WEBVTT - Bedside Manners 3: A Chemical Romance 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:09.760 The rivers were rumored to be shimmering and spectacular. Archaeologists 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:12.159 doubted it, though, because water ways of Mercury seemed to 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.080 be more fiction than fact, but still they were curious 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.480 to see if these silvery rivers and other stories about 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:23.040 Emperor shinshi Huan's tomb were true. Shinshi Huan became China's 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:26.960 first emperor in two b C after six other Chinese 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.280 states fell to him in bloody battles. While it's true 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.440 that he was responsible for the deaths of untold thousands 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.880 during his tumultuous reign, he was also credited with stimulating 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:42.560 significant cultural and intellectual advancement. He was passionate about infrastructure too. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.400 Among other things, he ordered the construction of a canal 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:48.360 that linked the yang z and the Pearl river systems, 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:52.200 and extensive network of roadways, and the creation of provinces 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.480 as well as China's Great Wall. It shouldn't surprise you 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.600 to know, then, that he also began constructing his enormous 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.800 underground mausoleum thirty six years before his death. And when 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.040 I say enormous, I really mean it. He built something 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:09.800 more than a grave. He created a sprawling underground compound 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:13.440 the size of an American football field. Tradition tells us 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.520 that his inner burial chamber, which has yet to be 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.520 excavated to this day, by the way, contains a scale 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.440 replica of his empire. It was something like a giant 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.440 dall house, a country in miniature that Shinshi Huan planned 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.240 to preside over in death. Legend tells us that he 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:34.240 included facsimiles of animals, laborers, stables, offices, and statues of 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.920 government officials. He ordered the creation of palaces and towers 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.080 and scenic vistas, and as I mentioned a moment ago, 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:44.959 it was also said that he wanted mercury rivers. For years, 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:48.200 scholars weren't sure if this latter wish was executed, but 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:50.720 in the nineteen eighties researchers found that the levels of 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.440 mercury in the burial mound above the tomb were exceptionally high, 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.440 potentially giving credence to the seemingly fantastical idea that man 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.560 made rivers of mercury were buried below the surface. And 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.520 when we look at the emperor and his contemporaries, they 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.160 were quite familiar with the substance mercury you see was 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:12.080 used in several ways. In ancient China, mercury sulfide, often 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.480 called cinnabar, is bright red in color and was often 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.880 used in artwork and decorations. Mercury was also used to 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.959 cure many common ills, from infected sores to insomnia. Because 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:26.200 it's the only metal that's liquid at room temperature, perhaps 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.320 it was natural that inquisitive minds also felt like it 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:32.560 might contain some sort of magical property. And that brings 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.200 us to another use for mercury that was long a 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:39.919 part of Chinese tradition, alchemy. Alchemists used mercury to dissolve 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.680 other metals and create amalgams that were used in things 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.440 like guilt plating, but we're also thought to have other 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:49.400 broader applications. Using the Taoist concept of yin and yang, 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.000 it was suggested that cold, watery mercury and bright, fiery 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.480 gold could be blended in ideal proportions to sustain life. 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.080 One legend tells of a man who extended his life 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.760 by ten thousand and years after consuming wine spiked with it. 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:05.720 But the first person that we understand to have definitively 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.239 pursued the specific goal of immortality was none other than 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:12.920 shinshi Huan. Indeed, among the many famous legacies of the 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.280 first Emperor of China was his own quest for immortality 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.359 and the so called elixir of life, a much fabled 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.959 and deeply sought after means of living forever. He sent 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.639 search parties out to the far reaches of his empire, 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:27.800 and as part of this quest, he worked a little 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.920 closer to home too. The emperor tasked court doctors with 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.480 cooking up a number of mercurial concoctions in the hopes 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.960 of figuring out how to engineer immortality in a cauldron. 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.040 He hoped, and searched and plotted for immortality. But it's 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:45.440 good that he planned so lavishly for the afterlife. Not 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:49.040 only did his mercury laced potions not grant him eternal life, 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.280 but they probably contributed to his early death. We know 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:56.040 now that the element is highly toxic to humans. Today, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.680 the medical industry is indeed in the business of prolonging life. 