Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Medicine is a funny thing. We like to believe that
Speaker 1: it's an exact, objective science, but the history of medicine
Speaker 1: is full of trial, error and chance. Take penicillin, for example,
Speaker 1: that life saving medication was discovered by accident. A little
Speaker 1: mold in doctor Alexander Fleming's petri dish changed the whole
Speaker 1: world for the better. But some medical inventions are well
Speaker 1: not so for tuitous and back in nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: a New England socialite named Ebenezer Buyers learned that the
Speaker 1: hard way. Ebenezer or Eben for short, was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty, the son of a fabulously wealthy steel manufacturer.
Speaker 1: As such, he grew up with a particularly shiny silver
Speaker 1: spoon in his mouth. He studied at the best schools,
Speaker 1: He wore the best clothes and attended the best social events.
Speaker 1: When he graduated from college in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: he had no reason to try and find a job. Instead,
Speaker 1: he spent his days playing Richmond's favorite sport, golf, and
Speaker 1: he was really good. In nineteen oh six, he won
Speaker 1: first place at the US Amateur Golf Championship. He might
Speaker 1: have wanted to go pro, but as he got older,
Speaker 1: he landed right where he'd been destined since birth. His
Speaker 1: father made him the chairman of the Buyer's Steel company.
Speaker 1: Things were going quite well for Eban until nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: That November, he was riding the train home from a
Speaker 1: collegiate football game, Yale versus Harvard. Of course, he'd just
Speaker 1: a first class ticket and was snoozing away on a
Speaker 1: comfortable bed. Then the trains skidded to a sudden halt,
Speaker 1: and Eben flew off the mattress and landed on the floor,
Speaker 1: and in the process he hid his shoulder hard enough
Speaker 1: that it was still bothering him a few days later.
Speaker 1: In fact, it hurt so badly that he couldn't play golf,
Speaker 1: which for Eben was a big problem. He went to
Speaker 1: his doctor, who prescribed him with a new miracle drug
Speaker 1: that would supposedly zap the pain right away. It was
Speaker 1: called Ratathor. It came in a small, dark colored bottle,
Speaker 1: and Eben was prescribed one spoonful a day. He did
Speaker 1: as he was told, and just like the doctor promised,
Speaker 1: it made him feel incredible. The pain in his arm
Speaker 1: went away. He had more energy, he felt more alive, happier.
Speaker 1: He liked it so much that he started taking more
Speaker 1: than the recommended dose, sometimes drinking an entire bottle of
Speaker 1: Ratathor in one day. Over the next four years, Eben
Speaker 1: ingested around fourteen hundred bottles of Ratathor. And then one
Speaker 1: day in nineteen thirty one, his jaw fell off his face.
Speaker 1: And I mean that literally, the bones and muscles holding
Speaker 1: his jaw together disintegrated and it just snapped off. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Eban was terrified. He figured this new development must have
Speaker 1: been related to the mysterious liquid that he'd been chugging
Speaker 1: for the last four years, and he was right. Around
Speaker 1: the same time, the Federal Trade Commission started investigating Radathor
Speaker 1: as a potentially life threatening drug. They sent an attorney
Speaker 1: to Evans's house to get a statement from him. Later on,
Speaker 1: that attorney wrote the following about meeting Evan San's jaw
Speaker 1: in a fancy Long Island mansion a more gruesome experience,
Speaker 1: he wrote, in a more gorgeous setting, would be hard
Speaker 1: to imagine Evans's whole upper jaw accepting two front teeth,
Speaker 1: and most of his lower jaw had been removed. All
Speaker 1: the remaining tissue of his body was disintegrating, and holes
Speaker 1: were actually forming in his skull. Now I know what
Speaker 1: you're asking. What kind of medication causes human bodies to
Speaker 1: break apart at the seams? Well, ratathor contained exactly two ingredients,
Speaker 1: water and radium. And if you're not familiar, radium is
Speaker 1: an extremely dangerous radioactive element that was commonly used in
Speaker 1: everything from paint to medications before people realized that it
Speaker 1: was deadly. By the time Eben died of radium induced
Speaker 1: cancer in nineteen thirty two, he had ingested so much
Speaker 1: of the element that even his breath was radioactive. They
Speaker 1: had to bury him in a coffin lined with lead
Speaker 1: so that his remains wouldn't contaminate the surrounding dirt. It's
Speaker 1: a bleak story, I know, but there was one very
Speaker 1: small upside for Eben. Buyer's radium really does have pain
Speaker 1: relieving properties. So even as his bones slowly fell apart,
Speaker 1: Eben couldn't feel a thing. And that, my friends, is curious.
