March 24, 2015 • 44 mins
Medical science has a long and storied history of trying out cures and procedures that later strike us as wacky. And they're still at it today! Learn about bizarre treatments, from opium for children to tobacco smoke enemas in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Child's Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry to
my right. This is Stuffy should Know. Why are your
eyes closed? A creepy? You sound like shwetty Balls Alo
(00:24):
Bob swetty Balls get from Saturday Night Live. Man. That
just that blofted right over here. Now I'm all mellow.
Yeah you irie, Yes, I love that. The beginning of
this article UM talks about botox. I thought it was
a pretty good. Uh it was. It said, like, you know,
(00:47):
one day we're gonna look back on injecting batolenum toxin
A into your face and think that's just crazy. Like
I think it's crazy. Now, Okay, you know I see
what you mean. Nuts. Yeah, if you step back and
look at it, for sure, paralyzing your face muscles to
look younger. Yeah, especially if you've ever seen Dead Calm.
(01:09):
Did you see that movie? Yeah, with a out on
the water with the boat. Yeah, I remember he said
that's what happened to the other people on the bows,
that they all got baculi um and died. Oh, I
don't remember that. Yeah, that was his whole set up.
His excuse for his explanation for what happened was baculi
is um. But yeah, that's what I think of when
(01:30):
I think baculi is um is dead calm. Yeah, and
with botox he end up looking like a freak. Oh,
don't be judgmental, not being judgmental, but it was pretty judgmental. No, yeah,
that's judgmental, I guess. But yeah, I think I think it.
That's my stance is if you want to do that,
then more power to you. But I think people look
(01:52):
weird when they look consistently surprised, So they don't. They
don't use it just for that. They used to treat
my grains, uh, excessive sweatiness. I should get it also
known as hyper hydrosis. What what like in the armpit
or the hands? Yeah, like directly in there. I guess
this toxin goes in and like deadens the nerve cells.
(02:15):
Maybe I can't remember. The point is we're both agreed,
even in a roundabout way, that it is a very strange, bizarre,
you might say, medical treatment to inject toxin into your
face to look youthful. Yeah, I was judging. I take
it all back. People want to do what they want
(02:37):
to do. That's fine. I just my personal feeling is
that it doesn't have the desired effect to make you
look like you think you look proud of you. Thank you.
Uh so, chuck botuli is um batulin botox, we should say,
is pretty much nothing compared to some of the other
stuff that we've used the past and in some cases
(03:02):
still continue to use. Because this is all based on
an article on Housta Works called tim Bizarre Treatments. Doctors
used to think we're legit, it turns out that some
of the stuff actually still is legit. Yeah, and um,
you know, we should plug our friends over at Sawbones. Yeah. Yeah,
Justin and his wife Dr Sidney McElroy. And Justin does
(03:22):
My Brother and My Brother and Me podcast with his brothers.
They have a spinoff, not spinoff, they have their own
podcast with Sawbones where they talk about antiquated medical Uh
that's all. They talk about antiquated medical treatments. And they
said they were inspired by our podcast to start that one. Yeah.
But every time we send somebody over to listen to them,
they don't come back. Yeah, you know, so stop it.
(03:47):
We created a monster. But anyway, Um, we are in
turn inspired by them, and uh, it's just a big
we're blowing smoke each up each other's butt, tobacco smoke.
I'll hard to see it. That was literally where that
term came from, to blow smoke ups up your arts.
But all it did was redirect to the fact that
(04:09):
people used to do this for real. And I don't
know if that's really where the term came from or not.
I don't. I don't either. I can tell you where
the treatment supposedly came from came from a legend. It
looks like a legend. I think at the time they
took it as a factual story that a man rescued
his drowned wife from a river, I think in France.
And um, I didn't know what to do when a
(04:30):
soldiers just happened to walk by and said, take this
pipe and blow the smoke like stick one end into
erectum and blow on the lid end until she comes
to I don't think we've even said yet what we're
talking about, which is a tobacco enema. We're no sawbones.
Tobacco enemas literally blowing tobacco smoke up the rectum of
(04:53):
an individual for a health reason, and in this case,
the original reason was to revive a drown victim, which
is apparently what it was initially used for when it
came into widespread use, and I guess it was in
widespread use, and apparently it did work. In this initial legend,
the wife came to on the fifth blow and went
(05:15):
to a local bar and got a drink and then
went home after being resuscitated from drowning and then having
a pipe in erect um with smoke blone up her butt. Yes,
and um, there there's speculation that if if it did work,
it was the intrusion of the pipe or later on
the bellows that probably did it. But the thinking at
(05:39):
the time was that nicotine was a stimulant and that
this would directly stimulate the person back to life. That's right. Uh,
you mentioned drowning victims. That it was so commonly used
as a method for helping drowning victims that this equipment
was um put alongside major waterways, very much like we
(06:01):
would have a um defribrillator today. They had these along
like the River Thames, and you had to know where
they were. And Uh. In seventeen seventy four, doctors William
Hawes and Thomas Cogan Um in London formed the Institution
for Affording Immediate Relief two persons apparently dead from drowning,
and they later changed that name to the Royal Humane Society.
(06:23):
That's a lot better. And they have promoted this method
by paying people for guineas uh to anyone who could
successfully revive a drowning victim. Huh. I'll bet in those
kids along the waterways you go to use it in
the tobacco would be missing because local twelve year old
had gotten into it. It's a good point. Uh. And
there was even a little rhyme at the British Medical
(06:44):
Association in the seventeen seventy four at the meeting um
tobacco glister because it was also called glister g l
y ste er these kids tobacco glister. Breathe and bleed,
keep warm and rub till you succeed, and spare no
pains for what you do may one day be repaid
to you. What is going on? Uh? You know what
(07:06):
goes around comes around. What's going on? And I think
trying to England where I guess if you're if you're
giving a tobacco animal to somebody and you know that
that little rhymes, you probably would stop because you'd be like,
I don't want this coming back to me. I just
rather pass on to the next world. Uh well. Dr
(07:26):
Richard Mead was the first guy who pioneered this in
mid seventeen hundreds, and by eighteen eleven it was because
they were like, no, this is not working and it's
bad for you and you're blown smoke up. Someone's but right,
what are you thinking? And then later on doctors were
used to prescribe cigarettes going through the other end that's right,
(07:46):
which is all untrue supposedly. Yeah, I guess that was
the Edward Burney's thing. Oh yeah, intent um, all right,
Next up, we have our mercury. Um. If you've ever
heard of you've ever seen the awesome exhibit the terracotta soldiers.
Did you ever see that? Um? China's first emperor, Qin
(08:07):
chi Huang Um he was the moment the terracotta soldiers. Yeah,
he was the one that was buried in like this
basically underground city that was so vast and had all
these terracotta soldiers guarding him and his own specific to him.
They've they've I was about to say rated much of it,
but they've explored much of it, but not his actual
tomb still because it has a moat of liquid mercury
(08:30):
around it, so he's still in situ because of the
local Yeah, that's pretty neat, pretty neat. And Um, he
took the stuff as to make himself immortal, um, which
is ironic because super toxic and it killed him before
he was forty, but at the opposite effect it did. Um.
His death didn't apparently get out to the rest of
(08:52):
the world because mercury was used in other kinds of
medicines for a very long time, apparently up until the parties. Um,
if you had syphilis, your doctor would give you some
sort of ointment, sometimes an injection of mercury to treat syphilis.
And it may or may not have treated the syphilis,
(09:13):
but it would definitely make your teeth fall out and
make you what would I guess generously be called agitated. Yes,
it had. There's a host of horrible things that can
happen to you from mercury exposure. Yeah, like death. Um.
Cinnabar was what they used in China as their or
mercury for two thousand years. And uh, it's it's just
(09:36):
I find it crazy that I know it was the
first Emperor of China, so it was a long time ago,
but it just seems weird that hey take this thing
to make you live forever when it's actually one of
the most toxic things you can put in your body.
They had it backwards. Supposedly, Jeremy Piven had mercury poisoning
(09:57):
in two he was eating sushi twice a day. I
remember that, and then I heard that, and then I
think I remember hearing that that wasn't true, and it
was maybe it was like made up to get out
of a movie or something. I don't know. I've got
looking at that again. I definitely remember when that happened.
Thought strange. I mean, I love sushi, like, yeah, anyone
(10:19):
go back and listen to our sushi podcast. But I've
never had mercurial or mercury poisoning. So chuck up next
is one of my favorites. But I could find almost
nothing more on this. I found that it did in
fact exist, and there's schematics and stuff on the on
the internet, but the whirling chair, there's not much to it.
(10:40):
No um again. Mid nineteenth century when um the mentally
ill were treated very poorly locked away put in iron cages. Um.