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.920 A link between modern medicine and the quest for immortality 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.080 is inextricable, but maybe not in the way you might 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.800 have expected. This is a story of magic and medicine. 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:12.680 It's a story of our ever present quest to find, 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:17.880 distill or create elixirs that put off death, even if 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:22.960 just for a while. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome to 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:35.320 bedside manners. Diseases come in all shapes and sizes. These days, 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:37.760 an average person with access to Google might be able 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:39.520 to do a quick search and figure out what that 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.600 strange rashes or what's wrong with their tonsils. Internet access 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.839 has made armchair experts out of many of us mere mortals, 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.839 But at one time, sickness was the realm of the gods. 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:53.159 The word that we translate to the English disease finds 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.320 its ancient origins in the idea that something is without 0:04:56.440 --> 0:05:00.000 well being or divine favor. For thousands of years, humans 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.240 believe that gods were integral to sickness and to healing, 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.560 both in terms of affliction and its treatments. How to 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:09.640 treat illness and disease has evolved over the course of 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.400 human history. Since time immemorial, humans have used a wide 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:17.760 range of natural materials like plants, minerals, and other substances 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:22.680 to treat sickness. Medicine and medicinal practitioners have existed for 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.560 far longer than we have records for. However, in the 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:29.240 mid sixth century, BC, people began to think about the world, 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.120 human life, and health and wellness in a very different way. 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.280 On Nature, a work of prose published by Anaximander of 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.480 my Leaders, proposed that the world wasn't simply created as 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.599 a playground by the gods for the gods, but rather 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.880 it was a natural entity with its own processes which 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.839 were able to be studied and explained on its own terms, 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.640 apart from any reference to the god's activities. People started 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.159 thinking more about the natural causes of sickness, if the 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:01.000 gods weren't to blame, than who or what us. People 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.400 began thinking about their bodies, inner workings. Disease came to 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:08.200 be seen as natural in origin rather than supernatural. This 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.799 would lead to a lot of speculation about how natural 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.840 medicines could be used internally. The fifth century BC brought 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.360 a major seismic shift. During this time, the Greeks devised 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:20.960 and committed to paper the idea that medicine might be 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.960 formally defined as a craft, and thus it could be 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:28.320 systematized and practiced by formally studied crafts people. One of 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.840 the most influential figures in this invention of medicine, as 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.640 scholars call it, was a fellow named Hippocrates, who you'll 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:37.679 get to know a little bit more over the course 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.400 of this series. Hippocrates was highly influential, and his school 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.760 of thought created the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of Greek 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:49.120 medical works. In general, Hippocratic medicine understood disease as an 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.760 internal imbalance of one of four key fluids known as 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.239 the humors, and healing was concerned with restoring the balance 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.880 of them, largely through diets and exercise. The physician gay 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.040 And would later appear on the scene. Building upon ideas 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:05.560 of those who came before him, he worked on developing 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.760 a significant catalog of natural cures, most of which were 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.760 plant extracts. His recipes would be systematized as they traveled 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.920 around the world during the next several centuries. While these 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:18.360 Greek ideas faded out in the West, they were picked 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.160 up by Arabic writers. These natural solutions gained momentum in 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.040 the East, where they were further built upon and developed, 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:27.960 before being brought back to the West around eight hundred 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:31.000 years ago in the twelfth and thirteen centuries. In the 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.760 eleventh century, for example, a Persian scholar named Albi Rooney 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:38.600 cataloged an extensive collection of medicines from Central Asia and 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.840 with it, he suggested that pharmacy, a term derived from 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.440 the Greek word pharmacon or poison, should be considered a 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.360 distinctly separate branch of the healing arts. He thought it 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.520 required its own line of study. By twelve thirty one, 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:55.480 the Holy Roman Emperor signed the Constitutions of Malfi into law, 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:59.640 creating official legal codes around healing that extended across his empire. 