WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Stone of Madness 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:08.160 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:10.440 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:13.880 one of our from the Vault selections from days of Old. 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.640 That's right, this is an older episode of Stuff to 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:20.560 Blow Your Mind. This in this particular episode originally published 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:24.360 January seven, two thousand sixteen, and it is titled The 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.080 Stone of Madness. I think this may have been my 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.840 most embarrassing skit performance on the show. Well, we were 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.080 playing characters from a Bosch painting, so we were supposed 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:37.680 to sound grotesque. If even if we can't look grotesque, 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.040 you always gotta have fun being a little boshy. Yeah. Yeah, 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:43.559 I love episodes like this because this is another one 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.400 of those where we have art and history and early 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:52.840 ideas about human biology all coming together into a nice package. Yeah. 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:54.840 So those are some of the best ones, right, art, 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.040 history and paleo science. Yes, and this one was also 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.720 almost a video, is that recall? I think somebody was 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.120 turning us into cartoons, and mercifully that didn't happen. Yeah, 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:07.600 because the skit that you mentioned here, they were they 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.960 were creating an animated version of that with grotesque versions 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.600 of of ourselves. God save us from the unflinching gaze 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.200 of the animator. All right, Well, on that note, let's 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:23.759 dive in. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:41.119 how stuff works? Dot com. Maybe, why, my good fellow, 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.479 you look a bit mad. I am a bit mad. 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.400 Do you know? Are you a physician? Well, of course, 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.680 didn't you notice my physician's cap? You mean that beautiful 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.120 tin funnel? Yes, yes, of course. Now if you would, 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:58.000 can you point to the part of your body that 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:02.559 feels insane right here in the scuttle dock, right right here? 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.720 Then that's where the stone of madness awaits us? Can 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.440 you can you remove it? Dot why? Certainly? Just have 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.680 a seat and allow me to trepen your cranium just 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.280 large enough to remove the stone. Better make it a 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.280 big hole, doc. I'm about as mad as they come. 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:20.639 I'm a man to rats to a bowl of pork, 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.000 a chest to take. Sometimes I wake up in a 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.840 field and I think I'm a dog. I started chasing 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.760 the local clergy around it. Yes, yes, it's going to 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.959 be all right. Now, just let me reach inside and ah, 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.480 there it is the stone of madness and folly, the 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.639 source of your mental maladies. Surgically removed. That'll be five 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:47.359 silver Here you go. But can I can I keep 0:02:47.400 --> 0:03:01.560 the stone? Of course you can. Hey, welcome to stuff 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:03.400 to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:05.919 I'm Joe McCormick. I hope you enjoyed our little skit. 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.920 That is our attempt to audibly capture the spirit of 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:14.160 a particular painting, namely, uh, the cutting of the stone 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:16.800 or the extraction of the stone of madness or the 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:18.839 cure of folly, whatever you want to call it, by 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:24.360 Hieronymous Bosh. Um. This is a painting from around four 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:29.760 and it depicts uh, this sort of crazy but highly 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.560 allegorical uh surgery taking place. Yeah, if you have never 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.320 seen this painting, you should look it up. I'm gonna 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:39.160 do my thing and tell you to google an image, 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.120 but you really should see it to go with this episode. 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.160 It will be on the landing page of of the 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.880 web version of this episode. But yeah, it's a painting 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:50.440 by Hieronymous bosh It's usually dated to around fifteen hundreds sometime. 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:52.240 We read one source that said it had to be 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.480 after fifteen o two other people dated to the fourteen nineties. Um. 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:58.760 As we mentioned in the past. When we dealt with 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:01.440 the some of Bosh's work, there's there's so little known 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.640 about him that it's there's a certain amount of mystery 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.200 involved in all of this, And one of the great 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.240 things about it is the mystery of what motivated this painting, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.440 because because what's happening in the painting, the cutting of 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.080 the stone of Badness. You have a patient in the 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:21.640 sort of the center left of the frame, who seated 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.680 in a chair in the middle of a field, and 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.120 he looks quite distressed, and he's reclining back in the 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:32.039 chair as a man in a pink robe with a 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:36.840 tin funnel on his head cuts into the patient's scalp. Yes, 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.599 and the man, the man with the tin funnel on 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.000 his head, who's doing the cutting, he looks fairly serene, 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.279 wouldn't you say? Yes, he seems he's he seems dedicated 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.839 to the task at hand here, which you could interpret 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.919 as concentration and and you know, knowing what he's doing, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.839 or you could interpret as a kind of callousness and 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.440 insensitivity to this man's apparent grunting. He looks like he's 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:03.120 in the middle of really good grunt. Then to the 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:05.920 right of the guy reclining in the chair. He's having 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.560 his head cut open. You have what appears to be 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.400 you think this is a monk. Yeah, it looks very 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:13.840 much like a monk. Yeah, he's got a shaved top 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.719 of his head and he's in some black garments. And 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.159 then to the right of the monk there is a 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.880 woman with her head covered by a cloth, in a 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:26.720 dress straped over her, with a book sitting on top 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:31.120 of her head that's clasped with a clasp. So what 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.679 on earth do we make of this painting? I should 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:36.680 also note that there is text with this painting, right 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:39.800 if you have the appropriate zoomed out version, and it 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.920 says this translation, of course, master cut away the stone. 