Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're
Speaker 1: back with the fourth and final part of our series
Speaker 1: on the healing waters, the belief held by many throughout
Speaker 1: history that you could cure your illnesses and improve your
Speaker 1: health by bathing or immersing yourself in water, often water
Speaker 1: with special properties, maybe water of a certain temperature like
Speaker 1: hot baths or cold baths, or water from a special
Speaker 1: source such as a particular warm mineral spring. Now. In
Speaker 1: previous episodes, as a brief refresher, we talked about the
Speaker 1: prehistoric emergence of bathing culture and the ancient religious associations
Speaker 1: between bathing and spiritual purity in the realm of healing.
Speaker 1: We talked about ancient Greek and Roman theories of medicine,
Speaker 1: such as humoral theory, which sometimes had the consequence of
Speaker 1: recommending bathing as a cure for all sorts of health problems,
Speaker 1: and we also talked about the importance of baths and
Speaker 1: spas in the culture and civic infrastructure of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: We discussed some interesting and strange examples of spas with
Speaker 1: alleged healing powers that contain living organisms such as bloodworms
Speaker 1: or fish, that are themselves thought to in some way
Speaker 1: be a mechanism of healing. And in the episode just
Speaker 1: previous to this one, we discussed an I thought fascinating
Speaker 1: medical history paper from a few decades back, analyzing records
Speaker 1: of treatment that made use of the thermal waters of Bath, England,
Speaker 1: and this paper argued that while yeah, most of the
Speaker 1: conditions people thought could be cured by bathing in hot
Speaker 1: springs throughout history, we're probably just benefiting from the placebo effect.
Speaker 1: There is pretty decent evidence for thinking that the immersion
Speaker 1: treatments at Bath were genuinely directly effective at curing paralysis
Speaker 1: caused by chronic lead poisoning, because, according to the author,
Speaker 1: sitting up to your neck in warm water increases the
Speaker 1: rate in which your body purges lead content through urine. Anyway,
Speaker 1: after all that, we're back today to finish off this
Speaker 1: series with a few more interesting tidbits. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the things I did want to briefly talk about is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the mineral springs with alleged healing
Speaker 1: powers that we've mentioned so far have been in places
Speaker 1: that were formerly part of the Roman Empire, and I
Speaker 1: think this should not be surprising, given the importance of
Speaker 1: bathing in Roman culture in general, but especially in the
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman theories of medicine we discussed in the
Speaker 1: previous parts of the series, and in fact you can
Speaker 1: still see like the lingering effects of this. There are
Speaker 1: alleged healing spas all throughout Europe that go way way
Speaker 1: back that can be traced back to Roman times. But
Speaker 1: I don't think we should assume that the association of
Speaker 1: some forms of bathing with healing is just like an odd,
Speaker 1: unique belief contingent on some amount of Roman cultural heritage,
Speaker 1: because I think it seems that people in many places
Speaker 1: around the world, at various times have come to think
Speaker 1: that they can be healed by bathing, by bathing in general,
Speaker 1: or through the specific waters of some particular mineral spring.
Speaker 1: And so you can find examples of this from around
Speaker 1: the world. There was one that I ended up doing
Speaker 1: kind of a deep dive on. I was reading about
Speaker 1: the Kittagada Hot Springs of Uganda. So the Kittagada Hot
Speaker 1: Springs are they're a system of geothermal springs in southwest Uganda.
Speaker 1: I've seen the name Kittigada translated as both warm water
Speaker 1: and as warm place or good place. And there's a
Speaker 1: town of the same name located about two kilometers northwest
Speaker 1: of the springs. And these waters are said to collect
Speaker 1: in two side by side pools, and they are believed
Speaker 1: by many to have healing properties, so much so that
Speaker 1: they are or at least they were, as of the
Speaker 1: sources I was reading, which were some Uganda newspaper articles
Speaker 1: from roughly ten years ago or so. At that time,
Speaker 1: they were being visited by hundreds of people every day,
Speaker 1: both locals and tourists, tourists from within Uganda and tourists internationally.
