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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is

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Speaker 1: one of our from the Vault selections from days of Old.

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Speaker 1: That's right, this is an older episode of Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. This in this particular episode originally published

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Speaker 1: January seven, two thousand sixteen, and it is titled The

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Speaker 1: Stone of Madness. I think this may have been my

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Speaker 1: most embarrassing skit performance on the show. Well, we were

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Speaker 1: playing characters from a Bosch painting, so we were supposed

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Speaker 1: to sound grotesque. If even if we can't look grotesque,

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Speaker 1: you always gotta have fun being a little boshy. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love episodes like this because this is another one

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Speaker 1: of those where we have art and history and early

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Speaker 1: ideas about human biology all coming together into a nice package. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So those are some of the best ones, right, art,

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Speaker 1: history and paleo science. Yes, and this one was also

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Speaker 1: almost a video, is that recall? I think somebody was

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Speaker 1: turning us into cartoons, and mercifully that didn't happen. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the skit that you mentioned here, they were they

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Speaker 1: were creating an animated version of that with grotesque versions

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Speaker 1: of of ourselves. God save us from the unflinching gaze

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Speaker 1: of the animator. All right, Well, on that note, let's

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Speaker 1: dive in. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from

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Speaker 1: how stuff works? Dot com. Maybe, why, my good fellow,

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Speaker 1: you look a bit mad. I am a bit mad.

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Speaker 1: Do you know? Are you a physician? Well, of course,

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Speaker 1: didn't you notice my physician's cap? You mean that beautiful

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Speaker 1: tin funnel? Yes, yes, of course. Now if you would,

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Speaker 1: can you point to the part of your body that

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Speaker 1: feels insane right here in the scuttle dock, right right here?

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Speaker 1: Then that's where the stone of madness awaits us? Can

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Speaker 1: you can you remove it? Dot why? Certainly? Just have

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Speaker 1: a seat and allow me to trepen your cranium just

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Speaker 1: large enough to remove the stone. Better make it a

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Speaker 1: big hole, doc. I'm about as mad as they come.

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Speaker 1: I'm a man to rats to a bowl of pork,

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Speaker 1: a chest to take. Sometimes I wake up in a

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Speaker 1: field and I think I'm a dog. I started chasing

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Speaker 1: the local clergy around it. Yes, yes, it's going to

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Speaker 1: be all right. Now, just let me reach inside and ah,

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Speaker 1: there it is the stone of madness and folly, the

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Speaker 1: source of your mental maladies. Surgically removed. That'll be five

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Speaker 1: silver Here you go. But can I can I keep

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Speaker 1: the stone? Of course you can. Hey, welcome to stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. I hope you enjoyed our little skit.

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Speaker 1: That is our attempt to audibly capture the spirit of

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Speaker 1: a particular painting, namely, uh, the cutting of the stone

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Speaker 1: or the extraction of the stone of madness or the

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Speaker 1: cure of folly, whatever you want to call it, by

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Speaker 1: Hieronymous Bosh. Um. This is a painting from around four

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Speaker 1: and it depicts uh, this sort of crazy but highly

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Speaker 1: allegorical uh surgery taking place. Yeah, if you have never

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Speaker 1: seen this painting, you should look it up. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: do my thing and tell you to google an image,

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Speaker 1: but you really should see it to go with this episode.

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Speaker 1: It will be on the landing page of of the

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Speaker 1: web version of this episode. But yeah, it's a painting

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Speaker 1: by Hieronymous bosh It's usually dated to around fifteen hundreds sometime.

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Speaker 1: We read one source that said it had to be

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Speaker 1: after fifteen o two other people dated to the fourteen nineties. Um.

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Speaker 1: As we mentioned in the past. When we dealt with

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Speaker 1: the some of Bosh's work, there's there's so little known

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Speaker 1: about him that it's there's a certain amount of mystery

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Speaker 1: involved in all of this, And one of the great

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Speaker 1: things about it is the mystery of what motivated this painting,

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Speaker 1: because because what's happening in the painting, the cutting of

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Speaker 1: the stone of Badness. You have a patient in the

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Speaker 1: sort of the center left of the frame, who seated

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Speaker 1: in a chair in the middle of a field, and

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Speaker 1: he looks quite distressed, and he's reclining back in the

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Speaker 1: chair as a man in a pink robe with a

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Speaker 1: tin funnel on his head cuts into the patient's scalp. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and the man, the man with the tin funnel on

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Speaker 1: his head, who's doing the cutting, he looks fairly serene,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't you say? Yes, he seems he's he seems dedicated

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Speaker 1: to the task at hand here, which you could interpret

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Speaker 1: as concentration and and you know, knowing what he's doing,

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Speaker 1: or you could interpret as a kind of callousness and

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Speaker 1: insensitivity to this man's apparent grunting. He looks like he's

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Speaker 1: in the middle of really good grunt. Then to the

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Speaker 1: right of the guy reclining in the chair. He's having

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Speaker 1: his head cut open. You have what appears to be

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Speaker 1: you think this is a monk. Yeah, it looks very

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Speaker 1: much like a monk. Yeah, he's got a shaved top

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Speaker 1: of his head and he's in some black garments. And

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Speaker 1: then to the right of the monk there is a

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Speaker 1: woman with her head covered by a cloth, in a

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Speaker 1: dress straped over her, with a book sitting on top

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Speaker 1: of her head that's clasped with a clasp. So what

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Speaker 1: on earth do we make of this painting? I should

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Speaker 1: also note that there is text with this painting, right

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Speaker 1: if you have the appropriate zoomed out version, and it

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Speaker 1: says this translation, of course, master cut away the stone.

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Speaker 1: My name is Lubert Duss Lubert Dass. Yeah, and this

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Speaker 1: is apparently a fool in Dutch literature of the time.

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Speaker 1: And then the the observer that the viewer of this

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Speaker 1: particular piece would have known that. Yeah, I think at

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Speaker 1: the time, calling calling a character Lubbert is kind of

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Speaker 1: like us calling a character Cletus or something like that.

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Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a joke and a Dutch cletus,

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Speaker 1: if you will. Yeah, So that's the the one of

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Speaker 1: the key paintings that we're gonna keep referring back to.

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Speaker 1: But but we've see an overall trend uh in medieval art, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: medieval and early modern art in Europe that seems to

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Speaker 1: be following this theme set up by Bosh, or at

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Speaker 1: least first interpreted by Bosh. As far as we know,

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Speaker 1: this theme of cutting out the stone of madness. So

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Speaker 1: in the previous painting we had the guy with the

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Speaker 1: tin funnel hat cutting the guy's head. He seems to

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Speaker 1: be in the process of removing this titular stone, the

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Speaker 1: stone of madness, whatever that is. But there are other paintings.

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Speaker 1: There's of course, a cutting of the Stone of Madness

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Speaker 1: by Brugal. Right, yeah, Peter Brugal the Elder lived a

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Speaker 1: fifteen fifteen to fifteen sixty nine, responsible for a number

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Speaker 1: of fabulous pieces that I'm sure everyone's familiar with it

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Speaker 1: and they've even had on your dorm room wall in college.