Speaker 1: If you use TikTok, or really any social media, you've
Speaker 1: almost certainly heard the phrase skincare routine. You might have
Speaker 1: seen videos of influencers rubbing layer upon layer of products
Speaker 1: on their faces, talking about how much they love a
Speaker 1: certain serum or a scrub. These days, the beauty industry
Speaker 1: is a five hundred and thirty two billion dollar a
Speaker 1: year business. From mascara that's supposed to make your eyelashes grow,
Speaker 1: to lotion that claims to reverse the signs of aging.
Speaker 1: Beauty products make impossible promises, and the people who peddle
Speaker 1: them make incredible profits. It's been that way throughout history too.
Speaker 1: Take for example, the story of Madame Anna Rupert, a
Speaker 1: pioneering beauty guru who made a killing then almost got killed.
Speaker 1: Anna was born in Missouri in eighteen sixty four. Now,
Speaker 1: according to legend, she grew up with a birthmark on
Speaker 1: her face. No big deal, right, Well, to Anna, it
Speaker 1: was as a teenager she sought to have the birthmark removed.
Speaker 1: The exact details have been lost to history, but she
Speaker 1: either visited a Saint Louis druggist, which is like a
Speaker 1: pharmacist today, or a vaguely described old woman and I
Speaker 1: use big air quotes for that, whichever one is the truth.
Speaker 1: They apparently provided Anna with a curative formula that made
Speaker 1: the mark disappear. Anna was so happy with the results
Speaker 1: that she wanted to share this magical formula with others.
Speaker 1: She created her own spin on the product and tried
Speaker 1: to sell it. She even started calling herself a dermatologist,
Speaker 1: which was a problem because she had zero medical training.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty three, she married a man named Henry Rupert.
Speaker 1: They moved to New York, where Anna's skincare business really
Speaker 1: took off. Her most popular offering was Madame Rupert's Face Bleach.
Speaker 1: If that title makes you a little uncomfortable, I don't
Speaker 1: blame you. Anna didn't specifically market her products to an
Speaker 1: African American audience, but the idea of skin bleaching definitely
Speaker 1: carries racist undertones. This was a time in history when
Speaker 1: being pale was the beauty standard, and Madame Rupert's face
Speaker 1: Bleach promised to erase tns, freckles, ezema, blackheads, beauty marks,
Speaker 1: and so much more Now. I can't say if this
Speaker 1: product actually worked, I'd put my money on no though,
Speaker 1: But people bought it anyway, which allowed Anna to establish
Speaker 1: herself as a major player in the nineteenth century American
Speaker 1: beauty business. She wrote a beauty column in a magazine
Speaker 1: called Hearth and Home and published a book titled How
Speaker 1: to Be Beautiful. She later moved to London and captured
Speaker 1: her share of the British market as well. But beauty
Speaker 1: is pain, after all, Anna's life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen eighties, she and her husband got
Speaker 1: a divorce, which was a much bigger deal in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century than it would be today. Then, in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, the British Medical Journal published an article that
Speaker 1: tarnished the name of Madame Rupert forever you see a
Speaker 1: woman not only as missus Kay had experienced a horrible
Speaker 1: reaction to Anna's face bleach. She actually died after us.
Speaker 1: That's because it contained mercury chloride, which in high amounts
Speaker 1: could cause mercury poisoning. After this, Anna was effectively blacklisted
Speaker 1: from the beauty industry. She turned to acting in theater
Speaker 1: management to make ends meet. And that's why she was
Speaker 1: working at the Princess Theater in London in November of
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four when she received the box of candy
Speaker 1: with no letter attached. Clearly it was somewhat suspicious, but
Speaker 1: Anna figured that the gift was from a secret admirer,
Speaker 1: so she ate a handful of the candy. The next day,
Speaker 1: she felt so ill she couldn't perform. It turned out
Speaker 1: that the candy was laced with carbolic acid. Someone had
Speaker 1: tried to poison Anna, and although she survived and offered
Speaker 1: a reward for information, the culprit was never found. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was a disgruntled customer trying to get back at Anna,
Speaker 1: but we'll never know for sure. A few months later,
Speaker 1: Anna moved back to the United States, where she tried
Speaker 1: to re enter the beauty industry by becoming a lecturer
Speaker 1: on dermatology. She gave speeches about skincare serums and aging prevention,
Speaker 1: and then quite suddenly, she contracted toberculosis and passed away
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety six at just thirty two years old.
Speaker 1: And for critics of her work in the beauty product industry,
Speaker 1: there is a small bit of irony there. They're quick
Speaker 1: to point out that Anna died so young she didn't
Speaker 1: have time to get a single wrinkle. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.