WEBVTT - The Stone of Madness 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.120 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from house works 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:23.319 dot com. Maybe, why, my good fellow, you look a 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:28.760 bit mad? Why I have a bit mad? You know? 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.800 Are you a physician? Well, of course, didn't you notice 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.160 my physician's cap. You mean that beautiful tin funnel? Yes, yes, 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:38.519 of course. Now if you would, can you point to 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.199 the part of your body that feels insane right here 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.160 in the skull, Doc, Right right here, then that's where 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:49.040 the stone of madness awaits us? Can you can you 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.760 remove it? Dot y? Certainly? Just have a seat and 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.160 allow me to trepen your cranium just large enough to 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.600 remove the stone. Better make it a big hole, Doc, 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:00.880 I'm about as mad if they come mad, Mary to 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.520 ratscure bowlepord a chest today. Sometimes I wake up in 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.000 a field and I think I'm a dog. I start 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.280 chasing the local clergy around it. Yes, yes, it's going 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.760 to be all right now. Just let me reach inside 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:19.240 and ah, there it is the stone of madness and folly, 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:24.000 the source of your mental maladies. Surgically removed. That'll be 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:28.520 five children here you go. But can I can I 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:42.880 keep the stone? Of course you can. Hey, Welcome to 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:44.840 stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:47.360 and I'm Joe McCormick. I hope to enjoyed our little 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.920 skip that is, our attempt to audibly capture the spirit 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:55.360 of a particular painting, namely, uh, the cutting of the 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.280 stone or the extraction of the stone of madness or 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:00.040 the cure of folly, whatever you want to call it, 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:04.400 by Hieronymous Bosh. Um this is a painting from around 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:10.720 fourteen and it depicts uh, this sort of crazy but 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:15.799 highly allegorical uh surgery taking place. Yeah, if you have 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.680 never seen this painting, you should look it up. I'm 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.760 gonna do my thing and tell you to google an image, 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:22.720 but you really should see it to go with this episode. 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:25.480 It will be on the landing package of of the 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.520 web version of this episode. But yeah, it's a painting 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.680 by Hieronymous Bosh. It's usually dated to around fifteen hundreds. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:33.760 Sometimes we read one source that said it had to 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.440 be after fifteen o two other people dated to the 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.880 fourteen nineties UMU. As we mentioned in the past when 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.440 we dealt with the some of Bosh's work, there's there's 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.480 so little known about him that it's there's a certain 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.280 amount of mystery involved in all of this, and one 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.600 of the great things about it is the mystery of 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.840 what motivated this painting, because because what's happening in the painting, 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.560 the cutting of the stone of badness. You have a 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.720 patient in the the sort of the center left of 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.560 the frame, who's seated in a chair in the middle 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.400 of a field, and he looks quite distressed, and he's 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:11.919 reclining back in the chair as a man in a 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:16.560 pink robe with a tin funnel on his head cuts 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.280 into the patient's scalp. And the man, the man with 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:22.320 the tin funnel on his head, who's doing the cutting, 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:25.639 he looks fairly serene, wouldn't you say, Yes, he's he's 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.040 he seems dedicated to the task at hand here, which 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.640 you could interpret as concentration and and you know, knowing 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.040 what he's doing, or you could interpret as a kind 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:40.440 of callousness and insensitivity to this man's apparent grunting. He 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.720 looks like he's in the middle of a really good grunt. Uh. 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:47.080 Then to the right of the guy reclining in the chair, 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.840 he's having his head cut open. You have what appears 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.560 to be you think this is a monk. Yeah, it 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:54.680 looks very much like a monk. Yeah, he's got a 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:57.920 shaved top of his head and he's in some black garments. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.640 And then to the right of the monk there is 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.360 a woman with her head covered by a cloth, in 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.960 a dress draped over her, with a book sitting on 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:12.520 top of her head that's clasped with a clasp. So 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.000 what on earth do we make of this painting? I 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:17.880 should also note that there is text with this painting, 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.280 right if you have an appropriate zoomed out version, and 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.560 it says this translation, of course, master cut away the stone. 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.120 My name is Lubert Duss Lubert Dass. Yeah, and this 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.640 is apparently a fool in Dutch literature of the time. 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:34.320 And then the the observer that the viewer of this 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.600 particular piece would have known that. Yeah, I think at 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.960 the time, calling calling a character Lubbert is kind of 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.480 like us calling a character Cletus or something like that. 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.039 It's like a it's like a joke and a Dutch Cletus, 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.800 if you will. Yeah. So that's the the one of 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.320 the key paintings that we're gonna keep referring back to. 