Danny Jones Podcast - #309 - Ancient Medical Examiner Uncovers Remains of Hitler, Napoleon & Jesus | Philippe Charlier

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Philippe Charlier is a French coroner, forensic pathologist and paleopathologist who has personally examined the re...mains of historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, Pablo Picasso, Joan of Arc and many more. SPONSORS https://trueclassic.com/danny - Upgrade your wardrobe & save. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. EPISODE LINKS https://www.instagram.com/phcharlier https://x.com/doctroptard FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Evidence Hitler died in Berlin 11:05 - Hitler's missing skull fragment 14:25 - Analyzing Hitler's teeth 25:15 - Examining ancient poo of King Louis XIV 30:08 - What they found in Napoleon's bathtub 34:36 - Diagnosing cancer using old paintings 41:49 - Examining Jesus' robe 47:13 - Bone analysis discovers how Lucy died 54:04 - Cro-Magnon man 59:08 - Why human lifespan hasn't changed since pre-history 01:04:29 - Pablo Picasso's remains 01:10:25 - Studying King Tut's children 01:12:40 - The mummified heart of Louis XIV 01:21:14 - The skeleton of Mary Magdalene 01:31:23 - Reviewing "The Chemical Muse" 01:43:37 - Ancient medicine 01:49:36 - Jesus' crucifixion 01:53:11 - Jesus cause of death during crucifixion 02:04:24 - Do humans have souls? 02:07:05 - Philippe's modern-day autopsies 02:09:40 - Treating murderers in prison 02:12:34 - Using ancient medical knowledge today 02:19:00 - Ancient biological warfare 02:21:18 - Finding evidence for mythological creatures 02:29:38 - Recreating the voice of King Henry IV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:00 Is it you a doctor? Is it a doctor? I'm a doctor. I've got three PhDs. Three PhDs. And I'm reading the fourth now. No way. So what are your PhDs in?
Starting point is 00:01:16 Medicine, forensic, archaeology, and ethics. And I'm reading the last one, the fourth in low. Okay. We have a lot to talk about today. The reason, the way I discovered you was I read your peer review on Dr. Amin Hillman's book, the chemical muse. And then I got introduced to all of your other work, the anthropology, the forensic stuff. So I want to cover all of this today. But first of all, I want to know what is this picture? Are those really Hitler's teeth? Yes, this picture has been taken in Moscow, Russia.
Starting point is 00:01:55 And you can see my hands wearing some white gloves. Between my fingers, I've got the remains of Hitler's mandible, in fact. So you can see this tiny remains. means made of bone, of teeth, and also some prosthetic element. All of this comes from Hitler. So Hitler really did kill himself in the bunker in April. He didn't escape to Argentina. Exactly. Yes, he died, really died in Berlin in 49, in 45, 45. And you know, there were a lot of theories about escaping to Argentina, Brazil, Antarctic. Some others spoke also about the moon. but we can read so much theories. So it's absolutely, it's a fake.
Starting point is 00:02:42 Of course, it died, it really died. But we do not know exactly what was the exact cause of death, because we found tiny remains of powder, a blue powder between the teeth that may be related to poison. And we found also a big hole at the level of the scud of Hitler that may be related to the exit of bullet, from from his from a bullet exactly so we don't know maybe one you know maybe the the poison did not work very well or very quick so he asked a good one to kill himself so what was the smoking gun evidence
Starting point is 00:03:19 for you and how did you how were you able to figure out beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was hitler's mandible because i mean from my i have a there's i don't understand all the nuances and the history of Hitler's escape, the theory of his escape. But from what I understand, there was like, out of the top 15 people under Hitler, two through 10 were able to escape to Argentina or to South America. And Hitler was the one who ended up staying in the bunker and committing suicide. And some people speculate that that didn't fit his character. He wasn't the kind of guy to maybe go down to go down with the ship the way he did.
Starting point is 00:04:00 And, you know, it is documented that they did. did have escape routes. And with all of those top generals and commanders being able to escape, it's and the lack of evidence of Hitler actually, the lack of evidence of his body and other stories that he was buried in multiple places throughout history. So first of all, where did you find this piece and this piece of his jawbone? And what was what was the the best evidence that this belonged to? Hitler? First of all, you have to imagine the period. We are exactly at the end of the Second World War, okay? We are in Berlin, Germany. You've got three different armies that are arriving on the East Front. You've got the Soviets, okay?
Starting point is 00:04:49 Now Russia, if you prefer. On the other part of the front, you've got the French, you've got the American, you've got the Canadian, and the English. So Hitler knows that he will be defeated within the next few hours or days no more. So he's in the chancellery, in the bunker, below the chancelry, to be exact. And on the morning, we are in the last days of April, 1945. In the morning, he will get married with Eva Brown, okay, which is much younger than him.