They had one thing I found called a tranquilizing chair,
and it's basically it looks like an electric chair. You're
just sitting up completely strapped then, um, but you have
(11:01):
a box over your head. Well, what's funny is that
was one of the more humane techniques for treating mental illness. Yeah.
That was like the result of the um humanism progressive
movement from the mid nineteenth century. That's crazy and sad.
Oh yeah, the history of the treatment metal mental illness
(11:22):
not just like yeah, we've talked about it a lot,
just across the ages. It's really really sad. Yeah, very
misunderstood and still is in a lot of ways. Um.
But the whirling chair was it was not all about
it me. It was not an ice shower or laxative
or an insulent comma or an insulin comma. It was
much better. It was a chair with a spring and
(11:43):
lever system basically where they it looks like they had
a like it was hooked up to a like a crank. Yeah,
like a crank that you basically just spun these people
around until they passed out. And based on the schematics
I saw if you were the operator, you had to
wear pantaloon. Yes, that's right. And apparently they would say
(12:04):
it would cure your schizophrenia. Um, because it would shuffle
the contents of your brain and just the right way. Yeah.
Like imagine being strapped to a chair that was spun
around where you became so dizzy that you passed out,
and on top of it, you have schizophrenia, right, and
then on top of that they came out and you say,
how are you feeling? Are you cured? I'm cured? Yes?
(12:26):
Can I please go home now? Yeah? Seriously, they're like, hey,
at least we're not burning you at the stake for
being a witch. Um. I wish there was more out
there on that too, though. I think a lot of
this stuff is just it went the way the dodos,
So there's, you know, not much info on it. Yeah,
I mean there's nothing. It's just there was such thing
as a whirling chair. Here's how it worked, and the
(12:48):
reason why they used it was to rearrange your brain
if you had schizophrenia. That's right. So we'll keep going
because this is a lot of fun. Yes it is,
but first we have to take a commercial break and
we will do that right now, and we're back Chuck
(13:19):
and Chuck, do you remember what are we record on
yesterday where we were talking about antioch t um. So
remember we talked about how oxygen goes through and and
steals electrons from other other atoms and other molecules to
stabilize itself. And that's the process of oxidation. If you
(13:39):
take that process and multiply it by powers of millions,
what you have is radiation poisoning exposure, high levels of
exposure to high levels of radiation, is what I'm trying
to say. Um. For the most part, we do everything
we can to avoid this kind of thing. UM. But
it turns out that in the UM late nineteenth century
(14:01):
early twentieth century there were a lot of products on
the shelf that did the opposite, that introduced radiation in
the form of radium um in the in the hopes
that it would promote health and cure disease. Yeah, Mary
and Pierre Cury discovered it. In by UM, the US
(14:21):
was manufacturing synthetic radium UH to use in such things
like um radium schokolada from Burke and Brown it was,
or radium bread from the Hitman block bakery. Radium was
bread baked with radium water and popular until ninety six,
and radium water was a big thing. The reason why
(14:42):
it was a big thing apparently it kicked all of
this off because there are natural spas in places like
Hot Springs, Arkansas, UM and somebody started investigating the waters
and found radon there and they said, well, rd on,
that's radio active. Where can we find that? And they said,
(15:02):
how about radium? So they started putting radium in everything. Yeah,
they had. Here's some of the other products and you
can look these up. There a lot of fun when
you look at these old school ads, you know. For
the relegator, it was a um a radium lace bucket
basically with a little spigot. It's like a little water tank.
So it just introduced radiation to whatever water you put in. Yep.
(15:24):
Or you could get what they called the radium coin
that you could just drop like an alka seltzer into
your water. Um. There was the radium scope, which is
a toy inwo that offered the luminescence in the ad
also said but also doubles as a wonderful night light
because it glows. Oh yeah, it was for kids. Wow. Toothpaste, um,
(15:46):
but from a man named Alfred Cury who was no
relation really, even though he used that to his advantage
the Curie name. And he also had the faux radio
brand of cosmetics UH rejuvenates and brightens the ski in.
This also kind of brings to focus why little kids
chemistry sets frequently included radioactive materials like in the middle
(16:09):
of the twentieth century it glowed well, no, because like
that you could get it in water if you wanted to,
or cosmetics or contraceptives or chocolate. So why wouldn't you
put it in a kid's chemistry set too? So before
I didn't understand that, Now I understand. So Supposedly the
trend really started to die off in the thirties though,
(16:30):
um thanks to something called rate a Thor and ratea
Thor was a little tincture that you would take these
little couple fluid ounce bottles that were highly radioactive. They
had just tons of radium m and what I guess,
one of the owners or one of the investors in
the company, his name was Evan Buyers. He was a
(16:51):
pro golfer too, I believe um. He very publicly died
of radiation poisoning because he drank three bottles of this
stuff a day. So after at the public was like,
maybe we shouldn't be doing this anymore. Well, another thing
they used it for between nineteen seventeen and nineteen twenty six,
the US Radium Corporation UM used luminous paint to paint
(17:13):
clocks clock faces so you could see them. And workers
were even taught to shape paint brushes with their mouths
to maintain a finer point. So they were sticking the
paintbrushes with the paint on them in their mouth, and
they encouraged them to paint their nails, their teeth, uh,
and to ingest it. But management suspiciously always stayed away
(17:36):
and avoided exposure themselves. And I know there were a
bunch of lawsuits because of that. And the other thing
I found two was they used it before viagran c alice.
There were um they called them bougies b O U
g I E s um radioactive wax rods inserted into
the urethra. Ah isn't that crazy? Yeah, for a number
(18:01):
of reasons. Yeah. Or they had like an athletic supporter
containing a layer of um radium impregnated fabric that you
would wear if you had trouble getting an erection. It's
not nearly as bad as the rods. No, no, all right,
how about eurotherapy, dude, So this one apparently is labeled
quack medicine, but there's a lot of there's a lot.
(18:25):
It makes sense intuitively, so eurotherapy. Drinking or ingesting or
having your own urine shot into your bloodstream. Yeah, yeah,
I some people injected. Yeah, it's still a thing. It
is still a thing. Yeah. UM. Here's why. Urine is
a byproduct of the blood UM and when so in
your your urine is water two and a half percent
(18:49):
roughly is uria, which is actually a UM has antimicrobial, antimicrobial,
anti fungal, and antibacterial product properties and um it also
has another tune mineral stuff like that, salts, things like that. UM. Apparently,
(19:10):
if your blood is toxic, you have toxins in your blood,
your body, your body is triggered to clean it out,
and your urine is clean. If your urine has toxins
in it, your blood is cleaned out too. There's like
the symbiotic um feedback loop where if one's clean, the
other one's clean. If one's toxic, the other one's toxic,
(19:32):
and that you can trigger a blood cleaning your blood
cleaning drive supposedly by drinking your own urine. By reintroducing
the toxins over and over again. Um, your blood could
be conceivably cleaner. That's the thinking behind this, and there's
actually again intuitively it makes sense. Yeah, they they Some
(19:54):
people still think it can stimulate your immune system and
actually fight cancer exactly basically by making your your body
basically your immune system react more vigorously. Um, it's like
running it through the ring or on purpose. Yeah. The
problem is is there's no evidence behind it. There have
(20:14):
been individual reports um of it stopping cancer growth, but
no scientific evidence um has come out in favor of it.
But people still do it. Yeah. And there's also been
tons of stories about people surviving for days and weeks
by drinking their own urine after being trapped in like
a collapsed hotel or something like that. Right. Um, but yeah,
(20:37):
there's still there's still I guess, pockets of people who
engage in urine therapy. Yeah. And um, also we should
mention it is does not help your jellyfish sting I
did it. Don't be dumb on that it actually definitely
makes your jellyfish thing worse. That's another one. Things like
why do people say that if it makes it worse?
I don't know. It's not an episode of Friends, for
(20:59):
God's sake. I know they propagated a lie. Jerks who
pete On who? I can't remember. I think didn't they
all pe on Monica? Yeah? I think Monica got pete On,
But I don't know if it was everybody. Maybe it
was everybody. Of course you didn't show it. It probably
wouldn't have been. I don't know. Yeah, I think it was, yeah,
Courtney Cox, Alright, This next one UM A bit of
(21:22):
a warning. It is sexual in nature. So if you're listening,
maybe you should go ask your mom or dad if
you should continue listening. If you're a child, yeah, an
honest kittern't know. If you're an adult, you should call
up your elderly mother or father. Can I listen to
something about the female orgasm? Right? Which supposedly, apparently for
especially in the Victorian Age, but for centuries before that,
(21:47):
UM was widely considered not to exist. Right um. But strangely,
there was a medical procedure that women would undergo called
UM a pelvic massage yes to treat I don't think
we even said hysteria because women were hysterical quote unquote right.