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:57.839 But but we've see an overall trend uh in medieval art. Um. Yeah, 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:00.600 medieval and early modern art in Europe seems to be 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:03.839 following this theme set up by Bosh, or at least 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.920 first interpreted by Bosh as far as we know, this 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.400 theme of cutting out the stone of madness. So in 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:12.320 the previous painting we had the guy with the tin 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:14.640 funnel hat cutting the guy's head. He seems to be 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:19.479 in the process of removing this titular stone stone of madness, 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.400 whatever that is. But there are other paintings. There's of course, 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.440 a cutting of the stone of madness by Brugal. Right, yeah, 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.840 Peter Brugal the Elder lived a fifteen fifteen to fifteen 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:33.320 sixty nine, responsible for a number of fabulous pieces that 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:35.400 I'm sure everyone's familiar with it and they've even had 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.920 on your dorm room wall in college. I know I did, uh, 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:40.880 And this one shows this one has a number of 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:46.280 individuals and several different neurosurgical procedures going on in very 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:48.880 crude and horrific fashion. Now we can point out that 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:50.960 this painting. You should also look this one up so 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:52.880 you can see it for yourself. But it's much more 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.200 chaotic than the last one. The last one is a 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.440 sort of a concentrated scene of a single cutting taking place. 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.680 Is it's a madhouse there. There are people all over 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.600 having their heads examined and cut, and the multiple people 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.920 doing the cutting. There's just general chaos. People are squatting 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.680 and squirming in the background and trying to peek in 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.760 and see what's going on. It's it looks like a 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.240 bad scene. Yeah, and and definitely remember the madhouse of it, 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.440 because we'll come back to that. The third painting we 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.320 want a reference here is is won by Quentin Massy's 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.920 Uh he lived fourteen six to twenty nine, and this 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.920 one is called an Allegory of Folly. And this one 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.000 is probably it's probably my favorite of the three, just 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.080 because it's so monstrous and weird. Yeah. Now it doesn't 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:43.320 depict a surgery, but it does depict it follows the 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.120 same theme of the Stone of Madness. There seems to 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:49.320 be so you see a guy here, he looks like 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:54.040 he is perhaps mentally unsound in some way, and he 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:59.440 is clutching a staff. That what is going on at 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:01.719 the top of this staff, Robert, Well, they're there are 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.599 evidently a number of different symbols going on in this piece. 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:08.720 There's so much uh, there's so much symbology uh at 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.360 play and in these these paintings, and we we don't 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:14.920 have time to to to tease it all apart. But yeah, 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.280 he has a staff that has like a small individual 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.200 that is with their with exposed buttocks emerging from the staff. 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.400 He has a rooster on his head. Uh, and he's 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.320 see he doesn't seem in pain by his madness. He 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:31.280 seems a little uh mischievous, the mused. Uh. No, he 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:34.320 seems to be contemplating the act of marrying two rats 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.600 to a bowl of four yes. And on his forehead 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.520 there is a lump that you can see. It's a 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.600 visible lump bulging from his forehead that appears to be 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.960 this stone. It's the stone of madness. Yeah, it looks 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:48.800 very much in a way. It also looks kind of 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:51.160 like a third eye, which is I think something that's 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:52.760 kind of neat about this piece that if you look 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:57.240 at it with other artistic traditions uh loaded into your head, 0:07:57.680 --> 0:07:59.200 it kind of makes you wonder about, you know, the 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.400 whole difference betwe lean enlightenment and madness, which which will 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:03.960 be a thing we come back to. But yeah, it 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:06.320 looks like the stone of madness is not only in 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.360 this individual's head, but it's poking through. Yeah, And so 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.560 these are just a few examples, but this seems to 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.880 be a general theme emerging in in medieval and early 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.760 modern European art of of the stone of madness being 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.560 a stone in the head associated with madness as they 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.840 would understand it, and the the act of cutting for 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.760 the stone to get it out. But does this refer 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:36.400 to a real physical thing in any way, and does 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.720 the act of cutting for it represent a surgical procedure 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:43.880 that really took place. Yeah, It's an interesting, uh mystery 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:48.600 to consider because ultimately have like three possibilities here. One 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.800 is that yes, there's something going on here to some 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:56.439 physical malady in the head that is being removed. Okay. 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.800 Another possibility is that this is all a charlatan's game, right, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.920 It that that a quack is coming along and saying, oh, 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:05.480 you have a problem, Well, I can take care of that. 