Speaker 1: And I was reading about the springs in a series
Speaker 1: of articles from a Ugandan English language newspaper called New Vision,
Speaker 1: which is based out of Kampala. So one of the
Speaker 1: articles is called the Healing Hot Springs. It was published
Speaker 1: in February twenty fourteen by Chris Mugasha. And in this
Speaker 1: article the author actually describes a visit he had to
Speaker 1: the springs and describes some basic facts about them and
Speaker 1: sort of how they're used by the people. So Rabbi
Speaker 1: attached some pictures of the Kitagada Springs. You can see
Speaker 1: that they are surrounded by some very interesting rock formations.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what sort of geology forms the
Speaker 1: rocks like this, but you can see that all around
Speaker 1: the pools there are these strange, beautiful, interesting kind of
Speaker 1: like crags poking up in all directions. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this sense of the rocks being burst out by swelling
Speaker 1: from beneath. Yeah. So, according to Mugosha's article here, the
Speaker 1: springs are divided into a section that's used by men,
Speaker 1: and then a section used by women and children. And
Speaker 1: then also there are some people who don't actually want
Speaker 1: to stay in bathe in person with everybody else, and
Speaker 1: he says they bring jerry cans and fill them up
Speaker 1: with hot spring water to carry back home. And the
Speaker 1: thermal pools also vary by temperature. There's one area that
Speaker 1: apparently as comfortably warm water, while the other has water
Speaker 1: that the author describes as hot enough to prepare porridge
Speaker 1: or cook an egg. Yeah. This is a feature of
Speaker 1: various hot springs that I was reading about. You know,
Speaker 1: just because it's a hot spring, does I mean you
Speaker 1: can or should get into it. There are some very
Speaker 1: dangerous hot springs out there in the world, and you
Speaker 1: should definitely obey any signage or rules and regulations surrounding them.
Speaker 1: But then there are also plenty of complexes where if
Speaker 1: you know the right place to go in a spring complex,
Speaker 1: then you'll be all right because that's where the water
Speaker 1: will be warm and not hot enough to cook eggs. Right.
Speaker 1: And it seemed from what I was reading that the
Speaker 1: area with water hot enough to cook an egg may
Speaker 1: still be used for some things. But I doubt people
Speaker 1: are like getting in that water and hanging out there
Speaker 1: for a long time because you don't want to be
Speaker 1: the egg. So this is this topic. This is not
Speaker 1: something I research, but this might be something we might
Speaker 1: have to put a pin in to come back to
Speaker 1: in discussing like the history of cooking, you know, because
Speaker 1: we've talked about the importance of natural springs, both hot
Speaker 1: and cold, to ancient peoples. I wonder how this factors
Speaker 1: or doesn't factor into the history of boiling as a
Speaker 1: cooking method. I have no idea, but that is an
Speaker 1: interesting question. Yeah, maybe before we had fire, did anybody
Speaker 1: ever try to like boil their food in a hot spring.
Speaker 1: I don't know what evidence of that there would be
Speaker 1: left over if they did. Yeah, that would be the
Speaker 1: thing right anyway. So the author here says that people
Speaker 1: visit the springs for multiple reasons. So some people it
Speaker 1: seems to be just recreational. People come for pleasure and
Speaker 1: relaxation and the hot waters. Maybe they come after work
Speaker 1: to chill out, or they come to admire the area's
Speaker 1: natural beauty. But he says that the majority of people
Speaker 1: there are looking for healing of some kind. And an
Speaker 1: earlier article in the same newspaper I read in New Vision.
Speaker 1: This article was by Ali Wasaswa from August twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: mentions people coming to the springs hoping for cures to
Speaker 1: a wide range of health issues, both minor and severe.
Speaker 1: So this includes everything from acne to cancer. And while
Speaker 1: many people claim to have experienced improvements after bathing in
Speaker 1: the water, was was article sites some doubts about the
Speaker 1: efficacy of these cures from a researcher named Moses Kakaya
Speaker 1: who was affiliated with an organization called Save for Health
Speaker 1: Uganda that appears to be a Ugandan public health in
Speaker 1: geo and the article says that this team investigated the
Speaker 1: springs and said they found the waters had no special
Speaker 1: healing properties. Mugosha's article mentions that to the extent the
Speaker 1: waters do have any healing properties. If they do, those
Speaker 1: could possibly be based in specific mineral contents of the water.
Speaker 1: We've discussed some possibilities of those kinds with other springs,
Speaker 1: but also that the claims of healing could simply be
Speaker 1: from the heat of the water, feeling good, alleviating pain
Speaker 1: and swollen joints and things like that, or just from
Speaker 1: easing stress, you know, helping people relax and other quote
Speaker 1: psychotherapeutic effects. Now, this article and another article also by
Speaker 1: Mugasha from the month before mentioned threats to the springs,
Speaker 1: which is something I think we haven't really thought about
Speaker 1: that much yet, but that hot springs are not necessarily
Speaker 1: an eternal phenomenon, or even a semi eternal phenomenon, because
Speaker 1: even though they are heated by you know, the rocks
Speaker 1: from deep down below they you know, they still are
Speaker 1: subject to hydrodynamic effects and so like changes of what's
Speaker 1: going on where water drains, where water goes can affect
Speaker 1: how a hot spring works. And so these two articles
Speaker 1: mentioned some threats to the springs. So the article from
Speaker 1: a month before by the same author reports complaints from
Speaker 1: locals that construction from a nearby highway has had negative
Speaker 1: effects on the springs. Basically, it seems that they're claiming
Speaker 1: water from a nearby wetland system was diverted because of
Speaker 1: roadwork and this has led to flooding of the spring.