Starting point is 00:05:22 So they make the short ceremony, they drink some alcohol, maybe Porto, okay, and it's important. And just after the midday, they will all commit suicide. Not only the couple Hitler, Eva Hitler, now on Adolf Hitler, but also all the Goebbels, Marta Goebbels, which is a kind of minister of propaganda. Goebbels. Exactly. Goebbels, exactly. And all the daughters, six daughters. And also the dog, if you want to know the most precise detail.
Starting point is 00:05:55 Exactly. So they all commits suicide using... cyanide or using poison or using also fire arms. Cyanide? Exactly, yes, exactly. The problem is that... Well, the poor dog didn't commit suicide. They killed the dog.
Starting point is 00:06:11 Of course, yes. You have to know that the poison did not work very well. Probably because they have eaten many things before, like a feast for the wedding, maybe because of the portal also. So we can find some fragments of the... the tiny glass that's trying to find... Shards of glass?
Starting point is 00:06:37 No, ampoule. You know when you break it and you drink it, it's a small part of glass when you break it. You don't know the English word. Like a fjord? A fjord or gourd. What is he that? What is he... like a, not shards, just like a sediment?
Starting point is 00:07:00 No, no, no, no, it's a very, it's, it contains some medics and it's very, very, very, very little, very small, you know, and you break it and then you've got the liquid inside. Yes. What name for this in English? You don't remember? Oh, a capsule. A capsule. A capsule, okay, okay, got it. Sorry.
Starting point is 00:07:17 That's okay. That's just like, okay. The problem is that the capsule of poison did not work very well. we found tiny fragments of this capsule made of glass between the teeth of Hitler Joe, but probably the poison did not work very well because of all the things that they have eaten or drink just before. So just after Hitler and Everbronn asked her to be killed directly, or maybe did they kill themselves?
Starting point is 00:07:45 We do not know exactly. But we've got many, many testimony. We know, for example, that all the people that were next to, Hitler and Eva and also the Goebbels, put all the cadavers outside of the chancelry in the ground, just outside, in two pits made by bombs. One pit for Hitler, on his new wife, and the second for all the Goebbels family. Over these cadavers, they put some kerosene, okay, some petrol over it, some oil. Some oil over the dead bodies.
Starting point is 00:08:21 Exactly, just to burn them. But it was not very efficient. You have to use a lot of oil, a lot of petrol to burn a body. It was just a few liters, not enough. So when the Soviets arrived maybe five or six days later, immediately they interred into the chancelry and they tried to find the cadavers, because it was very important for them from a pure political point of view
Starting point is 00:08:48 to discover the remains of Italy and to know if the chief has abandoned all the army on the territory. So they found some blood. They found also some fragments of tissues, of cloth, et cetera, on outside of the chancelry, they found the pits. But when they did something like archaeological excavations or forensic excavations, they didn't find all the body of Hitler. They found just the lower part of the skull on the remains of all the body.
Starting point is 00:09:20 the upper part. So they were able to confirm the identity of Hitler based upon the dentistry analysis, the exact examination of all the teeth, all the medical treatments, all the morphology of the body, they were able at that precise moment to say, okay, this is the true cadaver of Hitler. At what moment was that? 45. In 45, so that was right afterwards. Yes, just five of six days. after the death of Hitler while making some excavations in the pit outside of the chancelry. So they were able to make something
Starting point is 00:09:58 like a forensic autopsy on the ground. But the most important part of the case was missing. They did not know what was the exact cause of death because they did not have the upper part of the skull.
Starting point is 00:10:14 Interesting. Why don't you think they would have had the upper part of the skull? Probably because the skull had exploded for two reasons. The first one was the firearm wound, of course. And the second one was because of an explosion that we know when you put a fire on a body, when you make a cremation of the body, the skull may explode. Oh, really?
Starting point is 00:10:37 Yes, yes. It's very, very current. Very common? Yes, very common. So these two reasons may explain why the upper part of the skull of Hitler was missing when the first team of the Soviets were excavated. activating the pit. So he took the sign. So the idea is he took the cyanide.
Starting point is 00:10:56 It didn't work because he had a big fat steak beforehand or something like this. Yes, sugar. Mainly sugar. Many sugar. A lot of sugar. Okay. See why the portal is important. And he probably was drinking, right?
Starting point is 00:11:06 Probably drinking a lot of liquor. And then he shot himself in the head. Or maybe he asked him to shot him in the head. Or ask somebody to shoot him in the head. Because he had Parkinson disease or Parkinson's disease. Yes. Right. And then he had.
Starting point is 00:11:20 somebody, one of his body guards or something, cremate the bodies afterwards? Exactly, yes. Making two pits, two different pits. One for the family Hitler and one for the others, meaning the gobbles. Got it, okay. And then so after they, he instructed the guards to cremate the bodies, I'm assuming the guards tried to escape or probably got captured. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:11:41 Okay. Yes. We don't know a lot about the guard. We never had any interviews with guards who admitted to doing this or anybody? Unfortunately, no. No, okay. No. But we've got some indirect testimony and we've got all the reports by the Soviets when they entered into the chancelry. They took many pictures that I saw, describing all the sen of the crime scene, if I can say, of this suicide. So some weeks later, weeks, another team from Moscow came to Berlin to find the missing part of Hitler's body. And they found a skull. Oh, just a small piece of skull. Maybe.
