Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Before we get into
Speaker 2: this story, I'd like to give a little content warning.
Speaker 2: This episode contains discussions about extreme weight loss. If that
Speaker 2: topic is triggering for you, please feel free to skip
Speaker 2: this one. And if you are a loved one is
Speaker 2: struggling with an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating
Speaker 2: Disorder Association by texting n e DA to seven four
Speaker 2: one seven four one. In century, thin was all the rage.
Speaker 2: In fact, the more sick you looked, the better. Beauty
Speaker 2: trends during the Victorian era involved a pale complexion of
Speaker 2: tiny wiste and a frail body. If you're thinking that
Speaker 2: this sounds more like a hospital patient than a model,
Speaker 2: well you'd actually be right. These beauty standards were based
Speaker 2: on the appearance of people with tuberculosis. Yes, you heard
Speaker 2: that right, tuberculosis. In the late eighteenth century, consumption as
Speaker 2: it was known had become completely intertwined with feminine beauty.
Speaker 2: Thinness was already considered a desirable trait for women to have,
Speaker 2: and of course the very thinnest women were the ones
Speaker 2: who were dying. Looking like you were wasted away was
Speaker 2: en vogue. You got bonus points if you could emulate
Speaker 2: some of the other physical signs of the disease as well.
Speaker 2: You see, while frailty was the main draw, TB also
Speaker 2: gave it sufferers sparkling eyes and a pretty blush across
Speaker 2: their cheeks and lips, both of which were actually the
Speaker 2: result of a low grade fever. While it may not
Speaker 2: sound appealing to us today, this tuberculosis chic was all
Speaker 2: the rage, and its grip on society lasted for over
Speaker 2: one hundred years. Of course, looking like you're dying when
Speaker 2: you're knots is actually pretty hard to do, and losing
Speaker 2: enough weight to fit into this ideal was very, very difficult,
Speaker 2: So some people got creative diet pills and potions started
Speaker 2: to gain popularity in the nineteenth century. A lot of them, though,
Speaker 2: were more likely to kill you than help you whittle
Speaker 2: away your waist.
Speaker 1: See. A lot of these pills had ingredients like arsenic
Speaker 1: and strychnine in them, and if you took too many
Speaker 1: at once, you could poison yourself. Arsenic, though, is tame
Speaker 1: compared to the worst ingredient used for weight loss. That
Speaker 1: honor actually goes to tapeworms. Yeah, tapeworms. Evidence points to
Speaker 1: these parasites first being used for weight loss in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century in London. People would swallow pills with
Speaker 1: tapeworm larvae in them, and then the worm would hatch
Speaker 1: and would take up residents inside the body. The idea
Speaker 1: was that you could eat as much as you wanted
Speaker 1: and leave the dinner table satisfied, but since the worm
Speaker 1: was eating all of your food, you would never gain
Speaker 1: any weight. In fact, in the end you would probably
Speaker 1: lose quite a few pounds. It was a risky gamble,
Speaker 1: to be sure, because weight loss might not even have
Speaker 1: been the only result. Tapeworms can cause headaches, eye problems, epilepsy,
Speaker 1: and early onset dementia. It's hard to imagine risking so
Speaker 1: much for the shallow promise of losing weight, but people
Speaker 1: were willing to go far to be considered beautiful. They
Speaker 1: were even willing to deal with the traumatic aftermath of
Speaker 1: the parasite leaving their system. Once the tapeworm's host decided
Speaker 1: that they had lost enough weight, they were supposed to
Speaker 1: take an anti parasite pill, which would kill off the worm.
Speaker 1: At least that was the idea, and when the worm
Speaker 1: was dead, the host was supposed to excrete the worm
Speaker 1: in what was sure to be the worst bathroom session
Speaker 1: of their entire life. Not only would it be terrifying
Speaker 1: and painful, but it could also cause serious abdominal and
Speaker 1: rectal issues. If you didn't want to kill the worm, though,
Speaker 1: it was believed that you could always lure it out
Speaker 1: with a cup of milk. It's a ridiculous theory that
Speaker 1: likely did not work, but if it did, then the
Speaker 1: host would still have to deal with the tapeworm's unfortunate
Speaker 1: exit strategy into the toilet. It's said that the tapeworm
Speaker 1: diet made its way to America in nineteen twelve. However,
Speaker 1: many government officials at the time were skeptical that it
Speaker 1: was actually in the States. The Surgeon General denied having
Speaker 1: seen evidence of tapeworm pills in America, and the American
Speaker 1: Medical Association outright denied the pill's existence at all anywhere,
Speaker 1: be it in America or Europe. There is still debate
Speaker 1: among historians on whether or not the tapeworm pill was
Speaker 1: largely distributed, or if working tapeworm pills were ever distributed
Speaker 1: at all. Some believe that they absolutely did exist. After all,
Speaker 1: the Victorians were willing to poison themselves for a thinner waste.
Speaker 1: What was a parasite compared to that? Others say that
Speaker 1: they were always a hoax, made up as satire to
Speaker 1: show how far fad diets had gone. The most accepted
Speaker 1: theory is that it was never a super popular diet fad,
Speaker 1: but that plenty of people definitely still try to take
Speaker 1: these pills tried being the operative here. It's believed that
Speaker 1: while some of these pills worked, many others were just duds.