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.520 My name is Lubert Duss Lubert Dass. Yeah, and this 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.000 is apparently a fool in Dutch literature of the time. 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:52.719 And then the the observer that the viewer of this 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.960 particular piece would have known that. Yeah, I think at 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.400 the time, calling calling a character Lubbert is kind of 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.960 like us calling a character Cletus or something like that. 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.400 It's like a it's like a joke and a Dutch cletus, 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.159 if you will. Yeah, So that's the the one of 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.719 the key paintings that we're gonna keep referring back to. 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:16.240 But but we've see an overall trend uh in medieval art, um, yeah, 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.880 medieval and early modern art in Europe that seems to 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.960 be following this theme set up by Bosh, or at 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.480 least first interpreted by Bosh. As far as we know, 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.680 this theme of cutting out the stone of madness. So 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:30.520 in the previous painting we had the guy with the 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:32.960 tin funnel hat cutting the guy's head. He seems to 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:37.000 be in the process of removing this titular stone, the 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.920 stone of madness, whatever that is. But there are other paintings. 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:42.520 There's of course, a cutting of the Stone of Madness 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.039 by Brugal. Right, yeah, Peter Brugal the Elder lived a 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.240 fifteen fifteen to fifteen sixty nine, responsible for a number 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:53.080 of fabulous pieces that I'm sure everyone's familiar with it 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.120 and they've even had on your dorm room wall in college. 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.599 I know I did, uh, And this one shows this 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:03.159 one has a number of individuals and several different neurosurgical 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.400 procedures going on in very crude and horrific fashion. Now 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:08.520 we can point out that this painting. You should also 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:10.400 look this one up so you can see it for yourself, 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.880 but it's much more chaotic than the last one. The 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:16.240 last one is a sort of a concentrated scene of 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:19.840 a single cutting taking place. This is it's a mad 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:23.000 house there. There are people all over having their heads 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.760 examined and cut, and the multiple people doing the cutting. 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.040 There's just general chaos. People are squatting and squirming in 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:32.760 the background and trying to peek in and see what's 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:36.600 going on. It's it looks like a bad scene. Yeah, 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:38.920 and and definitely remember the mad house of it, because 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.000 we'll come back to that. The third painting we want 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:44.640 a reference here is is Won by a Quentin Massy's 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.480 uh he lived fourteen six to nine. And this one 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.480 is called an Allegory of Folly. And this one is 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.720 probably it's probably my favorite of the three, just because 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.880 it's so monstrous and weird. Yeah. Now it doesn't depict 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:02.000 a surgery, but it is depict It follows the same 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:04.800 theme of the Stone of Madness. There seems to be 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.080 So you see a guy here, he looks like he 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:12.800 is perhaps mentally unsound in some way, and he is 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:17.880 clutching a staff that what is going on at the 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.520 top of the staff. Robert, Well, there there are evidently 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.000 a number of different symbols going on in this piece. 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:27.120 There's so much uh, there's so much symbology uh at 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.720 play and in these these paintings, and we we don't 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:33.280 have time to to to tease it all apart. But yeah, 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:35.640 he has a staff that has like a small individual 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:39.640 that is with their with exposed buttocks emerging from the staff. 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.800 He has a rooster on his head. Uh, and he's 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.679 see he doesn't seem in pain by his natness. He 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.680 seems a little uh mischievous, the mused. Uh. No, he 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.720 seems to be contemplating the act of marrying two rats 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:56.200 to a bowl of port. Yes. And on his forehead 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.880 there is a lump that you can see, it's a 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.000 visible lump fulging from his forehead that appears to be 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.320 this stone. It's the stone of madness. Yeah, it looks 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:07.160 very much in a way. It also looks kind of 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.559 like a third eye, which is I think something that's 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:11.120 kind of neat about this piece that if you look 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:15.640 at it with other artistic traditions uh loaded into your head, 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:17.600 it kind of makes you wonder about you know, the 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.960 whole difference between