Speaker 1: And of course, flooding of the spring is like mixing
Speaker 1: water from other sources, which causes the water to become tepid.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to travel to a tepid spring. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the later article by Mgosha also mentions changes in weather
Speaker 1: patterns suit a climate change possibly having an effect, because
Speaker 1: changing rain patterns mean that the increased flooding of the
Speaker 1: nearby river also means that it runs over into the
Speaker 1: spring and this results, I think, if I'm understanding right
Speaker 1: once again with the river water coming into the spring
Speaker 1: water and you know, kind of like diluting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely to your point. I mean, these springs like this
Speaker 1: are environmental conditions and they can be altered either intentionally
Speaker 1: or accidentally exactly. And so this article describes people who
Speaker 1: were local people who are trying to protect the spring
Speaker 1: having to like stack up essentially sort of sandbags like
Speaker 1: bags of gravel to try to block the flow, the
Speaker 1: inflow of water from other sources into the spring. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Now I was trying to find a scientific paper directly
Speaker 1: testing the leedged healing properties of this spring in particular
Speaker 1: because again, you know, one of the articles mentions an
Speaker 1: investigation by that Ugandan Public Health NGEO about its medical properties.
Speaker 1: I didn't come across anything, so I can't comment with
Speaker 1: any confidence about whether these springs would have any health
Speaker 1: effects other than placebo. But especially since that paper we
Speaker 1: read in the last episode arguing that that spot therapy
Speaker 1: could have actual effects on chronic lead poisoning in particular,
Speaker 1: and again that was the argument, was that it worked
Speaker 1: by increasing the rate at which lad is purge from
Speaker 1: the body through urine. I wonder, you know, I wonder
Speaker 1: if there are other conditions where people might be getting
Speaker 1: some health improvements through a surprising mechanism other than just maybe, say,
Speaker 1: you know, the very real effects of relaxing in nice
Speaker 1: warm water. Yeah, you always have to at least keep
Speaker 1: keep the door open to such a possibility, even if
Speaker 1: in many cases it seems perhaps unlikely based on what
Speaker 1: we understand currently. Now, as long as we're speaking about
Speaker 1: you know, other international examples of healing waters. I felt
Speaker 1: like we should at least acknowledge that the River Ganges
Speaker 1: in India and Bangladesh has long been held as a
Speaker 1: traditional place of healing via immersion. Again, not a natural
Speaker 1: you know, spring, hot spring and cold spring, etc. But
Speaker 1: but a great river. Yeah, this is actually a subtopic
Speaker 1: that I became very interested in when we first started
Speaker 1: looking at the series, But then I got kind of
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and I was like, Oh, it seems like the
Speaker 1: Ganges would have to be an entire series on its own. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: there's just so much to it. You've you've got glacier
Speaker 1: snow and perma frost melt. You've got discussions of supposedly
Speaker 1: beneficial bacteria, phages, antibiotic resistant bacteria that are that are
Speaker 1: not beneficial. Then you have you have to deal with
Speaker 1: topics such as pollution as well as all of this
Speaker 1: on top of a rich tradition of religious significance. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's something we'd have to come back
Speaker 1: to and cover in more depth in the future. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we didn't want to give the
Speaker 1: impression that we were just overlooking it. Right now, another
Speaker 1: example of spring and spa culture. I wanted to bring
Speaker 1: up just briefly, is, of course Japan. Japan has a
Speaker 1: very rich tradition of spas and thermal springs, and I
Speaker 1: believe we previously alluded to the Japanese macaques who famously
Speaker 1: immersed themselves in hot springs and also do so communally.
Speaker 1: So that's a great example of non human primates engaging
Speaker 1: in this very activity that humans have enjoyed for so long.
Speaker 1: So I've read that they're somewhere in the neighborhood of
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand hot spring sources or on sin throughout Japan.
Speaker 1: I got an email recently about a tour of hot
Speaker 1: springs in Japan eighteen days long. Looked amazing, but just
Speaker 1: you know, it basically shows that, yeah, you can travel
Speaker 1: to Japan and largely just do hot springs and it'll
Speaker 1: be enough to fill eighteen days worth of travel. Now,
Speaker 1: one in particular that I thought was pretty interesting, and
Speaker 1: I have to I have to stress this is not
Speaker 1: actually an example of a spring system where you can
Speaker 1: do much or really any bathing. But it's called Chinoki Jigokku,
Speaker 1: and it's in Beppoo, Japan, and here you'll find the
Speaker 1: eight hells of Beppoo. I think I've sometimes seen the
Speaker 1: count of seven, but I believe eight is the right count.