Speaker 1: Whether they were a scam from the beginning or the
Speaker 1: worm died before hatching, a lot of these pills never
Speaker 1: resulted in a live parasite. The important thing here, though,
Speaker 1: is that people wanted to lose weight so badly they
Speaker 1: were willing to risk their health and their lives and
Speaker 1: a very unfortunate new neighbor in their intestines to achieve
Speaker 1: that goal. And that is the real horror of this story.
Speaker 1: Thanks to smartphones, we have a camera always ready to
Speaker 1: record at a moment's notice, whether we're documenting accident footage
Speaker 1: for our insurance company or snapping a shot of our
Speaker 1: kids Little League home run. Our phones have become like
Speaker 1: extensions of our brains, holding all of our memories for us.
Speaker 1: But those tiny cameras have another talent shame. I'm sure
Speaker 1: we've all eagerly watched the footage of an entitled customer
Speaker 1: lashing out in a store because they didn't get what
Speaker 1: they wanted. Some people call it cancel culture, but really
Speaker 1: those videos are just documentary evidence that leads to consequences
Speaker 1: for the offending party. But the idea of publicly shaming
Speaker 1: someone is nothing new. It predates our smartphones. Heck, it
Speaker 1: predates the Internet and television and the printing press. All
Speaker 1: we have to do is look back at Italy during
Speaker 1: the Renaissance. Now, when we think of the Italian Renaissance,
Speaker 1: we picture artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli
Speaker 1: painting and sketching the people in places around them. But
Speaker 1: these works were not just a way for painters to
Speaker 1: express themselves. Some art had a specific purpose. It was
Speaker 1: called petura infamante, which in English meant defaming portrait. When
Speaker 1: someone was caught stealing or accused of fraud or traitorous behavior,
Speaker 1: they became the subject of special paintings hung everywhere that
Speaker 1: they could be seen. They were usually painted to publicly
Speaker 1: shame those who could not be dealt with in a
Speaker 1: normal legal context, and those depictions were pretty tough. Often
Speaker 1: the subject, who was always a man by the way,
Speaker 1: was painted hanging upside down or present among animals such
Speaker 1: as donkeys or pigs, creatures that were deemed unclean, and
Speaker 1: below the images, captions explaining what the person had done
Speaker 1: wrong were written so that everyone walking by would know
Speaker 1: what they were guilty of. Now, to be clear, this
Speaker 1: type of punishment wasn't for everyone. Since the poor would
Speaker 1: have nothing to lose by being defamed, they would be
Speaker 1: punished outright. Petura infamante was typically reserved for the rich,
Speaker 1: who didn't just value their wealth, but their reputations within
Speaker 1: the community as well, and the conditions in which they
Speaker 1: were depicted also mattered. Hanging was a method of execution
Speaker 1: used primarily for the lower class, while upper class criminals
Speaker 1: had the luxury of being beheaded a quick and relatively
Speaker 1: painless death, and to be shown hanging upside down was
Speaker 1: doubly offensive, as that position was viewed as comedic and
Speaker 1: unbecoming of someone of means and status. Many of these
Speaker 1: defaming portraits were hung in the Bargello, a massive palace
Speaker 1: first built in twelve fifty five. It's originally housed high
Speaker 1: ranking government officials before it was converted into everything from
Speaker 1: a prison, to a military barracks to an art museum.
Speaker 1: But for a time it was a popular venue for
Speaker 1: frescoes and portraits of local fraudsters, painted by the likes
Speaker 1: of both Icelli and Andrea del Castagno. After all, the
Speaker 1: men in these portraits had to be recognizable, so only
Speaker 1: the best artists were hired to paint them. Some scholars
Speaker 1: and art historians argue that these works were not just
Speaker 1: meant to humiliate the wealthy, but also to remind others
Speaker 1: of what awaited them in the event that they broke
Speaker 1: the law. Step out of line and find your face
Speaker 1: hanging literally upside down on the walls of the Bargello. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: no frescoes survived to this day. The only evidence of
Speaker 1: these paintings that we have today are some preparatory sketches
Speaker 1: done in advance of the colorful portraits, some of which
Speaker 1: were drawn by Da Vinci himself. Interestingly enough, though most
Speaker 1: modern tarot decks also contain a nod to the picture
Speaker 1: Infamante of old. The card, known as the hang Demand
Speaker 1: shows an individual hanging upside down by one leg, a
Speaker 1: common pose from many Renaissance to Faming portraits. Tarot cards
Speaker 1: were invented in northern Italy in the mid fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: so it's possible that the card's design was influenced by
Speaker 1: these portraits. But did petura infamante work. Were rich men
Speaker 1: discouraged from committing fraud or treason? Maybe maybe not. After all,
Speaker 1: money and power make people behave in very curious ways.
Speaker 1: But it was also probably the cheapest way to get
Speaker 1: one's portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast book series and television s, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at theworldoflore dot com. And
Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.
Speaker 2: H