enlightenment and madness, which which will be 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:22.560 a thing we come back to. But yeah, it looks 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.920 like the stone of madness is not only in this 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.800 individual's head, but it's poking through. Yeah. And so these 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.160 are just a few examples, but this seems to be 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:35.640 a general theme emerging in in medieval and early modern 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.200 European art of of the stone of madness being a 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:43.160 stone in the head associated with madness as they would 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:46.440 understand it, and the the act of cutting for the 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:50.400 stone to get it out. But does this refer to 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:54.960 a real physical thing in any way, and does the 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.240 act of cutting for it represent a surgical procedure that 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:03.360 really took place. It's an interesting, uh mystery to consider 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:08.040 because ultimately have like three possibilities here. One is that yes, 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.040 there's something going on here to some physical malady in 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:16.280 the head that is being removed. Okay. Another possibility is 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:19.520 that this is all a Charlatan's game, right, that that 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:21.720 a quack is coming along and saying, oh, you have 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:23.959 a problem, Well, I can take care of that. I 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.200 can remove the source of it. It's like cranial psychic surgery, 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.920 you know, origin the psychic surgeon would kind of scoop 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:32.200 on your stomach for a minute, and then sneak some 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.640 chicken guts into his hand and pretend to be pulling 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:37.240 things out of your body. Exactly in this case, you'd 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.920 have somebody cutting at your head and then by sleight 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.160 of hands, sneaking a stone into the hand and saying, well, 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:44.920 look what I pulled out of your brain? You know, 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.480 here's the problem. Yeah, it would be Yeah, in this case, 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:50.920 it would be precisely psychic surgery. Imagine a lot of 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.679 people have seen this depicted in the movie Man in 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.560 the Moon of the movie about Andy Kaufman, where he 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:58.400 goes and this is performed for him and yeah, and 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:00.199 they would often sometimes it would be chicken up, but 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.040 other times it would be inorganic objects. And so you're 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.160 throw in a little You're throw in a little magic, 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.600 a little superstition, and you can easily imagine this scenario 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:12.240 in which this essentially a medieval witch doctorre of Swords 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.800 of Charlotton comes in, Ah, here's the stone, I've removed it, 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:18.960 and now you're well, yeah. Another option would be that 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.160 there wasn't actually a stone in the head, so there 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.719 wasn't a real problem that was being addressed. Here, and 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.320 it wasn't quackery, but it was just somebody who was 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:31.520 well meaning thought that there was some kind of thing 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:33.760 that could be done to the head or something removed 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.400 from the head to actually cure people, and it just 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:38.760 didn't work. You know, they were wrong, but they were 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.000 well meaning. So that's what we're gonna explore in today's episode. 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:44.800 We're gonna be talking a little bit about medieval surgery. 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:48.200 We're gonna be talking about trepi nation. Uh, We're gonna 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:51.760 be talking about, oh, the removal of actual stones from 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:56.000 the body, uh, particularly in the Middle Ages, And we'll 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.600 get back around to what what experts think this painting 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:04.400 and this really, this this artistic tradition is really saying. Well, 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:06.000 I think first we should take a look at the 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:09.520 general atmosphere of surgery in the Middle Ages and then 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:12.840 bridging into the early Modern period here. One of the 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.720 things that I think about about when we think back 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.600 on medieval medicine is that it's easy for us to 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.360 look back and make fun of people in the Middle 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:25.840 Ages for believing and ridiculous cures, you know, like, oh, 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:28.640 you've got migraines, you need to look at an ugly 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.520 baby for thirteen minutes and then sprinkle some ground up 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.840 bore tusk in your eye. I mean, we all know 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.360 that's not gonna work. It seems ridiculous to us, Like, 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:39.439 how did people fall for that? They must have been 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.800 so stupid. But I'm not sure that's the case, because 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:47.480 considering the known alternatives at the time, this superstitious kind 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:51.400 of try anything approach starts to make more sense. In 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.839 the Middle Ages, if you were smart, the known alternatives, 0:12:55.000 --> 0:13:01.240 especially surgery, were often a last resort, and especially elle surgery. Yeah, 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.920 to open up the body is particularly the body, Kennedy 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:09.720 was what was a very dangerous proposition. Yeah, so you 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.719 may have heard about this term barber surgeon, right, you've 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:15.920 probably heard the story that you know, why why did 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.559 barber polls have this spinning red and white kind of 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.160 twirl on them? Is it because they love candy canes 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:25.040 and Christmas? Or is it is it just an accident? 