Speaker 1: There's and these are translated, of course from the Japanese.
Speaker 1: There's sea hell, white pond Hell, devil mountain Hell, mountain Hell,
Speaker 1: alligator Hell, cooking pot hell, which this is actually the
Speaker 1: case cooking pot hell. These are all thermal springs, and
Speaker 1: as the name implies, many of them are really hot.
Speaker 1: Cooking pot hell is where you can actually cook food,
Speaker 1: and there there's a long standing tradition of cooking food
Speaker 1: in this particular thermal spring. There's tornado Hell, and then
Speaker 1: there is blood pond Hell or bloody hell pond. Is
Speaker 1: it red? It is very red. Yeah, you can look
Speaker 1: up pictures of this. It's it's all. It's too hot
Speaker 1: to get into it. It's basically hot enough to cook
Speaker 1: food in itself. It has a deep red color that
Speaker 1: I believe is due to both like clay content and
Speaker 1: iron oxide. I would have assumed red bacteria. All of
Speaker 1: these hells, all these ponds, these are tourist destinations. You
Speaker 1: can go and visit them, and I think they have
Speaker 1: if I'm understanding correctly from the information I was looking
Speaker 1: at they have smaller pools for like soaking your feet
Speaker 1: in as a visitor. So even though you can't stick
Speaker 1: your feet directly into many of these hells, and I
Speaker 1: think Alligator hell As actually has alligators in it, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to stick your feet in there either,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, they do have some smaller pools
Speaker 1: that I guess are fed or partially fed by the
Speaker 1: actual spring waters that you can get your feet wet in.
Speaker 1: I had no idea there were alligators in Japan. They
Speaker 1: might be imported. I'm not sure what their their status is.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, they're definitely alligators here, no matter where they
Speaker 1: came from. I don't care where your alligators come from.
Speaker 1: I just want them to be alligators. They've got to
Speaker 1: be alligators in Alligator hell Yes, the end to the end.
Speaker 1: I believe they come through on that front. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get back into the healing waters, though, away from
Speaker 1: the alligator waters and the egg boiling waters. So we've
Speaker 1: we've already talked a bit in these episodes about traditional
Speaker 1: healing waters potentially having something specific in them, something in
Speaker 1: the contents of the waters that enable healing in human bathers,
Speaker 1: and in some cases these springs end up having something
Speaker 1: in them that some cases where a particular element in
Speaker 1: the water is also utilized in modern medical treatments one
Speaker 1: way or the other. So it's tempting to wonder, well,
Speaker 1: if these springs maybe offer the same benefits for those
Speaker 1: who simply immerse themselves in the water or drink of
Speaker 1: the waters. Okay, so not that this would happen, but
Speaker 1: for example, it would be like, you know, a set
Speaker 1: of menifin is the is the active ingredient in tile
Speaker 1: and all, and then maybe we discover, oh, there is
Speaker 1: a spring that naturally has a seed a minifen content
Speaker 1: in it, and you wonder if we're people like getting
Speaker 1: their their pre tile and all tile and all from
Speaker 1: this spring. Oh, well, that would that would be a
Speaker 1: bad idea for a number of obvious reasons there, thinking
Speaker 1: about you know, controlled dosages of something in a general
Speaker 1: medication versus how much are you getting out of the water,
Speaker 1: how much are you if you're drinking it or potentially
Speaker 1: absorbing it through your skin. Yes, calibration of dosage would
Speaker 1: would seem to be a big problem with this, so
Speaker 1: so definitely something to keep in mind as we go
Speaker 1: into a couple of specific examples, and I think both
Speaker 1: pretty fun specific examples too, in that they both have
Speaker 1: connections to our home state of Georgia. Here in the
Speaker 1: United States, we don't often get to cover things that
Speaker 1: are that are present in Georgia or Georgia history. So
Speaker 1: we're going to start with lithia water. This is mineral
Speaker 1: water marked by the presence of lithium salts. Now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, most of what we're talking about with lithia
Speaker 1: water concerns its consumption, though I have read that Sweetwater
Speaker 1: Park Hotel this is a luxury resort which operated in
Speaker 1: Lithia Springs, Georgia during the heyday of lithium water tourism
Speaker 1: in Georgia's Douglas County also offered lithia vapor baths, which
Speaker 1: were said to be very popular. I included an old
Speaker 1: illustration of what this, I guess may have consisted for
Speaker 1: you here, Joe. Okay, So what we're looking at here
Speaker 1: appear to be wooden boxes in which men are situated
Speaker 1: with their heads poking out of a hole in a
Speaker 1: wooden plank, so it's like they're in a pillory. But
Speaker 1: there well, I guess without the wrists poking out so
Speaker 1: it's just the head poking out of the pillory and
Speaker 1: then there is steam shooting out of the edges of
