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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from house works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Maybe, why, my good fellow, you look a

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Speaker 1: bit mad? Why I have a bit mad? You know?

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Speaker 1: Are you a physician? Well, of course, didn't you notice

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Speaker 1: my physician's cap. You mean that beautiful tin funnel? Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: of course. Now if you would, can you point to

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Speaker 1: the part of your body that feels insane right here

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Speaker 1: in the skull, Doc, Right right here, then that's where

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Speaker 1: the stone of madness awaits us? Can you can you

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Speaker 1: remove it? Dot y? Certainly? Just have a seat and

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Speaker 1: allow me to trepen your cranium just large enough to

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Speaker 1: remove the stone. Better make it a big hole, Doc,

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Speaker 1: I'm about as mad if they come mad, Mary to

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Speaker 1: ratscure bowlepord a chest today. Sometimes I wake up in

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

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

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Speaker 1: to be all right now. Just let me reach inside

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

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

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Speaker 1: five children here you go. But can I can I

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Speaker 1: keep the stone? Of course you can. Hey, Welcome to

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

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. I hope to enjoyed our little

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Speaker 1: skip that is, our attempt to audibly capture the spirit

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: by Hieronymous Bosh. Um this is a painting from around

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

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Speaker 1: highly allegorical uh surgery taking place. Yeah, if you have

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Speaker 1: never seen this painting, you should look it up. I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna 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 package 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.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we read one source that said it had to

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Speaker 1: be after fifteen o two other people dated to the

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Speaker 1: fourteen nineties UMU. As we mentioned in the past when

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Speaker 1: we dealt with the some of Bosh's work, there's there's

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Speaker 1: so little known about him that it's there's a certain

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Speaker 1: amount of mystery involved in all of this, and one

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Speaker 1: of the great things about it is the mystery of

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Speaker 1: what motivated this painting, because because what's happening in the painting,

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Speaker 1: the cutting of the stone of badness. You have a

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Speaker 1: patient in the the sort of the center left of

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Speaker 1: the frame, who's seated in a chair in the middle

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Speaker 1: of a field, and he looks quite distressed, and he's

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Speaker 1: reclining back in the chair as a man in a

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Speaker 1: pink robe with a tin funnel on his head cuts

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Speaker 1: into the patient's scalp. And the man, the man with

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Speaker 1: the tin funnel on his head, who's doing the cutting,

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Speaker 1: he looks fairly serene, wouldn't you say, Yes, he's he's

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Speaker 1: he seems dedicated to the task at hand here, which

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Speaker 1: you could interpret as concentration and and you know, knowing

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Speaker 1: what he's doing, or you could interpret as a kind

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Speaker 1: of callousness and insensitivity to this man's apparent grunting. He

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Speaker 1: looks like he's in the middle of a really good grunt. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Then to the right of the guy reclining in the chair,

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Speaker 1: he's having his head cut open. You have what appears

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Speaker 1: to be you think this is a monk. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: looks very much like a monk. Yeah, he's got a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: right if you have an appropriate zoomed out version, and

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Speaker 1: it 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 seems to be

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

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Speaker 1: first interpreted by Bosh as far as we know, this

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: whatever that is. But there are other paintings. There's of course,

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Speaker 1: a cutting of the stone of madness by Brugal. Right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Peter Brugal the Elder lived a fifteen fifteen to fifteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine, responsible for a number of fabulous pieces that

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Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone's familiar with it and they've even had

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Speaker 1: on your dorm room wall in college. I know I did, uh,

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Speaker 1: And this one shows this one has a number of

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Speaker 1: individuals and several different neurosurgical procedures going on in very

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Speaker 1: crude and horrific fashion. Now we can point out that

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Speaker 1: this painting. You should also look this one up so

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Speaker 1: you can see it for yourself. But it's much more

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Speaker 1: chaotic than the last one. The last one is a

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Speaker 1: sort of a concentrated scene of a single cutting taking place.

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Speaker 1: Is it's a madhouse there. There are people all over

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Speaker 1: having their heads examined and cut, and the multiple people

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Speaker 1: doing the cutting. There's just general chaos. People are squatting

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Speaker 1: and squirming in the background and trying to peek in

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Speaker 1: and see what's going on. It's it looks like a

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Speaker 1: bad scene. Yeah, and and definitely remember the madhouse of it,

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

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

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Speaker 1: Uh he lived fourteen six to twenty nine, and this

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: depict a surgery, but it does depict it follows the

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: is clutching a staff. That what is going on at

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Speaker 1: the top of this staff, Robert, Well, they're there are

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Speaker 1: evidently 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 madness. 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 four 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 bulging 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 betwe lean enlightenment and madness, which which will

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that really took place. Yeah, It's an interesting, uh mystery

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Speaker 1: to consider because ultimately have like three possibilities here. One

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Speaker 1: is that yes, there's something going on here to some

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Speaker 1: physical malady in the head that is being removed. Okay.

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Speaker 1: Another possibility is that this is all a charlatan's game, right,

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Speaker 1: It that that a quack is coming along and saying, oh,

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

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Speaker 1: I can remove the source of it. It's like cranial

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Speaker 1: psychic surgery, you know. The psychic surgeon would kind of

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

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

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Speaker 1: pulling things out of your body. Exactly. In this case,

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Speaker 1: you'd have somebody cutting at your head and then by

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Speaker 1: sleight 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 ups, 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: little superstition, and you can easily imagine this scenario in

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Speaker 1: which this essentially a medieval witch doctor of Swords of

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Speaker 1: Charlottan 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 the medieval surgery.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about trep 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: uh and and this really, this this artistic tradition is

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Speaker 1: really saying. Well, I think first we should take a

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Speaker 1: look at the general atmosphere of surgery in the Middle

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Speaker 1: Ages and then bridging into the early Modern period. Here.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that I think about about when

