Speaker 1: Alexander Henderson had heard some strange things in his day
Speaker 1: as a doctor. He liked solving the body's mysteries. But
Speaker 1: what or who waited for him in Tutbury, a small
Speaker 1: village in Staffordshire, was something or someone that even he
Speaker 1: couldn't quite understand. His patient that day was a local
Speaker 1: resident by the name of Anne Moore, who claimed to
Speaker 1: have not eaten since eighteen oh seven, the year, by
Speaker 1: the way, was now eighteen twelve. Anne had long ago
Speaker 1: ceased to just be a local oddity. Now she was
Speaker 1: a global superstar. She had become famous for claiming to
Speaker 1: survive without food. There was now even a wax replica
Speaker 1: of her across the ocean in a Boston museum. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't Anne that called for Alexander's counsel that day.
Speaker 1: She actually didn't need a thing. Rather, he was going
Speaker 1: to surprise her. This was an ambush, and Alexander wanted
Speaker 1: to prove her grift once and for all. When he
Speaker 1: and his traveling companion arrived at her home, they found
Speaker 1: her in bed. She was seemingly unperturbed by their sudden appearance,
Speaker 1: and for someone who supposedly hadn't eaten in years, her
Speaker 1: body told an interesting story. Her lower half did indeed
Speaker 1: look a bit withered, but she overall looked healthy. But
Speaker 1: she was fifty years old and claimed to have had
Speaker 1: no food for five years and no drink for four
Speaker 1: of those. And she told them that she hadn't defecated
Speaker 1: in five years nor urinated in three. However, Alexander's own
Speaker 1: sense told him otherwise, with the odor of soiled bedclothes
Speaker 1: hanging heavy in the room. Even though Alexander didn't believe
Speaker 1: Anne's claims, her community certainly did. They wanted to. You see,
Speaker 1: she stood for something much larger than herself, and she
Speaker 1: wasn't the only girl or woman to take up this
Speaker 1: starvation path. For centuries, the ability to survive without nourishment
Speaker 1: had been tied to morality and divinity, and now Anne
Speaker 1: Moore would become part of a long line of girls
Speaker 1: and women who would use as a public spectacle. Often,
Speaker 1: these women, who had later become known as the Fasting Girls,
Speaker 1: came from rural backgrounds or from poor and working class families.
Speaker 1: From humble beginnings, they found ways to usurp their social order.
Speaker 1: Suddenly people wanted to pay attention to them, and when
Speaker 1: word of their strange feats spread, People would come to
Speaker 1: see them, and often for a price. Molly Franchier, a
Speaker 1: woman from Brooklyn, New York, spoke in prophecies and accepted donations.
Speaker 1: Others such as Sarah Jacob, the Welsh fasting Girl, Leonora
Speaker 1: Eaton of New Jersey, and Josephine Marie Bedard, claimed to
Speaker 1: have been granted a variety of abilities and powers because
Speaker 1: of their abstinence from food. The cultural fascination with them
Speaker 1: inspired their courting by P. T. Barnum and his contemporaries
Speaker 1: for dime museums and sideshows. They were a hot commodity.
Speaker 1: Those fasting girls and Alexander saw them as nothing more
Speaker 1: than a hoax. After examining Anne, Alexander deduced that it
Speaker 1: was likely that she had fasted just over two weeks.
Speaker 1: He deemed that her five year fast that she claimed
Speaker 1: to have undertaken would have actually killed her, and for
Speaker 1: her parts, did all that she could to avoid close
Speaker 1: and protracted scrutiny of any kind, and, according to Alexander's
Speaker 1: published account, those who supported her had a vested interest
Speaker 1: in maintaining her ruse. Her station in life had certainly improved.
Speaker 1: She had gone from impoverished to comfortable, affording an existence
Speaker 1: funded by her own exhibition. But this wasn't to last.
Speaker 1: For curious outsiders, the desire to prove or disprove her
Speaker 1: claims became insatiable. In the spring of eighteen thirteen, it
Speaker 1: was decided that a local clergyman would supervise her around
Speaker 1: the clock. He would sit at her bedside, maintaining vigil
Speaker 1: She was reluctant to be a part of any such watch,
Speaker 1: but did against her better judgment. The study began on
Speaker 1: April twenty first. By the thirtieth Anne was emaciated and feverish,
Speaker 1: causing her daughter to call it off, and died a
Speaker 1: few months later at the age of fifty three. There
Speaker 1: is much to be said about the fasting girls and
Speaker 1: why they did what they did. In fact, although the
Speaker 1: history of fasting is inextricably linked to morality and piety,
Speaker 1: there's a shadowy side there as well, and Moore was
Speaker 1: nowhere near the first to take a crack at a
Speaker 1: career in fasting for personal gain, and as usual, she
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the last. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome to
Speaker 1: bedside Manners. Before Primetime TV gave us the WWE and WWF.