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.840 Well no, you know that the fact you probably heard 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:30.520 about that is that that came from you know, blood letting, 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:32.640 essentially saying this is a place where you can get 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.080 your blood let So what While the scientific ignorance of 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.560 people in in medieval Europe is sometimes I think a 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.320 little bit overstated, like sometimes we underestimate just how smart 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:46.080 people in the past were about things. Medieval surgery was 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:50.360 still probably about as scary as you're imagining. One of 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.320 the things about the time is that academic physicians, the 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.760 people who really studied the body the closest equivalent to 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.240 what we would think of as doctors today. These would 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:02.200 be to learn it into visuals who had some degree 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.719 of access to medical texts. Yeah, they studied in universities, 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.920 they knew what was up. They may have done dissections 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:12.760 and stuff like that, but much of the actual cutting 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.720 in surgery was not done by these people. So you 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.640 had your experts who were the physicians, and then separately 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.480 you had these barber surgeons or these traveling surgeons who 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.880 were more just kind of like skilled people who you know, 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.480 they have a skill they can apply, so I can 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:35.479 cut hair, I can cut stones out, I can hear cataracts. 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.720 In many cases, the authors who wrote surgical treatises of 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:43.760 the time admitted that they had never performed the operations 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.520 they were describing, And in a way it kind of 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.240 makes sense, because you know, old barber cuts your hair 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:52.080 or shaves your head. If you're a monk and they 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:55.840 shave your beard, So they've got the razor. Why not 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.760 apply the razor to other things that need cutting, like 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.920 maybe if they need to extract some bone fragments from 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:04.720 a club strike, crush wound, or if they need to 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:07.880 do some blood letting, which truly was very common at 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.520 the time. Yeah. And plus I would imagine their status 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.720 is always is already one in which they have close 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.520 contact to the bodies of others. Uh, whereas I could 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.960 I could imagine that being less the case for you know, 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.760 learned individual. Yeah. And there's even a line in the 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:29.240 Hippocratic oath, you know, the Hippocratic oaths from Hippocrates, the 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:34.200 Greek physician. Um, he has a part of the Hippocratic 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.720 Oath that says, and this is for doctors, I will 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:41.640 not use the knife, not even on sufferers from the stone, 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:44.920 but will withdraw in favor of such men as are 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:48.640 engaged in this work. So this is you know, doctor 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.880 saying I'm not going to do any surgery. Uh. Kind 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:56.120 of strange attitude for us to consider, but that was 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.840 the thought of the time. Yeah, it's hard to imagine 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:04.240 the medieval barber surgeon TV show. You know, you would 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:07.760 have the medical dramas playing out, but the the individual 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.280 who has all the theories and all the the learning, uh, 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.560 they're not actually going to do any of the cutting 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:16.680 that goes to the secondary character. Now this does still 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:18.640 sort of apply today because of course we still have 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.560 medical specializations. You have somebody who is you know, they 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.600 they focus on maybe family medicine versus somebody who's a neurosurgeon. 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.120 Obviously they wouldn't try to do each other's job, you 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.200 know that they have medical specialization. So that still carries 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.640 through to today to some extent, but we're not in 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:47.080 this case letting barbers do the neurosurgery. Now, why was 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:50.840 surgery so dangerous in the Middle Ages and so just 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.880 so generally awful. Well, one of the things that medieval 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:59.400 surgeons did not have is sterile equipment or even knowledge 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:03.360 of the knee for antiseptic surgical methods uh like. For example, 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:05.560 there was a common belief at the time that pus 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:09.359 was just an important part of the healing process, and 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:13.720 that there were a few medieval surgeons who who tried 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:17.160 things like washing wounds with wine. But it really wasn't 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.760 until following Joseph Lister in the eighteen sixties that antiseptic 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:24.320 surgery started to catch on everywhere and become the new norm. 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:26.920 So you might have had a few people who got 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:29.439 the right idea early on, but it was not widespread 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.800 practice to practice antiseptic surgery. So then this is one 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.920 of the reasons, this is the primary reason why any 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.320 opening of the body, any surgical opening, is almost invariably 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.680 going to become infected because of the lack of sterility. Yeah. Yeah, 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.400 putting dirty things deep inside your body, it's not good 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.000 for you, like a like a grubby hand reaching in 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.680 to pull a stone if you're lower active. Who may 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:56.840 have just been handling chicken guts for all you know, 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.119 I mean, who knows, or collecting dead rats for the 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:05.920 town's local bounty anyway. So there's that. They also did 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:11.320 not have effective anesthesia and pain control. And this, I mean, 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.320 you can imagine in your head exactly what the problem is, 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.359 but maybe you're not imagining the extent to which this 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.239 is a problem. It's not just that it hurts for 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:25.600 the patient. It's difficult to perform internal surgery, even on 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:30.120 a very willing participant if they're awake. Yeah, if any 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:33.040 of you have ever um it's even difficult, I think 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.159 for a lot of us to understand because there's a 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.480 level of pain we're talking about here that a lot 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.879 of people have not experienced. And even if you undergo 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.000 surgical procedures thanks to anesthesia, you don't have to experience them. 