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Speaker 1: we think back on medieval medicine is that it easy

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Speaker 1: for us to look back and make fun of people

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Speaker 1: in the Middle 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 surgery, Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: poles have this spinning it and white kind of twirl

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

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Speaker 1: Or is it is it just an accident? Well, no,

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Speaker 1: you know that the fact you probably heard about that

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: in the past were about things, Medieval surgery was still

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

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

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Speaker 1: who really studied the body, the closest equivalent to what

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

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Speaker 1: the learned individuals who had some degree of access to

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Speaker 1: medical texts. Yeah, they studied in universities, they knew what

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Speaker 1: was up. They may have done dissections and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: but much of the actual cutting in surgery was not

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Speaker 1: done by these people. So you had your experts who

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Speaker 1: were of the physicians, and then separately you had these

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Speaker 1: barber surgeons or these traveling surgeons who were more just

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Speaker 1: kind of like uh, skilled people who you know, they

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Speaker 1: have a skill they can apply So I can cut hair,

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: were describing. And in a way it kind of makes

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

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Speaker 1: shaves your head if you're a monk and they shave

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Speaker 1: your beard, so they've got the razor. Why not apply

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Speaker 1: the razor to other things that need cutting, Like maybe

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

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

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Speaker 1: some blood letting, which truly was very common at the time. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And plus I would imagine their status is always is

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Speaker 1: already one in which they have close contact to the

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Speaker 1: bodies of others. Uh, whereas I could I could imagine

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Speaker 1: at being less the case for you know, learned individual. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And there's even a line in the Hippocratic oath, you know,

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Speaker 1: the Hippocratic oaths from Hippocrates, the Greek physician. Um, he

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Speaker 1: has a part of the Hippocratic Oath that says, and

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Speaker 1: this is for doctors, I will not use the knife,

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Speaker 1: not even on sufferers from the stone, but will withdraw

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Speaker 1: in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

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Speaker 1: So this is you know, doctor saying I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to do any surgery. Uh. Kind of strange attitude for

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Speaker 1: us to consider, but that was the thought of the time. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine the medieval barber surgeon TV show.

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Speaker 1: You know, you would have the medical dramas playing out,

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Speaker 1: but the the individual who has all the theories and

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Speaker 1: all the the learning. Uh, they're not actually going to

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Speaker 1: do any of the cutting that goes to the secondary character.

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Speaker 1: Now this does still sort of apply today because of

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Speaker 1: course we still have medical specializations. You have somebody who

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Speaker 1: is you know, they they focus on maybe family medicine

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Speaker 1: versus somebody who's a neurosurgeon. Obviously they wouldn't try to

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Speaker 1: do each other's job, you know that they have medical specialization.

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Speaker 1: So that still carries through to today to some extent,

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Speaker 1: but we're not in this case letting barbers do the neurosurgery. Now,

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Speaker 1: why was surgery so dangerous in the Middle Ages and

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

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Speaker 1: that medieval surgeons did not have is sterile equipment or

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Speaker 1: even knowledge of the need for antiseptic surgical methods uh like.

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Speaker 1: For example, there was a common belief at the time

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

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

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Speaker 1: tried things like washing wounds with wine. But it really

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Speaker 1: wasn't until following Joseph Lister in the eighteen sixties that

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Speaker 1: antiseptic surgery started to catch on everywhere and become the

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Speaker 1: new norm. So you might have had a few people

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Speaker 1: who got the right idea early on, but it was

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Speaker 1: not widespread practice to practice antiseptic surgery. So then this

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Speaker 1: is one of the reasons. There's the primary reason why

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

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Speaker 1: invariably 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 while you know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: who knows, or collecting dead rats for the town's local

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Speaker 1: bounty anyway, So there's that they also did not have

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Speaker 1: effective anesthesia and pain control. And this, I mean, you

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Speaker 1: 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 um, uh

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

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Speaker 1: tried to correct it myself. Uh, and it was just

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and the pain was just like blinding like that where

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Speaker 1: there were flashes of my eyes. And then I was, okay,

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Speaker 1: I need to actually go to professional about this. But

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

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

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Speaker 1: of pain are just going to be the norm. You're

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Speaker 1: gonna have to strap the individual down or have to

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

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Speaker 1: You've got to hire some thugs to help you with

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Speaker 1: your surgery. Yeah, And so there there were some potions

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Speaker 1: and stuff at the time. I mean, obviously people were

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Speaker 1: aware of some types of drugs, but the point was

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Speaker 1: that they didn't have controllable anesthesia, so they could maybe

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Speaker 1: give you some hemlock or you know, these these crazy

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Speaker 1: potions that were just as likely to kill you as

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Speaker 1: they were to put you under. So so they might

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Speaker 1: have had that in some scenarios, or they might have

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Speaker 1: just tried to do it with you awake because they knew,

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Speaker 1: you know, it looks like people die a lot of

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Speaker 1: times when we and that's the ties them. So this

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Speaker 1: was a problem. Medieval surgery just generally bad. Common procedures

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Speaker 1: that were aracticed by medieval surgeons. Blood letting that that's

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Speaker 1: a big one. At the time, they believed in the

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00:19:05,600 --> 00:19:08,760
Speaker 1: you know, humorism, like the idea that there were these

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Speaker 1: four humors in the body that could get out of

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Speaker 1: balance and you could fix some things by letting extra

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Speaker 1: blood out. A big thing at the time was the

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Speaker 1: treatment of battlefield wounds, such as the removal of arrows,

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Speaker 1: and so at the time, surgery was much much more

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Speaker 1: often external. From what we know at least, there's actually

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Speaker 1: sort of a dearth of information about what surgeons in

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Speaker 1: in medieval Europe we're doing. We don't have quite as