Speaker 1: We had the Gladiators. They were a curious class in
Speaker 1: Roman society, admired, revered, and somewhat's on the fringe, bound
Speaker 1: by an oath to submit to death, who just happened
Speaker 1: to also provide top notch entertainment. They were a spectacle
Speaker 1: unto themselves, selling tickets to shows that helped the masses
Speaker 1: pass the sweltering ro afternoons. It's here that we once
Speaker 1: again find the physician Galen, who by now you've already
Speaker 1: heard a lot about in this season. By around one
Speaker 1: sixty a d. Galen had become the resident physician to
Speaker 1: the Gladiators at the Temple of Peragammon. He was the
Speaker 1: guy behind the scenes, rubbing their shoulders, stitching their skin,
Speaker 1: and cleaning up their spilled blood. Galen would tend to
Speaker 1: his gladiators between shows, prepping them to get back out
Speaker 1: in the ring, so to speak, for the cheering crowds.
Speaker 1: The scope of his actual work was pretty broad. He
Speaker 1: was a doctor, an athletic trainer, a physical therapist, and
Speaker 1: a dietician all rolled into one. He was particularly interested
Speaker 1: in experimenting with diet for strength building and healing, which
Speaker 1: he spoke at length about these ideas in his writing.
Speaker 1: He saw food as a tool, pretty straightforward healing modality
Speaker 1: for the body and the spirit. These ideas, though, were
Speaker 1: inherited from another mind that we've heard about in this series,
Speaker 1: the mind of Hippocrates. Years before, he had written that
Speaker 1: everyone has a physician side of him or her. We
Speaker 1: just have to help it in its work. Our food
Speaker 1: should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food.
Speaker 1: Leaning on his idea of the four humors the balance
Speaker 1: of four bodily fluids that controlled the health of our systems,
Speaker 1: Galen sought balance through combining and eating what he thought
Speaker 1: to be opposites. Take his treatment for indigestion, for example,
Speaker 1: it was believed that this was a symptom of too
Speaker 1: much cold, wet flegm, so a hot, dry treatment should
Speaker 1: be taken. A common prescription might be wine to dry
Speaker 1: you out, and black pepper to bring the heat. He
Speaker 1: wrote three books on the idea, all divided into themes.
Speaker 1: The first volume spoke largely of grains, the second to
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables, and the third of animal products. Think
Speaker 1: of these as therapeutic texts, attempting to outline the utility
Speaker 1: of each food and devising ways to use them to
Speaker 1: heal people. He didn't believe in a one size fits
Speaker 1: all diet and believe that every individual should take into
Speaker 1: consideration what fits them best. Later writers picked up where
Speaker 1: Galen left off. Scrimonious Largess, who was writing in the
Speaker 1: first century a d thought that diet should be the
Speaker 1: first line of defense in medical care. Plutarch also believed
Speaker 1: that doctors did their best work when prescribing diets and
Speaker 1: sleep as opposed to taking more drastic measures. Prevention through
Speaker 1: a good diet was more ideal than needing to seek
Speaker 1: a cure once you got sick, especially when cures those
Speaker 1: days looked a lot like cutting, bleeding and burning the body.
Speaker 1: And alongside thoughts on how we should be eating, there
Speaker 1: were many coexisting belief systems that spoke of how we shouldn't. Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,
Speaker 1: and Taoism ancient religions, all of them elevate fasting, even
Speaker 1: if for different reasons. Fasting is often understood to be
Speaker 1: a means of humility and sacrifice, or of clarity and awareness,
Speaker 1: a physical self denial for the purpose of spiritual satisfaction.