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Speaker 1: I know I did, uh, And this one shows this

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Speaker 1: one has a number of individuals and several different neurosurgical

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Speaker 1: procedures going on in very crude and horrific fashion. Now

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Speaker 1: we can point out that this painting. You should also

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Speaker 1: look this one up so you can see it for yourself,

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Speaker 1: but it's much more chaotic than the last one. The

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Speaker 1: last one is a sort of a concentrated scene of

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Speaker 1: a single cutting taking place. This is it's a mad

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Speaker 1: house there. There are people all over having their heads

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Speaker 1: examined and cut, and the multiple people doing the cutting.

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Speaker 1: There's just general chaos. People are squatting and squirming in

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Speaker 1: the background and trying to peek in and see what's

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Speaker 1: going on. It's it looks like a bad scene. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and definitely remember the mad house of it, because

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Speaker 1: we'll come back to that. The third painting we want

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Speaker 1: a reference here is is Won by a Quentin Massy's

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Speaker 1: uh he lived fourteen six to nine. And this one

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Speaker 1: is called an Allegory of Folly. And this one is

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Speaker 1: probably it's probably my favorite of the three, just because

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Speaker 1: it's so monstrous and weird. Yeah. Now it doesn't depict

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Speaker 1: a surgery, but it is depict It follows the same

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Speaker 1: theme of the Stone of Madness. There seems to be

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Speaker 1: So you see a guy here, he looks like he

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Speaker 1: is perhaps mentally unsound in some way, and he is

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Speaker 1: clutching a staff that what is going on at the

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Speaker 1: top of the staff. Robert, Well, there there are evidently

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Speaker 1: a number of different symbols going on in this piece.

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Speaker 1: There's so much uh, there's so much symbology uh at

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Speaker 1: play and in these these paintings, and we we don't

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Speaker 1: have time to to to tease it all apart. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: he has a staff that has like a small individual

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Speaker 1: that is with their with exposed buttocks emerging from the staff.

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Speaker 1: He has a rooster on his head. Uh, and he's

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Speaker 1: see he doesn't seem in pain by his natness. He

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Speaker 1: seems a little uh mischievous, the mused. Uh. No, he

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Speaker 1: seems to be contemplating the act of marrying two rats

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Speaker 1: to a bowl of port. Yes. And on his forehead

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Speaker 1: there is a lump that you can see, it's a

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Speaker 1: visible lump fulging from his forehead that appears to be

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Speaker 1: this stone. It's the stone of madness. Yeah, it looks

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Speaker 1: very much in a way. It also looks kind of

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Speaker 1: like a third eye, which is I think something that's

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Speaker 1: kind of neat about this piece that if you look

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Speaker 1: at it with other artistic traditions uh loaded into your head,

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Speaker 1: it kind of makes you wonder about you know, the

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Speaker 1: whole difference between enlightenment and madness, which which will be

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Speaker 1: a thing we come back to. But yeah, it looks

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Speaker 1: like the stone of madness is not only in this

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Speaker 1: individual's head, but it's poking through. Yeah. And so these

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Speaker 1: are just a few examples, but this seems to be

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Speaker 1: a general theme emerging in in medieval and early modern

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Speaker 1: European art of of the stone of madness being a

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Speaker 1: stone in the head associated with madness as they would

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Speaker 1: understand it, and the the act of cutting for the

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Speaker 1: stone to get it out. But does this refer to

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Speaker 1: a real physical thing in any way, and does the

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Speaker 1: act of cutting for it represent a surgical procedure that

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Speaker 1: really took place. It's an interesting, uh mystery to consider

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Speaker 1: because ultimately have like three possibilities here. One is that yes,

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Speaker 1: there's something going on here to some physical malady in

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Speaker 1: the head that is being removed. Okay. Another possibility is

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Speaker 1: that this is all a Charlatan's game, right, that that

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Speaker 1: a quack is coming along and saying, oh, you have

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Speaker 1: a problem, Well, I can take care of that. I

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Speaker 1: can remove the source of it. It's like cranial psychic surgery,

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Speaker 1: you know, origin the psychic surgeon would kind of scoop

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Speaker 1: on your stomach for a minute, and then sneak some

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Speaker 1: chicken guts into his hand and pretend to be pulling

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Speaker 1: things out of your body. Exactly in this case, you'd

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Speaker 1: have somebody cutting at your head and then by sleight

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Speaker 1: of hands, sneaking a stone into the hand and saying, well,

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Speaker 1: look what I pulled out of your brain? You know,

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Speaker 1: here's the problem. Yeah, it would be Yeah, in this case,

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Speaker 1: it would be precisely psychic surgery. Imagine a lot of

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Speaker 1: people have seen this depicted in the movie Man in

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Speaker 1: the Moon of the movie about Andy Kaufman, where he

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Speaker 1: goes and this is performed for him and yeah, and

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Speaker 1: they would often sometimes it would be chicken up, but

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Speaker 1: other times it would be inorganic objects. And so you're

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Speaker 1: throw in a little You're throw in a little magic,

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Speaker 1: a little superstition, and you can easily imagine this scenario

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Speaker 1: in which this essentially a medieval witch doctorre of Swords

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Speaker 1: of Charlotton comes in, Ah, here's the stone, I've removed it,

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Speaker 1: and now you're well, yeah. Another option would be that

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Speaker 1: there wasn't actually a stone in the head, so there

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Speaker 1: wasn't a real problem that was being addressed. Here, and

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Speaker 1: it wasn't quackery, but it was just somebody who was

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Speaker 1: well meaning thought that there was some kind of thing

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Speaker 1: that could be done to the head or something removed

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Speaker 1: from the head to actually cure people, and it just

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Speaker 1: didn't work. You know, they were wrong, but they were

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Speaker 1: well meaning. So that's what we're gonna explore in today's episode.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking a little bit about medieval surgery.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about trepi nation. Uh, We're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about, oh, the removal of actual stones from

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Speaker 1: the body, uh, particularly in the Middle Ages, And we'll

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Speaker 1: get back around to what what experts think this painting

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Speaker 1: and this really, this this artistic tradition is really saying. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think first we should take a look at the

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Speaker 1: general atmosphere of surgery in the Middle Ages and then

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Speaker 1: bridging into the early Modern period here. One of the

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Speaker 1: things that I think about about when we think back

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Speaker 1: on medieval medicine is that it's easy for us to

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Speaker 1: look back and make fun of people in the Middle

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Speaker 1: Ages for believing and ridiculous cures, you know, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you've got migraines, you need to look at an ugly

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Speaker 1: baby for thirteen minutes and then sprinkle some ground up

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Speaker 1: bore tusk in your eye. I mean, we all know

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Speaker 1: that's not gonna work. It seems ridiculous to us, Like,

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Speaker 1: how did people fall for that? They must have been

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Speaker 1: so stupid. But I'm not sure that's the case, because

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Speaker 1: considering the known alternatives at the time, this superstitious kind

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Speaker 1: of try anything approach starts to make more sense. In

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, if you were smart, the known alternatives,

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Speaker 1: especially surgery, were often a last resort, and especially elle surgery. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: to open up the body is particularly the body, Kennedy

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Speaker 1: was what was a very dangerous proposition. Yeah, so you

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Speaker 1: may have heard about this term barber surgeon, right, you've

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Speaker 1: probably heard the story that you know, why why did

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Speaker 1: barber polls have this spinning red and white kind of

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Speaker 1: twirl on them? Is it because they love candy canes

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Speaker 1: and Christmas? Or is it is it just an accident?