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.400 Formally trained physicians were deemed to be of a scholarly class, 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.800 while apothecaries, those who mixed their medicines, consisted of tradesmen. 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.440 But they continued to work closely together, dispensing cures under 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.480 a strict legal code that governed their activities. But of 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.520 course there are ways to get around the rules. You see, 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.280 these laws were hard to enforce through both the Ancient 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:23.920 and Renaissance worlds. From East to west, most big cities 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.920 had their own apothecaries, and many of them to boot. 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.680 They were small businesses, after all, they needed to make 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.920 their ends meet. Sometimes they would take advantage of their clients, 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.520 selling them mislabeled products and jacking up the prices. They 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.800 might sell old or spoiled things, and sometimes they would 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.760 knowingly sell cures that were known to be deadly in 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.280 order to turn a profit. We'll get to more of 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.160 that later in the season. But alongside the often creative apothecaries, 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.440 up sprouted another possible answer to the many ailments of 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:56.319 the early modern world, a particular kind of craftsperson with 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:01.199 sometimes equally dubious concoctions. By the thirteen than fourteen centuries, 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.520 another group was already beginning to make small waves in 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:08.240 medical practice and theory, a group born of magic and 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.880 mysticism that brought us to medicine as we know it today. 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:22.040 The Alchemists. The apocalyptic visions kept him awake at night. 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:27.120 John Franciscan Friar believed that the Antichrist's arrival was imminent, 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:29.959 But though his brow was sweaty and his pulse was quick, 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:32.720 he knew that he was ready. John believed that he 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:34.720 was in on the secret of how to defeat the 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.439 devil and his demonic army. He believed that the key 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:40.720 lay in his knowledge of alchemy and its ability to 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.320 restore health and wealth to the virtuous. So John tinkered 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.679 in his workshop, preparing his potions and talking of divine revelations. 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.240 He was eventually thrown in jail by the pope for 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.120 his blasphemy, but John was onto something. Exactly what he 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:57.719 was onto was less about the devil, though, and more 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:01.160 about what John had boiling over the flame. To us today, 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.400 medicine can sometimes feel like nothing short of magic. It 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.439 has allowed the deaf to hear and the blind to see. 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:12.319 It's made infection disappear and pain vanish. It's brought innumerable 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.040 people back from the brink of death. And maybe we've 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.800 all felt it in smaller ways, maybe when the doctor 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.840 gives us the right antibiotics, or when our sinus is 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:24.120 finally clear. At least it always feels that way to me. 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.160 The origins of the chemical based medicines which we are 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.720 prescribed today are very much intertwined with the philosophy and 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:34.800 experiments of alchemy. Now, when you hear the word alchemy, 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.560 you probably think about mad scientists in secret medieval labs 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.720 filled with fire and smoke and glass, all cooking up 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.080 optimistic experiments and the hopes of turning lead into gold. 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.400 That's the picture that movies and books tell us about, anyway, 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:50.880 But there's so much more to it than that. The 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.760 history and the goals of alchemy are much broader than 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.520 I could tell you about today in this one single episode. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.680 But throughout much of history there's been one common thread 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.520 that I'd love to tell you about, one very precious 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:05.920 item which you might have heard of, the Philosopher's Stone. 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:08.760 Now I should point out that the Philosopher's Stone is 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.560 kind of a misleading name. The stone was rumored not 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.000 to be a stone at all, but a fine powder. 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.800 It was thought to be read or maybe white, or 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.200 sometimes even purple. But whatever it looked like, alchemists believed 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:23.920 that it was the secrets ingredient of transmutation, the ability 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:28.240 to transform one substance into another, to shapeshift and renew. 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:32.400 The ability of transmutation was considered all powerful, but no 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.560 one had gotten close enough to prove it. Some claimed 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:38.920 that this mythical substance had been given by God to Adam. 