Speaker 1: The Greeks, for example, believe that demons had the ability
Speaker 1: to enter into the mouth while we ate, and later
Speaker 1: on Puritan Cotton Mather recommended fasting to all of those
Speaker 1: who wanted to stop the witchcraft hysteria that had besieged Salem, Massachusetts. Together,
Speaker 1: all of these ideas around eating and not eating have
Speaker 1: created something of a monstrous tangled web in our collective
Speaker 1: belief systems of what eating even means. There are entire
Speaker 1: fields of study dedicated to understanding such things. For us today, though,
Speaker 1: we're going to begin by just pulling at some of
Speaker 1: these freight ends of fasting this ancient and complicated tool.
Speaker 1: Around the turn of the twentieth century, a perfect storm
Speaker 1: of eating had landed on the shores of the United States.
Speaker 1: Mass immigration had arrived and with it a slew of
Speaker 1: new cultures and their food ways. Industrialization too, was taking hold.
Speaker 1: To feed all of these mouths, mass produced food was
Speaker 1: often cut with toxic additives to make it go further,
Speaker 1: to last longer, and to be more profitable. The edible
Speaker 1: landscape of America was changing and quickly. At that far
Speaker 1: from healing, was actively making people physically sick. And it
Speaker 1: makes sense then that for folks of a certain elevated class,
Speaker 1: ideas around self control and food would begin to blur.
Speaker 1: Starvation due to poverty was deadly, but exercising fasting with
Speaker 1: the safety net of abundance, even among the secular folks,
Speaker 1: began to take on a righteous air. Time was ripe
Speaker 1: to look once again towards the past for answers to
Speaker 1: current woes. The marketing of dietary cures began in earnest,
Speaker 1: some in good faith and with advice that we still
Speaker 1: abide by today. Others, though, had no intent to cure. Instead,
Speaker 1: they aimed to kill. Linda had no medical degree, but
Speaker 1: she had a can opener, and she had a vision.
Speaker 1: You could say that her life was set on this course.
Speaker 1: When she was a young child in Minnesota. Each year,
Speaker 1: a traveling doctor would visit her family's home, Her father
Speaker 1: hopeful that the man had the tools to ward off
Speaker 1: any potential illnesses. That one fateful visit, though she and
Speaker 1: her seven siblings were given mercury pills, tiny and blue
Speaker 1: and undeniably potent, she was effectively poisoned by the very
Speaker 1: person who said that he would keep her healthy, and
Speaker 1: it shouldn't surprise you to hear that this treatment made
Speaker 1: Linda very, very sick, with frequent bouts of vomiting and diarrhea.
Speaker 1: Unable to take the hint, the doctor prescribed more of
Speaker 1: the same pills for Linda's advancing illness, and she would
Speaker 1: stay sick for years as a result. This set her
Speaker 1: off on a quest for her own healing. As a
Speaker 1: young woman, she decided to study osteopathy, thinking that she
Speaker 1: would become a nurse, and soon became a disciple of
Speaker 1: doctor Edward Hooker Dewey, an ardent practitioner and promoter of fasting.
Speaker 1: Linda decided that this would be her purpose and her mission.
Speaker 1: She was going to become the world's leaving authority on fasting,
Speaker 1: the likes of which no one had ever seen before.
Speaker 1: She moved to Minneapolis in nineteen oh three and set
Speaker 1: up shop, leaving behind a husband and children to fend
Speaker 1: for them. She was of a single mind now and
Speaker 1: couldn't let anyone stand in her way. She figured that
Speaker 1: men were allowed to trailblaze, so why shouldn't she be
Speaker 1: allowed to do the same. Linda believed that system in
Speaker 1: purification was the root of all sickness, caused by overeating.
Speaker 1: Her approach was a pragmatic and brutal one, relying on
Speaker 1: patients only consuming thin broths made of strained canned tomatoes
Speaker 1: and asparagus. Installing patients under her watchful eye, she would
Speaker 1: administer daily enemas that sometimes lasted for hours. She also
Speaker 1: prescribed daily therapeutic massages, in which patients would be pummeled
Speaker 1: in the stomach and forehead as Linda commanded them to eliminate.