Starting point is 00:12:20 15 cm of maximum length, okay, with a hole inside. It's the left parietal, the right parietal, on part of the occipital. So it's really the upper and posterior part of the skull. And this part is really important because here you've got an exit wound of a fire arm of the bullet. Okay, so we do not know where exactly the bullet was interred, in fact, into the into the, into the, into the, skull but we know exactly where it came out of the skull. Right. Because when you, sometimes the bullet to trajectory will change when it goes inside the skull, it will come out at a random spot, right? Exactly, exactly. It's not necessarily like in and directly out the other side. No, it's not always linear, of course. It may move a lot inside a, inside
Starting point is 00:13:09 the body, especially inside the skull. So if you want me to answer precisely to your question, we are 100% sure that the teeth are really the teeth of it. because we've got many testimonies. We've got the testimony of the dentist, of the assistant of the dentist. One part is in Moscow, one other part is in America. We've got also other testimonies such as radiographs, x-rays, made... X-rays.
Starting point is 00:13:40 X-rays, yes, made on Hitler's, not body, but when he was leaving. Just at the moment of the... What's the name of this operation? of this operation. X-rays made just after the Valkyrie operation. Oh, really? Exactly. Because you remember this story, the bomb that exploded. Yes. Just near his body, maybe less than two meters. Normally he should have died. Unfortunately, no. And he said just after that he had headaches or things like this, of course. So he sustained some x-rays, so we know precisely nine months before his death, what was exactly the morphology of the teeth and the skull.
Starting point is 00:14:25 And you were able to examine those original x-rays? Exactly, yes. Wow. Exactly, yes. And we compared the morphology of the teeth and all the prosthesis between the x-rays and what I had in my hands in Moscow. So I was able to see that it's exactly the same aspect, the same morphology. And this is really important because you may imagine that if he's,
Starting point is 00:14:49 had been taken by the Soviets in Berlin in 1945, then transported, I don't know where, in Siberia, somewhere for 10 years or 20 years of detention. Of course, the teeth would have changed. He would have some more treatments at the level of the teeth, the mandible, the maxill, etc. So it will not be the same aspect. So we can say that it's exactly the same, so it died really few months. after the x-rays. So it really confirms this aspect. And it's not finished.
Starting point is 00:15:25 I was able to take some samples of the dental calculus, which is between the teeth, and to export it to my ladder in Paris. True classic isn't just clothing. It's designed to make you look good and feel even better. Their gear fits right.
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Starting point is 00:16:47 Now back to the show. Okay. So the dental what? Calculus. You know, the deposits that you don't have such deposits, that's good for you. Okay. But you know, when you've got some deposits between the teeth, which is calcified, we call it dental calculus. Okay.
Starting point is 00:17:05 It's a medical term. So I was able to take some samples of them, some millimeters, okay, to take them back away to my lab in Paris. Okay. And to examine it under microscope. And we were able to see some fragments of argil, meaning that he took some medics because he had pain at the level of the gut, okay, on stomach pain, okay, because of ulcer, maybe because of gastritis, okay, inflammation. So he took argyll, which was a painkiller at the level of the gut on the gastric system.
Starting point is 00:17:41 Yeah. Yeah. We knew from many files that he had such a treatment. So it was again an argument saying that these remains were the true one. One last thing, when we did examine at the microscope all the samples of dental calculus, we did not find any meat fragment. No one meat fragment. So no animal fragment.
Starting point is 00:18:08 He was vegetarian. Exactly, yes, exactly. So his teeth look perfect here. Not so perfect. He had a very poor state of dental health. Those teeth look perfectly shiny white, and then he has one metal golden tooth? Yes, it's an amalgam. It's made of many metal, in fact. But you can see also the blackish coloration due to the partial cremation of the body. You can see between the two teeth on the left side
Starting point is 00:18:41 some fragments of mucusa that are still present. It's the jungeva, of course. Right, right. Jungeitis? Yes, yes. So it's really a good, for us, it's really a good sample. We can do a lot of things on such a sample. And you weren't allowed to take this out of Moscow, right?
Starting point is 00:18:58 Not the teeth. Not the teeth. Is this? This is another fragment. This is from the upper maxilla. Upper maxilla. And you can see how complex it is. It's really a very complex piece.
