: counterintuitive practice, blood is our life force, after all, For
Speaker 1: a long time the practice was considered to be cutting edge,
Speaker 1: and yes, that pun was intentional. For a large part
Speaker 1: of history, quality and quantity of blood were thought to
Speaker 1: govern the quality and quantity of a person's years. The
Speaker 1: practice of phlebotomy, the letting of blood, is thought to
Speaker 1: have originated in ancient Egypt, with the first evidence of
Speaker 1: the practice appearing around fift b C. It's believed that
Speaker 1: the earliest proponents of therapeutic blood letting took their cues
Speaker 1: from spontaneous forms of blood letting, such as menstruation and
Speaker 1: nose bleeds. It was with thanks to the ancient physician Hippocrates, though,
Speaker 1: that this specific healing modality gained a lot of momentum
Speaker 1: over two thousand, three hundred years ago. Hippocrates hypothesized that
Speaker 1: illnesses stemmed from natural mother than supernatural causes. He proposed
Speaker 1: that healing was a matter of proper bodily maintenance and
Speaker 1: not from tributes to the gods. He adapted his ideas
Speaker 1: on some pre scientific thought that originated before his time,
Speaker 1: and after some percolating, he came up with his theory
Speaker 1: of the four humors. Hippocrates believe that nature is represented
Speaker 1: in four elements earth, air, water, and fire. It made
Speaker 1: sense to him then that humans also might be comprised
Speaker 1: of four corresponding liquids called humors, and he decided that
Speaker 1: these were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Each
Speaker 1: humor was ascribed to a certain organ and related to
Speaker 1: one of four certain personality types. Illness was attributed to
Speaker 1: humoral imbalance, too much of one thing and not enough
Speaker 1: of another. In order to get yourself back in balance,
Speaker 1: a doctor would be prescribing any number of things blood letting, purging,
Speaker 1: diarresus and fasting. Of course, there were folks who completely
Speaker 1: disagreed with Hippocrates, but his ideas would be built upon
Speaker 1: and gain wider acceptance long after his time. The physician
Speaker 1: Galen inherited these ideas. He was born in Turkey in
Speaker 1: one d and twenty years later he took to the
Speaker 1: road to study with some of the most pre eminent
Speaker 1: medical teachers of the time. He settled permanently in Rome
Speaker 1: in the early one sixties, stirring up business with public
Speaker 1: demonstrations and lectures. By this time he had become wholly
Speaker 1: fixated on blood, becoming phlebotomy's most prolific proponent. That said,
Speaker 1: he knew it wasn't something to be taken lightly. Cutting
Speaker 1: a person was something to be done with much precision
Speaker 1: and care. He deemed blood letting to be an essential
Speaker 1: remedy to all that ailed folks, and as a safeguard
Speaker 1: against what might afflict them in times to come. Blood,
Speaker 1: Galen thought, was the root of all sickness. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: had bad blood, and sometimes you might have too much
Speaker 1: of it. This, according to him, could be diagnosed from
Speaker 1: external observations. One just had to look for a ruddy complexion. Uh,
Speaker 1: sluggishness or maybe a rapid pulse. He and his contempt
Speaker 1: braries became quick to prescribing blood letting as a remedy
Speaker 1: for just about everything. Galen would go on to become
Speaker 1: one of the most prolific authors in Western antiquity, his
Speaker 1: total writing output exceeding two million words. He wrote on
Speaker 1: a variety of topics, but he's best remembered for his
Speaker 1: outsized impact on medicine, and as the Empire expanded, so
Speaker 1: too did the reach of Galen's medical theories. Blood Letting,
Speaker 1: it seems, was here to stay. So next time you
Speaker 1: reach for an aspirin or have to run out for
Speaker 1: more cold medicine, just think this could all be so
Speaker 1: much worse, because for a very long time it was.
Speaker 1: King Charles the Second of England was having a rough
Speaker 1: go of it in the winter of his feet ached,
Speaker 1: and despite tending to them, they continued to be a nuisance.
Speaker 1: So he decided to cancel his daily walk and go
Speaker 1: for a carriage ride instead. As you'll see, it would
Speaker 1: be his last. The king retired to bed early that night,
Speaker 1: but his sleep would be anything but RESTful. By morning,
Speaker 1: he awoke moaning and barely able to speak, His aids
Speaker 1: hustled in alarm. He was soon struck by a seizure.