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Speaker 1: much information on this as we would like to have,

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00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:40,040
Speaker 1: but from the records we do have, it seems surgery

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Speaker 1: was very often externals, such as the treatment of a

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Speaker 1: surface wound or other problems near the outside of the body,

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Speaker 1: and for all the reasons we've already stated, internal surgery,

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Speaker 1: going deep inside the body for anything was dangerous and rare,

352
00:19:54,240 --> 00:19:57,520
Speaker 1: though it did happen for some extremely problematic things such

353
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Speaker 1: as bladder stones. And we will definitely get back to stones,

354
00:20:02,960 --> 00:20:07,720
Speaker 1: the bodies, the bodies lithos in uh in a bit here,

355
00:20:07,800 --> 00:20:10,000
Speaker 1: but I think we should first turn our attention back

356
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Speaker 1: thinking back on on the Bosch painting and the ones

357
00:20:12,480 --> 00:20:15,080
Speaker 1: that followed it to the head. That's right, yeah, because

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Speaker 1: essentially what's going on here appears to be going on

359
00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:21,200
Speaker 1: here is that they are uh, they're performing what we

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00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:27,080
Speaker 1: now call craniotomy, but what has been historically known as

361
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Speaker 1: trep nation or trepanning, in which and this is just

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Speaker 1: basically the opening of the skull and creating of a

363
00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:38,160
Speaker 1: of a hole in the skull. Now we find evidence

364
00:20:38,200 --> 00:20:41,600
Speaker 1: of trepinnation going back to well well before the Middle

365
00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:44,680
Speaker 1: Ages in Europe. I mean it goes back to prehistoric times,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, thousands of years. You see accounts of it

367
00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:50,359
Speaker 1: among the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Romans,

368
00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:54,960
Speaker 1: the Greeks, early meso American civilizations. Uh there there, that's there.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of a lot of interesting work

370
00:20:56,920 --> 00:20:59,440
Speaker 1: has come out of South America and I believe also

371
00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:02,400
Speaker 1: in and Papua New Guinea as well. But we've even

372
00:21:02,480 --> 00:21:07,200
Speaker 1: found neolithic remains, human remains that had skulls that it

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00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:11,959
Speaker 1: had clearly had the operation performed on them and survived. Right,

374
00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:14,439
Speaker 1: there's a hole in the skull and it has been

375
00:21:14,520 --> 00:21:17,640
Speaker 1: smoothed over where the person didn't die from this surgery,

376
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:20,120
Speaker 1: at least not at least not for a long time. Yeah,

377
00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:23,560
Speaker 1: And so it's it's often been an archaeological uh mystery

378
00:21:23,720 --> 00:21:26,440
Speaker 1: that individuals have have looked into. You know what, what's

379
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:28,479
Speaker 1: going on with this skull? Is this the wounded? Did

380
00:21:28,560 --> 00:21:30,920
Speaker 1: this was this didal just you know, clugged with something

381
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:33,840
Speaker 1: or was there some sort of a surgical procedure And

382
00:21:33,920 --> 00:21:37,040
Speaker 1: if there was a surgical surgical procedure, why did they

383
00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:39,880
Speaker 1: carry it out? Was it both? Was it just purely magical?

384
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:42,440
Speaker 1: Were they trying to let a demon or spirit out

385
00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:45,920
Speaker 1: of the head, or were they trying to deal with

386
00:21:46,119 --> 00:21:53,280
Speaker 1: a cranial and brain injuries. Because today clinical trepidation remains

387
00:21:53,359 --> 00:21:59,200
Speaker 1: a treatment for epidural and subdural hematomas. But and plus

388
00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:01,800
Speaker 1: it gives us a base surgical entry point to the

389
00:22:01,880 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 1: brain itself. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you've heard about

390
00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:07,119
Speaker 1: trepidation before, you think about, Okay, that's just a crazy

391
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: you know, why would somebody drill a hole in the skull.

392
00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:11,520
Speaker 1: It's just because they thought there were demons, you know,

393
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 1: But there are real medical reasons, as you're saying. And

394
00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:19,159
Speaker 1: I guess we don't know what the ancients knew, you know,

395
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:22,679
Speaker 1: it's hard to say whether in some cases they may

396
00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:26,359
Speaker 1: have been doing it just for superstitious reasons or they

397
00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:31,400
Speaker 1: had some kind of medical prompting that was legitimate. Yeah,

398
00:22:31,680 --> 00:22:35,480
Speaker 1: and you get into, uh, you know, an argument back

399
00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:37,520
Speaker 1: and forth over that too, because to a certain extent,

400
00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:39,960
Speaker 1: um archaeologists in the past have looked at some of

401
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,000
Speaker 1: these examples and they've they've said, well, there's no way

402
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:45,960
Speaker 1: that these individuals were carrying this out for legitimate medical purposes.

403
00:22:46,040 --> 00:22:50,920
Speaker 1: These are savages, these are ancient people. But there's a

404
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:53,520
Speaker 1: lot of events to suggest that they were actually dealing

405
00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:58,200
Speaker 1: with They were actually performing medical procedures to deal with

406
00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:01,359
Speaker 1: with head wounds, to deal with swelling of the brain

407
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:04,960
Speaker 1: um due to you know, blunt force trauma to the skull,

408
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:09,160
Speaker 1: trying to relieve that pressure by creating uh, this hole

409
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:13,000
Speaker 1: in the skull itself. Yeah, but of course trepination doesn't

410
00:23:13,119 --> 00:23:16,399
Speaker 1: have necessarily a very good record in terms of the

411
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:20,760
Speaker 1: survivability of the procedure. Oh no, Yeah. Even by the

412
00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:24,520
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, only ten percent of patients survived a

413
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:27,560
Speaker 1: Western trepination due to infection. And I want to stress

414
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:30,000
Speaker 1: Western because when you do look to some of the

415
00:23:30,040 --> 00:23:32,800
Speaker 1: so called primitive cultures out there, uh, it seems that

416
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:37,159
Speaker 1: they actually may have had a lower mortality rate with

417
00:23:37,280 --> 00:23:42,000
Speaker 1: their trestinations. Um. But eventually we're able to bring that up, obviously,

418
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:46,560
Speaker 1: because neurosurgery is not the uh, you know, a nine

419
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:49,159
Speaker 1: mortality rate andever that it used to be. I mean,

420
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:53,640
Speaker 1: we're just generally better at at fighting off infection post surgery. Now.