Starting point is 00:19:08 Is this been polished and like and it has not been polished it's been cleaned by the russians but just cleaned and thanks god they let some fragments of Dundal calculus which were very important for us what was it like going into those the archives where they kept all this stuff like how tight was it and what was it like what were the guards like and what was the process like for you getting getting your hands on the stuff the teeth were in the FSB which is the continuation of the KGB. So it's in a very big building in the center of Moscow, which is the Lubyanka, not a very well-renowned building, as you may imagine. Right. But the ambiance was really amazingly friendly,
Starting point is 00:19:56 amazingly friendly, okay? Because they were really open-minded because they wanted... Can I get you a water or anything, coffee? You're good? They wanted something like international and objective expert to do the job. Previously, I worked on some ancient artifacts such as Richard the Lionheart, King of England,
Starting point is 00:20:18 the relics of Joan of Arc, etc. So they knew me on my lab. Probably because I was not, sorry, American. Right. Why didn't they want any Americans? Maybe because of historical opposition. Maybe, maybe. You don't say. Well, I was French and at this
Starting point is 00:20:38 I'm still French and at this period they wanted something which was almost independent, okay, not between this historical opposition. Sure, sure, so an unbiased. And they did not want also someone from Russia because they didn't want people to say,
Starting point is 00:20:55 okay, you ask a Russian to study relics which are in Russia so it's not objective. So we did the job. Honestly, we did it well. But to answer your question again, when I had these remains in my hands, I really had no feeling, no particular feeling. Because, you know, when you do such a job, you are really focused on your analysis. Okay.
Starting point is 00:21:18 You don't have time for feelings, for sentimental feeling or something like this. After, when the job is finished, when you get out of the Lubyanka, when you are in the street of Moscow. Okay. Then at this moment, you say, wow, such a moment it was. The most critical part was between the asking of the study and my study itself. Because I took a long time of reflection before doing it. Do I go to Moscow? Do I do such a study?
Starting point is 00:21:54 Maybe it's better not to do it, because it's not nothing. You know, studying Richard the Lionheart or the relics of St. Louis, as I did all. or other historical remains, okay, no problem. Teeth on hairs from Picasso, okay, no problem. But Italy, it's really another category, as you may imagine. So before doing it, I had a long time of reflection. But finally, I found that it was really, it's part of my job to do it. It was really a huge historical interrogation.
Starting point is 00:22:29 Because we had, as you said before, we had so many theories about an escape to Argentina, Brazil, everywhere else. So we wanted to know if this was true or false. So this was the only way to know the truth. So finally, I accepted the job. Now, Russia and the KGB and the regime there, they have a stance on before you came in there. They had already stated that they know for a fact this is actually Hitler's remains, right?
Starting point is 00:23:06 Would there have been any sort of backlash or repercussions for you if you would have said, no, this is not Hitler's remains? They told us, and it was absolutely honest from their part, they told us, okay, do the analysis, and we will not ask you to do, to go in one direction or another direction.
Starting point is 00:23:25 Do it clearly without any orientation. So we were absolutely free of our conclusions. Absolutely free. When I was doing it... And here's a bag of cash. No, no, no, no, seriously, no. But no, no, when we did the examination, I had my microscope with me,
Starting point is 00:23:45 which is that you can see in the... Right. I had my gloves, my everything. So I said, minute after minute, all my conclusions to them. And it's true that's one minute after one minute. minutes, all the aspects were gathering into the authenticity of such remains. Wow.
Starting point is 00:24:08 That's pretty bizarre, man. Bizarre, but you know, it's history. Of course, this is the most horrible, one of the most horrible of all human history, of course. Yeah. But from a pure historical point of view, it was really interesting, really interesting. And, you know, when I do forensic autopsies daily in Paris, it's the same way. work. It's the same. Yeah. What originally got you in to decide, like, when did you say, hey, I want to start doing, I wanted to start doing autopsies on ancient dead people, mummies and people from ancient Greece and these just these historical figures, religious figures, all this stuff. How did this happen for you?
Starting point is 00:24:50 I was six years old, six years old with my parents. We were in Pompeii, Italy, you know, the ancient Roman city, which has been destroyed by the eruption of, Volcano Vesuvius. And there I saw many skeletons, but you know there, the skeletons are covered by plaster. And it looks like white ghost. Okay, white ghost. And these days I said to them, okay, this is really the job that I want to do. I want to make these dead speaking, but not using spiritism or magical beliefs, but using science. So using medicine and also archaeology.
Starting point is 00:25:32 This is the reason why I made some PhDs, one in medicine, one in archaeology, anthropology, and others too, because I wanted to know how to use such specialties from traveling into time, in fact. When my children asked me, Daddy, what did you do today? I answered them, oh, I traveled into past because I was studying the poo of King Louis 14 in Versailles because I was studying the relics of St. Laurent O'Toole, which is an ancient saint from Ireland, because each time I work with and I touch such relics, in fact, I travel into time. Why were you studying the poop of that? Who was he again?
Starting point is 00:26:19 The king, Luis the 14, the Brinner of Versailles. Yes, we are the 14. And you were studied, I think one day we were messaging each other and you said that you were in his bathroom. Yes. Exactly, yes. So what were you guys looking for? You have to imagine something like this room, but full filled with poop. Yes, 80 centimeters 8, just the poop of the king.