Speaker 1: Doctors from the Royal College of Physicians quickly arrived at
Speaker 1: his bedside and deployed an arsenal of treatments. They took
Speaker 1: out their enemies, the purgatives, the laxatives. They ground up
Speaker 1: sugar and pearls for a tonic. They put the irons
Speaker 1: in the fire literally, and of course they brought out
Speaker 1: their lancets. This was top tier medical technology. There would
Speaker 1: be nothing but the best for their king. With these
Speaker 1: tools in hand, the metal of the king was put
Speaker 1: to the test. The old adage what doesn't kill you
Speaker 1: makes you stronger, it seems like it was particularly applicable here.
Speaker 1: He drank boiled spirits from a human skull, hoping that
Speaker 1: its former vitality would reinvigorate him. He was scalded from
Speaker 1: head to toe by white hot irons and bled from
Speaker 1: his jugular vein, but he knew the end was near.
Speaker 1: The king apologized to his doctors for having such an
Speaker 1: unconscionable time, dying after six days, King Charles the Second
Speaker 1: slipped from this life. In total, he had about twenty
Speaker 1: four ounces of blood taken over the course of his treatment.
Speaker 1: What we have since learned is that a human body
Speaker 1: can replace sixteen ounces of the stuff within two days. This, though,
Speaker 1: is assuming that the body is healthy. It seems that
Speaker 1: Charles probably needed all the blood he could get, and
Speaker 1: it's likely that his body couldn't keep up with the
Speaker 1: reproduction of it, and due to the number of physical ailments,
Speaker 1: it seems that his body simply gave out. He was
Speaker 1: beyond repair. In the centuries following Galen, blood letting continued
Speaker 1: to be widely considered as a cure all and was
Speaker 1: incredibly common. For a while, the practice was in the
Speaker 1: hands of the clergy, which actually made a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: They were an educated class and were often tasked with
Speaker 1: caring for the sick. But after Pope Alexander the Third
Speaker 1: banned his holy men and women from the practice in
Speaker 1: eleven sixty three, avoid appeared and the barber surgeons would
Speaker 1: fill that role. Once upon a time, the local barber
Speaker 1: surgeon was a stop shop for various kinds of bodily maintenance, haircutting,
Speaker 1: teeth pulling, and of course, blood letting. Their job was
Speaker 1: to tend to things considered to be dirty and deeply personal.
Speaker 1: These practitioners were tradesmen rather than high society physician types.
Speaker 1: They worked with bodies, something that was considered to be uncouth,
Speaker 1: whereas physicians looked but didn't touch. In England, it was
Speaker 1: common to see candy cane striped poles outside of barber
Speaker 1: surgeon shops, with the red representing blood and the white
Speaker 1: representing the tourniquet. Bowls of blood were even set in
Speaker 1: the windows as advertising. Remember that the next time you
Speaker 1: go and see the same pole outside your own barber shop.
Speaker 1: Over the years, their tools of the trade evolved. Animal teeth,
Speaker 1: sharpened wood and shells gave way to spring lancets and
Speaker 1: razor sharp instruments known as scarificators. But as theories around
Speaker 1: the practice grew more complex, the tools became more precise.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular aids and bleeding were small, soft,
Speaker 1: and sentient leeches. They were placed on the problem area,
Speaker 1: both on the outside and on the inside of the body.
Speaker 1: If you have never heard of a leeching chair and
Speaker 1: wonder why it might have a hole in the seat, well,
Speaker 1: consider yourself lucky. The popularity of leeches peaked in France
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties, when it was thought that about
Speaker 1: thirty five million of them were used per year. The
Speaker 1: most popular variety, the Herudo Medicinalis, was capable of ingesting
Speaker 1: ten times its own weight of blood at each feeding.
Speaker 1: They were housed in ornate jars and apothecary windows, which
Speaker 1: were filled with comfortable beds of pebbles and moss for
Speaker 1: the leeches to retire upon between gigs. In fact, for
Speaker 1: a very long time they were believed to have gone
Speaker 1: extinct thanks to this high demand. They're actually still around today,
Speaker 1: but they are a protected species, and of course they've
Speaker 1: had to go back to finding their own meals, but
Speaker 1: not before taking the blame for the deaths of some
Speaker 1: very famous historical figures. George Washington had really taken to retirement.