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:07.880 I can remove the source of it. It's like cranial 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.160 psychic surgery, you know. The psychic surgeon would kind of 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.680 scoop on your stomach for a minute and then sneak 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:15.880 some chicken guts into his hand and pretend to be 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.520 pulling things out of your body. Exactly. In this case, 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.200 you'd have somebody cutting at your head and then by 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.800 sleight of hands, sneaking a stone into the hand and saying, well, 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:26.520 look what I pulled out of your brain. You know, 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.080 here's the problem. Yeah, it would be Yeah, in this case, 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.520 it would be precisely psychic surgery. Imagine a lot of 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.319 people have seen this depicted in the movie Man in 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.120 the Moon of the movie about Andy Kaufman, where he 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:40.040 goes and this is performed for him and yeah, and 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:41.839 they would often sometimes it would be chicken ups, but 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.679 other times it would be inorganic objects. And so you're 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:46.800 throw in a little you're throw in a little magic, 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.439 little superstition, and you can easily imagine this scenario in 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.959 which this essentially a medieval witch doctor of Swords of 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.360 Charlottan comes in, Ah, here's the stone. I've removed it, 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:00.480 and now you're well. Yeah. Another option would be that 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.760 there wasn't actually a stone in the head, so there 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:06.240 wasn't a real problem that was being addressed here, and 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.920 it wasn't quackery, but it was just somebody who was 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.120 well meaning thought that there was some kind of thing 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.400 that could be done to the head or something removed 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:17.959 from the head to actually cure people, and it just 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:20.360 didn't work. You know, they were wrong, but they were 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.600 well meaning. So that's what we're gonna explore in today's episode. 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.400 We're gonna be talking a little bit about the medieval surgery. 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.840 We're gonna be talking about trep nation. Uh. We're gonna 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.360 be talking about, oh, the removal of actual stones from 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:37.640 the body, uh, particularly in the Middle Ages. And we'll 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.199 get back around to what what experts think this painting 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.040 uh and and this really, this this artistic tradition is 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.160 really saying. Well, I think first we should take a 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.440 look at the general atmosphere of surgery in the Middle 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.120 Ages and then bridging into the early Modern period. Here. 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.720 One of the things that I think about about when 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:00.400 we think back on medieval medicine is that it easy 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.480 for us to look back and make fun of people 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.439 in the Middle Ages for believing and ridiculous cures. You know, like, oh, 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:10.240 you've got migraines, you need to look at an ugly 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.120 baby for thirteen minutes and then sprinkle some ground up 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.439 bore tusk in your eye. I mean, we all know 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:18.959 that's not gonna work. It seems ridiculous to us, like, 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.040 how did people fall for that? They must have been 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.360 so stupid. But I'm not sure that's the case, because 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:29.120 considering the known alternatives at the time, this superstitious kind 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:33.000 of try anything approach starts to make more sense. In 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:36.439 the Middle Ages, if you were smart, the known alternatives, 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:42.800 especially surgery, were often a last resort, and especially surgery, Yeah, 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.920 to open up the body, particularly the body, Kennedy was 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.520 what was a very dangerous proposition. Yeah, so you may 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.640 have heard about this term barber surgeon, right, you've probably 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:57.920 heard the story that you know, why why did barber 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.680 poles have this spinning it and white kind of twirl 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.520 on them? Is it because they love candy canes and Christmas? 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.040 Or is it is it just an accident? Well, no, 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:09.839 you know that the fact you probably heard about that 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.760 is that that came from you know, blood letting, essentially 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:14.400 saying this is a place where you can get your 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:18.000 blood let So what While the scientific ignorance of people 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:20.440 in in medieval Europe is sometimes I think a little 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.319 bit overstated, like sometimes we underestimate just how smart people 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.960 in the past were about things, Medieval surgery was still 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:32.079 probably about as scary as you're imagining. One of the 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.240 things about the time is that academic physicians, the people 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.520 who really studied the body, the closest equivalent to what 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:40.959 we would think of as doctors today. These would be 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.719 the learned individuals who had some degree of access to 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.800 medical texts. Yeah, they studied in universities, they knew what 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.240 was up. They may have done dissections and stuff like that, 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.760 but much of the actual cutting in surgery was not 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:59.679 done by these people. So you had your experts who 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.360 were of the physicians, and then separately you had these 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.559 barber surgeons or these traveling surgeons who were more just 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.679 kind of like uh, skilled people who you know, they 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:12.640 have a skill they can apply So I can cut hair, 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:17.640 I can cut stones out, I can hear cataracts. In 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.480 many cases, the authors who wrote surgical treatises of the 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.560 time admitted that they had never performed the operations they 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:28.360 were describing. And in a way it kind of makes 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.439 sense because you know, old barber cuts your hair or 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:33.960 shaves your head if you're a monk and they shave 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:37.920 your beard, so they've got the razor. Why not apply 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:40.760 the razor to other things that need cutting, Like maybe 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.599 if they need to extract some bone fragments from a 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.400 club strike, crush wound, or if they need to do 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.200 some blood letting, which truly was very common at the time. Yeah. 