421
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 1: There are a lot of reasons now that surgery in

422
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,480
Speaker 1: general is safer. Yeah, And a lot of people point

423
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:04,160
Speaker 1: to American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing uh lived eighteen sixty nine

424
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:07,239
Speaker 1: through nineteen thirty nine as as one of the key

425
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:10,960
Speaker 1: individuals who was able to bring that neurosurgery mortality right

426
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:15,200
Speaker 1: down to less than ten percent um and and ultimately

427
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 1: ushering in the modern age of neurosurgery in which some

428
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: people do neurosurgery just for fun. Yeah, well for fun

429
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 1: or for enlightenment, m consciousness extension. Yeah. I don't want to.

430
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:29,160
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too far off the beaten

431
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:32,440
Speaker 1: path here. But we did see the rise of often

432
00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:36,879
Speaker 1: self trepanned psychonauts in the nineteen sixties and seventies. You

433
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: had this individual who was Dutch, interestingly enough, tying into

434
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:44,920
Speaker 1: the origins of our paintings here bosh. Yeah. Former medical

435
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 1: student Bart Hughes lived n through two thousand and four. Uh.

436
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 1: And he stands as voluntary trepidations pioneering visionary and so so.

437
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: So he added the idea that trepidation is good for

438
00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 1: your mind, right, yeah, he um so. And this was

439
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: apparently he had been a mescal and induced revelation that

440
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,800
Speaker 1: his whole thing is that when we became bipeds, when

441
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: we rose up on two legs, it altered the way

442
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: um uh. The fluids move through our brain. It altered

443
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:19,679
Speaker 1: blood flow. It also altered the movement of cerebral spinal fluid,

444
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 1: and and and so he thought that this would be

445
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: He was trying to figure out, how can I, uh,

446
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,239
Speaker 1: you know, get healthy flow of blood to the brain. Uh.

447
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: So he considered, um, he considered making a hole uh

448
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,359
Speaker 1: in his the base of his spinal column to drain

449
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: out some of the fluid. But he eventually decided, Okay,

450
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: what I'll do is I'll just I'll trepan myself. I'll

451
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: make this hole in my skull. And it's important to

452
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 1: note here we're talking about just a hole in the skull.

453
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: He's not drilling all the way into brain. It's but

454
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:53,240
Speaker 1: that the premise here is that if you were to

455
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 1: just remove a little bit of skull there, it would

456
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:01,200
Speaker 1: allow the pressure inside the brain to be relieved and

457
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:05,879
Speaker 1: therefore allow increased blood flow through the brain, allow a

458
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,960
Speaker 1: better removal of toxins. That there's there's actually some interesting

459
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:13,479
Speaker 1: research going on and going into this even today. Uh

460
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 1: and they make some kind of compelling arguments for it.

461
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:21,159
Speaker 1: But then the experts also argue that brain function is

462
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: not limited by normal blood flow, and then increased brain

463
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: metabolism might actually stress the system. So it's not it's

464
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: not a cut and dry situation, but you have individual

465
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: cut and wet situation. Yeah, but you have individuals out

466
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: there who are very strong proponents all of trefinnation as

467
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,400
Speaker 1: a means of achieving up a higher state of consciousness. Okay,

468
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: And so this informs our interpretation of the painting. How like,

469
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: are we thinking that maybe what we're seeing in this

470
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: painting is we're misunderstanding it and it's a form of

471
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:54,399
Speaker 1: trefination or it's really just sort of related to the

472
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: general concept. Essentially, it means that if there's any kind

473
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: of stone removal going on, if removing a stone from

474
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:05,240
Speaker 1: the brain, either in fact or merely allegorically, then they're

475
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:09,359
Speaker 1: there and they're dealing with repination. And certainly tremination predated

476
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: these paintings. It was practiced to some degree at the time.

477
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 1: And uh and and it would have been known to

478
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 1: the artists. There were woodcuts, there were you know, instruction manuals,

479
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: and as many of the medical text showing how this

480
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 1: was this procedure was carried out. So, as you probably

481
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:32,400
Speaker 1: well know, kidney stones and bladder stones are very much

482
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: a reality yes they are, and as Joe will shortly

483
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 1: relate to us, their surgical removal is is also very

484
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 1: much reality and one that dates back to antiquity. But

485
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 1: is there actually such a thing as a cranial stone?

486
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 1: I mean, we know there there are mineral formations that

487
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:50,360
Speaker 1: can happen in the body. Can that happen in your brain? Well?

488
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: Can it happen? Is is a question we'll get to.

489
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: Was it happening at the time? Did individuals think that

490
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: this was happening? Uh? In the Middle Ages and in

491
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:05,360
Speaker 1: the centuries to follow well, As related by Mathis Kerschel,

492
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 1: Frederick Mall and Philip van Karen Brook in the paper

493
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: A Stone Never Cut for a New Interpretation of the

494
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 1: Cure of Folly by Hieronymous Bosh published in the Journal

495
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: International Urology. UH, there's no evidence to suggest this was

496
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: ever carried out in real life. There are no historical

497
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: sources from the period that mentioned genuine or fraudulent stone operations.