(22:11):
They couldn't have orgasms, but they could have hysteria, which
we should point out what the hysteria was is normal
female sexuality. Okay, we know that now, but back then
it was hysteria. So somehow somewhere along the way, and
apparently there's um, there's evidence that in ancient Greece the
pelvic massage was carried out. But in the Victorian Age
(22:34):
you would go to your doctor if you're a woman,
and get a pelvic massage, and then you would be
brought to what was called hysterical paroxysm, which is orgasm, right,
which didn't exist, that's right. Uh. They also it was
hysteria or wandering womb um was what it was also called. Well,
wandering room was different. Oh yeah, that was like um
(22:57):
the idea and apparently Hippocrates either at least espoused it
if he didn't come up with it. That was the
idea that the womb or the uterus floated freely inside
the woman and if it moved around too far it
could cause all sorts of other problems. So it's different
than hysteria. But the treatment was the same, yes, which
(23:19):
was bringing a woman to climax a doctor hysterical paroxysm. Yes,
and the doctor would do this um initially using his hands,
and um, you know, I read one article from the
New York Times about it and said, there's no evidence
that the male physicians enjoyed this. On the contrary, this
male elite sought every opportunity to substitute other devices um
(23:43):
or have the husband or a midwife, uh come in
and you know, take care of business for them. So
it wasn't some pervy doctor. This is a lot of
misunderstanding going on at the time, they said. They said,
by the end of the nineteenth century, sev of women
suffered from hysteria, which can also be read as seventy
(24:04):
of American women were normal sexual human beings. And I
guess the other we're just repressed and didn't know they
should be or could be normal sexual human beings. So
it's just crazy they called the hysteria. It's um then
that it went up until the nineteen twenties. So you
were saying that that doctors were looking for any kind
of substitute that you could get their hands. One well,
(24:26):
apparently in the late nineteenth century somebody introduced the vibrator.
After that it became a medical device originally when it
was introduced, right, Yeah, because it brought that time to
achieve the hysterical paroxysm down from anywhere up to an
hour down to about ten minutes UM ideally. And um,
(24:47):
you could buy him at Sears and Roebuck. You know.
It was, like you said, a medical device, and women
loved them. And uh, by the nineteen twenties they started
to pere in erotic films and that's when people were like, oh,
this is not something we should use. This is no
longer a medical device, which is interesting. It's all sort
of backwards, isn't it. So this one to me chuck.
(25:08):
The next one leeches. Yeah, we talked a little bit
about medical leeches before, because they are still around, um,
which is kind of hard to believe if you've never
heard that little tidbit. Yeah, this is why in the
intro I was saying like, hey, some of this stuff
still works, and leeches are a sterling example of that.
(25:29):
So for a very long time. You know, barbers were
originally called barber surgeons, and they were called that because
they would perform lots of surgery, which is why the
barber pole is red and white. Hopefully they would hang
their bloody towels and they would flip around in the wind,
and the barber pole is symbolic of that bloody towels
whipped around in the wind outside of barber's. Yeah, supposedly,
(25:52):
that's the legend as far as I know, that's I
think it's true. I believe it. But one of the
things that Barber's would engage in was blood landing. Yeah. Um,
you remember the old Chiant Life Skit was Steve Martin
years ago, he was a barber. You know, this is
in the seventies, I think when he was a guest
and people come in for everything and he's like, you
just need a good bleeding, like everything under the sun.
(26:14):
People would come in for let's just put a lancet
in there and open up a vein. See what happens.
And that's basically what they did. They would, you know,
it was this more spiritual thing, like the evil spirits
would be out through your blood or like we mentioned
in the anesthesia episode, they would use that for anesthesia
and do stupor through blood. Boss. But um, the they
(26:36):
wouldn't always use lancets. Oh, and apparently that was one
of the reasons why George Washington may have died, was
just too much blood blighting. His doctor really really put
his foot on the gas with blood lighting. And when
he designed his deathbed. Did she go to Mountain Vernon?
Didn't you go? Yeah? I've been a couple of times.
There was like a whole they have, like I think
there's the blood lighting bowl that they used on him
(26:58):
still there. Oh, I didn't even notice. There's a separate
museum that's like brand new. I went to all that stuff.
That is that where it is? Yeah, but I mean,
you know, there's the bed that he died in right there. Yeah,
you can land blood lighting bowls right there. Yes, you
can't go l in it. Um. But the the rather
than lance it's they would also sometimes use are very
(27:18):
frequently use leeches, which and they've been using them for
thousands of years apparently for blood lighting. Yeah, and this
was back when they practiced what was known as humorl medicine,
based on the four humors in the body, which is
everyone knows because of the popular T shirt we sell
flam yellow bile, black bile, and blood for the Four Humors? Right?
(27:40):
What t shirt do we sell? I was just kidding.
We should have one totally the Four Humors. Just have
that on there and then s y s K on
the front. Okay, it could be a big seller. Who
doesn't want a shirt that says black, bile and flam um.
So with blood lighting or with using leeches for blood
lighting everyone who. I think it was the Indians originally
(28:04):
from India who came up with this using leeches for
blood letting, and they were really onto something because, like
you said, medical leeches are still in use today here
in the United States. They're an f d A approved
medical device, and leeches secrete something called here here Harudin.
(28:24):
That's what I'm going with, Haruden h I r U
d I. And I'll bet the guests from Sawbones would
have said it right um, and in in their saliva
you will find haruden and Harudin is an anti coagulant. No,
it's a coagulant, so it keeps you from bleeding to death. Um.
It has antibiotic properties, it's a numbing agent, and it's
(28:48):
a vasodilator, right, which means that it relaxes your your blood.
So it can flow more freely. But it also is
an anti coagulant, so you don't bleed to death. All
of this in each saliva. And they use it today,
um for like skin graphs and for um when they
reattach limbs, that kind of thing. Yeah. I think we
(29:11):
had someone even right in and send us pictures of
their medical leeches, which are in little vials. It's pretty cool.
It's pretty neat. But I mean, this is an ancient, ancient,
millennia old medical technique that is still to this day used,
and it's an FDA approved medical device. Now, leeches are
I just think that's really cool. It is super cool, uh,
(29:32):
you know, because it means it's there's still an open
mind in the medical community. Oh yeah, it's way open.
You know. Let's try whatever. Uh, we are gonna keep going.
I say, we do all ten for the first time ever.
What about you? Yeah, let's do it. All right, We're
gonna keep going right after this, all right, Chuck, we're back. Yeah, man,
(30:08):
we're taking it home with I'm just I'm doing some
I'm taking some medicine, man, some some cocaine and opium.
I bought it at the corner store. Yeah, and then
you could buy your rig if you inject it from
the serious catalog. Yeah, a cocaine kit. Yeah and seen.
So how are we doing a scene? I was playing myself,
(30:30):
you know, I was doing a scene. Uh. Apparently you
could get a morphine, cocaine all this stuff, um, very
very easily, and in tons of medical or medicine and
elixers that you would buy over the counter in the
nineteenth century. Yeah, not just medicines. Um, cocaine was in
(30:51):
a lot of stuff, um, most notably coca cola at first, Um,
cocaine toothdrops give your kids, Yeah, cocaine throat lozenges. We did.
You just reminded me. We did a gallery. There's a
gallery on stuff you should know, Like, um, you have
the cocaine poster right the kid, Uh yeah, cocaine tooth drops. Um,
(31:13):
it's it's like crazy medical ads or medicine pharmaceutical ads
from yesteryear. We'll put that up when this is really
good stuff. Yeah, but that one's in there, the cocaine
tooth drops. And it's got like a little kid playing
happy because he's on cocaine, playing vigorously. And look at
this kid. Did you see Mrs Winslow's soothing syrup for
(31:34):
teething children. Look at out wasted that kid is. Yeah,
he can't even pick his head up off the pillar. Hilarious.
His eyes are half lidded. He's like, I love teething
um for the throat lozenges. The ads as indispensable for singers, teaches,
and orators to quiet a sore throat and to quiet
the demons in your head. Yeah, they order to add
(31:54):
the demons in your head. Or how about this cocaine wine.
The Oka line market was really big. Um. Yeah, the
then Marianna was the most recognized and most popular brand
at the time, but there were a lot of them,
and that's just cocaine. We also talked about opium um.
There was something I saw another ad for something called
(32:14):
stickney and pores paregoric and McCormick made that the popular
spice maker and they even have the recommended doses for infants,
children and adults, and it was alcohol and the rest
was opium ninety two proof man and that is that
looked on them or laudanum laudanum. No, but that was
(32:38):
like an alcohol mixer. Yeah, maybe I guess it was
laudanum um. Is that how you say it? Laudanum? Yeah?
I think so. It's not the same as de lauded, right,
it's different, but de lauded isn't opiate. But it's like
a it's just a straight up opiate that's used for medicine. Yeah,
I mean it's crazy. People just used to like to
put a few drops under their tongue and like it
(33:00):
would start their child or like, uh, I know we've
talked about the Soderberg's TV show. Is that on still?