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Speaker 1: Well no, you know that the fact you probably heard

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Speaker 1: about that is that that came from you know, blood letting,

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Speaker 1: essentially saying this is a place where you can get

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Speaker 1: your blood let So what While the scientific ignorance of

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Speaker 1: people in in medieval Europe is sometimes I think a

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Speaker 1: little bit overstated, like sometimes we underestimate just how smart

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Speaker 1: people in the past were about things. Medieval surgery was

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Speaker 1: still probably about as scary as you're imagining. One of

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Speaker 1: the things about the time is that academic physicians, the

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Speaker 1: people who really studied the body the closest equivalent to

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Speaker 1: what we would think of as doctors today. These would

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Speaker 1: be to learn it into visuals who had some degree

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Speaker 1: of access to medical texts. Yeah, they studied in universities,

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Speaker 1: they knew what was up. They may have done dissections

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Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but much of the actual cutting

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Speaker 1: in surgery was not done by these people. So you

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Speaker 1: had your experts who were the physicians, and then separately

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Speaker 1: you had these barber surgeons or these traveling surgeons who

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Speaker 1: were more just kind of like skilled people who you know,

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Speaker 1: they have a skill they can apply, so I can

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Speaker 1: cut hair, I can cut stones out, I can hear cataracts.

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Speaker 1: In many cases, the authors who wrote surgical treatises of

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Speaker 1: the time admitted that they had never performed the operations

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Speaker 1: they were describing, And in a way it kind of

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Speaker 1: makes sense, because you know, old barber cuts your hair

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Speaker 1: or shaves your head. If you're a monk and they

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Speaker 1: shave your beard, So they've got the razor. Why not

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Speaker 1: apply the razor to other things that need cutting, like

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Speaker 1: maybe if they need to extract some bone fragments from

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Speaker 1: a club strike, crush wound, or if they need to

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Speaker 1: do some blood letting, which truly was very common at

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Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. And plus I would imagine their status

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Speaker 1: is always is already one in which they have close

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Speaker 1: contact to the bodies of others. Uh, whereas I could

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Speaker 1: I could imagine that being less the case for you know,

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Speaker 1: learned individual. Yeah. And there's even a line in the

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Speaker 1: Hippocratic oath, you know, the Hippocratic oaths from Hippocrates, the

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Speaker 1: Greek physician. Um, he has a part of the Hippocratic

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Speaker 1: Oath that says, and this is for doctors, I will

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Speaker 1: not use the knife, not even on sufferers from the stone,

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Speaker 1: but will withdraw in favor of such men as are

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Speaker 1: engaged in this work. So this is you know, doctor

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Speaker 1: saying I'm not going to do any surgery. Uh. Kind

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Speaker 1: of strange attitude for us to consider, but that was

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Speaker 1: the thought of the time. Yeah, it's hard to imagine

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Speaker 1: the medieval barber surgeon TV show. You know, you would

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Speaker 1: have the medical dramas playing out, but the the individual

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Speaker 1: who has all the theories and all the the learning, uh,

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Speaker 1: they're not actually going to do any of the cutting

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Speaker 1: that goes to the secondary character. Now this does still

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Speaker 1: sort of apply today because of course we still have

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Speaker 1: medical specializations. You have somebody who is you know, they

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Speaker 1: they focus on maybe family medicine versus somebody who's a neurosurgeon.

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Speaker 1: Obviously they wouldn't try to do each other's job, you

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Speaker 1: know that they have medical specialization. So that still carries

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Speaker 1: through to today to some extent, but we're not in

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Speaker 1: this case letting barbers do the neurosurgery. Now, why was

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Speaker 1: surgery so dangerous in the Middle Ages and so just

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Speaker 1: so generally awful. Well, one of the things that medieval

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Speaker 1: surgeons did not have is sterile equipment or even knowledge

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Speaker 1: of the knee for antiseptic surgical methods uh like. For example,

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Speaker 1: there was a common belief at the time that pus

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Speaker 1: was just an important part of the healing process, and

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Speaker 1: that there were a few medieval surgeons who who tried

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Speaker 1: things like washing wounds with wine. But it really wasn't

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Speaker 1: until following Joseph Lister in the eighteen sixties that antiseptic

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Speaker 1: surgery started to catch on everywhere and become the new norm.

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Speaker 1: So you might have had a few people who got

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Speaker 1: the right idea early on, but it was not widespread

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Speaker 1: practice to practice antiseptic surgery. So then this is one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons, this is the primary reason why any

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Speaker 1: opening of the body, any surgical opening, is almost invariably

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Speaker 1: going to become infected because of the lack of sterility. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: putting dirty things deep inside your body, it's not good

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Speaker 1: for you, like a like a grubby hand reaching in

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Speaker 1: to pull a stone if you're lower active. Who may

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Speaker 1: have just been handling chicken guts for all you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, or collecting dead rats for the

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Speaker 1: town's local bounty anyway. So there's that. They also did

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Speaker 1: not have effective anesthesia and pain control. And this, I mean,

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Speaker 1: you can imagine in your head exactly what the problem is,

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Speaker 1: but maybe you're not imagining the extent to which this

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Speaker 1: is a problem. It's not just that it hurts for

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Speaker 1: the patient. It's difficult to perform internal surgery, even on

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Speaker 1: a very willing participant if they're awake. Yeah, if any

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Speaker 1: of you have ever um it's even difficult, I think

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Speaker 1: for a lot of us to understand because there's a

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Speaker 1: level of pain we're talking about here that a lot

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Speaker 1: of people have not experienced. And even if you undergo

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Speaker 1: surgical procedures thanks to anesthesia, you don't have to experience them.

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Speaker 1: But I remember the one time I tried to perform

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Speaker 1: a self surgery of a sort. Um, I had a

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Speaker 1: tonenail issue which I which I tried to uh like

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Speaker 1: an ingrown issue stemming from a injury. Uh. I tried

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Speaker 1: to correct it myself, uh and it was just like

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Speaker 1: a butter knife and some hemp rope no you know

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Speaker 1: I had. And it wasn't, you know, quite surgery by

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Speaker 1: any means. But um, I tried to to take care

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Speaker 1: of the situation using tweezers, you know, and clippers, and

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00:19:17,680 --> 00:19:21,080
Speaker 1: the pain was just like blinding, like to where there

340
00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:22,920
Speaker 1: were flashes in my eyes. And then it was okay,

341
00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:26,520
Speaker 1: I need to actually go to to a professional about this.

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Speaker 1: But but imagine that extrapolated to not even self surgery,

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Speaker 1: but yet surgery on on on any individual where high

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Speaker 1: levels of pain are just going to be the norm.

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Speaker 1: You're gonna have to strap the individual down or have

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Speaker 1: to ruffians, bring them to a wall or to a bed.