Speaker 1: the box, so you can you can tell it must
Speaker 1: be quite warm and moist on the inside. Yes, now
Speaker 1: none of this is going on today, But um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Do you ever make it up to Sweetwater
Speaker 1: Creek State Park, Joe, this is the same Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great place. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful place. But back
Speaker 1: in the day, uh, back at the like the the
Speaker 1: the end of the eighteen hundreds beginning of the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: this was a very popular destination for well to do
Speaker 1: folks such as the Vanderbilts such as Mark Twain. This
Speaker 1: particular Sweetwater Park Hotel was again luxury resort. People came
Speaker 1: from all over to partake of the of the healing
Speaker 1: powers of Lithia waters. The hotel burned down in nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's not even there is an historical
Speaker 1: location anymore. This is funny that you mentioned Mark Twain
Speaker 1: because he also came up in a in a research
Speaker 1: tangent that I ended up not including. But he he
Speaker 1: wrote a piece about a place like a spa. He
Speaker 1: went to somewhere in Europe. I think it was in France,
Speaker 1: and it's called I don't even know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: the name of this place. The name it was called
Speaker 1: ai X. Do you know how you say that? I
Speaker 1: do not. Let's call it I. He went to he
Speaker 1: went to I in I think it's France, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a piece about it called I Paradise of the
Speaker 1: Room Attics. So I guess Twain was into various kinds
Speaker 1: of like hot wet healing. Yeah. Well, and he was,
Speaker 1: he was very well traveled for the day. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit more about this, uh,
Speaker 1: this whole fad around lithia waters, and I was reading
Speaker 1: a paper titled Lithium Treatment in Clinical Medicine History, Current
Speaker 1: Status in Future Use, published in the Journal of Sell
Speaker 1: Science and Therapy in twenty seventeen by Duval and Galachio.
Speaker 1: And this was interesting point that lithia water became a
Speaker 1: health fad around eighteen fifty and was especially big and
Speaker 1: again the late eighteen hundreds. In early nineteen hundreds, it
Speaker 1: was thought to treat gout, anxiety, various nervous conditions, and
Speaker 1: a whole slew of other ailments. So similar situation that
Speaker 1: we found, you know, discussing any of these hate healing waters,
Speaker 1: what does it treat well? What you got going on? Right,
Speaker 1: A lot of things. So it's interesting they mentioned gout
Speaker 1: because that did come up in the paper about Bath,
Speaker 1: specifically as one of the lead poisoning associated conditions that
Speaker 1: the physicians at Bath thought could be cured by long
Speaker 1: periods of immersion. But another thing about gout at Bath
Speaker 1: was one of the purposes of like recording all this
Speaker 1: data at the charity hospital there to say, you know,
Speaker 1: we really can prove that these waters are providing a benefit,
Speaker 1: was to try to attract rich patients who had gout. Well.
Speaker 1: It is often referred to as the disease of kings, right,
Speaker 1: disease of the upper class clientele. Yeah. Now, the author's
Speaker 1: note here that though even though there was you know,
Speaker 1: this boom in lithia water and the healing powers of lithium,
Speaker 1: the authors know that there was almost no mention of
Speaker 1: lithium in psychiatry papers of the time. So bottling lithia
Speaker 1: waters became big business, but it took a serious dive
Speaker 1: in the US when the US government got involved. So
Speaker 1: the US Bureau of Chemistry this was a precursor to
Speaker 1: the FDA. They examined the waters on the market and
Speaker 1: the lithia waters and there and there was lithia waters
Speaker 1: coming from lithia springs in Georgia but also from other places.
Speaker 1: And they they tested these waters out and they found
Speaker 1: that they contained little to know lithium, and it was
Speaker 1: concluded that whatever results people were experiencing were mainly due
Speaker 1: to just drinking water. Oh that's interesting and yeah, which
Speaker 1: kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: like earlier in the last episode, Like even if the
Speaker 1: treatment itself was doing nothing else, then perhaps you're drinking
Speaker 1: more water than usual, you're drinking less beer or what
Speaker 1: have you. Yeah. Yeah, So when this happened, when the
Speaker 1: US Bureau Chemistry chimed in well lithium proponents, they pivoted
Speaker 1: more to the use of lithium tablets, which the authors
Speaker 1: here point out could be properly measured, you know, you
Speaker 1: could be a little more certain about how much lithium
Speaker 1: you're giving people. But then there was kind of like
Speaker 1: a power creep with the lithium tablets. The concentrations increased
Speaker 1: and the dangers of lithium toxicity became more apparent, all
Speaker 1: while the actual therapeutic properties of lithium consumption seemed just unverifiable,
Speaker 1: So therapeutic use of lithium eventually just went out of fashion.