I don't know. I haven't kept up with it lately,
but in the opening episodes, I mean, the doctor what's
his face is like shooting cocaine between his toes on
a daily basis. I watched Edwood again the other day.
(33:21):
First of all, it's even better than ever. It's great
movie Hill Murray so great. Yeah. Uh and then uh,
I've I forgot Martin Landa was like a junkie in it.
Yeah he's an opium p and yeah, but he injects
it using his sears in Roebuck opium injection kill but
probably yeah, lest just lots of crazy things. Uh So Yeah,
(33:46):
strong drugs available over the counter until people wised up,
uh and started making strong drugs pharmaceutical style. They're like,
you can't have this anymore unless you come to the hospital.
Then we'll hook you up. How about trepid nation, man,
which you pointed out we talked about before in the
lobotomy episode. I think so, it's just I know we've
(34:08):
mentioned it at some point because we talked about the
movie Pie. Yeah. Where um spoiler alert, Oh yeah, big spoiler.
That's how it ends. Yeah, it turns out that um
people have done that. There was a guy named um
Bart Hughes who was a I guess kind of like
a crazy genius from the nineteen sixties. He decided that
(34:32):
um our brains originally were constructed for us to be
walking on all fours, and once we started walking upright,
the blood supply to our brain was diminished. Makes sense
in a weird way. He also decided that our skulls
had grown to decrease blood flow in the brain, and
(34:53):
that the best way to counteract this was to cut
a hole in your skull to allow more blood flow. Yeah,
that's what trepid nation is. Drilling a hole in your skull, right,
or cutting a whole piece a square, a circle, like
removing a sizeable chunk. There's um evidence of trepid nation
that goes back thousands of years years. Yeah, and some
(35:16):
of these skulls show almost half the skull removed. But
what's crazy is with trepid nation, including Bart hughes own
self trepen nation, the patient frequently survived. And this is
long before anesthesia. We're talking again ten thousand years ago UM,
where people were basically held down and somebody in say
(35:38):
Peru or Mesoamerica, or India or Russia, all over the place,
this this practice was carried out. They would grab an
obsidian rock and start shaving away at the scalp and
then basically chisel out a portion of the skull and
remove it to allow the brain to um well, either
(36:00):
to allow evil spirits out. Yeah, back then that was
more of the line of thought. Or it's possible that
they were treating an injury and this would reduce brain swelling.
I found a great article a vice Um. They did
an interview with Amanda Fielding, who in the nineteen seventies
Tree banned herself. She was a follower of Bart. He
was all bet she was. I think she's a director
(36:22):
of the Beckley Foundation, UM who does research into consciousness
man and um, she actually made a little film of
her doing it. You can watch. Um it's it looks
like super eight and it's like super choppy. It's not
very uh intensive, but two and a half stars, but
two and half stars to two tomatoes. But um, it
(36:43):
does show her drilling herself in the head. Um. She
said she was very cautious and prepared very carefully, but
she used an electric drill with a flat bottom and
a foot pedal, tested the drill on the membranes of
my hand to see would damage the skin, and then
did it, made a film about it, and then she
said afterward, I wrapped my head in a scarf, ate
a stake to replace iron for moss blood, and went
(37:05):
to a party. And she points out that she's not
advocating self trepidation at all, but she said a benefit her.
She said there was a feeling of of the tide
coming in slowly and gently, very subtly. And one thing
she really noticed was a change in her dream patterns.
Her dreams became much less anxious. But she also says
that it could be a placebo as well. She acknowledges
(37:27):
all that but it was interesting. I mean, this was
the nineteen seventies, and I think she was a follower
of that guy because she said that the loss of
pulse pressure UM in the brain when you're Fontanelle's clothes
basically is the reason that she did it, like she
fully believed that. But that's part hughes all over the place. So, UM,
(37:48):
don't do it people, No, did we need to say that?
I don't think so. I hope not. All Right, we
got one more. He thought it couldn't get any weird er.
Corpse medicine a k a. Cannibalism, Yeah, that's another way
to put it. So we did not cover in cannibalism weirdly,
did we. I'd be surprised. I think that's pretty comprehensive.
(38:08):
If we didn't, I don't remember doing it. Of course
that doesn't mean anything. Um. So, corpse medicine or cannibalism
is basically eating human flesh to cure disease. And apparently
it started out with the Egyptians who decided that um,
if you ate mummies, yeah, or mummy powder at least, yeah, Um,
(38:30):
it could cure a lot of different diseases, Yeah, like
muscle aches and headaches. Uh. They also would rub human
fat on, like topically on your body, and they thought
something was wrong. Drinking the blood of a gladiator in
ancient Rome was supposedly enough to cure your epilepsy. Yeah,
how about that. Yeah, drinking blood is a big one
(38:53):
just throughout the ages. Um And speaking of mummies, also,
it wasn't just food. There's is awesome cult of weird
article about mummy brown where up until the nineteenth century,
I think maybe even the twentieth century, um mummies were
used to make a specific type of brown pigment used
in paints called mummia. Interesting. Yeah, and then the artists
(39:16):
started to figure out where it was actually coming from
and they stopped using it. But mummy and brown came
from mummies. Is that still a color? I think? Yeah.
So you can get like Bear Premium plus mummy and brown. Right.
I don't think it's made with mummies anymore. But yeah,
I've seen it before. I've seen it before I read
the article, So it's out there somewhere. Uh. Yeah, what
(39:37):
else would they eat? Fat bones? Yea fat bones. Grind
it up and eat it and you'll be cured. There's
there's a pretty cool Smithsonian article called the Gruesome History
of Eating Corpses of Medicine. If this kind of thing
rings your bell, if you just gotta no more? Yeah,
you got anything else? You ready for? Nap? Hey? This one? Yeah? Uh.
(40:03):
If you want to know more about bizarre stuff, type
the word bizarre in the search bar how stuff works
dot Com and it will bring up this and who
knows what else. Yeah, we got a lot of bizarre
things in there. Yeah, and both of us just said bizarre.
So now it's magic listener mail time. Hey, before I
read listener mail, I want to ask a favor. Uh. First,
(40:27):
My Songs for Kids is a great foundation run out
of here in Atlanta. And what they do is they
put musicians and children's hospitals and camps for kids with
special needs and basically play music form. It's that simple
and it's really neat and um. You can start a
fundraising page through your band, So I thought, let me
(40:47):
try and raise two thousand dollars. WHOA, that's lofty goal.
I thought it was pretty small. Oh yeah, that's what
it is. So my old man band, El Cheapo, we
started a page and you can donate as little as
ten dollars and that would really mean a lot to
me and those kids. So just go to Songs four
Kids Foundation dot org slash l cheap oh E L
(41:10):
c h E A p O. That's the band. Do
you have a song in particular you want to play. No,
you'll play any of the songs. I'll play any of them.
That's a great attitude. Yeah, just go to Songs for
Kids Foundation dot org slash el chiepo and like I said,
donate ten dollars or more if you want and help
l Chiepo reach their goal of two thousand and I
really appreciate it, folks. Alright, so listener, mail, I'm gonna
(41:34):
call this the or the the the or the Greetings
from Manhattan, guys. I just finished catching up on a
few weeks of podcasts. I was excited to hear you
mentioned the pronunciation of the in the folklore episode. I
studied vocal music throughout my youth and in college, and
one of the more important rules for my teachers that
stuck out with me was about the word. The word
(41:55):
and word combinations can sound surprisingly different when they're sung
versus spoken, So there are a bunch of interesting tricks
he used to counteract this diphthongs are used to emphasize
two adjacent vowels so a listener can hear both, while
glottal stops create a discreet stop between words so they
sound distinct rather than like a big old mess of sounds.
(42:15):
With the word the the trick is to slightly adjust
how it's pronounced. These should be used when it precedes
a word beginning with a consonant and uh, the sorry,
and these should be used when it precedes a vowel.
May sound silly and bourgeois, but there is a reason
for this. Like Josh guests, a phrase like the apple
sounds normal when it's spoken, but when you're singing in
(42:36):
your words are strung together, it starts to sound a
lot more like the apple makes sense, which is weird
and a made up word. But switched to the apple
and suddenly you've got yourself two fine words that sound
recognizable even when sung. Next time you're listening to any
vocal music, keep an ear out for this. I bet
you'll start to notice this use everywhere. Big shout out
(42:58):
to my former vocal teacher Mrs Alphart A U F
F A R T H Alphart, So you would say
the alphar that's right, Alfar. So she thanks her for
making her such a nut about pronunciation, and that is
from Nicole. Thanks a lot, Nicole, very nice. We appreciate that.
(43:19):
Um more knowledge, just we just keep packing it in.
If you want to impart some more knowledge, if you
want to inject it like some sort of yearine therapy
into our vein or botulis um in our face. Yeah.