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Speaker 1: You gotta hire some thugs to help you with your surgery. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And so there there were some potions and stuff at

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Speaker 1: the time. I mean, obviously people were aware of some

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Speaker 1: types of drugs, but the point was that they didn't

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Speaker 1: have controllable anesthesia, so they could maybe give you some

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Speaker 1: hemlock or you know, these these crazy potions that were

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Speaker 1: just as likely to kill you as they were to

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Speaker 1: put you under. So so they might have had that

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Speaker 1: in some scenarios, or they might have just tried to

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Speaker 1: do it with you awake because they knew, you know,

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00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:15,680
Speaker 1: it looks like people die a lot of times when

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00:20:15,720 --> 00:20:19,960
Speaker 1: we and that'esthetize them. So this was a problem. Medieval

359
00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:24,480
Speaker 1: surgery just generally bad. Common procedures that were practiced by

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Speaker 1: medieval surgeons. Blood letting, that that's a big one. At

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Speaker 1: the time. They believed in the you know, humorism, like

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Speaker 1: the idea that there were these four humors in the

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00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:35,880
Speaker 1: body that could get out of balance and you could

364
00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:39,359
Speaker 1: fix some things by letting extra blood out. A big

365
00:20:39,400 --> 00:20:41,760
Speaker 1: thing at the time was the treatment of battlefield wounds,

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Speaker 1: such as the removal of arrows and so at the

367
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:49,480
Speaker 1: time surgery was much much more often external. From what

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00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:52,439
Speaker 1: we know at least, there's actually sort of a dearth

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Speaker 1: of information about what surgeons in in medieval Europe we're doing.

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Speaker 1: We don't have quite as much information on this as

371
00:20:59,359 --> 00:21:01,960
Speaker 1: we would like to have, but from the records we

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00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:05,320
Speaker 1: do have, it seems surgery was very often externals, such

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Speaker 1: as the treatment of a surface wound or other problems

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Speaker 1: near the outside of the body. And for all the

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Speaker 1: reasons we've already stated, internal surgery, going deep inside the

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00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:18,560
Speaker 1: body for anything was dangerous and rare, though it did

377
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:22,840
Speaker 1: happen for some extremely problematic things such as bladder stones.

378
00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:27,760
Speaker 1: And we will definitely get back to stones, the bodies,

379
00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:31,760
Speaker 1: the body's lithos in uh in a bit here, but

380
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:34,399
Speaker 1: I think we should first turn our attention back thinking

381
00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:36,439
Speaker 1: back on on the Bosch painting and the ones that

382
00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:39,640
Speaker 1: followed it to the head. That's right, yeah, because essentially

383
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:42,040
Speaker 1: what's going on here appears to be going on here

384
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:45,480
Speaker 1: is that they are uh, they're performing what we now

385
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:51,000
Speaker 1: call um craniotomy, but what has been historically known as

386
00:21:51,119 --> 00:21:54,800
Speaker 1: a trap nation or trepanning, in which and this is

387
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:58,000
Speaker 1: just basically the opening of the skull, creating of a

388
00:21:58,119 --> 00:22:02,040
Speaker 1: of a hole in the skull. Now we find evidence

389
00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:05,480
Speaker 1: of trepidation going back to well but before the Middle

390
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:08,600
Speaker 1: Ages in Europe. I mean, it goes back to prehistoric times,

391
00:22:08,600 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 1: so yeah, thousands of years. You see accounts of it

392
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:14,240
Speaker 1: among the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Romans,

393
00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:19,000
Speaker 1: the Greeks, early Meso American civilizations. Uh, there, there's there.

394
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 1: There are a lot of a lot of interesting work

395
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 1: has come out of South America and I believe also

396
00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 1: in Papua New Guinea as well. But we've even found

397
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 1: neolithic remains, human remains that had skulls that it had

398
00:22:31,280 --> 00:22:35,840
Speaker 1: clearly had the operation performed on them and survived. Right,

399
00:22:35,880 --> 00:22:38,320
Speaker 1: there's a hole in the skull and it has been

400
00:22:38,359 --> 00:22:41,560
Speaker 1: smoothed over where the person didn't die from this surgery,

401
00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:44,000
Speaker 1: at least not at least not for a long time. Yeah,

402
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:47,440
Speaker 1: and so it's it's often been an archaeological, uh mystery

403
00:22:47,560 --> 00:22:50,479
Speaker 1: that individuals have have looked into, you know, what's going

404
00:22:50,520 --> 00:22:52,560
Speaker 1: on with this skull? Is this a wounded did this

405
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:56,040
Speaker 1: was this just you know, clud with something, or was

406
00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: there some sort of a surgical procedure and if there

407
00:22:58,119 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: was a curical surgical procedure, why did they carry it out?

408
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:04,119
Speaker 1: Was it both? Were they just purely magical? Were they

409
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:06,840
Speaker 1: trying to let a demon or spirit out of the head,

410
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:10,679
Speaker 1: or were they trying to deal with a cranial and

411
00:23:10,760 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: brain injuries. Because today clinical trepid nation remains a treatment

412
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: for epidural and subdural hematomas. But and plus it gives

413
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 1: us a basic surgical entry point to the brain itself. Yeah.

414
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've heard about trepid nation before, you

415
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,399
Speaker 1: think about, Okay, that's just a crazy you know, why

416
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:33,679
Speaker 1: would somebody drill a hole in the skull? It's just

417
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:36,920
Speaker 1: because they thought there were demons, you know. But there

418
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: are real medical reasons, as you're saying. And I guess

419
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:43,680
Speaker 1: we don't know what the ancients knew. You know, it's

420
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:46,679
Speaker 1: hard to say whether in some cases they may have

421
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: been doing it just for superstitious reasons or they had

422
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:55,560
Speaker 1: some kind of medical prompting that was legitimate. Yeah, and

423
00:23:56,880 --> 00:23:59,479
Speaker 1: you get into, um, you know, an argument back and

424
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 1: forth over it too, because to a certain extent, um

425
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: archaeologists in the past have looked at some of these

426
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: examples and they've they've said well, there's no way that

427
00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:09,880
Speaker 1: these individuals were carrying this out for legitimate medical purposes.

428
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:14,159
Speaker 1: These are savages, these are ancient people. Uh, but uh,

429
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:16,400
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence to suggest that they were

430
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:21,399
Speaker 1: actually dealing with they were actually performing medical procedures to

431
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:24,680
Speaker 1: deal with with head wounds, to deal with u swelling

432
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: of the brain um due to you know, blunt force

433
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:31,120
Speaker 1: trauma to the skull, trying to relieve that pressure by

434
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: creating uh this whole in the skull itself. But of course,

435
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: trepination doesn't have necessarily a very good record in terms

436
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 1: of the survivability of the procedure. Oh no, yeah, even

437
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: by the late nineteenth century, only ten percent of patients

438
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:51,040
Speaker 1: survived a Western trepination due to infection. And I want

439
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,679
Speaker 1: to stress Western because when you do look to some

440
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 1: of the so called primitive cultures out there, uh, it

441
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 1: seems that they actually may have had a lower and

442
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 1: more reality rate with their definations. Um. But eventually we

443
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: were able to bring that up, obviously, because neurosurgery is

444
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:11,680
Speaker 1: not the uh you know, a nine mortality rate and

445
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:13,359
Speaker 1: ever that it used to be. I mean, we're just

446
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: generally better at, uh fighting off infection post surgery. Now,

447
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,560
Speaker 1: there are a lot of reasons now that surgery in

448
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 1: general is safer. Yeah, And a lot of people point

449
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:28,200
Speaker 1: to American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing lived eighteen sixty nine through

450
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine as as one of the key individuals

451
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:35,120
Speaker 1: who was able to bring that neurosurgery mortality right down

452
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:39,600
Speaker 1: to less than ten percent um and and ultimately ushering

453
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: in the modern age of neurosurgery in which some people

454
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 1: do neurosurgery just for fun. Yeah, well for fun or

455
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 1: for enlightenment, m consciousness intention Yeah. I don't want to.