Speaker 1: I found a couple of the original scathing reviews of
Speaker 1: lithiu water from the time period collected in the Checkered
Speaker 1: History of Lithium in Medicine by Stroebush and Jefferson in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties Pharmacy in History, Volume twenty two, number two.
Speaker 1: Let's hear these reviews. Oh yeah, they're good, so the
Speaker 1: US Bureau of Chemistry said at the time, in a
Speaker 1: review by Charles Harrington, MD. Quote, this water claims to
Speaker 1: be a cure for almost all ills to which flesh
Speaker 1: is air and to contain over fourteen grains of lithium
Speaker 1: salts per gallon. It proves to be an exceedingly hard water,
Speaker 1: practically free from organic matter, absolutely free from lithia, but
Speaker 1: rich and undesirable lime salts priceless. Yeah, it really brings
Speaker 1: the hammer down. And then there's another case. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court of the District of Columbia had this to say
Speaker 1: concerning waters from Buffalo Lithia Springs, Virginia. At the time quote,
Speaker 1: for a person to obtain a therapeutic dose of lithium
Speaker 1: by drinking Buffalo lithia water, he would have to drink
Speaker 1: from one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand gallons of water per day. It was
Speaker 1: further testified without contradiction that Potomac River water contains five
Speaker 1: times as much lithium per gallon as the water controversy.
Speaker 1: Oh amazing. So, like, the one thing you can be
Speaker 1: sure about with lithium water is that it doesn't really
Speaker 1: have any lithium. Yeah, yeah, I again, these were this
Speaker 1: is these were the findings at the time. Now, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you mentioned lithium went out of fashion as
Speaker 1: a as a health treatment or a mood treatment, because
Speaker 1: while I'm certainly not on the cutting edge of a psychopharmacology,
Speaker 1: I do believe that lithium has been used in the
Speaker 1: modern era as a as a psychiatric treatment, hasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah Yeah, And that's the thing that I guess can
Speaker 1: for us, like retroactively, can be kind of confusing about
Speaker 1: all this because because lithium does become an important treatment,
Speaker 1: specifically for bipolar disorder, this wasn't discovered until nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: That's when American psychiatrist John Kade discovered that it could
Speaker 1: be used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder as
Speaker 1: opposed to resorting to lobotomy or electro convulsive therapy were
Speaker 1: kind of the standards of the day. So that was
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine. The treatment became more prominent and more
Speaker 1: covered by I believe nineteen fifty two, and it was
Speaker 1: approved by the FDA in the nineteen seventies. And I've
Speaker 1: read that it remains an effective treatment, though the authors
Speaker 1: of this particular paper about the history of lithium as
Speaker 1: a treatment, they point out that it still remains in
Speaker 1: some circles somewhat controversial due to toxicity and side effects. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's I guess with it's a similar case
Speaker 1: with a lot of medications. You know, it's like there's
Speaker 1: it has a definite usage, but you also have to
Speaker 1: be aware of the potential side effects to it, and
Speaker 1: some discussion still remains. Yeah, So to come back to
Speaker 1: wondering if lithia water springs could have offered relief to
Speaker 1: individuals suffering from specific neurological maladies, I don't know again,
Speaker 1: I you know, no expert on any of this, but
Speaker 1: it seems iffy based on what we've looked at, mainly
Speaker 1: because of concentration issues with the water itself and the
Speaker 1: risk of toxicity and side effects if higher quantities were
Speaker 1: obtained from the water, which it doesn't seem like is
Speaker 1: necessarily the case with any of these naturally occurring lithia
Speaker 1: spring waters. I mean, it seems like from what you've
Speaker 1: been talking about that carefully managing dosage of lithium is
Speaker 1: one of the crucial factors in modern prescriptions, and so like,
Speaker 1: if you're just gulping down water that has some questionable
Speaker 1: amount of lithium content, that seems like you're either maybe
Speaker 1: not getting enough for it to make much of a difference,
Speaker 1: or you risk getting too much and that is highly toxic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just I don't think the concentrations in just
Speaker 1: out there in the natural occurring spring waters would be
Speaker 1: high enough to even relically register for you. Now, you
Speaker 1: can still buy and drink lithia waters from from different springs,
Speaker 1: though it's not held up as I think the miracle
Speaker 1: cure at once was. Though I don't know. It kind
Speaker 1: of depends on branding and fads. I guess from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, it contains lithium by the micrograms, though,
Speaker 1: rather than the milligrams which would be involved in therapeutic doses.