Starting point is 00:26:45 Wow. Yes, and this is really interesting because you can investigate all the alimentation process, all the disease, also, the parasites, for example, the exposure through toxics on elements such as mercury, lead, arsenic, etc. When did he die? 1715. So there was a big room of poop under his toilet? Yes.
Starting point is 00:27:10 Because they had no plumbing. So it was like a royal porta potty. Exactly. Exactly. So you have all the history, the intimate history of the king. This is really interesting. This I love, you see, latrines. It's one of my best.
Starting point is 00:27:27 part of the job. I remember having excavated some latrines in an isolated island in Greece, which is Delos, the island of Delos. Delos. Yes, it's next to Mekonos, if you know, the island. It's an isolated island in the Asian Sea. It's in Mediterranean Sea. And here there was poop from the second century AD. Okay, but a cascade, a cascade of poop, it was one of my dreams. And what did you find in that poop? In poop, you find a lot of things in ancient poop. Not speaking about Versailles. Ancient poop. Yes, ancient poop.
Starting point is 00:28:07 Yes, paleo poop, if you want. That's a great keyword. Ancient poop. Ancient poop. In Versailles, I can't tell you yet because the study did not begin. We are just collecting samples. But for example, in ancient poop from Greco-Roman antiquity, we can find some.
Starting point is 00:28:25 Yes. We can find some parts of alimentation, and we can find also fragments of sponge. Do you know why we find sponge? Sponge? Sponge. Yes. In poop? In poop.
Starting point is 00:28:37 I have no idea. When you go to the toilets now, you use something like a stick, you know, to clean the bathroom, to clean the toilets. Yes. But at this period, such stick were used not for cleaning the toilet. wiping their butts. Exactly. Exactly. So you can find some fragments.
Starting point is 00:28:59 And you have to imagine that there were put in a bowl at the feet of all the people. Then all the parasites were going from, so it would be rude from one ass to another ass, et cetera. Right, right. So that's why. And we can find also another thing in latrines. You see the holes where the people were gathering. And people were speaking one next to the other. If we had done such an interview but two millionaires before, we would have done in the latrines.
Starting point is 00:29:28 Okay? Totally naked. You, not totally, but half part of the body. And like we were peeing or pooping, and you would have asked me some questions and I would have answered this way. Okay. But in such latrins, we can find also some babies. Hey, guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video. Back to the show.
Starting point is 00:29:51 When you don't want baby, you don't put baby anywhere, okay? And you put them in latrins. And I remember the case of latrines in Israel, which have been blocked. The evacuation pipes have been blocked by babies because people did not want it. It was in a brothel, you see. Oh, God. All the babies from these were like abortions. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:30:19 Yes. All the babies that were not conserved. by the prostitutes were put in the latrins and it blocked the pipe. But my colleague, the archaeologist, made some genetic analysis of the skeletons, of the babies. All the babies were male because all the female babies were conserved and educated to be the next generation of prostitutes. That is fucking dark, man. Oh my God. This is archaeology too.
Starting point is 00:30:53 That's crazy. And what time period are we talking about with these brothels? We are speaking about late antiquity beginning of Byzantine time. So it's something like... I need a number. Three to fifth century AD. Three to fifth. Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:31:11 So what kind of... What else can you tell about these people? Specifically like what kind of foods? What kind of... drugs or can you tell like anything else like the age of the person or anything like that like that with by analyzing their poop no no no with the poop you cannot speak about the age of the individual no no because it's just organic material i had a guy in here recently who was um he he wrote a book about hitler and hitler said he was they were constantly analyze they were sending his poop
Starting point is 00:31:41 off to a laboratory and they were having doctors analyze his poop to see like what was what was wrong with him if he needed to change anything with his diet or his drug race So it's super interesting. Why, why, you know, what other kind of things you can find about people, even like that late, like centuries afterwards? For us, analyzing poop on latrines, it's really interesting because we can recreate the alimentation of this individual, but also all the medics that he took. Medics, not the organic one because it destroys year after year, but all the... The medicine?
Starting point is 00:32:17 Yes, the medicine, yes. Yes. But if someone takes some mercury, for example, for dematological purposes or some exposure to lead, for example, or arsenium, then we can see it on the poop. But we can also see it with the nails, you see, with the nails or with the hairs also. Oh, okay. Another specialty that we've got is the analysis of deposits in a bathtub. I remember having studied the deposits in the bathtub of the emperor Napoleon, the French Emperor Napoleon. Oh, yeah. Because I've been excavated in St. Elena Island, which is in the south of Atlantic, between
Starting point is 00:32:59 Brazil and South Africa. You know, he was deported there, Napoleon. What was the name of the island? St. Helena. St. Eleanor. St. Eleanor. Some map of that, Steve. Sorry, you can continue.
Starting point is 00:33:13 Yes, no problem. He's just doing the visuals. Oh, this is the relic of St. Elena. That's the saint. This is an island. He was deported in St. Elena, Ireland, for six years. Okay. There, he lived in a property that you can find, which is Longwood House.