Speaker 1: Her gumption proved to be a selling point, and curious
Speaker 1: seekers found their way to her doorstep. But it didn't
Speaker 1: take long for her practice to take on something that
Speaker 1: fell short of a shine. In fact, she began to
Speaker 1: gain a deadly reputation. Clients associated with her began to wither,
Speaker 1: and some began to die. But of course she couldn't
Speaker 1: be blamed for this. They were free agents, after all,
Speaker 1: bound by nothing more than a shared interest in holistic
Speaker 1: healing and health. The most human thing, after all, is
Speaker 1: to die, and sometimes that's just what the sick did right. This,
Speaker 1: of course, wasn't a great look for Linda. She had
Speaker 1: taken a lover named Sam, and upon his release from
Speaker 1: prison in nineteen oh seven, they both skipped down and
Speaker 1: settled in Seattle. Even still, her reputation preceded her. The
Speaker 1: papers wrote about this mysterious fasting doctor who had come
Speaker 1: to town her wild and boisterous claims, and speculated about
Speaker 1: her checkered past. But in a stroke of luck, Linda
Speaker 1: inherited a kind of legitimacy when she arrived. You see,
Speaker 1: the city had recently grandfathered in and granted legality to
Speaker 1: current holistic healthcare practitioners under a new law that was
Speaker 1: attempting to legitimize medical practices where she wasn't ever licensed before,
Speaker 1: she now in a way was, and her attitude had
Speaker 1: it changed since Minnesota. It was convenient for Linda to
Speaker 1: be able to blame deceased patient for their own passing.
Speaker 1: She argued that the ones who died failed to heed
Speaker 1: her advice completely, claiming that they were negligent and disregarded
Speaker 1: her expertise. Authorities couldn't quite figure out how to intervene,
Speaker 1: or if they even needed to. She continued to get
Speaker 1: bad press, but her followers remained faithful. She was a
Speaker 1: polarizing character, this Linda Hazard. In nineteen ten, Linda treated
Speaker 1: l E. Radar, a locally famous politician. She installed him
Speaker 1: in a Seattle hotel, and no amount of coercing by
Speaker 1: his family could convince him to forego Linda Hazard's fasting cure.
Speaker 1: This would be a fatal mistake. He died within a month,
Speaker 1: but not before bequeathing Linda property. A short boat ride
Speaker 1: off the coast of the city, where she decided that
Speaker 1: she would once and for all have her own fasting empire,
Speaker 1: away from the prying eyes of those who had it
Speaker 1: out for her. Wilderness Heights she would call it, but
Speaker 1: it would become known by another name, Starvation Heights, and
Speaker 1: few would make it out alive. Claire and Dorothea Williamson
Speaker 1: had come upon a marvelous idea. They had installed themselves
Speaker 1: in the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, to take
Speaker 1: another one of their resting cures. They were young, beautiful, rich,
Speaker 1: and likely a little bored. They had lost their parents
Speaker 1: at a young age, who left them an immense fortune
Speaker 1: and undeniable trauma. What's true here is that the two
Speaker 1: women's pain has long been debated, scrutinized, and doubted. According
Speaker 1: to one of their own relatives, Claire and Dorothea are
Speaker 1: ill because they can afford to be. They traveled the
Speaker 1: world with their jam packed steamer trunks filled with fineries
Speaker 1: most could only dream of. But all of this money
Speaker 1: couldn't buy them happiness, and it couldn't buy them health.
Speaker 1: One fall morning in nineteen ten, they eyed a newspaper
Speaker 1: advertisement for the Hazard Institute for Natural the Therapeutics. Claire
Speaker 1: responded immediately, writing up a laundry list of diagnoses from
Speaker 1: previous doctors, dropped uterus inflamed ovaries, bad knees, and informed
Speaker 1: Linda of their intention to come. Linda's Wilderness Heights Sanitarium
Speaker 1: was still under construction and would be through the winter. However,
Speaker 1: she quickly agreed to take them on his clients, as
Speaker 1: long as they were willing to temporarily be installed in
Speaker 1: a local Seattle hotel for the time being. The sisters
Speaker 1: said nothing of this to their friends and surviving family members.
Speaker 1: They didn't need any extra opinions. They knew what was
Speaker 1: best for themselves, so Dorothea and Claire consented to treatment,
Speaker 1: then arrived in Seattle on February twenty sixth of nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: For the first time in their lives. They were separated
Speaker 1: and housed in different departments. Linda insisted that this was
Speaker 1: necessary for their own rest and well being, and the
Speaker 1: sisters obliged. The treatment began, and the women were hopeful.
Speaker 1: What they couldn't have known was that they were part
Speaker 1: of Linda's larger plan. Off the coast of Seattle, in
Speaker 1: the community of Olala, Wilderness Heights was beginning operations, and
Speaker 1: even though it was newly minted, it had gathered quite
Speaker 1: a reputation amongst the locals. They were, in short, somewhat fearful.