Speaker 1: So I think you'd find yourself, even with you know,
Speaker 1: definite lithia water that you might purchase, you'd still have
Speaker 1: to drink those gallons of it, those hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of gallons of it per day to get the levels
Speaker 1: that would reach anything like a therapeutic dosage. Now, on
Speaker 1: this account of concerning lithia spring water, thanks to our
Speaker 1: listener Sean for writing in on this concerning a particular
Speaker 1: Irish well, the well at glenn Nanealt. I've read that
Speaker 1: this area is also called Valley of the Mad and
Speaker 1: made date back to the twelfth century. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the lithium levels are at this well. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find any data on that, but I don't know. Based
Speaker 1: on what we've looked at, I think it's a safe
Speaker 1: bet that it did not contain or does not contain
Speaker 1: therapeutic amounts of lithium, and that the connection here is
Speaker 1: just a coincidence. And also worth noting that lithium springs
Speaker 1: in North America likewise, tend to predate any modern medical
Speaker 1: or scientific understanding, and were utilized by indigenous peoples long
Speaker 1: before the arrival of westerners. Well that's very interesting digression.
Speaker 1: What else have you got for me? Oh well, we
Speaker 1: should also talk about about potentially radioactive spring waters. Nothing
Speaker 1: better for your gout than radioactive spring waters. Yeah, specifically
Speaker 1: radium springs. So Tarifa, We've talked about radium on the
Speaker 1: show before. But radium is a highly radioactive alkaline earth
Speaker 1: metal discovered in eighteen ninety eight by Pierre and Marie Curie.
Speaker 1: They discovered it by noting the radioactivity in pitch blend
Speaker 1: radioactive uranium rich mineral relative to the uranium it actually contains.
Speaker 1: They refine several tons of the stuff of residues down
Speaker 1: to zero point one grams of pure radium by nineteen
Speaker 1: o two, and they isolated radium in nineteen ten. Now,
Speaker 1: radium is important historically, you know, tying into the work
Speaker 1: of the curious here, but its commercial uses have long
Speaker 1: been very limited. So formally it was used in the
Speaker 1: creation of radio luminescent devices, and it was also formally
Speaker 1: used in the medical treatment of cancer, but has largely
Speaker 1: been replaced by stronger and less costly artificial radioisotopes. One
Speaker 1: particular example of the radioluminescent topic here there was a
Speaker 1: luminous paint known as Undark, created by the United States
Speaker 1: Radium Corporation, noted for its connection to the so called
Speaker 1: radium girls factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting
Speaker 1: with the stuff. Yes, and that is a ghastly story
Speaker 1: if you want to go read more about it. The
Speaker 1: luminescent radium paints were used to like maybe illuminate the
Speaker 1: watch hands, you know, the dials on little clocks and
Speaker 1: watches and stuff, and further glow in the dark purposes.
Speaker 1: And it was glowing because the phosphorescent elements in the
Speaker 1: paint were being bombarded by radiation from the radium content.
Speaker 1: So yeah, obviously that was not good for humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at the time this was we have to put
Speaker 1: things in context. In the early twentieth century, there was
Speaker 1: a great deal of radium fever going on, and there
Speaker 1: was also not much in the way of regulation of
Speaker 1: the stuff. So there were more than a few medical
Speaker 1: quacks out there, you know, jumping in to make some
Speaker 1: money off of the radium craze, so you saw products
Speaker 1: like radithor salts for supposed medicinal use, or the radium
Speaker 1: or revigatur This was a radium aligned water vessel for
Speaker 1: your drinking water. But then on the simcount you also
Speaker 1: saw various products that either couldn't or just didn't actually
Speaker 1: put radium into the product, but really wanted a slice
Speaker 1: of the pie, so they included radium in the brand names,
Speaker 1: such as Radium Brand Creamery butter. This is an actual
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties product included the label here for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: with this beautiful image of these these these cattle drinking
Speaker 1: from some sort of a pond or perhaps naturally occurring spring.
Speaker 1: The sun is rising or setting in the background, and
Speaker 1: it says Radium Brand Creamery Butter. Now, can I hope
Speaker 1: that this butter had just as much radium content as
Speaker 1: the bottled lithia water actually had lithium content meaning none? Right? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this apparently had no actual radium in it, but it
Speaker 1: was just getting in on the excitement, like radium equals health,
Speaker 1: and therefore, you know, there was nobody to say you
Speaker 1: couldn't have shouldn't do this, And there are numerous examples
Speaker 1: of this sort of marketing, including the non radioactive radium
Speaker 1: new Tex condoms of the day, but again not actually
Speaker 1: made with radium. Right, And there there are are examples
Speaker 1: of actually radioactive quack products from the twentieth century, including
Speaker 1: the German dor Mud radioactive toothpaste that was made using thorium.
Speaker 1: This was an actual product and you can see some
Speaker 1: alarming looking like poster promotional art for this product as well. Now,
Speaker 1: all of these quackery uses of radium or bad ideas
Speaker 1: because it has no beneficial role in the human body.