Speaker 1: He found a lot of satisfaction in watching the seasons
Speaker 1: change at his estates at Mount Vernon, Virginia. His time
Speaker 1: and attention had shifted away from public service, and now
Speaker 1: he spent his hours tending to his land. Thursday, December
Speaker 1: twelfth of sev started off with light snow, then hail,
Speaker 1: and then rain. Conditions weren't kind, to say the least. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: Washington hopped on his horse to supervise his plantation activities.
Speaker 1: It was a long, cold, wet day in the saddle.
Speaker 1: When he returned home that evening, he was chilled to
Speaker 1: his core. Guests said just to arrive for dinner. A
Speaker 1: friend suggested that he changed into something warm and dry. Washington, however,
Speaker 1: was a stickler for punctuality and chose not to do so.
Speaker 1: He chose to take a seat at the meal, still freezing.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Washington woke up with a sore throat
Speaker 1: and later complained of a cough and a running nose. Still,
Speaker 1: there were chores to do outside and three fresh inches
Speaker 1: of snow to contend with, So despite the frigid air
Speaker 1: and his sore throat, Washington headed out to mark trees
Speaker 1: that he wanted to have cut down. His voice grew
Speaker 1: more hoarse throughout the day, and by the time he
Speaker 1: returned to read his evening newspapers allowed he could barely manage.
Speaker 1: He chose to retire for the nights, but he wouldn't
Speaker 1: sleep for long. He woke up around two am, clutching
Speaker 1: his chest, short of breath, and with a raging fire
Speaker 1: in his throat. Even so, he wouldn't allow Martha to
Speaker 1: get up and call for help. She was recovering from
Speaker 1: a cold herself, and he didn't want her to have
Speaker 1: to leave the warm comforts of their bed. At daybreak,
Speaker 1: Caroline Brandham, one of the people enslaved by the Washington's,
Speaker 1: came to light a fire in the bedroom. It was
Speaker 1: then that Martha sent for washington Secretary Tobias Lear. He
Speaker 1: arrived quickly and was startled to find the former president
Speaker 1: in such bad shape. He sent for George Rawlins, and
Speaker 1: overseer at Mount Vernon, as well as Washington's personal doctor
Speaker 1: of over forty years, Dr James Craik. At around seven
Speaker 1: thirty a m. While waiting for Dr Craik to arrive, Rawlins,
Speaker 1: at the request of Washington, and despite Martha's vocal opposition,
Speaker 1: bled the former president, taking about fourteen ounces of blood
Speaker 1: Over the course of the morning. Panic set in. Another
Speaker 1: doctor was called, who also opted to bleed an additional
Speaker 1: eighteen ounces of blood. A third blood letting occurred at
Speaker 1: eleven am, drawing out another eighteen ounces, and then they
Speaker 1: sent for yet another doctor. Washington's condition unsurprisingly continued to deteriorate.
Speaker 1: A fourth position was called for, who conducted one final
Speaker 1: thirty two ounce bleeding. The doctors tried giving him tease,
Speaker 1: They tried having him gargle various tonics. They tried administering enemas,
Speaker 1: they blistered him with Spanish fly, They even induced vomiting.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, it was all a pretty gruesome sight.
Speaker 1: And if you were wondering if Washington knew that he
Speaker 1: was dying, the answer unequivocally yes. At four thirty PM,
Speaker 1: he called for his wills. He gave directions on how
Speaker 1: to settle his books and accounts. He thanked his doctors
Speaker 1: and asked to be decently buried, and specified that his
Speaker 1: body not be put into his vault any less than
Speaker 1: three days after he had died, for fear that he
Speaker 1: might mistakenly be buried alive but die he did just
Speaker 1: a few hours later, at the age of sixty seven. Washington, though,
Speaker 1: wasn't the only high profile person to possibly be bled
Speaker 1: to death. There were others too. It's thought that Wolfgang Amadeus,
Speaker 1: Mozart and Lord Byron both succumbed with the aid of bleeding. Conversely,
Speaker 1: there was the case of Marie Antoinette, in which it
Speaker 1: was suggested that blood letting may have actually saved her life.