498
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: And I also want to add that apparently there were

499
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 1: existing accounts of quackery that was going on in the

500
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: Netherlands here in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. They don't

501
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 1: mention any kind of fake stone removals or or fake

502
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: trepid nations going on. But it was presented theatrically in

503
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: performances for the masses, because clearly the painting makes us

504
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: think the painting has a lot to say, and you

505
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 1: can imagine that extrapolated to street performances for the common individuals. Yeah,

506
00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: the idea was that there there were plays that had

507
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,239
Speaker 1: scenes of the the extraction of the stone of madness, right,

508
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 1: cutting for the stone in the head, not unlike our

509
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: little drama at the beginning of this episode. It makes

510
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: you wonder because what other types of fiction that we

511
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: have today depict things going on that are plausible in

512
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 1: the same way that cutting for the stone is a

513
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: plausible thing that could have happened. You can imagine quacks

514
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: cutting into people's heads pretending to remove a stone. Uh,

515
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: without researching it any I would be tempted to say, um,

516
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: nefarious kidney removal while on vacation place. You know, yeah,

517
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: exactly if if historians of the future look back at

518
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 1: our fiction as a as a judge to see what's

519
00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:46,479
Speaker 1: happening in our culture today, and they're not, they can

520
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 1: tell the difference between fantasy and realistic fiction. You know,

521
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: they don't think that Star Wars is happening in our

522
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 1: culture today. But you know, they look at some kind

523
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: of realistic drama where somebody has a kidney stolen in

524
00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, they wake up in a bathtub full of ice. Um.

525
00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: I mean they could conclude, oh, this must have been

526
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: something that happened a lot in the early two thousands,

527
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: because clearly it's depicted in their art and these are

528
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 1: not these films are not just complete works with fantasy.

529
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: So therefore maybe it happened. Yeah, and that brings us

530
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: back to actual stone removal, the sort of stone removals

531
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 1: we know. Um, we're carried out or attempted, uh in

532
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,480
Speaker 1: many cases at the time. Yeah. So I mentioned earlier

533
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: how in the Middle Ages coming into the early modern period,

534
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: surgery really was a last resort, especially any significantly invasive surgery,

535
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 1: deep internal surgery, that was really really a last resort

536
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 1: at the time. Surgeons just didn't have safe, reliable ways

537
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: of putting a patient to sleep. So, as we said earlier,

538
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: you have to imagine internal surgery with knives going deep

539
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: inside you while you're awake, or taking a drug that

540
00:30:55,840 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: might kill you. And that's that's an interesting that the

541
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: real Sophie's choice there. Yeah, so you remember that line

542
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: from the Hippocratic Oath, I said where I will not cut,

543
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: not even for the stone. That's sort of an indicator

544
00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 1: that of all the things people would come to an

545
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: ancient or medieval doctor begging to be cut open for

546
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 1: at the time when this was painful and dangerous, stones

547
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: in the urinary tract have got to be some of

548
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 1: the worst things to merrit a mention like this, you know, Like,

549
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: so the doctor is saying, you know, of all the

550
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 1: things that I may be tempted to do for a

551
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: person that I shouldn't do, cutting for a stone has

552
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: got to be near the top to merrit a mention

553
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: like this. Yeah. I mean, I I've never suffered the

554
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: experience of having a stone in my body, but I

555
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: know we have listeners who surely have, and I would

556
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:48,719
Speaker 1: love to hear from you and your account and how

557
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: that ties into your appreciation of our episode today. Yeah,

558
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: I want to read a little selection from a paper

559
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: called the History of Urinary Stones in Parallel with Civilization

560
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: by a met Te Feckley and Fatine says I yearly.

561
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: So this is what they write during the medieval period

562
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 1: in Europe ten to fourteen thirty eight. There was little

563
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: activity in the management of stone disease in this era.

564
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 1: Lithotomists and that's you know, a person who would remove stones,

565
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: the lithos and stone for a living. Lithotomus who were

566
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: essentially commercial travelers, moving from town to town looking for

567
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: business and cutting all who came their way, often uneducated

568
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: and occasionally dishonest, some were great showmen. The procedure was

569
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: generally performed in the public without anesthesia and generally lasted

570
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 1: a few minutes. However, lithotomus were held responsible for their

571
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: bad results and find accordingly. So as we've said this surgery, Yeah,

572
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: that sounds cute, right, the surgery is dangerous. Uh. Didn't

573
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 1: you have some stats on the mortality rates? Yes, and

574
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 1: these are from that a stone never cut paper. Their

575
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 1: referenced earlier and all clue to link to that at

576
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 1: landing paper. This episode about around the fifteenth century, you

577
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: saw about fifty percent, but our sources on that are

578
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: a little I have to image approximate. Yeah, from the

579
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: seventeenth century up to the mid eighteenth century, you see

580
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: variable um statue. You see it as low as two

581
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 1: point five but also as high as sixty seven point eight.

582
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: It sounds like it matters who's doing your your stone cutting, yes,

583
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: as well as who is undergoing the surgery. Apparently the

584
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: best outcomes occurred when you had a boy suffering a

585
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: small stone. The older the individual, the larger the stone. Uh.

586
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: And also if the individual is female, these would all

587
00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: really um tip the scales in the in favor of death. Okay,

588
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: So do we have an actual account of what like?