You can tweet to us via s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
(43:41):
stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
joined us at home on the web. Stuff you should
Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Child's Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry to
my right. This is Stuffy should Know. Why are your
eyes closed? A creepy? You sound like shwetty Balls Alo
(00:24):
Bob swetty Balls get from Saturday Night Live. Man. That
just that blofted right over here. Now I'm all mellow.
Yeah you irie, Yes, I love that. The beginning of
this article UM talks about botox. I thought it was
a pretty good. Uh it was. It said, like, you know,
(00:47):
one day we're gonna look back on injecting batolenum toxin
A into your face and think that's just crazy. Like
I think it's crazy. Now, Okay, you know I see
what you mean. Nuts. Yeah, if you step back and
look at it, for sure, paralyzing your face muscles to
look younger. Yeah, especially if you've ever seen Dead Calm.
(01:09):
Did you see that movie? Yeah, with a out on
the water with the boat. Yeah, I remember he said
that's what happened to the other people on the bows,
that they all got baculi um and died. Oh, I
don't remember that. Yeah, that was his whole set up.
His excuse for his explanation for what happened was baculi
is um. But yeah, that's what I think of when
(01:30):
I think baculi is um is dead calm. Yeah, and
with botox he end up looking like a freak. Oh,
don't be judgmental, not being judgmental, but it was pretty judgmental. No, yeah,
that's judgmental, I guess. But yeah, I think I think it.
That's my stance is if you want to do that,
then more power to you. But I think people look
(01:52):
weird when they look consistently surprised, So they don't. They
don't use it just for that. They used to treat
my grains, uh, excessive sweatiness. I should get it also
known as hyper hydrosis. What what like in the armpit
or the hands? Yeah, like directly in there. I guess
this toxin goes in and like deadens the nerve cells.
(02:15):
Maybe I can't remember. The point is we're both agreed,
even in a roundabout way, that it is a very strange, bizarre,
you might say, medical treatment to inject toxin into your
face to look youthful. Yeah, I was judging. I take
it all back. People want to do what they want
(02:37):
to do. That's fine. I just my personal feeling is
that it doesn't have the desired effect to make you
look like you think you look proud of you. Thank you.
Uh so, chuck botuli is um batulin botox, we should say,
is pretty much nothing compared to some of the other
stuff that we've used the past and in some cases
(03:02):
still continue to use. Because this is all based on
an article on Housta Works called tim Bizarre Treatments. Doctors
used to think we're legit, it turns out that some
of the stuff actually still is legit. Yeah, and um,
you know, we should plug our friends over at Sawbones. Yeah. Yeah,
Justin and his wife Dr Sidney McElroy. And Justin does
(03:22):
My Brother and My Brother and Me podcast with his brothers.
They have a spinoff, not spinoff, they have their own
podcast with Sawbones where they talk about antiquated medical Uh
that's all. They talk about antiquated medical treatments. And they
said they were inspired by our podcast to start that one. Yeah.
But every time we send somebody over to listen to them,
they don't come back. Yeah, you know, so stop it.
(03:47):
We created a monster. But anyway, Um, we are in
turn inspired by them, and uh, it's just a big
we're blowing smoke each up each other's butt, tobacco smoke.
I'll hard to see it. That was literally where that
term came from, to blow smoke ups up your arts.
But all it did was redirect to the fact that
(04:09):
people used to do this for real. And I don't
know if that's really where the term came from or not.
I don't. I don't either. I can tell you where
the treatment supposedly came from came from a legend. It
looks like a legend. I think at the time they
took it as a factual story that a man rescued
his drowned wife from a river, I think in France.
And um, I didn't know what to do when a
(04:30):
soldiers just happened to walk by and said, take this
pipe and blow the smoke like stick one end into
erectum and blow on the lid end until she comes
to I don't think we've even said yet what we're
talking about, which is a tobacco enema. We're no sawbones.
Tobacco enemas literally blowing tobacco smoke up the rectum of
(04:53):
an individual for a health reason, and in this case,
the original reason was to revive a drown victim, which
is apparently what it was initially used for when it
came into widespread use, and I guess it was in
widespread use, and apparently it did work. In this initial legend,
the wife came to on the fifth blow and went
(05:15):
to a local bar and got a drink and then
went home after being resuscitated from drowning and then having
a pipe in erect um with smoke blone up her butt. Yes,
and um, there there's speculation that if if it did work,
it was the intrusion of the pipe or later on
the bellows that probably did it. But the thinking at
(05:39):
the time was that nicotine was a stimulant and that
this would directly stimulate the person back to life. That's right. Uh,
you mentioned drowning victims. That it was so commonly used
as a method for helping drowning victims that this equipment
was um put alongside major waterways, very much like we
(06:01):
would have a um defribrillator today. They had these along
like the River Thames, and you had to know where
they were. And Uh. In seventeen seventy four, doctors William
Hawes and Thomas Cogan Um in London formed the Institution
for Affording Immediate Relief two persons apparently dead from drowning,
and they later changed that name to the Royal Humane Society.
(06:23):
That's a lot better. And they have promoted this method
by paying people for guineas uh to anyone who could
successfully revive a drowning victim. Huh. I'll bet in those
kids along the waterways you go to use it in
the tobacco would be missing because local twelve year old
had gotten into it. It's a good point. Uh. And
there was even a little rhyme at the British Medical
(06:44):
Association in the seventeen seventy four at the meeting um
tobacco glister because it was also called glister g l
y ste er these kids tobacco glister. Breathe and bleed,
keep warm and rub till you succeed, and spare no
pains for what you do may one day be repaid
to you. What is going on? Uh? You know what
(07:06):
goes around comes around. What's going on? And I think
trying to England where I guess if you're if you're
giving a tobacco animal to somebody and you know that
that little rhymes, you probably would stop because you'd be like,
I don't want this coming back to me. I just
rather pass on to the next world. Uh well. Dr
(07:26):
Richard Mead was the first guy who pioneered this in
mid seventeen hundreds, and by eighteen eleven it was because
they were like, no, this is not working and it's
bad for you and you're blown smoke up. Someone's but right,
what are you thinking? And then later on doctors were
used to prescribe cigarettes going through the other end that's right,
(07:46):
which is all untrue supposedly. Yeah, I guess that was
the Edward Burney's thing. Oh yeah, intent um, all right,
Next up, we have our mercury. Um. If you've ever
heard of you've ever seen the awesome exhibit the terracotta soldiers.
Did you ever see that? Um? China's first emperor, Qin
(08:07):
chi Huang Um he was the moment the terracotta soldiers. Yeah,
he was the one that was buried in like this
basically underground city that was so vast and had all
these terracotta soldiers guarding him and his own specific to him.
They've they've I was about to say rated much of it,
but they've explored much of it, but not his actual
tomb still because it has a moat of liquid mercury
(08:30):
around it, so he's still in situ because of the
local Yeah, that's pretty neat, pretty neat. And Um, he
took the stuff as to make himself immortal, um, which
is ironic because super toxic and it killed him before
he was forty, but at the opposite effect it did. Um.
His death didn't apparently get out to the rest of
(08:52):
the world because mercury was used in other kinds of
medicines for a very long time, apparently up until the parties. Um,
if you had syphilis, your doctor would give you some
sort of ointment, sometimes an injection of mercury to treat syphilis.
And it may or may not have treated the syphilis,
(09:13):
but it would definitely make your teeth fall out and
make you what would I guess generously be called agitated. Yes,
it had. There's a host of horrible things that can
happen to you from mercury exposure. Yeah, like death. Um.
Cinnabar was what they used in China as their or
mercury for two thousand years. And uh, it's it's just
(09:36):
I find it crazy that I know it was the
first Emperor of China, so it was a long time ago,
but it just seems weird that hey take this thing
to make you live forever when it's actually one of
the most toxic things you can put in your body.
They had it backwards. Supposedly, Jeremy Piven had mercury poisoning
(09:57):
in two he was eating sushi twice a day. I
remember that, and then I heard that, and then I
think I remember hearing that that wasn't true, and it
was maybe it was like made up to get out
of a movie or something. I don't know. I've got
looking at that again. I definitely remember when that happened.
Thought strange. I mean, I love sushi, like, yeah, anyone
(10:19):
go back and listen to our sushi podcast. But I've
never had mercurial or mercury poisoning. So chuck up next
is one of my favorites. But I could find almost
nothing more on this. I found that it did in
fact exist, and there's schematics and stuff on the on
the internet, but the whirling chair, there's not much to it.
(10:40):
No um again. Mid nineteenth century when um the mentally
ill were treated very poorly locked away put in iron cages. Um.
They had one thing I found called a tranquilizing chair,
and it's basically it looks like an electric chair. You're
just sitting up completely strapped then, um, but you have
(11:01):
a box over your head. Well, what's funny is that
was one of the more humane techniques for treating mental illness. Yeah.