Speaker 1: The village was made up largely of immigrants, and Linda
Speaker 1: portrayed herself to be a studied, moneyed American doctor. Who
Speaker 1: were they to intervene even if their best senses told
Speaker 1: them that something was very, very wrong. Every now and
Speaker 1: then they might catch glimpses of her patients, skeletal, gaunt
Speaker 1: creatures with tight, pale flesh, taking in the air and
Speaker 1: filled with conviction, or some would wonder later, was that fear.
Speaker 1: But Claire and Dorothea would see this all for themselves
Speaker 1: soon enough. In April of nineteen eleven, over a month
Speaker 1: into treatment and too weak to walk, they were taken
Speaker 1: by stretcher from their hotel to a fairy launch with
Speaker 1: Wilderness Heights as their final destination. It was estimated that
Speaker 1: each were about seventy pounds at the time, all wrapped
Speaker 1: in bandages and barely speaking. Just before boarding the boat,
Speaker 1: they were intercepted by Linda's attorney. He spoke with Claire
Speaker 1: kindly yet authoritatively, giving her a pen and directions of
Speaker 1: what to write on a piece of paper that he supplied,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, he needed her signature. The letters intended
Speaker 1: recipient was Margaret Conway, the sister's longtime nurse who lived
Speaker 1: in Australia. But it wasn't a postcard. No, it was
Speaker 1: a codicil to a will naming Linda Hazard and her
Speaker 1: institute as the beneficiary. Claire signed it, it was sealed,
Speaker 1: and the sisters were taken away in a thicket of
Speaker 1: spruce and fir on an island separated from the mainland
Speaker 1: by only a few miles. Claire and Dora might as
Speaker 1: well have been thousands of miles from each other. They
Speaker 1: remained in separate spaces at Linda's insistence, and were totally bedbound.
Speaker 1: She told the sisters that they were healing, but any
Speaker 1: progress would be impaired by distraction. And they missed each
Speaker 1: other mightily, and I have a hard time imagining that
Speaker 1: my faith wouldn't waver at this point. The record isn't
Speaker 1: exactly clear on what happened next, but what we do
Speaker 1: know is that all the way in Australia, the girl's
Speaker 1: beloved Margaret Conway received a cryptic telegram from Claire telling
Speaker 1: her to come urgently. She hadn't been in touch with
Speaker 1: the sisters and knew that something must be terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: She arrived by steamship to Vancouver as soon as she
Speaker 1: could June first of nineteen eleven, and was met by
Speaker 1: Linda Hazzard's now husband Sam. He regretfully informed her the
Speaker 1: Claire was already dead. That was when Margaret realized that
Speaker 1: something terrible had happened and was still happening. She insisted
Speaker 1: on being taken to see both women, one dead and
Speaker 1: one very close to it, and appointed herself as Dorothea's nursemaid.
Speaker 1: In a brazen gesture of hubrists, Linda invited a stunned
Speaker 1: Margaret into her office, where she revealed that she had
Speaker 1: been designated as the executioner of Claire's estate and named
Speaker 1: guardian of Dorothea. She did this all decked out in
Speaker 1: Claire's exquisite dressing gown and jewels. It was clear to
Speaker 1: Margaret that this wasn't Linda's first ruse, but she was
Speaker 1: hell bound and determined to make sure it was her last.
Speaker 1: Margaret wouldn't believe for a single moment a word of
Speaker 1: what Linda was telling her. She quickly deployed telegraphs and
Speaker 1: assembled a team that included a local lawyer by the
Speaker 1: name of John Herbert, who also happened to be Claire
Speaker 1: and Dorothea's uncle. He shelled out a thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: the release of Dorothea into his custody, in a gesture
Speaker 1: that basically amounted to pain a ransom according to Linda Hazard,
Speaker 1: though this was just a fee for services rendered. Of course,
Speaker 1: the authorities, meanwhile, had been waiting to pounce on Linda
Speaker 1: for a long long time. The sisters, remember, were not
Speaker 1: the first of her patients for whom she had forged
Speaker 1: checks and signed over estates. So when her predatory business
Speaker 1: practices became clear, the authorities arrested Linda on a charge
Speaker 1: of first degree murder for starving Claire to death. The
Speaker 1: first day of Linda's trial packed the courthouse with curious,
Speaker 1: dubious onlookers, who all heard stories about how the sisters
Speaker 1: screamed in pain during treatments, took physical beatings, and were
Speaker 1: brainwashed into believing that they were going in saying. Those
Speaker 1: on the stand testified that Linda and Sam gorged themselves
Speaker 1: on their patients trappings of wealth, with one claim even
Speaker 1: going so far as to say that Linda's husband, Sam
Speaker 1: took gold crowns from the mouths of dead patience. And
Speaker 1: all the while Linda maintained her innocence, she was furious,
Speaker 1: insistent that the only reason she was being persecuted was
Speaker 1: because she had been successful in business as a woman.