456
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too far off the beaten

457
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: path here. But we did see the rise of often

458
00:25:56,440 --> 00:26:00,720
Speaker 1: self trepanned psychonauts in the nineteen sixties and seventies. You

459
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: had this individual who was Dutch, interestingly enough, tying into

460
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:09,200
Speaker 1: the origins of our paintings here. Yeah. Former medical student

461
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:13,439
Speaker 1: Bart Hughes lived through two thousand and four. Uh, and

462
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:18,440
Speaker 1: he stands as voluntary trepidations pioneering visionary and so so.

463
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: So he added the idea that trepidation is good for

464
00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:24,199
Speaker 1: your mind, right, yeah, he um so, And this was

465
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 1: apparently he admenced. This was a mescal and induced revelation.

466
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: But his whole thing is that when we became bipeds,

467
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: when we rose up on two legs, it altered the way,

468
00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:38,920
Speaker 1: um uh, the fluids moved through our brain. It altered

469
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 1: blood flow. It also altered the movement of cerebral spinal

470
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: fluid and and and so he thought that this would

471
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 1: be He was trying to figure out, how can I, uh,

472
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: you know, get healthy flow of blood to the brain.

473
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: So he considered, um, he considered um making a hole

474
00:26:57,280 --> 00:26:59,879
Speaker 1: uh in his the base of his spinal column to

475
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: rain out some of the fluid. But he eventually decided, Okay,

476
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 1: what I'll do is I'll just I'll trepan myself. I'll

477
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:08,679
Speaker 1: make this hole in my skull. And it's important to

478
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:10,880
Speaker 1: note here we're talking about just a hole in the skull.

479
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: It's not drilling all the way into brain. It's but

480
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: the but the premise here is that if you were

481
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: to just remove a little bit of skull there, it

482
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 1: would allow the pressure inside the brain to be relieved

483
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: and therefore allow increased blood flow through the brain, allow

484
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 1: a better removal of toxins. That there's there's actually some

485
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:37,400
Speaker 1: interesting research going on and going into this even today. Uh,

486
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,920
Speaker 1: and they make some kind of compelling arguments for it.

487
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: But then the experts also argue that brain function is

488
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: not limited by normal blood flow, and then increased brain

489
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,920
Speaker 1: metabolism might actually stress the system. So it's not it's

490
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 1: not a cut and dry situation, but you have individualstation situation. Yeah,

491
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: but you have individuals out there who are very strong

492
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:03,439
Speaker 1: proponent all of trefinnation as a means of achieving up

493
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: a higher state of consciousness. Okay, and so this informs

494
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: our interpretation of the painting. How like, are we thinking

495
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: that maybe what we're seeing in this painting is we're

496
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: misunderstanding it and it's a form of trepidation or it's

497
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:20,639
Speaker 1: really just sort of related to the general concept. Essentially,

498
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: it means that if there's any kind of stone removal

499
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: going on, if they're removing a stone from the brain,

500
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 1: either in fact or merely allegorically, then there there and

501
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 1: they're dealing with trepidation. And certainly trepidation predated these paintings.

502
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: It was practiced to some degree at the time. And

503
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 1: uh and and it would have been known to the artists.

504
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: There were woodcuts, there were you know, instruction manuals and

505
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: as many of the medical texts showing how this was

506
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: u this procedure was carried out. So, as you probably

507
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: well know, kidney stones and bladder stones are very much

508
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: a reality. Yes they are, and as Joe will shortly

509
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: relate to us, there's sort of removal is is also

510
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: very much reality and one that dates back to antiquity.

511
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: But is there actually such a thing as a cranial stone?

512
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: I mean, we know there there are mineral formations that

513
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: can happen in the body. Can that happen in your brain? Well?

514
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: Can it happen? Is is a question we'll get to.

515
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: Was it happening at the time that individuals think that

516
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 1: this was happening in the Middle Ages and in the

517
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: centuries to follow well, As related by Mathis Kerschel, Frederick Mall,

518
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: and Philip van karen Brock in the paper A Stone

519
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: Never Cut for a New Interpretation of the Cure of

520
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: Folly by Hieronymous Bosh published in the Journal International Urology. Uh,

521
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: there's no evidence to suggest this was ever carried out

522
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 1: in real life. There are no historical sources from the

523
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: period that mentioned genuine or fraudulent stone operations. And I

524
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: also want to add that apparently there were existing accounts

525
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: of quackery that was going on in the nether Lands.

526
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 1: You're in the fifteen and sixteenth century. Doubt they don't

527
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: mention any kind of fake stone removals or or fake

528
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: trepid nations going on. But it was presented theatrically in

529
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: performances for the masses, because clearly the painting makes us think.

530
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:18,239
Speaker 1: The painting has a lot to say, and you can

531
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: imagine that extrapolated to street performances for the common individuals. Yeah,

532
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: the idea was that there there were plays that had

533
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 1: scenes of the the extraction of the stone of madness, right,

534
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 1: cutting for the stone in the head, not unlike our

535
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: little drama at the beginning of this episode. It makes

536
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 1: you wonder because what other types of fiction that we

537
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: have today depict things going on that are plausible In

538
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 1: the same way that cutting for the stone is a

539
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: plausible thing that could have happened. You can imagine quacks

540
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: cutting into people's heads pretending to remove a stone. Uh,

541
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: without researching it any I would be tempted to say, um,

542
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: nefarious kidney removal while on vacation. Yeah, there's place you

543
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: know you Yeah, exactly if if historians of the future

544
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: look back at our fiction as a as a judge

545
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 1: to see what's happening in our culture today, and they're

546
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: not They can tell the difference between fantasy and realistic fiction.

547
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: You know, they don't think that Star Wars is happening

548
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:17,959
Speaker 1: in our culture today. But you know, they look at

549
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 1: some kind of realistic drama where somebody has a kidney

550
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: stolen in Las Vegas, they wake up in a bathtub

551
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: full of ice. Um. I mean they could conclude, oh,

552
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: this must have been something that happened a lot in

553
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,720
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's because clearly it's depicted in their art.

554
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: And these are not these films are not just complete

555
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: works with fantasy. So therefore maybe it happened. Yeah, and

556
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: that brings us back to actual stone removal, the sort

557
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: of stone removals we know, Um, we're carried out or attempted,

558
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: uh in many cases at the time. Yeah. So I

559
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier how in the Middle Ages, coming into the

560
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 1: early modern period sir jury really was a last resort,

561
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: especially any significantly invasive surgery deep internal surgery, that was

562
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: really really a last resort at the time. Surgeons just

563
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: didn't have safe, reliable ways of putting a patient to sleep. So,

564
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, you have to imagine internal surgery

565
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: with knives going deep inside you while you're awake, or

566
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: taking a drug that might kill you. And that's that's

567
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: an interesting It's it's a real Sophie's choice there. Yeah.