Speaker 1: The four A time you see. In seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: Marie was pregnant with her first child, Marie Theress. When
Speaker 1: it came time for the then Queen of France to
Speaker 1: give birth in December of that year, Marie's bedroom in
Speaker 1: the Palace of Versailles was filled with onlookers, eager to
Speaker 1: see the birth of the queen's first child, who everyone
Speaker 1: hoped would be a male heir to the crown. At
Speaker 1: that time, it was customed to have public births in
Speaker 1: the French court. People wanted to witness the heir's corporeal debut,
Speaker 1: so the Queen's room was packed with gawkers, so many,
Speaker 1: in fact, that they not only hindered the work of
Speaker 1: the attending doctors, but they also made the room itself loud, suffocating,
Speaker 1: and unbearably hot. People stood on cabinets, climbed tapestries, and
Speaker 1: crowded all around just to get a glimpse. King Louis
Speaker 1: the sixteenth ordered that the tapestry screens around the Queen's
Speaker 1: bed be secured with strong cords so that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: collapse on her. Due to the rush of people clamoring
Speaker 1: to get a glimpse of the birth, The scene was
Speaker 1: chaotic and overwhelming. This was all amplified when Marie did
Speaker 1: eventually give birth, not to a son, which she had
Speaker 1: so deeply hoped for, but to a daughter. All of
Speaker 1: this was too much for Marie, it seems, and she
Speaker 1: passed out as if she hadn't already lost enough blood
Speaker 1: for the day. The doctors sprung into action. They sliced
Speaker 1: an incision in the Queen's foot. Sure enough, she opened
Speaker 1: her eyes and stirred once more. Blood letting in this
Speaker 1: case seems to have helped revive her. Or it could
Speaker 1: also be that the pain of the incision had brought
Speaker 1: her back around, or that the crowd was dispersed and
Speaker 1: the king frantically opened all the windows to let in
Speaker 1: some fresh air. But this, of course, would not be
Speaker 1: the last time that Marie Antoinette would be bled. Fourteen
Speaker 1: years later, a much more shall we say, comprehensive session
Speaker 1: of blood letting would occur at the gallows when Marie
Speaker 1: was executed after a trial found her guilty of high treason.
Speaker 1: Blood Letting may or may not have saved her before,
Speaker 1: but the second instance certainly did what it was designed
Speaker 1: to do, and it brought her life to an end.
Speaker 1: You might be wondering to yourself, with all of these
Speaker 1: cases of blood letting potentially having gone wrong, why did
Speaker 1: so many think it was right. The advent of germ
Speaker 1: theory in the eighteen sixties dealt a hard blow to
Speaker 1: humorl theory. Even still, it's been documented that blood letting
Speaker 1: didn't reach its peak in Europe until around the same time.
Speaker 1: Books on the topic continued to be published into the
Speaker 1: next century. For poor old George Washington, it's unknown to
Speaker 1: this day exactly what killed him. Almost immediately after his death,
Speaker 1: doctors began debating what had dealt America's first president the
Speaker 1: final blow. Some suggested an abscess in his mouth, while
Speaker 1: others believed it was a blockage in his throat. Some
Speaker 1: even attributed his death to pneumonia and strep. Whatever the
Speaker 1: true reason, they removed about eighty ounces of blood, or
Speaker 1: around forty of the amount of blood in the average adult,
Speaker 1: all in twelve hours, and this surely could not have
Speaker 1: helped the man. The practice of blood letting progressively dwindled
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century in the West, and in retrospect
Speaker 1: seems barbaric to our modern minds. It has not vanished altogether, though,
Speaker 1: and It's still used to treat certain conditions related to
Speaker 1: bone marrow and metabolism disorders. But on a more basic,
Speaker 1: fundamental level, think about your annual physical They take your heights,
Speaker 1: your weight, your blood pressure, and they also bleed you,
Speaker 1: drawing your blood through needles and into tubes. Science has
Speaker 1: gotten a lot better, of course. The blood is no
Speaker 1: longer drawn for its own therapeutic sake, but for the
Speaker 1: purpose of running various tests on it. We now look
Speaker 1: at taking blood as a means to an end, rather
Speaker 1: than the therapy itself, a first nest sary step toward
Speaker 1: a more precise diagnosis and treatment. And I'm sure you'd
Speaker 1: be happy to know that the use of medical leeches
Speaker 1: is making a comeback in modern medicine, particularly in microsurgery.