Speaker 1: In the end, she was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced
Speaker 1: to twenty years behind bars for reasons unknown. She was
Speaker 1: released within two catching a ship to New Zealand in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, where she opened a sanitarium that specialized in
Speaker 1: you guessed it, the fasting cure. Though not as many
Speaker 1: people came as she had hoped, those in her care
Speaker 1: continued to die. She again went on trial, paid a
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars fine, and then left the country. She
Speaker 1: returned to Olala, to her beloved and bedeviled wilderness heights
Speaker 1: where she could live out the end of her days.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty eight, she took to bed and began
Speaker 1: her own She was seventy one by now and in
Speaker 1: ill health. She wanted to prove that her method indeed worked.
Speaker 1: On a warm morning in June, she died cold, alone,
Speaker 1: emaciated and implicated, in the depths of as many as
Speaker 1: forty individuals under her care, all of whom were free
Speaker 1: to walk out her doors if only their bodies could
Speaker 1: carry them. Obviously, the public interest in people like Linda
Speaker 1: Hazard and other fast promoting Charlatan's wasn't eradicated with her trial.
Speaker 1: In fact, a notable contemporary journalist, Upton Sinclair of the
Speaker 1: Jungle Fame, published his book The Fasting Cure in nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: But there's something very important to note here. There's a
Speaker 1: marked difference between working to understand the physiology of fasting
Speaker 1: so that we can employ it for our body's well
Speaker 1: being and those who, under the guise of care, exploit
Speaker 1: a practice meant to heal for their own ill gotten gain.
Speaker 1: And throughout the century, fasting continued to maintain clusters of
Speaker 1: adherence the world over for its social, political, cultural, and
Speaker 1: spiritual meaning. In nineteen eighty two, four doctors teamed up
Speaker 1: and published a paper in the Western Journal of Medicine.
Speaker 1: They declared that an appreciation and understanding of fasting was
Speaker 1: essential to understanding food as intervention and how food deprivation
Speaker 1: works in treating various diseases. They also identified an upward
Speaker 1: trend in the practice and cautioned medical practitioners that they
Speaker 1: needed to take heat about how complicated of a prescription
Speaker 1: it can actually be. Even today, elements of fasting still
Speaker 1: show up in many wellness plans. The most popular in
Speaker 1: headline grabbing is probably intermittent fasting, but even that is
Speaker 1: just another repackaged, repurposed, and reworked fasting cure from yesteryear.
Speaker 1: The desire to diet for preventative measures is present, as
Speaker 1: is the promotion of the idea that diet manipulation can
Speaker 1: still be a tool to heal what damage we've already incurred.
Speaker 1: There is truth to this, but the idea is a
Speaker 1: slippery one that can lead to many different manners of
Speaker 1: disordered eating. Stricting, or whatever name we might give it.