568
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: So you remember that line from the Hippocratic Oath I

569
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 1: said where I will not cut, not even for the stone.

570
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: That's sort of an indicator that of all the things

571
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 1: people would come to an ancient or medieval doctor begging

572
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 1: to be cut open for at the time when this

573
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: was painful and dangerous, stones in the urinary tract have

574
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: got to be some of the worst things to merrit

575
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 1: a mention like this, you know, Like, so the doctor

576
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 1: is saying, you know, of all the things that I

577
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:01,840
Speaker 1: may be tempted to do for a person that I

578
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: shouldn't do, cutting for a stone has got to be

579
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: near the top to merit a mention like this. Yeah.

580
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:11,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I I've never suffered the experience of having

581
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: a stone in my body, but I know we have

582
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: listeners who surely have, And I would love to hear

583
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: from you and your account and how that ties into

584
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: your appreciation of our episode today. Yeah, I want to

585
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: read a little selection from a paper called the History

586
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: of Urinary Stones in Parallel with Civilization by ahmet Te

587
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: Feckley and Fatine says I yearly. So this is what

588
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 1: they write. During the medieval period in Europe ten to

589
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: fourteen thirty eight, there was little activity in the management

590
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 1: of stone disease in this era. Lithotomists and that's you know,

591
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: a person who would remove stones, the lithos the stone

592
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: for a living. Lithotomists were essentially commercial travelers, moving from

593
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: town to town looking for business and cutting all who

594
00:33:55,600 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: came their way, Often uneducated and occasionally dishonest, some were

595
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 1: great showman. The procedure was generally performed in the public

596
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: without anesthesia and generally lasted a few minutes. However, lithotomus

597
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: were held responsible for their bad results and find accordingly.

598
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: So as we've said, this surgery, Yeah, that sounds cute, right,

599
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: the surgery is dangerous. Uh. Didn't you have some stats

600
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: on the mortality rates? Yes, and these are from that

601
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 1: a Stone Never Cut paper that are referenced earlier and

602
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: all clue to link to that A landing page for

603
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:32,280
Speaker 1: this episode. But around the fifteenth century you saw about fifty,

604
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: but our sources on that are a little I have

605
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: to approximate. Yeah, from the seventeenth century up to the

606
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:43,359
Speaker 1: mid eighteenth century, you see variable um status. You see

607
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,319
Speaker 1: it as low as two point five, but also as

608
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:49,800
Speaker 1: high as sixty seven point eight. Sounds like it matters

609
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: who's doing your your stone cutting, yes, as well as

610
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:57,760
Speaker 1: who is undergoing the surgery. Apparently the best outcomes occurred

611
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 1: when you had a boy suffering a small stone. The

612
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:04,800
Speaker 1: older the individual, the larger the stone. Uh. And also

613
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 1: if the individual is female, these would all really um

614
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 1: tip the scales in the in favor of death. Okay,

615
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:15,640
Speaker 1: So do we have an actual account of what like

616
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 1: did anybody make records of what this was like on

617
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: the ground, Yes, they did, because these tended to be

618
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: very memorable, uh for surgeries. Uh. And one that we

619
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: have here today, this one actually ties into a painting

620
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:33,919
Speaker 1: is all an engineering A second, but it concerns jen

621
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: did Dut a Dutch blacksmith, and uh a do it

622
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: yourself lethotomist did dute beyond dute? And uh so that's

623
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: that's just the best name for a do it yourself. Yeah.

624
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:50,759
Speaker 1: And there and there's a painting of the painting of

625
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: this individual called a Portrait of Jan d Dute by

626
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: Carol uh Di Savillene, and this was painted in sixteen

627
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: fifty five. I'll try to include a ink to this

628
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,200
Speaker 1: painting so you can see it. Oh, he looks real

629
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 1: satisfied with himself. Yeah. Explain described his painting for the listeners. Jow. Well,

630
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 1: he's posed as if for a camera, and he's in

631
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,240
Speaker 1: his left hand holding up what looks like an egg,

632
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 1: but I guess it's supposed to be a huge stone.

633
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: And in his other hand he's just just kind of

634
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: near the bottom of the painting, posed on the table.

635
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: He's got what looks like a razor. So and and

636
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: he's he he's not exactly smiling, but he's got pride

637
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: in his eyes. Yeah. And uh, as the painting might suggest,

638
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: he apparently survived at least for five years. But we

639
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:41,759
Speaker 1: know of of his case from an account written by

640
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: Nicholas Tulp's six seventy two text Um Observation. He's medica

641
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: and uh and this is this is just a sample

642
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:58,120
Speaker 1: translated obviously from that book. Only letting his brother help him,

643
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:00,640
Speaker 1: he instructed him to pull aside his grown him while

644
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: he grabbed the stone in his left hand and cut

645
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:07,720
Speaker 1: bravely in the perennium with a knife he had secretly prepared.

646
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 1: I don't know why it was secretly prepared. Uh. And

647
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:13,720
Speaker 1: by standing again and again managed to make the wound

648
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: long enough to allow the stone to pass. To get

649
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:20,320
Speaker 1: the stone out was more difficult, and he had to

650
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 1: stick two fingers into the wound on either side to

651
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 1: remove it with leveraged force, and it finally popped out

652
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:30,160
Speaker 1: of hiding with an explosive noise and tearing of the bladder.

653
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 1: Now the more courageous than careful operation was completed, and

654
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 1: the enemy that had declared war on him was safely

655
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: on the ground. He sent for a healer who sewed

656
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: up the two sides of the wound together. That's just

657
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: troubling I And I will note that in the painting

658
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 1: here portrait of Jan dedut Uh, we don't see Uh.

659
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: We only see Hi from the waist up, So God

660
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: knows what the finished state of things were just soaked

661
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 1: in blood. And there are other accounts out there as well.

662
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,479
Speaker 1: There was one in particular that I ran across years

663
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:05,239
Speaker 1: years ago, and I was trying to find it. But

664
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: in involved. I want to say, a royal individual or

665
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: an astronomer or someone of you know, of means and

666
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 1: importance who had to undergo a stone removal surgery and

667
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: it was just a bloody disaster and they ended up

668
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: dying on the table. But after the life of me,

669
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was. Okay, So we've seen

670
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: that sometimes the body grows some stones inside it. You

671
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:30,799
Speaker 1: you've got these, uh, these formations of mineral deposits that

672
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:34,400
Speaker 1: can be very problematic, especially depending on where they occur.

673
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're so problematic medieval surgeons would go in for them,

674
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 1: despite how dangerous surgery was at the time. And how

675
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:45,879
Speaker 1: exactly does this affect the head, because like we've said,

676
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,240
Speaker 1: we're not really aware from the public record that people

677
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:51,399
Speaker 1: ever cut into people's skulls for stones at the time.