589
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 1: Did anybody make records of what this was like on

590
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: the ground? Yes, they did, because this these tended to

591
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 1: be very memorable, uh for surgeries. Uh. And the one

592
00:33:57,280 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: that we have here today, this one actually ties in

593
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 1: do a painting is not a lot an engineering a second,

594
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 1: but it concerns Jen did Dute, a Dutch blacksmith, and

595
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 1: uh a do it yourself lithotomist did Dute yonda Dutey

596
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 1: And so that's that's just the best name for a

597
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: do it yourself a little and there and there's a

598
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:22,720
Speaker 1: painting of the painting of this individual called a Portrait

599
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 1: of Jan d Dute by Carol uh the Establiene, and

600
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 1: this was painted in sixteen fifty five. I'll try to

601
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 1: include a link to this painting so you can see it. Oh,

602
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 1: he looks real satisfied with himself. Yeah. Explain described his

603
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: painting for the listeners. Well, he's posed as if for

604
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: a camera, and he's in his left hand holding up

605
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: what looks like an egg, but I guess it's supposed

606
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: to be a huge stone. And in his other hand

607
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: he's just just kind of near the bottom of the painting,

608
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,320
Speaker 1: posed on the table. He's got what looks like a razor.

609
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: So and and he's he he's not exactly smiling, but

610
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: he's got pride in his eyes. Yeah. And Uh, as

611
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: the painting might suggest, he apparently survived at least for

612
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 1: five years. But we know of of his case from

613
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: an account written by Nicholas Tulp's seventy two text um

614
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:22,320
Speaker 1: Observationes Medicae and uh, and this is this is just

615
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: a sample translated obviously from that book. Only letting his

616
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 1: brother help him, He instructed him to pull aside his

617
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: scrotum while he grabbed the stone in his left hand

618
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: and cut bravely in the perennium with a knife he

619
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: had secretly prepared. I don't know why it was secretly prepared. Uh,

620
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: and by standing again and again, I managed to make

621
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: the wound long enough to allow the stone to pass.

622
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:50,360
Speaker 1: To get the stone out was more difficult, and he

623
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: had to stick two fingers into the wound on either

624
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 1: side to remove it with leveraged force, and it finally

625
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: popped out of hiding with an explosive noise and tearing

626
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 1: of a bladder. Now the more courageous than careful operation

627
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,800
Speaker 1: was completed, and the enemy that had declared war on

628
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: him was safely on the ground. He sent for a

629
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: healer who sewed up the two sides of the wound together.

630
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: That's just troubling I And I will note that in

631
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: the painting here portrait of Jan didot Uh, we don't

632
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:23,799
Speaker 1: see Uh. We only see Hi from the waist up.

633
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,759
Speaker 1: So god knows what the Finnished states of fans were

634
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:30,280
Speaker 1: just soaked in blood. Yeah, and there are other accounts

635
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:32,480
Speaker 1: out there as well. There was one in particular that

636
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: I ran across years years ago, and I was trying

637
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: to find it. But in involved, I want to say,

638
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: a royal individual or an astronomer, someone of you know,

639
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 1: of means and importance, who had to undergo a stone

640
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:49,320
Speaker 1: removal surgery and it was just a bloody disaster and

641
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: they ended up dying on the table. But after the

642
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: life me I can't remember who it was. Okay, So

643
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: we've seen that sometimes the body grows some stones inside it.

644
00:36:57,239 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: You you've got these, uh, these formations of inneral deposits

645
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 1: that can be very problematic, especially depending on where they occur.

646
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're so problematic medieval surgeons would go in for them,

647
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: despite how dangerous surgery was at the time. And how

648
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: exactly does this affect the head, because like we've said,

649
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: we're not really aware from the public record that people

650
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 1: ever cut into people's skulls for stones at the time.

651
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 1: But maybe, just maybe there's one sort of cranial phenomenon

652
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: we could look at as a as a possible candidate

653
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: for what what's going on here? If this is intended

654
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:37,800
Speaker 1: to depict a real scene, if you're just saying, is

655
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: it remotely possible that that bo just could happen? That

656
00:37:42,200 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 1: bosh is depicting something that could have really happened. And

657
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:48,800
Speaker 1: here we want to talk about the meningioma. So, a

658
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 1: meningioma is a name for like a class of tumors

659
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 1: that affect the brain and the spinal cord. Though they

660
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: actually don't grow from brain or spinal cord tissue itself,

661
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:03,879
Speaker 1: but from Meninji's or the man ninjas, which are thin

662
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: layers of tissue that wrap around the outside of these organs.

663
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: So around the outside of your brain you've got a

664
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: thin layer of this tissue, and this is where this

665
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: meningioma can occur. It's it's like a tumor um and

666
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: because they appear on this outer tissue, they typically happen

667
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:24,240
Speaker 1: at the top or the outer curve of the brain.

668
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:26,759
Speaker 1: Also sometimes at the base of the skull. But this

669
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: would make sense in the picture right at the top

670
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:31,320
Speaker 1: or the outer curve of the brain, that's where we

671
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:36,800
Speaker 1: see Bosch's tin funnel hat wearing. Doctor might be the

672
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 1: generous word hutting here. So these these tumors are typically

673
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: non cancerous. They're containing cysts or calcifications. Interestingly, so that

674
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:49,800
Speaker 1: would be collections of minerals, you know, stone formations, just

675
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: like you might have in your bladder or something, so

676
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:56,480
Speaker 1: a mineral collection or cyst. But of course, since they grow,

677
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 1: they press against the brain. Even though they're non cancerous,

678
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,360
Speaker 1: it still need to be removed. So this could be

679
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in the painting. I don't know what

680
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: you think about that. Yeah, I think in terms of

681
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:11,239
Speaker 1: just I don't think it it is what we're saying.