That was like the result of the um humanism progressive
movement from the mid nineteenth century. That's crazy and sad.
Oh yeah, the history of the treatment metal mental illness
(11:22):
not just like yeah, we've talked about it a lot,
just across the ages. It's really really sad. Yeah, very
misunderstood and still is in a lot of ways. Um.
But the whirling chair was it was not all about
it me. It was not an ice shower or laxative
or an insulent comma or an insulin comma. It was
much better. It was a chair with a spring and
(11:43):
lever system basically where they it looks like they had
a like it was hooked up to a like a crank. Yeah,
like a crank that you basically just spun these people
around until they passed out. And based on the schematics
I saw if you were the operator, you had to
wear pantaloon. Yes, that's right. And apparently they would say
(12:04):
it would cure your schizophrenia. Um, because it would shuffle
the contents of your brain and just the right way. Yeah.
Like imagine being strapped to a chair that was spun
around where you became so dizzy that you passed out,
and on top of it, you have schizophrenia, right, and
then on top of that they came out and you say,
how are you feeling? Are you cured? I'm cured? Yes?
(12:26):
Can I please go home now? Yeah? Seriously, they're like, hey,
at least we're not burning you at the stake for
being a witch. Um. I wish there was more out
there on that too, though. I think a lot of
this stuff is just it went the way the dodos,
So there's, you know, not much info on it. Yeah,
I mean there's nothing. It's just there was such thing
as a whirling chair. Here's how it worked, and the
(12:48):
reason why they used it was to rearrange your brain
if you had schizophrenia. That's right. So we'll keep going
because this is a lot of fun. Yes it is,
but first we have to take a commercial break and
we will do that right now, and we're back Chuck
(13:19):
and Chuck, do you remember what are we record on
yesterday where we were talking about antioch t um. So
remember we talked about how oxygen goes through and and
steals electrons from other other atoms and other molecules to
stabilize itself. And that's the process of oxidation. If you
(13:39):
take that process and multiply it by powers of millions,
what you have is radiation poisoning exposure, high levels of
exposure to high levels of radiation, is what I'm trying
to say. Um. For the most part, we do everything
we can to avoid this kind of thing. UM. But
it turns out that in the UM late nineteenth century
(14:01):
early twentieth century there were a lot of products on
the shelf that did the opposite, that introduced radiation in
the form of radium um in the in the hopes
that it would promote health and cure disease. Yeah, Mary
and Pierre Cury discovered it. In by UM, the US
(14:21):
was manufacturing synthetic radium UH to use in such things
like um radium schokolada from Burke and Brown it was,
or radium bread from the Hitman block bakery. Radium was
bread baked with radium water and popular until ninety six,
and radium water was a big thing. The reason why
(14:42):
it was a big thing apparently it kicked all of
this off because there are natural spas in places like
Hot Springs, Arkansas, UM and somebody started investigating the waters
and found radon there and they said, well, rd on,
that's radio active. Where can we find that? And they said,
(15:02):
how about radium? So they started putting radium in everything. Yeah,
they had. Here's some of the other products and you
can look these up. There a lot of fun when
you look at these old school ads, you know. For
the relegator, it was a um a radium lace bucket
basically with a little spigot. It's like a little water tank.
So it just introduced radiation to whatever water you put in. Yep.
(15:24):
Or you could get what they called the radium coin
that you could just drop like an alka seltzer into
your water. Um. There was the radium scope, which is
a toy inwo that offered the luminescence in the ad
also said but also doubles as a wonderful night light
because it glows. Oh yeah, it was for kids. Wow. Toothpaste, um,
(15:46):
but from a man named Alfred Cury who was no
relation really, even though he used that to his advantage
the Curie name. And he also had the faux radio
brand of cosmetics UH rejuvenates and brightens the ski in.
This also kind of brings to focus why little kids
chemistry sets frequently included radioactive materials like in the middle
(16:09):
of the twentieth century it glowed well, no, because like
that you could get it in water if you wanted to,
or cosmetics or contraceptives or chocolate. So why wouldn't you
put it in a kid's chemistry set too? So before
I didn't understand that, Now I understand. So Supposedly the
trend really started to die off in the thirties though,
(16:30):
um thanks to something called rate a Thor and ratea
Thor was a little tincture that you would take these
little couple fluid ounce bottles that were highly radioactive. They
had just tons of radium m and what I guess,
one of the owners or one of the investors in
the company, his name was Evan Buyers. He was a
(16:51):
pro golfer too, I believe um. He very publicly died
of radiation poisoning because he drank three bottles of this
stuff a day. So after at the public was like,
maybe we shouldn't be doing this anymore. Well, another thing
they used it for between nineteen seventeen and nineteen twenty six,
the US Radium Corporation UM used luminous paint to paint
(17:13):
clocks clock faces so you could see them. And workers
were even taught to shape paint brushes with their mouths
to maintain a finer point. So they were sticking the
paintbrushes with the paint on them in their mouth, and
they encouraged them to paint their nails, their teeth, uh,
and to ingest it. But management suspiciously always stayed away
(17:36):
and avoided exposure themselves. And I know there were a
bunch of lawsuits because of that. And the other thing
I found two was they used it before viagran c alice.
There were um they called them bougies b O U
g I E s um radioactive wax rods inserted into
the urethra. Ah isn't that crazy? Yeah, for a number
(18:01):
of reasons. Yeah. Or they had like an athletic supporter
containing a layer of um radium impregnated fabric that you
would wear if you had trouble getting an erection. It's
not nearly as bad as the rods. No, no, all right,
how about eurotherapy, dude, So this one apparently is labeled
quack medicine, but there's a lot of there's a lot.
(18:25):
It makes sense intuitively, so eurotherapy. Drinking or ingesting or
having your own urine shot into your bloodstream. Yeah, yeah,
I some people injected. Yeah, it's still a thing. It
is still a thing. Yeah. UM. Here's why. Urine is
a byproduct of the blood UM and when so in
your your urine is water two and a half percent
(18:49):
roughly is uria, which is actually a UM has antimicrobial, antimicrobial,
anti fungal, and antibacterial product properties and um it also
has another tune mineral stuff like that, salts, things like that. UM. Apparently,
(19:10):
if your blood is toxic, you have toxins in your blood,
your body, your body is triggered to clean it out,
and your urine is clean. If your urine has toxins
in it, your blood is cleaned out too. There's like
the symbiotic um feedback loop where if one's clean, the
other one's clean. If one's toxic, the other one's toxic,
(19:32):
and that you can trigger a blood cleaning your blood
cleaning drive supposedly by drinking your own urine. By reintroducing
the toxins over and over again. Um, your blood could
be conceivably cleaner. That's the thinking behind this, and there's
actually again intuitively it makes sense. Yeah, they they Some
(19:54):
people still think it can stimulate your immune system and
actually fight cancer exactly basically by making your your body
basically your immune system react more vigorously. Um, it's like
running it through the ring or on purpose. Yeah. The
problem is is there's no evidence behind it. There have
(20:14):
been individual reports um of it stopping cancer growth, but
no scientific evidence um has come out in favor of it.
But people still do it. Yeah. And there's also been
tons of stories about people surviving for days and weeks
by drinking their own urine after being trapped in like
a collapsed hotel or something like that. Right. Um, but yeah,
(20:37):
there's still there's still I guess, pockets of people who
engage in urine therapy. Yeah. And um, also we should
mention it is does not help your jellyfish sting I
did it. Don't be dumb on that it actually definitely
makes your jellyfish thing worse. That's another one. Things like
why do people say that if it makes it worse?
I don't know. It's not an episode of Friends, for
(20:59):
God's sake. I know they propagated a lie. Jerks who
pete On who? I can't remember. I think didn't they
all pe on Monica? Yeah? I think Monica got pete On,
But I don't know if it was everybody. Maybe it
was everybody. Of course you didn't show it. It probably
wouldn't have been. I don't know. Yeah, I think it was, yeah,
Courtney Cox, Alright, This next one UM A bit of
(21:22):
a warning. It is sexual in nature. So if you're listening,
maybe you should go ask your mom or dad if
you should continue listening. If you're a child, yeah, an
honest kittern't know. If you're an adult, you should call
up your elderly mother or father. Can I listen to
something about the female orgasm? Right? Which supposedly, apparently for
especially in the Victorian Age, but for centuries before that,
(21:47):
UM was widely considered not to exist. Right um. But strangely,
there was a medical procedure that women would undergo called
UM a pelvic massage yes to treat I don't think
we even said hysteria because women were hysterical quote unquote right.