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:53.040 And plus I would imagine their status is always is 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.520 already one in which they have close contact to the 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.920 bodies of others. Uh, whereas I could I could imagine 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.520 at being less the case for you know, learned individual. Yeah. 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:07.800 And there's even a line in the Hippocratic oath, you know, 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:13.800 the Hippocratic oaths from Hippocrates, the Greek physician. Um, he 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.800 has a part of the Hippocratic Oath that says, and 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.400 this is for doctors, I will not use the knife, 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.560 not even on sufferers from the stone, but will withdraw 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.000 in favor of such men as are engaged in this work. 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.160 So this is you know, doctor saying I'm not going 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:35.800 to do any surgery. Uh. Kind of strange attitude for 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.320 us to consider, but that was the thought of the time. Yeah. 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:44.320 It's hard to imagine the medieval barber surgeon TV show. 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.360 You know, you would have the medical dramas playing out, 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:50.680 but the the individual who has all the theories and 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.360 all the the learning. Uh, they're not actually going to 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:56.920 do any of the cutting that goes to the secondary character. 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:59.560 Now this does still sort of apply today because of 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.720 course we still have medical specializations. You have somebody who 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.600 is you know, they they focus on maybe family medicine 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.880 versus somebody who's a neurosurgeon. Obviously they wouldn't try to 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:13.560 do each other's job, you know that they have medical specialization. 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.280 So that still carries through to today to some extent, 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:22.520 but we're not in this case letting barbers do the neurosurgery. Now, 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:26.120 why was surgery so dangerous in the Middle Ages and 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.040 so just so generally awful. Well, one of the things 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:34.440 that medieval surgeons did not have is sterile equipment or 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.840 even knowledge of the need for antiseptic surgical methods uh like. 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:40.840 For example, there was a common belief at the time 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.520 that pus was just an important part of the healing process, 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:49.480 and that there were a few medieval surgeons who who 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:52.920 tried things like washing wounds with wine. But it really 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.120 wasn't until following Joseph Lister in the eighteen sixties that 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.520 antiseptic surgery started to catch on everywhere and become the 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.560 new norm. So you might have had a few people 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:04.680 who got the right idea early on, but it was 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:09.520 not widespread practice to practice antiseptic surgery. So then this 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.200 is one of the reasons. There's the primary reason why 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:16.840 any opening of the body, any surgical opening, is almost 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:21.840 invariably going to become infected because of the lack of sterility. Yeah. Yeah, 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.480 putting dirty things deep inside your body, it's not good 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.000 for you, like a like a grubby hand reaching in 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.760 to pull a stone if you're lower active. Who may 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.320 have just been handling chicken guts while you know, I mean, 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:36.920 who knows, or collecting dead rats for the town's local 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:42.520 bounty anyway, So there's that they also did not have 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:47.760 effective anesthesia and pain control. And this, I mean, you 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.440 can imagine in your head exactly what the problem is, 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:53.400 but maybe you're not imagining the extent to which this 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.320 is a problem. It's not just that it hurts for 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:01.640 the patient. It's difficult to perform internal surgery, even on 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:06.240 a very willing participant if they're awake. Yeah, if any 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.159 of you have ever, um, it's even difficult I think 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:11.320 for a lot of us to understand because there's a 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:13.560 level of pain we're talking about here that a lot 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.000 of people have not experienced. And even if you undergo 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.880 surgical procedures thanks to anesthesia, you don't have to experience them. 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:24.240 But I remember the one time I tried to perform 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.680 a self surgery of a sort. Um. I had a 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.760 tonenail issue which I which I tried to um, uh 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:36.440 like an ingrown issue stemming from a injury. Uh. I 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.040 tried to correct it myself. Uh, and it was just 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.399 like a butter knife and some hemp rope no, you 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.360 know I had. And it wasn't, you know, quite surgery 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.320 by any means. But um, I tried to to take 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:52.440 care of the situation using tweezers, you know, and clippers, 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.600 and the pain was just like blinding like that where 0:17:57.119 --> 0:17:59.080 there were flashes of my eyes. And then I was, okay, 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:03.000 I need to actually go to professional about this. But 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:07.879 but imagine that extrapolated to not even self surgery, but 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.399 yet surgery on on on any individual where high levels 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:13.280 of pain are just going to be the norm. You're 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.399 gonna have to strap the individual down or have to 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.640 ruffians bring them to a wall or to a bed. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:21.720 You've got to hire some thugs to help you with 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:26.200 your surgery. Yeah, And so there there were some potions 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:28.159 and stuff at the time. I mean, obviously people were 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:30.720 aware of some types of drugs, but the point was 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:36.440 that they didn't have controllable anesthesia, so they could maybe 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:39.679 give you some hemlock or you know, these these crazy 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.719 potions that were just as likely to kill you as 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:44.959 they were to put you under. So so they might 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:46.879 have had that in some scenarios, or they might have 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.280 just tried to do it with you awake because they knew, 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:51.320 you know, it looks like people die a lot of 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:54.399 times when we and that's the ties them. So this 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:59.520 was a problem. Medieval surgery just generally bad. Common procedures 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.520 that were aracticed by medieval surgeons. Blood letting that that's 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.440 a big one. At the time, they believed in the 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.760 you know, humorism, like the idea that there were these 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.040 four humors in the body that could get out of 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:13.520 balance and you could fix some things by letting extra 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.320 blood out. A big thing at the time was the 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:19.520 treatment of battlefield wounds, such as the removal of arrows, 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.840 and so at the time, surgery was much much more 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.320 often external. From what we know at least, there's actually 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.200 sort of a dearth of information about what surgeons in 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:34.000 in medieval Europe we're doing. We don't have quite as 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.240 much information on this as we would like to have, 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.040 but from the records we do have, it seems surgery 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.320 was very often externals, such as the treatment of a 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.440 surface wound or other problems near the outside of the body, 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.640 and for all the reasons we've already stated, internal surgery, 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.880 going deep inside the body for anything was dangerous and rare, 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:57.520 though it did happen for some extremely problematic things such 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:02.640 as bladder stones. And we will definitely get back to stones, 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:07.720 the bodies, the bodies lithos in uh in a bit here, 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.000 but I think we should first turn our attention back 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.440 thinking back on on the Bosch painting and the ones 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.080 that followed it to the head. That's right, yeah, because 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:17.760 essentially what's going on here appears to be going on 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:21.200 here is that they are uh, they're performing what we 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:27.080 now call craniotomy, but what has been historically known as 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:31.040 trep nation or trepanning, in which and this is just 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:34.119 basically the opening of the skull and creating of a 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:38.160 of a hole in the skull. Now we find evidence 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.600 of trepinnation going back to well well before the Middle 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:44.680 Ages in Europe. I mean it goes back to prehistoric times, 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:46.840 oh yeah, thousands of years. You see accounts of it 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:50.359 among the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Romans, 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:54.960 the Greeks, early meso American civilizations. Uh there there, that's there. 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:56.880 There are a lot of a lot of interesting work 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:59.440 has come out of South America and I believe also 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.400 in and Papua New Guinea as well. But we've even 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:07.200 found neolithic remains, human remains that had skulls that it 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:11.959 had clearly had the operation performed on them and survived. Right, 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.439 there's a hole in the skull and it has been 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:17.640 smoothed over where the person didn't die from this surgery, 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.120 at least not at least not for a long time. Yeah, 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.560 And so it's it's often been an archaeological uh mystery 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:26.440 that individuals have have looked into. You know what, what's 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:28.479 going on with this skull? Is this the wounded? Did 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:30.920 this was this didal just you know, clugged with something 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:33.840 or was there some sort of a surgical procedure And 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:37.040 if there was a surgical surgical procedure, why did they 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.880 carry it out? Was it both? Was it just purely magical? 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:42.440 Were they trying to let a demon or spirit out 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:45.920 of the head, or were they trying to deal with 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:53.280 a cranial and brain injuries. Because today clinical trepidation remains 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:59.200 a treatment for epidural and subdural hematomas. But and plus 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:01.800 it gives us a base surgical entry point to the 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.040 brain itself. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you've heard about 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.119 trepidation before, you think about, Okay, that's just a crazy 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:09.280 you know, why would somebody drill a hole in the skull. 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:11.520 It's just because they thought there were demons, you know, 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.520 But there are real medical reasons, as you're saying. And 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:19.159 I guess we don't know what the ancients knew, you know, 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.679 it's hard to say whether in some cases they may 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:26.359 have been doing it just for superstitious reasons or they 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:31.400 had some kind of medical prompting that was legitimate. Yeah, 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:35.480 and you get into, uh, you know, an argument back 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:37.520 and forth over that too, because to a certain extent, 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:39.960 um archaeologists in the past have looked at some of 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.000