WEBVTT - Necessary Art 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:14.440 iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.440 the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.159 of these amazing tales are right there on display, just 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.880 waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.600 One thousand years ago, in October of ten thirty two, 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:43.560 a man named Theophylactus did the unthinkable. He was named 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.680 pope at the age of twenty. He chose the name 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.520 Benedict the Ninth, and as far as we know, became 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.000 the youngest person to ever hold the title. Of course, 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.920 this was no coincidence. Two of his uncles had been 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.040 Pope's as well as his grand uncle and great granduncle. 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.440 He was part of it unofficial papal dynasty, and his 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:07.920 family's connections had been crucial to securing his election. Unsurprisingly, 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.200 his papacy was controversial almost from the start. He was 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:15.679 accused of making a mockery of Rome, living a hedonistic lifestyle. 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:18.080 We have no way of knowing which of these accusations 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:21.479 were true and which were politically motivated hearsay, but it's 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.720 easy enough to conclude that he was not a popular pope. 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.440 In ten thirty six, just four years later, Benedic found 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.480 himself exiled from Rome. He would return shortly after, thanks 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.240 to the support of Holy Roman Emperor Conrad the Second, 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.480 but he didn't get any more popular, and rumors of 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.959 his indiscretions only grew. In ten forty four, he was 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:45.399 exiled the second time, and this time local bishops appointed 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:49.360 a replacement, Pope Sylvester the Third, But Benedict the ninth 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.720 was not going to take this line down now in 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.600 his early thirties, He rallied and returned to Rome the 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.440 following year, ousting his replacement. But something had changed in 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:00.880 his attitude. We don't know for sure if he was 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.080 tired of being the pope or if the constant criticism 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.720 was finally getting to him, but by April of ten 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.720 forty five, he was considering leaving the papacy behind. Honestly, 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:12.800 he just wanted to get married and move on with 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.359 his life. So he did what few popes have ever 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:19.040 done before or since. He resigned, although not before making 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:21.800 a deal that would set him up comfortably. You see, 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:26.240 Benedict's godfather, John Gretien, was a well liked priest, Benedict 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.040 proposed that he would resign and allow Gratzien to take 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.160 the papacy as long as Gratien paid all the debts 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:37.280 that Benedict had incurred during the papal elections. His uncle consented, 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.440 paid up, and was named Pope Gregory the sixth. This 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:42.840 was a huge relief for the Catholic Church at large, 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.359 who immediately started to press Gregory to root out corruption 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.800 amongst the priesthood. However, this wasn't a solution to the 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.440 problems created by Benedict's time in the Holy See. In fact, 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.520 it only made things more complicated. A year into his retirement, 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.400 Benedict started to regret his decision. In July of ten 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.600 forty six, he came back and demanded his proper place 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.880 as Pope, much to the annoyance of his godfather, and 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.280 around the same time, Sylvester the Third started speaking up, 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:14.320 claiming that he was the rightful pope. So, for those 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:16.840 who are keeping track at home, by ten forty six 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.080 there were three different popes, all claiming the title in Rome, 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.480 but nobody in Rome was powerful enough to do anything 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.600 about it. That November, the new Holy Roman Emperor Henry 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:29.960 the third traveled to Rome to meet the pope in 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:33.720 arrange for his coronation, so he spoke to Gregory the sixth, 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:35.640 only to learn that that guy was part of a 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.040 trinity who were squabbling over power. He learned that Gregory 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:41.920 himself got the title by paying off the previous pope, 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.920 who himself was part of a dynasty of corrupt popes. 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:48.480 It was more than a little outrageous. On December twentieth 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.360 of ten forty six, Henry the Third gathered a council 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.760 of bishops to address this chaos. All three popes were 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:57.680 invited too, but only Sylvester the Iird and Gregory the 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:00.320 sixth showed up. The bishops determined that soil l vest 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.080 the third was not a proper pope, and both Benedict 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:07.120 and Gregory had obtained their titles illegitimately. So after the council, 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:10.760 Henry deposed all three popes, appointing Clement the Second in 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.960 their place to return stability to the Roman Catholic Church. 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:16.440 Which is enough to make your head spin. Right, we 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.800 have four guys now who all claimed to want to 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.279 wear the point he had, So what happened to the others? Well, 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.320 Sylvester returned to Sabina, where he served as a bishop 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.040 for the rest of his life. Gregory left for Germany 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.640 and died only a few years later. Benedict, however, never 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.440 learned his lesson. After Clement the second died, Bennedict seized 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.880 the papal throne yet again, resulting in the Church fully 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:43.159 excommunicating him. His final fate is actually unknown, but he 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:45.480 went down in history as the only pope to ever 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.240 sell the title and the only one to reign three 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.360 times nonconsecutively, no matter how hard he fought for it. Though, 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:54.760 it really seemed like he didn't take the job all 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.880 that seriously, which is perhaps even more damning than anything 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:14.760 he was accused of while he was in power. In 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.480 twenty seven hundred BC, a time so ancient its people 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:22.240 might seem completely alien to us today, the Egyptian architect 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:26.160 and priest Imhotep was performing a delicate operation on a 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.000 stone tablet beneath a single shaft of light. The light 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.000 shone down from a hole cut into the stone roof 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.960 above It allowed Imhotep to see every detail of his 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.880 work in the otherwise