Starting point is 00:33:32 And maybe you can find a picture of the bathtub of Napoleon in Longwood, house. We studied it because we knew that he had a dermatological disease and he was obliged to spend a long time each day in the bathtub. So we crushed a little bit, the inner part of the bathtub and we analyzed and we found fragments of the treatment that he had, but also fragments of all the bacteria, parasites and viruses that were at the level of his skin. skin that were conserved, like using a mineralization process at the level of such deposits. You see, even if we don't have the body, we can study the disease from this individual. This is really cool.
Starting point is 00:34:21 How old was Napoleon when he died? He died in 1821. Okay. So he would have been in his 30s? How old was he? Do you know roughly? It was 70 in the 50s. Oh, no, no, no.
Starting point is 00:34:35 In the 50s, sorry. It was in the 50s. It was in the 50s. Okay. Steve, I meant like a Google map so you could zoom out. Napoleon House on Santa Elena. Oh, wow. Look at that.
Starting point is 00:34:46 This is the house. And inside you've got the bathtub. Okay. But if you tap, if you, I published on it, so maybe you can find the image. And is this what he died of? Yes. Yes. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:35:00 He died of emorage. I had access to the autopsy of Napoleon. of Napoleon, the autopsy report. And we can see that he died of a huge emmerage, internal hemorrhage. A hemorrhage. Hemorrhage. Hemorrhage. Hemorrhage.
Starting point is 00:35:17 So it was like an intestinal hemorrhage? Yes, yes. He had something like an ulcer, maybe a cancer at the level of the stomach. Wow, that's in the middle of nowhere, and the way in the middle of the Atlantic. Exactly, yes. It's right in the middle of nowhere. You can imagine the travel to go there. I know, right. Wow. That's fascinating. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're studying antiquity, the ancient world, there's only so many ways that we can, so many lenses we can look at it through.
Starting point is 00:35:46 We have the literature and we have this kind of stuff, the forensics. Is there any other way that we can determine, we can figure out what was going on back then? Yes, we've got paintings. Paintings. You can search if you want a painting, famous painting made by Raphaelho, which is La Fauna Raina. Fornaurina. You can try Fornairina.
Starting point is 00:36:08 Fornaurina? Yes. Fornairina, Fornaio, by Raphaelot. And I will explain you what is icono-diagnosis. Okay. Icono-diagnosis. Diagnosis. Yes.
Starting point is 00:36:20 Here she is. Yes. You can see the breast, especially the breast. Yes. I don't know if we can show breast in your program. We can show it, yeah. Okay. So the funarina was the mistress of the painter Raphaelow.
Starting point is 00:36:33 Okay. Okay. We are in the 15th, okay? 15th. Yes, exactly. So he was really in love with her. Okay, she was not very beautiful, but he was in love. And he did the painting of his mistress some month before his death and her death too.
Starting point is 00:36:53 And look at the painting. You can see that at the level of the left breast, you've got two different arcos. You've got two different waves. one and you can see also next to the I don't know the name of this the nipple Ariola This is a word that I do not often use in English
Starting point is 00:37:18 So next to the nipple Okay you've got Something like blue or dark patch Okay you can see it I show it to you around the arm Here exactly here Oh it's like a well that seems like a shadow right? It's not a shadow because
Starting point is 00:37:36 the shadow is not here. Okay, okay. The shadow... I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. So you've got two different dark patch. One is a shadow, and the other is not a normal part of the breast. In fact, Raphael was so precise
Starting point is 00:37:58 that he depicted in the painting the breast cancer of the funerina, of his mistress. But he did not know that this was a cancer. And the cancer was much more important within the next few months than the phonorrhoea died of the cancer. So this is icono-diagnosis. You know, it was so precise. It was so exact in the anatomy, but also in the pathology, that without knowing it exactly, it depicted in the painting all the morphologic, all the clinical signs of breast cancer.
Starting point is 00:38:34 Wow. This is iconogegnosis. Iconogynesis. Exactly. That's fascinating. So this was in the 15th, you said. Exactly. How far back do these sort of paintings go that we can actually look at them and corroborate other things that you find pathologically or in literature?
Starting point is 00:38:56 In fact, each time I go to a museum, I look at the paintings, I look at the sculptures, I look at the engravings and drawings. searching for such pathological sign. You have to consider that I look at you, I'm not searching for disease, and you don't have. Thanks God. But when I look at such paintings, you don't have to consider them as paintings. You have to consider them as patients, patients from the past.