(22:11):
They couldn't have orgasms, but they could have hysteria, which
we should point out what the hysteria was is normal
female sexuality. Okay, we know that now, but back then
it was hysteria. So somehow somewhere along the way, and
apparently there's um, there's evidence that in ancient Greece the
pelvic massage was carried out. But in the Victorian Age
(22:34):
you would go to your doctor if you're a woman,
and get a pelvic massage, and then you would be
brought to what was called hysterical paroxysm, which is orgasm, right,
which didn't exist, that's right. Uh. They also it was
hysteria or wandering womb um was what it was also called. Well,
wandering room was different. Oh yeah, that was like um
(22:57):
the idea and apparently Hippocrates either at least espoused it
if he didn't come up with it. That was the
idea that the womb or the uterus floated freely inside
the woman and if it moved around too far it
could cause all sorts of other problems. So it's different
than hysteria. But the treatment was the same, yes, which
(23:19):
was bringing a woman to climax a doctor hysterical paroxysm. Yes,
and the doctor would do this um initially using his hands,
and um, you know, I read one article from the
New York Times about it and said, there's no evidence
that the male physicians enjoyed this. On the contrary, this
male elite sought every opportunity to substitute other devices um
(23:43):
or have the husband or a midwife, uh come in
and you know, take care of business for them. So
it wasn't some pervy doctor. This is a lot of
misunderstanding going on at the time, they said. They said,
by the end of the nineteenth century, sev of women
suffered from hysteria, which can also be read as seventy
(24:04):
of American women were normal sexual human beings. And I
guess the other we're just repressed and didn't know they
should be or could be normal sexual human beings. So
it's just crazy they called the hysteria. It's um then
that it went up until the nineteen twenties. So you
were saying that that doctors were looking for any kind
of substitute that you could get their hands. One well,
(24:26):
apparently in the late nineteenth century somebody introduced the vibrator.
After that it became a medical device originally when it
was introduced, right, Yeah, because it brought that time to
achieve the hysterical paroxysm down from anywhere up to an
hour down to about ten minutes UM ideally. And um,
(24:47):
you could buy him at Sears and Roebuck. You know.
It was, like you said, a medical device, and women
loved them. And uh, by the nineteen twenties they started
to pere in erotic films and that's when people were like, oh,
this is not something we should use. This is no
longer a medical device, which is interesting. It's all sort
of backwards, isn't it. So this one to me chuck.
(25:08):
The next one leeches. Yeah, we talked a little bit
about medical leeches before, because they are still around, um,
which is kind of hard to believe if you've never
heard that little tidbit. Yeah, this is why in the
intro I was saying like, hey, some of this stuff
still works, and leeches are a sterling example of that.
(25:29):
So for a very long time. You know, barbers were
originally called barber surgeons, and they were called that because
they would perform lots of surgery, which is why the
barber pole is red and white. Hopefully they would hang
their bloody towels and they would flip around in the wind,
and the barber pole is symbolic of that bloody towels
whipped around in the wind outside of barber's. Yeah, supposedly,
(25:52):
that's the legend as far as I know, that's I
think it's true. I believe it. But one of the
things that Barber's would engage in was blood landing. Yeah. Um,
you remember the old Chiant Life Skit was Steve Martin
years ago, he was a barber. You know, this is
in the seventies, I think when he was a guest
and people come in for everything and he's like, you
just need a good bleeding, like everything under the sun.
(26:14):
People would come in for let's just put a lancet
in there and open up a vein. See what happens.
And that's basically what they did. They would, you know,
it was this more spiritual thing, like the evil spirits
would be out through your blood or like we mentioned
in the anesthesia episode, they would use that for anesthesia
and do stupor through blood. Boss. But um, the they
(26:36):
wouldn't always use lancets. Oh, and apparently that was one
of the reasons why George Washington may have died, was
just too much blood blighting. His doctor really really put
his foot on the gas with blood lighting. And when
he designed his deathbed. Did she go to Mountain Vernon?
Didn't you go? Yeah? I've been a couple of times.
There was like a whole they have, like I think
there's the blood lighting bowl that they used on him
(26:58):
still there. Oh, I didn't even notice. There's a separate
museum that's like brand new. I went to all that stuff.
That is that where it is? Yeah, but I mean,
you know, there's the bed that he died in right there. Yeah,
you can land blood lighting bowls right there. Yes, you
can't go l in it. Um. But the the rather
than lance it's they would also sometimes use are very
(27:18):
frequently use leeches, which and they've been using them for
thousands of years apparently for blood lighting. Yeah, and this
was back when they practiced what was known as humorl medicine,
based on the four humors in the body, which is
everyone knows because of the popular T shirt we sell
flam yellow bile, black bile, and blood for the Four Humors? Right?
(27:40):
What t shirt do we sell? I was just kidding.
We should have one totally the Four Humors. Just have
that on there and then s y s K on
the front. Okay, it could be a big seller. Who
doesn't want a shirt that says black, bile and flam um.
So with blood lighting or with using leeches for blood
lighting everyone who. I think it was the Indians originally
(28:04):
from India who came up with this using leeches for
blood letting, and they were really onto something because, like
you said, medical leeches are still in use today here
in the United States. They're an f d A approved
medical device, and leeches secrete something called here here Harudin.
(28:24):
That's what I'm going with, Haruden h I r U
d I. And I'll bet the guests from Sawbones would
have said it right um, and in in their saliva
you will find haruden and Harudin is an anti coagulant. No,
it's a coagulant, so it keeps you from bleeding to death. Um.
It has antibiotic properties, it's a numbing agent, and it's
(28:48):
a vasodilator, right, which means that it relaxes your your blood.
So it can flow more freely. But it also is
an anti coagulant, so you don't bleed to death. All
of this in each saliva. And they use it today,
um for like skin graphs and for um when they
reattach limbs, that kind of thing. Yeah. I think we
(29:11):
had someone even right in and send us pictures of
their medical leeches, which are in little vials. It's pretty cool.
It's pretty neat. But I mean, this is an ancient, ancient,
millennia old medical technique that is still to this day used,
and it's an FDA approved medical device. Now, leeches are
I just think that's really cool. It is super cool, uh,
(29:32):
you know, because it means it's there's still an open
mind in the medical community. Oh yeah, it's way open.
You know. Let's try whatever. Uh, we are gonna keep going.
I say, we do all ten for the first time ever.
What about you? Yeah, let's do it. All right, We're
gonna keep going right after this, all right, Chuck, we're back. Yeah, man,
(30:08):
we're taking it home with I'm just I'm doing some
I'm taking some medicine, man, some some cocaine and opium.
I bought it at the corner store. Yeah, and then
you could buy your rig if you inject it from
the serious catalog. Yeah, a cocaine kit. Yeah and seen.
So how are we doing a scene? I was playing myself,
(30:30):
you know, I was doing a scene. Uh. Apparently you
could get a morphine, cocaine all this stuff, um, very
very easily, and in tons of medical or medicine and
elixers that you would buy over the counter in the
nineteenth century. Yeah, not just medicines. Um, cocaine was in
(30:51):
a lot of stuff, um, most notably coca cola at first, Um,
cocaine toothdrops give your kids, Yeah, cocaine throat lozenges. We did.
You just reminded me. We did a gallery. There's a
gallery on stuff you should know, Like, um, you have
the cocaine poster right the kid, Uh yeah, cocaine tooth drops. Um,
(31:13):
it's it's like crazy medical ads or medicine pharmaceutical ads
from yesteryear. We'll put that up when this is really
good stuff. Yeah, but that one's in there, the cocaine
tooth drops. And it's got like a little kid playing
happy because he's on cocaine, playing vigorously. And look at
this kid. Did you see Mrs Winslow's soothing syrup for
(31:34):
teething children. Look at out wasted that kid is. Yeah,
he can't even pick his head up off the pillar. Hilarious.
His eyes are half lidded. He's like, I love teething
um for the throat lozenges. The ads as indispensable for singers, teaches,
and orators to quiet a sore throat and to quiet
the demons in your head. Yeah, they order to add
(31:54):
the demons in your head. Or how about this cocaine wine.
The Oka line market was really big. Um. Yeah, the
then Marianna was the most recognized and most popular brand
at the time, but there were a lot of them,
and that's just cocaine. We also talked about opium um.
There was something I saw another ad for something called
(32:14):
stickney and pores paregoric and McCormick made that the popular
spice maker and they even have the recommended doses for infants,
children and adults, and it was alcohol and the rest
was opium ninety two proof man and that is that
looked on them or laudanum laudanum. No, but that was
(32:38):
like an alcohol mixer. Yeah, maybe I guess it was
laudanum um. Is that how you say it? Laudanum? Yeah?
I think so. It's not the same as de lauded, right,
it's different, but de lauded isn't opiate. But it's like
a it's just a straight up opiate that's used for medicine. Yeah,
I mean it's crazy. People just used to like to
put a few drops under their tongue and like it
(33:00):
would start their child or like, uh, I know we've
talked about the Soderberg's TV show. Is that on still?