678
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: But maybe just maybe there's one sort of crany old

679
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 1: phenomenon we could look at as a as a possible

680
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: candidate for what what's going on here If this is

681
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:07,160
Speaker 1: intended to depict a real scene, if you're just saying,

682
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: is it remotely possible, yeah, that that just could happen,

683
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: That Bosh is depicting something that could have really happened,

684
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: and here we want to talk about the meningioma. So

685
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: a meningioma is a name for like a class of

686
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: tumors that affect the brain and the spinal cord, though

687
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: they actually don't grow from brain or spinal cord tissue itself,

688
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: but from the meninji's or the man ninjas, which are

689
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 1: thin layers of tissue that wrap around the outside of

690
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: these organs. So around the outside of your brain you've

691
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 1: got a thin layer of this tissue, and this is

692
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: where this meningioma can occur. It's it's like a tumor

693
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 1: um and because they appear on this outer tissue, they

694
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:53,359
Speaker 1: typically happened at the top or the outer curve of

695
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 1: the brain. Also sometimes at the base of the skull.

696
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: But this would make sense in the picture right, the

697
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,880
Speaker 1: top or the outer curve of the brain. That's where

698
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 1: we see Bosch's tin funnel hat wearing. Doctor might be

699
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: the generous word cutting here. So these these tumors are

700
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: typically non cancerous. They're containing cysts or calcifications. Interestingly, so

701
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,319
Speaker 1: that would be collections of minerals, you know, stone formations,

702
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: just like you might have in your bladder or something.

703
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,720
Speaker 1: So a mineral collection or cyst. But of course since

704
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 1: they grow they press against the brain. Even though they're

705
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: non cancerous, they still need to be removed. So this

706
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: could be what we're seeing in the painting. I don't

707
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: know what you think about that. Yeah, I think in

708
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: terms of just I don't think it. It is what

709
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: we're saying. But in terms of of making an argument,

710
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 1: what is it possible? Is it? Is it realistically possible

711
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: that that that there could be a stone of madness?

712
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:55,040
Speaker 1: Like this is the closest real world possibility. Um and

713
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: and in what case would it be a stone of madness? Well,

714
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 1: there's a paper the referred to. This is a two

715
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: thousand to letter to Neurology India by Prasada Krishnan uh

716
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 1: and UH a few other co authors as well, and

717
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: they they were looking at a particular individual that that

718
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 1: had one of these um meningioma's growing inside the skull,

719
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 1: and they found that it can result in irrelevant speech, forgetfulness,

720
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: behavioral abnormalities such as disinhibition, emotional liability, and just excessive talking.

721
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: So specifically they will get a sixty five year old patient,

722
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 1: uh and UH. They they actually performed a craniotomy and

723
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:45,280
Speaker 1: gross total excision of the legion, uh, cutting her curing

724
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 1: her of all the symptoms in the process. So, in

725
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,800
Speaker 1: other words, this is one case in two thousand twelve,

726
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:55,280
Speaker 1: with of course modern surgical um tools and procedures um

727
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: at hand, the surgeons were able to remove a stone

728
00:41:58,719 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 1: like growth from a humans goal and uh, and in

729
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 1: doing so cure the individual of their abnormal mental state. Huh. Okay, So,

730
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: while we have no evidence that operations like this took

731
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: place in the Middle Ages or Bosh's time, it is

732
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,279
Speaker 1: at least possible that this could be the kind of

733
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,759
Speaker 1: thing going on here. Yeah, so it would sort of

734
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: match the scene described. Yeah, so it might be a

735
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: case where we're accidentally art ends up giving us a

736
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: glimpse of what an actual surgeon's blade with one day

737
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: and cover. Okay, Well, I've got another question though. One

738
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 1: of the things that when I was researching medieval surgery

739
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: I came across is that one one of the most

740
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: common surgical procedures in medieval Europe would have been uh,

741
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:51,239
Speaker 1: treatment of battlefield wounds. Yeah, so what if what we're

742
00:42:51,280 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: actually seeing is something that is that has not just

743
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 1: grown inside the head, not a stone of madness, but

744
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:01,360
Speaker 1: a missile of madness, something that has come from the

745
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:05,840
Speaker 1: outside and is being treated or removed. Yeah, I mean indeed, uh.

746
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: Contemporary and ancient use of trefor nation. Uh. It was

747
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 1: often employed to deal with head trauma, either to you know,

748
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: mitigate brain swelling due to blow a blow to the skull,

749
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:18,760
Speaker 1: or to remove a bone fragment, or even a missile

750
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: of some sort from uh, from underneath the skull or

751
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: in the skull, or possibly in the brain. Uh. So

752
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 1: I think you could make a granted weak case for

753
00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:34,359
Speaker 1: the stone of folly having some relation to battle injury. Um,

754
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 1: only in this case you've not been hit by a

755
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 1: stone from the enemy sling, but rather a dose of

756
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 1: folly from the face. Yeah. When I was preparing for

757
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 1: this episode, one of the things I did was I

758
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,280
Speaker 1: watched part of a short documentary that had a scene

759
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 1: about an injury that the young Henry the Fifth actually

760
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: suffered on the battlefield when he was a teenager, where

761
00:43:57,520 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: he got an arrow lodged in his head, and they

762
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: were talking about what happened when it was a non

763
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:05,200
Speaker 1: fatal wound. But you know, at the time, of course,

764
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: if they leave the arrow head in your wound, it's

765
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: going to get infected and you're gonna die. Uh. And

766
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,320
Speaker 1: they talked about the procedures that the surgeons of the

767
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: day went through to try to remove this arrow head

768
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:22,360
Speaker 1: from his head, and eventually he lived. He survived the procedure.

769
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 1: But this does kind of show how, even at a

770
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:30,359
Speaker 1: time when surgery is known to be very dangerous, if

771
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: you've got a major head wound, you really don't have

772
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 1: any other choice. Yeah, It's either do it and possibly

773
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: die or just die. Alright. So this this brings us

774
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: back though, to to the painting itself. So we've already

775
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:48,239
Speaker 1: established that cutting for your urinary stones was complicated and

776
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 1: dangerous treatment mortality rate. Furthermore, trepidation was an even riskier

777
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: proposal at the time perhaticized mortality rate, maybe maybe even

778
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:01,120
Speaker 1: more depending on who's trying to carry it out. So,

779
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:04,279
Speaker 1: whether cutting into the brain or bowel, surgical practices of

780
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 1: the time we're just not up to snuff. And as

781
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: far as treatment of madness goes, this was an age

782
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 1: before psychiatry was even a word. We didn't get back

783
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 1: to eighteen o eight. The four humors still held sway

784
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: over our understanding of human experience. Uh, there were and

785
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:25,399
Speaker 1: there were very few treatments for uh mental illness. Uh.

786
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 1: The asylum was really one of the few options for

787
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: individuals who really had severe mental illness, which wasn't really

788
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: a treatment, right. And that's actually one of the arguments

789
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:39,880
Speaker 1: for Peter Brugal the Elder's painting cutting out of the

790
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 1: Stone of Madness, which you said it looks like a madhouse.