Starting point is 00:39:23 When we see something like this, then we have to cross such data with historical knowledge, with archives, with autopsy report, embalming reports when we've got them. Maybe we can also exhume bodies or skeletons to see if it corresponds to the painting, to the description, et cetera. So the best is ready to cross all the data one with the other. Have you worked with a lot of classicists or other folks who study and, you? ancient world and antiquity and
Starting point is 00:40:04 each time collaborate with them on this each time yes because you know I'm a forensic practitioner on archaeologists but I'm not an historian and I'm not an historian of art so each time we have to collaborate with them because they have to tell us
Starting point is 00:40:20 okay this source this archive is good this painting is not realistic it's much more symbolist or it's okay so each time we have to follow the the good path, you see. So each time we work with such
Starting point is 00:40:36 specialists, historians, historian of arts, sometimes palographs, meaning the one that studied the ancient written parts of archives, that's true. That's so interesting because most, so when you,
Starting point is 00:40:52 how do you determine which historian to work with? Because most history books are based on what you're doing, right? Yes. Because that's where it starts. It starts with the science stuff, the hands in the mud, looking under the microscopes, translating original source texts. But in history, typically, history books basically get written based on other history books. So it's like history is this game of telephone.
Starting point is 00:41:18 We try to find historians that did not write upon previously published books. So I always prefer historians that did themselves, their research. research, okay? And I'm very lucky because in France we've got many of such research search with original source, with unpublished one yet. Okay, so we've got La Sorbonne, we've got many important universities in Paris and in Europe. I may absolutely collaborate also with researchers from America, from the States, for example. I'm thinking about H. Lev Lovenstein, which is a famous dermatologist in America. And we can also work with other specialists in Italy, in Greece, in Germany, in England, in Spain, etc. So it's, my team is really
Starting point is 00:42:11 an international team. My laboratory is made of 33 researchers, okay, from almost 15 countries. So it's really a big team. Wow. And they and their expertise is range from our most ancient patient is Lucy, the Australopithecus. Really? Yes, on our most recent, I will tell you the story after, it's really amazing. Yes, yes. On our most recent one is Pablo Picasso, died in 1973. What about Jesus? Is he one of your patients? Not yet. Not yet. I would like so, yes. The Holy Shrewd may be really interesting to study. Have you had any people, have you talked to anyone who may, who claim to have any sort of evidence of remains or any hypothesis? of where remains could be?
Starting point is 00:42:58 No, no, no. With justice, no, not yet. But you know, within two days, when I will be back to France, I will go to Argenti, because there is a ostension, so official presentation of the, I can say the t-shirt, but the tunic of the Christ. You know, the shroud? No, not the shroud. The shroud is the piece of textile where the body was put in after the death, okay?
Starting point is 00:43:27 But the tunic is something like a shirt, okay, that he was wearing at the moment of the patient. And this piece is conserved next to Paris in a city which is Argenti. And there, this is it. Oh, wow. Yes. In two days, I will be there and looking at it. This is it. This would be something that would be, I would imagine, almost impossible to corroborate with anything else.
Starting point is 00:43:52 Like, how would we... This is exactly the kind of study that we can do. Yeah, but how would you, by studying this, what would you be looking for? It's not a clean robe, okay? It's really made of many spots, many in touch, how do you say? Yes, maybe. Stains, yes. It's fulfilled with many stains, okay, okay.
Starting point is 00:44:19 It's fulfilled with many stains, okay? Stains for us are really interesting because we can make many examination, many analysis on them. We will not study the textile in itself. We know what it is. Right, of course. It's not my specialty, but my specialty is all the biological deposits on the surface of the textile. This is our specialty.
Starting point is 00:44:42 So I will be looking at it externally from the outside, but it may be a very interesting file for us. Will you be examining this under a microscope? Will you be taking samples of it and testing it? All of this is possible. For yet, it's not a study for us. It's not a study yet. We did not ask any permit for it. Okay, not yet.
Starting point is 00:45:06 But this could be a study within the next few years. If it were a study, what would you want to do specifically? What would you want to look for? A hypothetical study on this. Yeah. What would be your goals? What would be interesting would be to study the pollens, okay? The pollens?
Starting point is 00:45:25 Polans, yes. Is it from European? Is it from Mediterranean? Is it from Far East or Middle East? This stuff would still be preserved for 2,000 years? Of course, yes. Of course, yes. Is there any blood also?
Starting point is 00:45:41 What kind of immunoglobulin can we see inside, meaning the exposure to different kinds of disease during the life of this individual? Yes, we can do. we can do a lot of analysis. So was he wearing this the day he was crucified? He was supposed, yes. And you know in the patient, there is a moment where the Roman soldiers...
Starting point is 00:46:05 Captured him? Captured him. But they also take the shirt of the Christ and they ask money, one with the other, to keep it. This is this shirt. When they catch him in the public park? Exactly, yes. Really? Yes.
Starting point is 00:46:22 Tradition says that this is this shirt. shirt. So they took the shirt off of them and then they sold it? Yes, exactly. Yes. You've got two different... The Roman cops did. Exactly, yes. You've got two different robes or shirt. One is conserved in Germany. This is the one that we can see here in Trir. And there is another one which is in Argentoy. This is the one from Germany. And the one from Argenti, you can find it after. Would this be a conflict of interest with the church?