Speaker 1: It's radioactive, it's toxic. You don't need to be consuming
Speaker 1: radium salts. Right, There's not like a hidden upside. Right.
Speaker 1: But again, given the enthusiasm for radium during the first
Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century, it should also come as
Speaker 1: no surprise that people were also game to bathe in
Speaker 1: the stuff. So the big one here is not in Georgia.
Speaker 1: It is in what is now the Czech Republic Radium Palace,
Speaker 1: which opened in nineteen twelve. It replaced a smaller spa
Speaker 1: on the property and cashed in hard on radium enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura refers to the palace as the birthplace of
Speaker 1: radio balmeology. It ignited a fad in spas around the world,
Speaker 1: anywhere where they were already naturally occurring springs. If you
Speaker 1: found that there was any kind of radium content to
Speaker 1: the waters, well low and behold, you have a new
Speaker 1: way to market your spa, a new way to market
Speaker 1: your spring water. Radium palace and its waters fell out
Speaker 1: of fashion after the Second World War, but the hotel
Speaker 1: was apparently refurbished in the nineteen nineties and it's rather
Speaker 1: stunning looking building, and it still offers radium based treatments,
Speaker 1: though they're apparently limited by contemporary maximum permitted levels of
Speaker 1: radiation doses. But on the same level, this looks like
Speaker 1: a very attractive resort, So we kind of have to
Speaker 1: take It's kind of like going back to their discussion
Speaker 1: of bath, like is it, you know, the communal factors,
Speaker 1: the placidibo factors of everything a fella scenario, So I
Speaker 1: don't know. But coming back to our home state of Georgia,
Speaker 1: Georgia also got in on the action with radium springs.
Speaker 1: Radium is still called radium springs Georgia. The spa here
Speaker 1: was already a retreat destination in the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: offering gambling and naturally occurring hot spring waters. So you
Speaker 1: had a lot of folks that would come down from
Speaker 1: the cold or northern states during the winter and they'd
Speaker 1: enjoy like the pleasant temperatures of just southern Georgia during
Speaker 1: the winter, but also these hot springs. It was known
Speaker 1: as blue springs at the time, but then in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five they discovered radium in the water and they
Speaker 1: rebranded thus radium Springs. Wow, and you can still visit it.
Speaker 1: I actually looked it up and I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could go down there for then a rows.
Speaker 1: It was like a four hour drive one way, and
Speaker 1: so maybe maybe it wouldn't fit into the workweek all
Speaker 1: that well, but you can still visit the grounds here
Speaker 1: and it it looks rather beautiful. So the supposed health
Speaker 1: benefits of radium spring soaking of radium springs spa water,
Speaker 1: I think in general is pretty dubious, though I suppose
Speaker 1: it's conceivably safe if one is still low the maximal
Speaker 1: permissible level of exposure. But yeah, otherwise I don't suppose
Speaker 1: you'd really get much out of the experience, again, other
Speaker 1: than just sort of the set and setting of the
Speaker 1: whole thing. It's worth noting that, of course, there are
Speaker 1: multiple springs at Ramsar in around containing radium and thorium,
Speaker 1: and this area is known as the most naturally radioactive
Speaker 1: place on Earth. The springs here are also used as spas,
Speaker 1: and I think we again have to put them in
Speaker 1: a larger historic context. People have been coming here for
Speaker 1: a very long time and continue to come to Ramsar
Speaker 1: in order to enjoy these spring waters. So yeah, they're uh,
Speaker 1: these are these are places that were special and important
Speaker 1: again before modern science came along to determine exactly what
Speaker 1: was going on in the contents of the water. I'd
Speaker 1: be very interested to hear from anyone out there who's
Speaker 1: had experiences in a in a radium spring what you
Speaker 1: thought of it, what the sort of salon it was
Speaker 1: with the grounds were, Like, I think it's it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I've not had the experience myself. Yes, uh, same here,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting. This has just kind of like opened
Speaker 1: up a door into this world of all the strange,
Speaker 1: little quirky local thermal springs all all over the world.
Speaker 1: So it makes me think we're maybe gonna get some
Speaker 1: really good listener mail about this series. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to hear about your your strange local thermal springs
Speaker 1: and spas and what's the backstory what goes on there? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because a lot of them have some very rich traditions
Speaker 1: behind them, um of perhaps some some quirky history in places,
Speaker 1: and and some alleged healing properties. So yeah, we've already
Speaker 1: heard from at least a few listeners, so certainly keep
Speaker 1: it coming. We've we'd love to to dive into these
Speaker 1: over the next several listener mail episodes. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to go and close it
Speaker 1: out for today, but we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there, so you know, definitely right in. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind publishes its core
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have short form artifact
Speaker 1: or monster fact episode on Wednesdays. On Mondays we do
Speaker 1: the listener mail, and on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Pauseway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
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