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.160 But I remember the one time I tried to perform 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:51.600 a self surgery of a sort. Um, I had a 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:55.919 tonenail issue which I which I tried to uh like 0:18:55.920 --> 0:19:00.680 an ingrown issue stemming from a injury. Uh. I tried 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.080 to correct it myself, uh and it was just like 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:06.399 a butter knife and some hemp rope no you know 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.040 I had. And it wasn't, you know, quite surgery by 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:13.400 any means. But um, I tried to to take care 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:17.119 of the situation using tweezers, you know, and clippers, and 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:21.080 the pain was just like blinding, like to where there 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:22.920 were flashes in my eyes. And then it was okay, 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.520 I need to actually go to to a professional about this. 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:31.720 But but imagine that extrapolated to not even self surgery, 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:34.920 but yet surgery on on on any individual where high 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:36.920 levels of pain are just going to be the norm. 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.080 You're gonna have to strap the individual down or have 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.520 to ruffians, bring them to a wall or to a bed. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:47.800 You gotta hire some thugs to help you with your surgery. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:50.679 And so there there were some potions and stuff at 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:52.679 the time. I mean, obviously people were aware of some 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.479 types of drugs, but the point was that they didn't 0:19:55.520 --> 0:20:01.000 have controllable anesthesia, so they could maybe give you some 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:04.480 hemlock or you know, these these crazy potions that were 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.080 just as likely to kill you as they were to 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.280 put you under. So so they might have had that 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:11.320 in some scenarios, or they might have just tried to 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:13.679 do it with you awake because they knew, you know, 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:15.680 it looks like people die a lot of times when 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.960 we and that'esthetize them. So this was a problem. Medieval 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:24.480 surgery just generally bad. Common procedures that were practiced by 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.200 medieval surgeons. Blood letting, that that's a big one. At 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:30.879 the time. They believed in the you know, humorism, like 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:33.760 the idea that there were these four humors in the 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:35.880 body that could get out of balance and you could 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.359 fix some things by letting extra blood out. A big 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:41.760 thing at the time was the treatment of battlefield wounds, 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.520 such as the removal of arrows and so at the 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:49.480 time surgery was much much more often external. From what 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.439 we know at least, there's actually sort of a dearth 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:56.720 of information about what surgeons in in medieval Europe we're doing. 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.320 We don't have quite as much information on this as 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:01.960 we would like to have, but from the records we 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:05.320 do have, it seems surgery was very often externals, such 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.600 as the treatment of a surface wound or other problems 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.199 near the outside of the body. And for all the 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.800 reasons we've already stated, internal surgery, going deep inside the 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:18.560 body for anything was dangerous and rare, though it did 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:22.840 happen for some extremely problematic things such as bladder stones. 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:27.760 And we will definitely get back to stones, the bodies, 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.760 the body's lithos in uh in a bit here, but 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:34.399 I think we should first turn our attention back thinking 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:36.439 back on on the Bosch painting and the ones that 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.640 followed it to the head. That's right, yeah, because essentially 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:42.040 what's going on here appears to be going on here 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.480 is that they are uh, they're performing what we now 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:51.000 call um craniotomy, but what has been historically known as 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.800 a trap nation or trepanning, in which and this is 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:58.000 just basically the opening of the skull, creating of a 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:02.040 of a hole in the skull. Now we find evidence 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:05.480 of trepidation going back to well but before the Middle 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.600 Ages in Europe. I mean, it goes back to prehistoric times, 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:10.840 so yeah, thousands of years. You see accounts of it 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:14.240 among the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Romans, 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:19.000 the Greeks, early Meso American civilizations. Uh, there, there's there. 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:20.760 There are a lot of a lot of interesting work 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.320 has come out of South America and I believe also 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:26.600 in Papua New Guinea as well. But we've even found 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:31.280 neolithic remains, human remains that had skulls that it had 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:35.840 clearly had the operation performed on them and survived. Right, 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.320 there's a hole in the skull and it has been 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:41.560 smoothed over where the person didn't die from this surgery, 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:44.000