682
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 1: But in terms of of making an argument, what is

683
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: it possible? Is it? Is it realistically possible that that

684
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: that there could be a stone of madness? Like this

685
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 1: is the closest real world possibility. Um And and in

686
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:28,439
Speaker 1: what case would it be a stone of madness? Well,

687
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: there's a paper that referred to This is a two

688
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:38,319
Speaker 1: thousand two letter to Neurology India by Prasada Krishnan uh

689
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: and uh a few other co authors as well, and

690
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,560
Speaker 1: they they were looking at a particular individual that that

691
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:50,280
Speaker 1: had one of these uh meningioma's growing inside the skull,

692
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 1: and they found that it can result in irrelevant speech, forgetfulness,

693
00:39:55,080 --> 00:40:01,879
Speaker 1: behavioral abnormalities such as disinhibition, emotional liability, and just excessive

694
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: talking huh. So specifically they will get a sixty five

695
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: year old patient uh and they they actually performed craniotomy

696
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: and gross total excision of the legion, cutting her curing

697
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: her of all the symptoms in the process. So, in

698
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 1: other words, this is one case in two thousand twelve,

699
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: with of course modern surgical um tools and procedures. UM

700
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: at hand, the surgeons were able to remove a stone

701
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,360
Speaker 1: like growth from a human skull and uh, and in

702
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: doing so cure the individual of their abnormal mental state. Uh. Okay, So,

703
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,279
Speaker 1: while we have no evidence that operations like this took

704
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:45,800
Speaker 1: place in the Middle Ages or Bosh's time, it is

705
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: at least possible that this could be the kind of

706
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: thing going on here. Yeah, so it would sort of

707
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: match the scene described. Yeah, so it might be a

708
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 1: case where we're accidentally art in up giving us a

709
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 1: glimpse of what an actual surgeon's blade with one day

710
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: and cover. Okay, Well, I've got another question though. One

711
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:10,760
Speaker 1: of the things that when I was researching medieval surgery

712
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 1: I came across is that one one of the most

713
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,920
Speaker 1: common surgical procedures in medieval Europe would have been uh,

714
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: treatment of battlefield wounds. Yeah, so what if what we're

715
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:25,080
Speaker 1: actually seeing is something that is that has not just

716
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,759
Speaker 1: grown inside the head, not a stone of madness, but

717
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: a missile of madness, something that has come from the

718
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,879
Speaker 1: outside and is being treated or removed. Yeah, I mean, indeed, uh,

719
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 1: contemporary and ancient use of trefornation. Uh, it was often

720
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,800
Speaker 1: employed to deal with head trauma, either to you know,

721
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:46,399
Speaker 1: mitigate brain swelling due to blow a blow to the skull,

722
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: or to remove a bone fragment or even a missile

723
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 1: of some sort from uh, from underneath the skull or

724
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:56,320
Speaker 1: in the skull, or possibly in the brain. Uh. So

725
00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: I think you could make a granted weak case for

726
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: the stone of folly having some relation to battle injury. Um,

727
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 1: only in this case you've not been hit by a

728
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: stone from the enemy sling, but rather a dose of

729
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:14,560
Speaker 1: folly from the fate. Yeah. When I was preparing for

730
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:16,600
Speaker 1: this episode, one of the things I did was I

731
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: watched part of a short documentary that had a scene

732
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:25,360
Speaker 1: about an injury that the young Henry the Fifth actually

733
00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:27,879
Speaker 1: suffered on the battlefield when he was a teenager, where

734
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: he got an arrow lodged in his head. And they

735
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:32,880
Speaker 1: were talking about what happened when it was a non

736
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: fatal wound, but you know at the time, of course,

737
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: if they leave the arrow head in your wound, it's

738
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: gonna get infected and you're gonna die. Uh. And they

739
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: talked about the procedures that the surgeons of the day

740
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: went through to try to remove this arrow head from

741
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: his head and eventually he lived. He survived the procedure.

742
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:56,360
Speaker 1: But this does kind of show how, even at a

743
00:42:56,440 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: time when surgery is known to be very dangerous, if

744
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: you've got a major head wound, you really don't have

745
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:07,760
Speaker 1: any other choice. Yeah, it's either do it and possibly

746
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 1: die or just die. Alright. So this this brings us

747
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 1: back though, to to the painting itself. So we've already

748
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: established that cutting for a urinary stones was complicated and

749
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: dangerous treatment mortality rate. Furthermore, trepidation was an even risk

750
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: your proposal at the time perhaticized mortality rate maybe maybe

751
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: even more depending on who's trying to carry it out.

752
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 1: So whether cutting into the brain or bowel, surgical practices

753
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: of the time we're just not up to snuff. And

754
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:39,839
Speaker 1: as far as treatment of madness goes, this was an

755
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: age before psychiatry was even a word. We didn't get

756
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,479
Speaker 1: back to eighteen o eight. The four humor still helps

757
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:50,839
Speaker 1: way over our understanding of human experience. Uh, they were

758
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 1: and there were very few treatments for uh mental illness. Uh.

759
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: The asylum was really one of the few options for

760
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,399
Speaker 1: individuals who really had severe mental illness, which wasn't really

761
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: a treatment, right, And that's actually one of the arguments

762
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: for Peter Brugal the Elder's painting cutting out of the

763
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: Stone of Madness, which you said, it looks like a madhouse.

764
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 1: One argument is is that he was depicting the brutal

765
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:23,520
Speaker 1: treatment of afflicted individuals within the madhouse, not that they

766
00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 1: were actually carved upon and had stones pulled out of

767
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: their heads, but that the treatment they received was was

768
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: comparable to that level of brutality and ineffectiveness. Okay, so yeah,

769
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of just like an extreme example that's

770
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: fictional to communicate the reality of the total, the total

771
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: picture of the conditions, much like you might say, use

772
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: this not really very plausible scenario of waking up in

773
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: a bathtub missing kidney to depict the general sort of

774
00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: lawlessness of of a society something like that, you know,

775
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 1: the predatory nature of wherever you are Las Vegas or something. Yeah. Now,

776
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,320
Speaker 1: in terms of actual trepidation, it was certainly on the

777
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: table for head trauma and psycho surgery was proposed in

778
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 1: Europe as early of the twelfth century, but there are