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.360 According to some legends, it was used by Noah to 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:44.280 create the arc, and by Moses to build the Tabernacle 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:48.640 and its vessels, by Solomon to build a temple. The alchemists, however, 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.440 sought not just to find the stone, but to make 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.839 the stone. You see, it was thought that the stone 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:57.760 could remove impurities and turned base things into precious things. 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.480 It was believed that by rearranging base properties of any element, 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.520 say in lead, it can morph into something else gold. 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.120 But over time the goal of alchemists evolved. It led 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.600 to a fairly systemized understanding of medicine, which was chemical 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.959 at its heart. The desire to remove impurities from metal 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:19.400 was expanded, and it was thought that disease, understood as 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.520 impurity of the body, could potentially be transmuted into health 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:28.240 and perhaps in perpetuity following along. Okay, so far, basically 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.080 alchemy was trying to take not so great things and 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:33.800 turn them into better things. Now, one of the most 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.280 important alchemical methods, as it would come to bear on medicine, 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.640 was the use of distillation. This was a central tool 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.200 of alchemy of any kind and one of the ways 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.640 the alchemists hoped to extract what they called quintessence, or 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:51.040 the fifth essence, out of simple substances like plants or minerals. 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.600 Extracting this quintessence was not exactly like reducing a substance 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:58.800 to active ingredients, since this fifth essence was understood to 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.320 be a celestial party that was dormant in earthly materials. 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.480 It was thought to be incorruptible and capable of making 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:09.320 powerful medicines which could remove any form of corruption from 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:13.400 the body. Importantly, for the medical world, this rather esoteric 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.840 process led to the very real discovery of alcohol, which 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.240 was understood to be the quintessence of wine. Recipes from 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.240 making alcohol started to appear in the twelfth century, and 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.280 by the next it became known as Aqua vitae the 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:31.040 water of life. Now our Franciscan friar John of Rupeskosa 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.080 was rumored to have been a gold making alchemist from 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:35.880 his jail cell it seems that he was the first 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:39.080 to propose that a kind of total panacea was attainable 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:42.800 by distilling not just wine, but things like herbs, animal products, 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.600 and especially minerals like gold, antimony, and mercury, and then 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:50.040 mixing medicines from them by way of a chemical process. 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:53.840 A proto chemistry, he proposed that an elixir of life 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.960 could be attained by a careful hand and a watchful eye. 0:13:57.360 --> 0:13:59.880 He was far ahead of his time, and he was 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.520 hunished for it. But he wasn't the first, and he 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:12.280 certainly wasn't going to be the last. The journey had 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:14.920 been a long one, but the doctor was no stranger 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.800 to life on the road. What followed him were stories 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.600 and legend, a heady blend of fact and fiction that 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:22.800 is hard to parse out. He was something of a 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:25.120 myth of his own making. But what we do know 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:27.480 to be true is that he was a genius and 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.440 a provocateur. But whether the story you're about to hear 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.840 is fact or fiction, well, I'll let you decide for yourself. 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:38.440 As the story goes in our traveling healer was about 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.000 one miles from his Austrian home of English dot Germany. 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.320 His studies had taken him far and wide, so this 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.560 short trip seemed easy by comparison. He made his way 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:50.120 to an end to rest for the night. His reputation 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:52.640 preceded him, it seems, because not long after arriving, the 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.360 inn's owner asked him to examine his twenty three year 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.800 old daughter. She had been paralyzed since birth. The doctor 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.480 prepared a cure for her of something he called as 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.000 off the Red Lion. It was a fancy name he 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.320 had given to his recipe, his own medical concoction of 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:11.800 alchemical mercury. He considered this to be universal medicine. He 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:13.680 told her to take a pinch of the remedy with 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.920 some wine after each meal. She will sweat profusely, he 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.200 told her, But that's just evidence that it's working. Soon after, 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.160 the innkeepers got the shock of their life when their 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.680 daughter walked into the room, having been bedridden her whole life. 