791
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: One argument is is that he was depicting the brutal

792
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: treatment of afflicted individuals within the madhouse, not that they

793
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:57,239
Speaker 1: were actually carved upon and had stones pulled out of

794
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 1: their heads, but that the treatment they were sieved was

795
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: was comparable to that level of brutality and ineffectiveness. Okay,

796
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's it's sort of just like an extreme

797
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: example that's fictional to communicate the reality of the total,

798
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: the total picture of the conditions, much like you might say,

799
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: use this not really very plausible scenario of waking up

800
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 1: in a bathtub missing kidney to depict the general sort

801
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:30,439
Speaker 1: of lawlessness of of a society or something like that,

802
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: you know, the predatory nature of wherever you are Las

803
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,799
Speaker 1: Vegas or something. Yeah, Now, in terms of actual trepidation,

804
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,560
Speaker 1: it was certainly on the table for head trauma and

805
00:46:40,600 --> 00:46:43,880
Speaker 1: psycho surgery was proposed in Europe as earlier the twelfth century,

806
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:45,839
Speaker 1: but there are actually very few reports of it being

807
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 1: effectively employed before. So it seems like the predominant theory

808
00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:55,399
Speaker 1: here is that this painting is there there a number

809
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: of things going on, but one possibility here is that

810
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: it's less about an actual surgery and more about a

811
00:47:01,719 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: symbol for the the the the the ineffectiveness of surgery

812
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:09,839
Speaker 1: as a whole. Yeah, so it's not just about our

813
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 1: cruelty but also about our our ignorance and fumbling. Yeah, like,

814
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 1: we we have such a disastrous record removing these stones

815
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:21,360
Speaker 1: that are occurring in the body. Let's just push it

816
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:26,240
Speaker 1: into a more comedic and symbolic area by having the

817
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:30,799
Speaker 1: quack surgeon or perhaps just surgeon with you know, bundering

818
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 1: and incomplete understanding of human physiology and imagine than him

819
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: operating on an even more dangerous part of the human anatomy,

820
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: the brain itself, and then trying to remove some stone

821
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:46,279
Speaker 1: from from that part of the body as well. So

822
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:50,800
Speaker 1: in Bosch's painting, Uh, it seems that it's less about

823
00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:55,320
Speaker 1: any about this being an actual procedure that was attempted.

824
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:59,280
Speaker 1: But more all right, let's take the stone removal surgeries

825
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:01,839
Speaker 1: that we know we're ocurring and that we know had

826
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 1: such a disastrous record. Let's extrapolate that, and then and

827
00:48:05,680 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 1: take our fictional doctor who's either a quack or just

828
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: a you know, a blundering but well meaning individual who's

829
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: dealing with just a limited understanding of human physiology and

830
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 1: and uh and and and and disease and infection. And

831
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:21,760
Speaker 1: let's have him not operate on on this already dangerous

832
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 1: part of the human body, but let's have him operate

833
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 1: on an even more dangerous area for surgery, the human

834
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 1: brain itself. Let's have him pull a stone out of there. Yeah.

835
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a fictional symbol of not only

836
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: not just like Brugal's vision of our the cruelty and

837
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 1: chaos of the madhouse, but also of our just lack

838
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 1: of knowledge and the way we fumble through medicine. Yeah.

839
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 1: And they're they're additional interpretations that are sometimes thrown in

840
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:50,320
Speaker 1: as well, the quack uh interpretation that we mentioned already,

841
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: that it is essentially psychic surgery. Uh. There's also the

842
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,240
Speaker 1: idea that the folly here is the patients for wishing

843
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:59,279
Speaker 1: the swift easy removal of a thing which must be

844
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:01,320
Speaker 1: one either spiritually or you know a few of the

845
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 1: mysteries of alchemy. Yeah, fool and his money are easily parted. Yeah.

846
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:07,919
Speaker 1: Another one of the interpretations that I'm I'm not sure

847
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 1: I can agree with, but I at least found very

848
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: interesting and liked came from that that paper reference to

849
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:16,319
Speaker 1: stone never cut four, which it was good, It was

850
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: interesting to read. Uh. They pointed out the three people

851
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 1: in the painting, so that the patient is laying in

852
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 1: this chair suffering, as you said, reclining, seeming to groan,

853
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: get it out. You've got the doctor cutting him, and

854
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: then you've got the monk, and then you've got the

855
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:34,960
Speaker 1: ladies sitting there with the book on her head. And

856
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: the way they interpreted the painting was that he's surrounded

857
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: by symbolic characters embodying medicine, religion, and philosophy, and that

858
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 1: that none of them really offer him a solution, the

859
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 1: philosopher being the what looks like a nun with the

860
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 1: closed book, the sealed book resting atop her head. Yeah.

861
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I buy that interpretation, but I

862
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, I like it too, And yeah, I

863
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,400
Speaker 1: mean she still looks more like a nun than a

864
00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:09,600
Speaker 1: philosopher to me. But that's that's the rough thing about

865
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:12,360
Speaker 1: interpreting these older pieces of art is they were not

866
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,359
Speaker 1: meant to speak to me or you. They were they

867
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,760
Speaker 1: were meant to speak to an individual living in the time.

868
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: So they're they're kind of speaking across time and space

869
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: here and we can just do our best to try

870
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: and interpret them. But but I do like that interpretation

871
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:30,399
Speaker 1: because it takes it, it extrapolates it beyond uh, mere

872
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 1: medical science, and it just shows this it's is comical take,

873
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: but also a one that that kind of just pokes

874
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 1: fun at at our attempts to master anything. Here are

875
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 1: the three learned individuals and what are they accomplishing with

876
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:52,040
Speaker 1: against this individual's pain, discomfort or madness boredom? Yeah? All right,

877
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 1: so there you have it. I'm going to make sure

878
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: that the landing page for this episode links to examples

879
00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:00,879
Speaker 1: of all the works of art that we referenced here,

880
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 1: so you can pull them up, look at him, draw

881
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 1: your own conclusions, make your own interpretations about what's going on.

882
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 1: Um And I will also link to that to some

883
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 1: of the papers that we reference here as well. But

884
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 1: I'd say, if you are feeling not quite well in

885
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: your in your mind or in your mental state, uh,

886
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: let us advise you don't cut for the stone or

887
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: pay anyone else to cut for the stone. Go go

888
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:26,799
Speaker 1: see a modern medical doctor. And if that doctor has

889
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:29,840
Speaker 1: a tin funnel on his or her head, pay extra,

890
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,720
Speaker 1: pay pay extra? Yes, all right, hey. In the meantime,

891
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:35,279
Speaker 1: I'll be sure to visit Stuff to Blow your Mind

892
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,000
Speaker 1: dot com. That's we will find all the podcast episodes,

893
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:40,239
Speaker 1: who find videos, who find blog posts, who find links

894
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 1: out for our social media accounts, Uh follow us there.

895
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook and Twitter is Blow the Mind. We're

896
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:47,040
Speaker 1: on tumbler as Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And if

897
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:48,880
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us with feedback

898
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 1: on this episode or to let us know your favorite

899
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: mystery from an ancient or medieval painting, you can email

900
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:56,479
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot

901
00:51:56,520 --> 00:52:08,360
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

902
00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:20,359
Speaker 1: Isn't how stuff works dot com? They little and they

903
00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:22,400
Speaker 1: need the biggest cement. I would be