I don't know. I haven't kept up with it lately,
but in the opening episodes, I mean, the doctor what's
his face is like shooting cocaine between his toes on
a daily basis. I watched Edwood again the other day.
(33:21):
First of all, it's even better than ever. It's great
movie Hill Murray so great. Yeah. Uh and then uh,
I've I forgot Martin Landa was like a junkie in it.
Yeah he's an opium p and yeah, but he injects
it using his sears in Roebuck opium injection kill but
probably yeah, lest just lots of crazy things. Uh So Yeah,
(33:46):
strong drugs available over the counter until people wised up,
uh and started making strong drugs pharmaceutical style. They're like,
you can't have this anymore unless you come to the hospital.
Then we'll hook you up. How about trepid nation, man,
which you pointed out we talked about before in the
lobotomy episode. I think so, it's just I know we've
(34:08):
mentioned it at some point because we talked about the
movie Pie. Yeah. Where um spoiler alert, Oh yeah, big spoiler.
That's how it ends. Yeah, it turns out that um
people have done that. There was a guy named um
Bart Hughes who was a I guess kind of like
a crazy genius from the nineteen sixties. He decided that
(34:32):
um our brains originally were constructed for us to be
walking on all fours, and once we started walking upright,
the blood supply to our brain was diminished. Makes sense
in a weird way. He also decided that our skulls
had grown to decrease blood flow in the brain, and
(34:53):
that the best way to counteract this was to cut
a hole in your skull to allow more blood flow. Yeah,
that's what trepid nation is. Drilling a hole in your skull, right,
or cutting a whole piece a square, a circle, like
removing a sizeable chunk. There's um evidence of trepid nation
that goes back thousands of years years. Yeah, and some
(35:16):
of these skulls show almost half the skull removed. But
what's crazy is with trepid nation, including Bart hughes own
self trepen nation, the patient frequently survived. And this is
long before anesthesia. We're talking again ten thousand years ago UM,
where people were basically held down and somebody in say
(35:38):
Peru or Mesoamerica, or India or Russia, all over the place,
this this practice was carried out. They would grab an
obsidian rock and start shaving away at the scalp and
then basically chisel out a portion of the skull and
remove it to allow the brain to um well, either
(36:00):
to allow evil spirits out. Yeah, back then that was
more of the line of thought. Or it's possible that
they were treating an injury and this would reduce brain swelling.
I found a great article a vice Um. They did
an interview with Amanda Fielding, who in the nineteen seventies
Tree banned herself. She was a follower of Bart. He
was all bet she was. I think she's a director
(36:22):
of the Beckley Foundation, UM who does research into consciousness
man and um, she actually made a little film of
her doing it. You can watch. Um it's it looks
like super eight and it's like super choppy. It's not
very uh intensive, but two and a half stars, but
two and half stars to two tomatoes. But um, it
(36:43):
does show her drilling herself in the head. Um. She
said she was very cautious and prepared very carefully, but
she used an electric drill with a flat bottom and
a foot pedal, tested the drill on the membranes of
my hand to see would damage the skin, and then
did it, made a film about it, and then she
said afterward, I wrapped my head in a scarf, ate
a stake to replace iron for moss blood, and went
(37:05):
to a party. And she points out that she's not
advocating self trepidation at all, but she said a benefit her.
She said there was a feeling of of the tide
coming in slowly and gently, very subtly. And one thing
she really noticed was a change in her dream patterns.
Her dreams became much less anxious. But she also says
that it could be a placebo as well. She acknowledges
(37:27):
all that but it was interesting. I mean, this was
the nineteen seventies, and I think she was a follower
of that guy because she said that the loss of
pulse pressure UM in the brain when you're Fontanelle's clothes
basically is the reason that she did it, like she
fully believed that. But that's part hughes all over the place. So, UM,
(37:48):
don't do it people, No, did we need to say that?
I don't think so. I hope not. All Right, we
got one more. He thought it couldn't get any weird er.
Corpse medicine a k a. Cannibalism, Yeah, that's another way
to put it. So we did not cover in cannibalism weirdly,
did we. I'd be surprised. I think that's pretty comprehensive.
(38:08):
If we didn't, I don't remember doing it. Of course
that doesn't mean anything. Um. So, corpse medicine or cannibalism
is basically eating human flesh to cure disease. And apparently
it started out with the Egyptians who decided that um,
if you ate mummies, yeah, or mummy powder at least, yeah, Um,
(38:30):
it could cure a lot of different diseases, Yeah, like
muscle aches and headaches. Uh. They also would rub human
fat on, like topically on your body, and they thought
something was wrong. Drinking the blood of a gladiator in
ancient Rome was supposedly enough to cure your epilepsy. Yeah,
how about that. Yeah, drinking blood is a big one
(38:53):
just throughout the ages. Um And speaking of mummies, also,
it wasn't just food. There's is awesome cult of weird
article about mummy brown where up until the nineteenth century,
I think maybe even the twentieth century, um mummies were
used to make a specific type of brown pigment used
in paints called mummia. Interesting. Yeah, and then the artists
(39:16):
started to figure out where it was actually coming from
and they stopped using it. But mummy and brown came
from mummies. Is that still a color? I think? Yeah.
So you can get like Bear Premium plus mummy and brown. Right.
I don't think it's made with mummies anymore. But yeah,
I've seen it before. I've seen it before I read
the article, So it's out there somewhere. Uh. Yeah, what
(39:37):
else would they eat? Fat bones? Yea fat bones. Grind
it up and eat it and you'll be cured. There's
there's a pretty cool Smithsonian article called the Gruesome History
of Eating Corpses of Medicine. If this kind of thing
rings your bell, if you just gotta no more? Yeah,
you got anything else? You ready for? Nap? Hey? This one? Yeah? Uh.
(40:03):
If you want to know more about bizarre stuff, type
the word bizarre in the search bar how stuff works
dot Com and it will bring up this and who
knows what else. Yeah, we got a lot of bizarre
things in there. Yeah, and both of us just said bizarre.
So now it's magic listener mail time. Hey, before I
read listener mail, I want to ask a favor. Uh. First,
(40:27):
My Songs for Kids is a great foundation run out
of here in Atlanta. And what they do is they
put musicians and children's hospitals and camps for kids with
special needs and basically play music form. It's that simple
and it's really neat and um. You can start a
fundraising page through your band, So I thought, let me
(40:47):
try and raise two thousand dollars. WHOA, that's lofty goal.
I thought it was pretty small. Oh yeah, that's what
it is. So my old man band, El Cheapo, we
started a page and you can donate as little as
ten dollars and that would really mean a lot to
me and those kids. So just go to Songs four
Kids Foundation dot org slash l cheap oh E L
(41:10):
c h E A p O. That's the band. Do
you have a song in particular you want to play. No,
you'll play any of the songs. I'll play any of them.
That's a great attitude. Yeah, just go to Songs for
Kids Foundation dot org slash el chiepo and like I said,
donate ten dollars or more if you want and help
l Chiepo reach their goal of two thousand and I
really appreciate it, folks. Alright, so listener, mail, I'm gonna
(41:34):
call this the or the the the or the Greetings
from Manhattan, guys. I just finished catching up on a
few weeks of podcasts. I was excited to hear you
mentioned the pronunciation of the in the folklore episode. I
studied vocal music throughout my youth and in college, and
one of the more important rules for my teachers that
stuck out with me was about the word. The word
(41:55):
and word combinations can sound surprisingly different when they're sung
versus spoken, So there are a bunch of interesting tricks
he used to counteract this diphthongs are used to emphasize
two adjacent vowels so a listener can hear both, while
glottal stops create a discreet stop between words so they
sound distinct rather than like a big old mess of sounds.
(42:15):
With the word the the trick is to slightly adjust
how it's pronounced. These should be used when it precedes
a word beginning with a consonant and uh, the sorry,
and these should be used when it precedes a vowel.
May sound silly and bourgeois, but there is a reason
for this. Like Josh guests, a phrase like the apple
sounds normal when it's spoken, but when you're singing in
(42:36):
your words are strung together, it starts to sound a
lot more like the apple makes sense, which is weird
and a made up word. But switched to the apple
and suddenly you've got yourself two fine words that sound
recognizable even when sung. Next time you're listening to any
vocal music, keep an ear out for this. I bet
you'll start to notice this use everywhere. Big shout out
(42:58):
to my former vocal teacher Mrs Alphart A U F
F A R T H Alphart, So you would say
the alphar that's right, Alfar. So she thanks her for
making her such a nut about pronunciation, and that is
from Nicole. Thanks a lot, Nicole, very nice. We appreciate that.
(43:19):
Um more knowledge, just we just keep packing it in.
If you want to impart some more knowledge, if you
want to inject it like some sort of yearine therapy
into our vein or botulis um in our face. Yeah.
You can tweet to us via s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
(43:41):
stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
joined us at home on the web. Stuff you should
Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com
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