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:27.760 It was said that she threw herself at the doctor's 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.800 feet and gratitude. This, of course, was no ordinary doctor, 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.400 no peddler of ancient theories about humors and diets. This 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:40.360 was Theophrastus Philippus Aurelius Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known to 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:44.200 us as Paracelsus, and he was famous, and too many 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:47.600 he was infamous. Medicine during the Renaissance period was taught 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.240 through a theory based bookish recitation of the ancient writers 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:56.000 like Galen, rather than establishing theories through practice. Galenic doctors 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:59.640 would diagnose and prescribe treatments to patients, sometimes without ever 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.120 having seen them. This time, during which Theophrastus was born, 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.800 was one of great general upheaval. The Renaissance birth new 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.800 ideas and changed all areas of life, from economics, arts, 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.400 and religion to medicine. His mother had died early in 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:16.760 his life, so he was cared for by his father, 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:19.560 who was a physician and a teacher. As a young man, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:23.720 Theophrastus worked briefly in Austrian silver mines, where he received 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:27.600 a basic understanding about medals and their properties. According to 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.960 some scholars, Theophrastis wrote under the name Paracelsus for the 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:34.800 first time while in medical school around fifteen fifteen. Taking 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:37.640 on a Greek or Latin pseudonym was customary for the 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:40.080 scholarly class at the time as a way to show 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.400 affinity with ancient minds. But what we know is that 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.920 whatever affinity he once had for his predecessors quickly grew 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.120 into disdain. In fact, Paracelsus spent the rest of his 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.720 life working in response to them and what he saw 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:57.280 as their deadly, misguided and classist shortcomings. The problem with 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.000 his education, Paracelsus pointed out, was that nothing should ever 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.040 be so firmly established that it could not be questioned. 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.399 But indeed he found the backbone of his education to 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:11.440 be rigid on critical and silencing. Doctoring as it was 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:14.760 taught in universities to the elite classes, was stuck in 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.480 the far past. He considered Galen's humorl medicine to be 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.680 nothing but charlatanism, and the folks who practiced it more 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:23.879 eager to take money from the sick and the naive 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.520 than to actually help them. He worried that anyone with 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:30.679 the doctor's title could basically get away with murder. Times 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:34.639 had changed, civilizations had come and gone, so had diseases 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.720 and epidemics too. Wouldn't it make sense that thinking about 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.080 how to heal the body had evolved as well, and 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:42.400 he could see how stuck in their thinking they were. 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.200 But he wasn't content to just read old and obsolete 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.960 writers of ancient Greece and then try to apply tired 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.760 ideas to modern times. So he took to the road, 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:54.439 covering thousands of miles, searching for better methods of healing. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:57.920 He was a true student of the world, absorbing lessons 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:00.720 and insights as he made his way. If a cure 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.480 was known to local surgeons and folk healers, as well 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.480 as monks, midwives and magicians, he sought it out. What 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.479 mattered to him was finding a deep understanding of nature 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.919 and how it worked, based on experience and practice, not 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:16.879 just ideas. Through that line of questioning. He believed that 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.720 he would be able to understand the body. Heaven is 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:23.320 man and man is heaven, he proclaimed, asserting that our 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:26.640 bodies and the cosmos are more or less the same. 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:30.399 Everything is made of sulfur, salt, and mercury, which he 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:34.720 called the triaprima. He believed that alchemy was everywhere. He 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:37.959 believed that each body was a natural alchemist and was 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:41.960 the job of the body's processes. One internal alchemist to 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.200 separate what was healthy from what was harmful. And then, 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.359 of course there's the external alchemist, which is to say, 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.080 the alchemist himself, who applied their knowledge and skills to 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:56.320 help the inner alchemist with that process. To Paracelsis, each 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.959 disease had a specific cause and required a specific remedy. 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.840 He believed natural cures were incomplete without an alchemist's intervention. 