Speaker 1: Today is alive and well in our complicated world of eating,
Speaker 1: and it shows no sign of ever going away. I
Speaker 1: know that this episode was a bit hard to stomach,
Speaker 1: no pun intended, I swear even today, the way that
Speaker 1: we talk about food, think about food and access food
Speaker 1: is a really complicated topic. If you've ever learned anything
Speaker 1: about the history of the American food pyramid, for example,
Speaker 1: then you'll know a little something about what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: But don't go away just yet. Stick around through this
Speaker 1: brief sponsor break and my teammates Robin Miniter. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with one more enlightening story. Once upon a time
Speaker 1: there was a young man named Tarar who hungered for
Speaker 1: fame so much so that he would eat just about
Speaker 1: anything to achieve it. And eighty eight are a hungry
Speaker 1: showman arrived in Paris at just eighteen years old. He
Speaker 1: was a scrawny little thing, weighing in at barely one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds and giving the appearance that he was getting
Speaker 1: just enough to eat. He hardly demanded a second glance
Speaker 1: from a passer by until he opened his mouth, that is,
Speaker 1: and people saw what was going into it. And that
Speaker 1: was just about anything he could get his hands on,
Speaker 1: edible and not edible things alike. Terrar had been working
Speaker 1: on his act for years, and it seems that everywhere
Speaker 1: he went he delighted, shocked, and horrified people, not with
Speaker 1: just his willingness, but his compulsion to consume. A short
Speaker 1: time into a stay in Paris, he was hospitalized with
Speaker 1: an illness. Here at the hospital, he was giving quadruple
Speaker 1: the typical food allowance of many patients and scrounge up
Speaker 1: scraps from others. He was still insatiable. It said that
Speaker 1: he would eat the poultices and bandages that he found,
Speaker 1: and that's only my hope that they were unseasoned, if
Speaker 1: you will. It was even reported that while he was
Speaker 1: there he ate live animals, including an eyewitness account from
Speaker 1: the ch doctor who stated that Tarar ate a cat
Speaker 1: whole and alive, right down to its skeleton. It's also
Speaker 1: been reported that he was found in the hospital drinking
Speaker 1: blood from patients who had recently been let, and that
Speaker 1: he had been found in the hospitals Morgue helping himself
Speaker 1: to human cadavers. Tarar had suddenly become the hospital's most
Speaker 1: confounding case, so they treated him in as many ways
Speaker 1: as they could conjure, with acids, opium, tobacco, hard boiled
Speaker 1: eggs or whatever the apothecary could throw at him that
Speaker 1: he hadn't already helped himself too. But still nothing helped,
Speaker 1: and he continued to scavenge outside and inside of the
Speaker 1: hospital walls. It was only when a one year old
Speaker 1: child disappeared from its hospital bed, with Tarar being the
Speaker 1: main suspect, that the place finally drove him away. He
Speaker 1: would die four years later of tuberculosis, but the doctor's
Speaker 1: remained perplexed as to why he was so hungry. They
Speaker 1: wondered if there could be something else going on with
Speaker 1: him beyond the insanity they assumed. If we want to
Speaker 1: give credit to the game of respected diagnosis, it's possible
Speaker 1: that Tarar was afflicted with polyphasia, which is characterized by
Speaker 1: an incessant sensation of hunger and desire to eat beyond
Speaker 1: the body's needs and capabilities. It's often a symptom of
Speaker 1: a larger underlying medical condition, and these symptoms don't always
Speaker 1: appear as dramatically as they did in Tarar. In fact,
Speaker 1: polyphasia symptoms can appear during PMS or with the onset
Speaker 1: of dementia. What is also true is that we have
Speaker 1: now developed orexigenics or compounds that they have the ability
Speaker 1: to induce hyperphasia, But instead of being something to be feared,
Speaker 1: it's something that can be celebrated and it can sometimes
Speaker 1: do life saving Hunger, you see, can be helpful. One
Speaker 1: of these drugs might be prescribed when a patient is
Speaker 1: experiencing malnutrition and extreme wasting in the cases such as
Speaker 1: cystic fibrosis, cancer, or AIDS. It's here that we once
Speaker 1: again call back to our friend Hippocrates, who believed that
Speaker 1: food is medicine. But to truly reap the benefits from
Speaker 1: that idea, we have to cut through a lot of
Speaker 1: noise of contemporary diet culture. We have to learn and
Speaker 1: sometimes relearn, how to eat. Our endlessly complicated cultural program
Speaker 1: gives us so many messages about food, what is good
Speaker 1: and what is bad, and has given us an endlessly
Speaker 1: changing set of rules. There are, and will continue to
Speaker 1: be diet fads that come and go. Some will be
Speaker 1: more destructive and some will be more liberating than others.
Speaker 1: It's up to us, it seems, to determine who has
Speaker 1: our best interests in mind and who might be out
Speaker 1: to profit grim and mild presents. Bedside Manners was executive
Speaker 1: produced by Aaron Manky and narrated by Aaron Manky and
Speaker 1: Robin Miniter. Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter,
Speaker 1: with research by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggerdorn, and Robin Miniter.
Speaker 1: Production assistance was provided by Josh Thayne, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show,
Speaker 1: the Grim and Mild team, and all the other podcasts
Speaker 1: that we make over at Grimm and Mild dot com, and,
Speaker 1: as always, thanks for listening.