dark palace. He made subtle observations 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:44.200 tweaking things here and there he had his assistance record 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.320 everything on pages of papyrus. They needed to preserve what 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.320 they learned. After all, any knowledge gleaned was from the 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.840 creator God Ptah himself. That being said, Imhotep began his 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.760 career as a priest of Ra, the sun god. He 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.720 owed everything to Ra. Although im Hotel had been born 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.000 a commoner, this time as a priest had exposed him 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:09.520 to all kinds of learning. He became a master of architecture, poetry, astronomy, 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.440 and mathematics. His designs for a new kind of building, 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:16.720 to whom he called a pyramid, were much grander than 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.240 the plain rectangles the pharaohs and other important Egyptians were 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:22.880 buried in at the time. This had soon captured the 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.320 attention of the current pharaoh, and he immediately had Imhotep 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.800 build him a pyramid, even allowing m Hotep to carve 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.440 his name into one of the stones. Afterward, m Hotep 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.000 became his chief adviser, and although he was a master 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.160 of the arts, there was one art that he now 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.960 valued above all the others. Architecture no longer held any 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.200 mysteries the heavens They've all been mapped. Now he was 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:49.240 exploring a new frontier, an art form that wasn't just 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.960 fascinating but also necessary. In fact, im Hotep had taken 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.080 to calling it the necessary art. Today, though we call 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:01.919 it medicine. Unlike architecture and poets, medicine didn't just exist 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:05.640 for its own sake. It existed to save lives. Motep 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.000 felt that there was no greater art than that. He 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.600 tried to help anyone he could who was suffering from 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:13.640 injury or illness. He considered his treatments a gift from 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.440 the god thought and recorded his findings as thoughts teachings. 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.640 Any physicians who deviated from these treatments was committing a 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.560 punishable crime. And that may sound ignorant, but it was 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.920 actually incredibly progressive for the time. You see, up until 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.520 this point, medicine was entirely based on superstition. This or 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.480 that herb was believed to cure this or that illness, 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.600 not out of testing or evidence, but out of passed 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.600 down traditions. If that herb didn't work, it was the 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:45.240 patient's fault for displeasing the gods. Imhotep, though believed his 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.040 treatments were from the gods, but he didn't believe that 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.360 they failed because of the patient. Instead, he believed that 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:53.400 the gods were telling him that he needed to try 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.600 something different. He was essentially inventing what we would call 0:07:56.640 --> 0:08:00.640 today empiricism, the idea that knowledge is gained through other observation, 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:05.280 not intuition or superstition. It is the underpinning idea behind 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:10.320 the modern scientific method. Take Imhotep's current patient. With that 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:13.120 in mind, let's return to his patient at the moment, 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.440 the one mentioned at the beginning of this story. His 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.880 latest project laid out on the stone table. The man 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.640 had been mauled by a hippo. One leg had been 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.480 torn to shreds, the other was badly broken and had 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.720 a bone sticking out. He was covered in lacerations, and 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:31.720 there was a strange swelling in his abdomen. Imhotep used 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.240 trial and error. He applied a thick paste to the 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.040 mangled leg, but it was not enough. He next tried 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:39.760 a reed splint, which worked on the snapped leg, but 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:43.080 not the mangled one. He considered a plaster linen cast, 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.200 but worried that the bleeding was too great. Instead, he 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.439 had his assistants hold down the man and while he screamed. 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.120 Impo Tep used a saw to cut off the leg, 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.120 but then Imhotep retrieved a hot poker from a nearby fire, 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.320 which he used to cauterize the wound, because he thought 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.400 that this might finally stopped the bleeding, and it did 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:06.320 a new discovery for his book of medicine. Next, he 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:10.079 treated the lacerations with an oiled eel's head, wrapping the 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.840 wounds up with bandages afterward, and upon closely examining the 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.240 swollen abdomen, he made an incision with his scalpel, a 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:20.440 small fine blade that he had invented for work. Just 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.880 like this, black blood began to pour from the abdomen, 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.679 and then it stopped and the swelling went down. By 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.080 observing what worked and what didn't, Imhotep could learn how 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.679 to effectively treat a variety of injuries and diseases and 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:37.680 force other doctors in Egypt to do the same rather 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.360 than rely on superstition. His methods were so effective that 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.360 even two thousand years after his death, the Egyptians were 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.240 still using his teachings on others. Imhotep was one of 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:51.040 the few Egyptians to be raised to the status of godhood. 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:53.880 His work was so influential that it crossed the ocean 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.240 to Greece, where a man named Hippocrates was inspired by it. 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.400 He went on to become known as the father of 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:03.400 modern metas, and his Hippocratic oath do no harm is 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.000 still sworn by doctors today. Curiously, the real father of 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:10.840 modern medicine lived a couple thousand years prior. His methods 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:14.360 might seem rough today, but like his pyramid designs, they 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:21.640 laid the foundation for something magnificent. I hope you enjoyed 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.240 today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.640 was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.160 researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:35.280 produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.600 the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:41.960 slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:46.120 Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.120 as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.360 for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.320 all the same stories, but without the interruption for a 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.319 small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:02.600 patreon dot com. Slash rim and mild and until next time, 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:07.240 stay curious m HM.