Speaker 1: It appears that the leeches release various biological substances that
Speaker 1: can help reduce venous congestion and prevent tissue necrosis. If
Speaker 1: you'll pardon the pun. It's pretty common for folks today
Speaker 1: to think the health care practitioners of your well sucked,
Speaker 1: But as their leeches seem to have taught us, it
Speaker 1: turns out they were onto something. Blood and guts. That's
Speaker 1: a term we've heard often as a general description of
Speaker 1: what's inside our bodies, and hopefully today you've gained new
Speaker 1: insights into the long and winding journey that blood has
Speaker 1: traveled throughout history. But as you might expect for something
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous, there are plenty of stories of blood out
Speaker 1: there waiting to be retold, and if you stick around
Speaker 1: through this brief sponsor break, you'll get to hear one
Speaker 1: more of them. M hmm. Right in the mummified body
Speaker 1: of an eleventh century Italian saint was discovered in a
Speaker 1: church in Luca, Italy. Saint Venus of Armenia had died
Speaker 1: in a hospital annexed to the church in the year
Speaker 1: ten fifty. During a complete study of the body, scientists
Speaker 1: located two significant wounds on a skull, thought to be
Speaker 1: produced by a serrated blade and a blunt instrument. They
Speaker 1: noticed precise scarifications around the wound, which appeared to indicate
Speaker 1: that while he was alive, it had been cleaned and cauterized.
Speaker 1: Researchers believe that this is the first physical evidence of
Speaker 1: a case of post surgical medieval cauterization. Therapeutic treatments based
Speaker 1: on humoral theory extended far beyond blood letting, or perhaps
Speaker 1: extended to other practices ten gently related to blood letting,
Speaker 1: and one of those practices was treatment by fire. Cattery,
Speaker 1: like blood letting, has a pronounced historical lineage. The first
Speaker 1: culture to use it is unknown, but what we do
Speaker 1: know is that from very ancient times, a wide variety
Speaker 1: of civilizations across the world believed that fire contained therapeutic properties.
Speaker 1: Hippocrates himself prescribed red hot irons to incinerate hemorrhoids, to
Speaker 1: be followed up with the healing poultice of lentils and vegetables.
Speaker 1: Of course, he believed that burning was a panacea, and
Speaker 1: if something couldn't be healed by the red hot end
Speaker 1: of a poker or a slow burning oil, then it
Speaker 1: was likely it probably couldn't be healed at all. Pottery
Speaker 1: was then later used by its proponents for just about everything,
Speaker 1: cauterizing temples for headaches, as well as under the chin
Speaker 1: or on the neck or on the chest for things
Speaker 1: like upper respiratory distress. Cattery was also thought to be
Speaker 1: an aid for emotional and psychological maladies in the same
Speaker 1: way the blood letting was part of the rationale behind
Speaker 1: cattery and blistering was something called counter irritation that essentially
Speaker 1: means intentionally irritating an area of the body to distract
Speaker 1: from the already wounded area. They were working under the
Speaker 1: assumption that this new irritation would draw away the sickness
Speaker 1: from the original wound and allow it to heal. One
Speaker 1: practitioner who advocated cattery was a New York physician named Dr. A. R. Carmen.
Speaker 1: In two when a young woman who had been bedridden
Speaker 1: for weeks due to headaches, insomnia, and overall malaise came
Speaker 1: to him for help. He treated her by way of
Speaker 1: creating a series of burns down or spine. Interestingly, the
Speaker 1: young woman recovered quickly and was able to go back
Speaker 1: to work. To him and to her family, this case
Speaker 1: was considered proof of the efficacy of counter irritation cattery.
Speaker 1: These days, folks are still being cauterized in medical settings,
Speaker 1: but it takes a far less gruesome form than you
Speaker 1: might imagine. Gone are the days of the stench of
Speaker 1: singed burning flesh. Today, the instruments are a lot more precise,
Speaker 1: center deployed in far fewer circumstances than days gone by,
Speaker 1: and people still willingly employ counter irritation methods. In fact,
Speaker 1: you can pick them right up at your local drug store.
Speaker 1: So the next time you go out for a run
Speaker 1: and find that your muscles are sore, rub in some
Speaker 1: icy hot or some tiger bomb, anything that might contain
Speaker 1: menthal or capsicum. The mag it is an abstraction and
Speaker 1: the subsequent peace of mind that they give you something
Speaker 1: that I highly doubt an iron poker ever could. Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by Aaron
Speaker 1: Manky and narrated by Aaron Manky and Robin Minat. Writing
Speaker 1: for this season was provided by Robin Minater, with research
Speaker 1: by Sam Alberty, Taylor haggerd Orn and Robin Minater. Production
Speaker 1: assistance was provided by Josh Thane, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show,
Speaker 1: the Grim and Mild team, and all the other podcasts
Speaker 1: that we make over at Grim and Mild dot com,
Speaker 1: and as always, thanks for listening.