779
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,720
Speaker 1: actually very few reports of it being effectively employed before,

780
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 1: so it seems like the predominant theory here is that

781
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 1: this painting is there. There are a number of things

782
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: going on, but one possibility here is that it's less

783
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,719
Speaker 1: about an actual surgery and more about a symbol for

784
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 1: the the the the the ineffectiveness of surgery as a whole. Yeah,

785
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 1: so it's not just about our cruelty but also about

786
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 1: our our ignorance and fumbling. Yeah, like, we we have

787
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: such a disastrous record removing these stones that are occurring

788
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,560
Speaker 1: in the body. Let's just push it into a more

789
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: comedic and symbolic area by having the quack surgeon or

790
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,279
Speaker 1: perhaps just surgeon with the you know, a boundering and

791
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 1: incomplete understanding of human physiology, and imagine than him operating

792
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:09,760
Speaker 1: on an even more dangerous part of the human anatomy,

793
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 1: the brain itself, and then trying to remove some stone

794
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: from from that part of the body as well. So

795
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: in Bosch's painting, Uh, it seems that it's less about

796
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 1: any about this being an actual procedure that was attempted,

797
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 1: but more all right, let's take the stone removal surgeries

798
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: that we know were occurring and that we know had

799
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 1: such a disastrous record. Let's extrapolate that and then and

800
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:39,080
Speaker 1: take our fictional doctor who's either a quack or just

801
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:42,399
Speaker 1: a you know, a blundering but well meaning individual who's

802
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: dealing with just a limited understanding of human physiology and

803
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: and uh and and and and disease and infection. And

804
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: let's have him not operate on on this already dangerous

805
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 1: part of the human body, but let's have him operate

806
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 1: on an even more dangerous area for surgery, the human

807
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 1: brain itself. Let's have him pull a stone out of there. Yeah.

808
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:04,399
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a fictional symbol of not only

809
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 1: not just like Brugal's vision of our the cruelty and

810
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:10,399
Speaker 1: chaos of the madhouse, but also of our just lack

811
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:14,319
Speaker 1: of knowledge and the way we fumble through medicine. Yeah,

812
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: and they're they're additional interpretations that are sometimes thrown in

813
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: as well, the quack uh interpretation that we mentioned already,

814
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 1: that it's essentially psychic surgery. Yeah, there's also the idea

815
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 1: that the folly here is the patients for wishing the swift,

816
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,200
Speaker 1: easy removal of a thing which must be one either

817
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 1: spiritually or you know, a few of the mysteries of alchemy. Yeah,

818
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: fool and his money are easily parted. Yeah. Another one

819
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: of the interpretations that I'm I'm not sure I can

820
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: agree with, but I at least found very interesting and

821
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: liked came from that that paper reference to Stone never

822
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:48,279
Speaker 1: cut four, which it was good, it was interesting to read. Uh.

823
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:52,320
Speaker 1: They pointed out the three people in the painting, so

824
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: that the patient is laying in this chair suffering, as

825
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: you said, reclining seeming to groan get it out. You've

826
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: got the doctor cut him, and then you've got the monk,

827
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:03,680
Speaker 1: and then you've got the ladies sitting there with the

828
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 1: book on her head. And the way they interpreted the

829
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: painting was that he's surrounded by symbolic characters embodying medicine, religion,

830
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: and philosophy, and that that none of them really offer

831
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: him a solution, the philosopher being the what looks like

832
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:25,240
Speaker 1: a nun with the closed book, the sealed book resting

833
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 1: atop her head. Yeah. I'm not sure if I buy

834
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 1: that interpretation, but I like it. Yeah, I like it too.

835
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: And and him Yeah, I mean, she still looks more

836
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: like a nun than a philosopher to me. But that's

837
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: the that's the rough thing about interpreting these older pieces

838
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 1: of art is they were not meant to speak to

839
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,800
Speaker 1: me or you. They were they were meant to speak

840
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,200
Speaker 1: to an individual living in the time. So they're they're

841
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: kind of speaking across the time and space here and

842
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:55,239
Speaker 1: we can just do our best to try and interpret them.

843
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: But but I do like that interpretation because it takes it,

844
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: it extrapolates it beyond uh, mere medical science, and it

845
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: just shows this it's is comical take, but also one

846
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 1: that that kind of just pokes fun at at our

847
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 1: attempts to master anything. Here are the three learned individuals

848
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 1: and what are they accomplishing with against this individual's pain,

849
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: discomfort or madness boredom? Yeah, all right, so there you

850
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: have it. Uh. I'm going to make sure that the

851
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode links to examples of all

852
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: the works of art that we referenced here, so you

853
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:35,000
Speaker 1: can pull them up, look at them, draw your own conclusions,

854
00:49:35,040 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: make your own interpretations about what's going on. Um. And

855
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: I will also link to that to some of the

856
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: papers that we reference here as well. But I'd say,

857
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 1: if you are feeling not quite well in your in

858
00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 1: your mind or in your mental state, uh, let us

859
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:52,760
Speaker 1: advise you don't cut for the stone, or pay anyone

860
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:54,880
Speaker 1: else to cut for the stone. Go go see a

861
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 1: modern medical doctor, and if that doctor has a tin

862
00:49:57,640 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 1: funnel on his or her head, payack strap. He pay

863
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 1: x ray. All right, hey. In the meantime, I'll be

864
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: sure to visit stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

865
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: If we will find all the podcast episodes, who find videos,

866
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: who find blog posts? We find links out for our

867
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: social media accounts. Uh follow us there. We're on Facebook

868
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Speaker 1: and Twitter is blow the Mind. We're on tumbler as

869
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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And if you want to

870
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Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

871
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 1: or to let us know your favorite mystery from an

872
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: ancient or medieval painting, you can email us at blow

873
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more

874
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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how

875
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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Fre