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.199 He thought that the healing properties of plants, herbs, and 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:11.320 minerals had to be unlocked in a sense, and the 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:15.359 keys to this unlocking required great knowledge, care, and most 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:19.000 of all, hands on experience. Depending on the dose, He 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:23.080 believed anything could be poison through processes the alchemists used, 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:28.640 like fermentation, digestion, distillation, and cooking. They separated harmful or 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.960 useless parts of natural substances. Doing so enabled and allowed 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:35.560 them to isolate the healing properties that could then be 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.480 used to treat specific illnesses. Suffice to say, he wasn't 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.320 a popular guy with the establishment, and his pompous personality 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.840 and snark that he leveled at the Galinist physicians probably 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:51.240 didn't help. The powers that be lampooned him. They mocked him, 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:54.280 They found him blasphemous. They saw him as a radical 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:58.280 and an outsider. They retaliated against him after he was 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:02.560 posted as the city's physician in Basil, Switzerland, in fifty seven. 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:06.480 It didn't help that during a citywide Midsummer bonfire in 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.000 that same year, he decided he would cast out his 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.720 own demons, So into the fire went The Encyclopedic Canon 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.720 of Medicine, a medical text book based on the teachings 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.240 of Galen. Paracelsus, left the next year. In the years 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:23.000 that followed, he continued to travel around Europe, studying diseases, 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.800 practicing medicine, and writing several books. But no matter where 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.520 he went, he still courted great controversy from traditional physicians. 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:33.800 In his later years, while remaining optimistic about his skills 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.639 as a physician. He did gain some humility, it seems, 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.399 acknowledging that he could not cure everything, and that some 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:44.040 diseases were indeed impossible to cure. Paracelsus died in Salzburg 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:47.800 in September of fifteen forty one. How well, we can 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:50.440 never be certain, but there are some ideas. It was 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.080 found that he had ten times the amount of mercury 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:55.560 and his bones, something that can happen due to long 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:59.800 exposure to the substance and occupational hazard for any alchemist, 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:04.720 especially a medicinal one. Was Paracelsus poisoned while creating medicine 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:07.560 or was he trying and failing to heal himself from 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.240 ailments acquired by his craft. His bones share this detail, 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:13.679 but as far as the how and the why, they 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:22.879 are silent, and Paracelsus left us no other clues. In time, 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:27.840 many Paracelsian ideas would, like those of Galen, be later rejected. However, 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.320 he and his followers were still an important link in 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.320 the chain that got us from Galen to modern pharmacology. 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.800 It's undeniable that without the ideas and pursuits of alchemy 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.280 and their applications to healing, we would not have the 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:42.600 kind of chemical based pharmaceutical medicine that we have today. 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.920 Paracelsus helped to transform the craft of pharmacy from a 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.359 botanic science into a chemical science. It can be said 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.560 that his methods and his personality redirected the course of medicine. 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:56.960 He wasn't the first person to think this way, but 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.000 he was one of the most influential. Today, one could 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:03.960 study alchemy at the Paracelsis College in Australia and even 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:09.040 purchase alchemical elixirs online. The roots of science are magical. 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.560 They are full of fantasy and mysticism, which seems like 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:15.479 a strange dichotomy today, but if you think about it, 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.800 these ideas were cutting edge for their time. The folks 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:21.439 at the Helm were not too different from the innovators 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:24.679 and industry disruptors of today. The world mocked them, but 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:29.960 they quietly embraced them. Their ideas and personalities, often bombastic, polarizing, 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:33.239 and arrogant, brought attention to the causes they stood for, 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:36.840 and thankfully, with time, their ideas were built upon in 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.040 ways that allowed progress to march forward, for an untold 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:43.359 number of lives to be saved, Even if we're still 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:55.080 trying to figure out how to live forever. We've certainly 0:22:55.080 --> 0:22:57.560 come a long way since the days of blaming gods 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:00.240 for everything that ails us, although I have to admit 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:04.600 replacing burnt offerings with experimental elixirs laced with mercury and 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:08.520 other mysterious substances sounds just as frightening to me. And 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:11.520 yet experimenting is how we learn. But, as one last 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:14.920 story will show us, no progress as possible without risk. 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:18.080 Stick around through this brief sponsor break, and my teammates 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:27.600 Robin Miniter will tell you all about it. Right, Isaac 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:31.120