Starting point is 00:46:54 It's a possible, I don't know if we can speak about a conflict of interest, maybe conflict of authenticity. Would the Vatican send their intelligence spies to come? No, no, no, no, no. No, no. This is for... You never know. This is for a novel. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:47:08 But this one is for Germany. Maybe you can try to find the one from Argentoy. How do you spell that? Are... A-A-R-G-E-N-T-E-N-T-E-E-N-T-E. Argentoy? Yes. You did it well.
Starting point is 00:47:25 Argentoi. Yes. So what's the difference between these two? It's, they look like the same, but the one of Argentoy has not, um,
Starting point is 00:47:36 blow that up, Steve. Yes, it's more, it's darker. It's darker. This is where I will be in two days. Oh,
Starting point is 00:47:42 on Sunday I will be there. That looks like a normal t-shirt. Yes. Looks like yours. It looks like my t-shirt without the printing on it. Yes. That's amazing. Hmm.
Starting point is 00:47:55 but it's 2,000 years old. I had a guy in here who said he had the bones of Christ in his possession. He was a, what was he, a Knights Templar? Have you ever talked to any of the Templars? They claim to have some of this stuff. No. So we were speaking also about Lucy. Lucy, yes.
Starting point is 00:48:16 Do you want to know the story? I do want to know the story, yes, the true story. Maybe you can find some, yes, the bones. Maybe focus on the bones. Okay. So you know, Lucy is three. 2.2 million years old. Right.
Starting point is 00:48:28 And the remains were found something like 50 years ago, okay, by a international team, including one famous man in France, which is Yves Coppins. We wanted to study it because rheumatologists from America said that all the fractures,
Starting point is 00:48:48 all the bone trauma at the level of the long bones, so humoral bone, the tight also the femur the tibia also the tibia the femur exactly all these bones
Starting point is 00:49:03 have got a trauma he said this rheumatologist from America that probably Lucy was sleeping in a high tree just to prevent any attack from yenas or lions or animals like this
Starting point is 00:49:19 which may be true and did she had a nightmare Did she move? I don't know. When she fell and she broke the legs, the arms, et cetera, and she died. This was the hypothesis of my colleague from America. And what year did they make this hypothesis? How long ago was this hypothesis formed?
Starting point is 00:49:38 Oh, maybe 10 years ago. 10 years ago. So we wanted to restudy the skeleton with one of his discoverer, which was Yves Coppins. He was professor at Paris. So we took the bones and we looked at them. again and again. And we found that at the level of the left coxal bone, you see what it is, the coxal bone. It's the like the pelvic bone. Exactly. Yes, the pelvic bone. We found that
Starting point is 00:50:05 there were some traces of animal attack, animal attack. What we can see is the negative aspect of the teeth from an animal attack, like if you were beaten by an animal. Okay. at the level of the buttocks. At this period, I was working at the forensic laboratory on pelvis from surfers, from the island of the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Reunion Island. Exactly. Yes.
Starting point is 00:50:41 Some surfers have been attacked by sharks. Oh, yes. I've heard stories. Amazing waves in Reunion Island, but there's some of the most deadly shark attacks happen there. I think there was, like, there was, anyways, I know that's a big political thing with the sharks there, like the overpopulation of sharks and people being bitten there. So you think that this had something to do with sharks?
Starting point is 00:51:01 No. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no shark in this. But the attack was exactly the, not exactly the same, but it was something like this. Anyway, it made me think about an animal attack because I was working on such pelvic bones from the surfers, but I had the pelvic bone of an osteopithecus.
Starting point is 00:51:22 So I made the point between animal attack and animal attack sign on the pelvic bone. But it was not shark, of course. The environment was not the one of shark. Then I look on the medical literature in forensic science international and other kind of specialized journals like this one. And we saw that in the Everglades, but also in Tasmanian Island, there are some attacks by any, Alligators? Exactly. And do you know how the alligators do attack the humans?
Starting point is 00:51:58 They grab onto a limb and then they spin. Exactly. And while spinning, it breaks many long bones of the victim. Legs or arms. Exactly. Like the one of Lucy. Of Lucy. So our hypothesis is that maybe she was attacked by, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's,
Starting point is 00:52:22 alligator or a crocodile, a crocodile, big crocodile, maybe, a paleo crocodile, that she was killed this way. This is maybe the reason why some parts of the body are still missing. Maybe we have to find these missing parts in the fossilized part of such paleo crocodiles. Because in the same layer in which Lucy was found, the paleontologists have found also skeletons of crocodiles. maybe the one that killed Lucy at the paleo. Wow, three million-year-old crocodiles. So, you know, it's a cold case.
Starting point is 00:53:01 Very, very, very cold case. But we were able to resolve it thanks to mixing forensic anthropology and paleontology. Oh, that's fascinating. Where is our Lucy's remains now? They are in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa. In Ethiopia? Exactly, yes. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 00:53:20 In a museum. But we've got precise cast, very precise cast in the Muse de Lom in Paris, for example. That's incredible. So, okay, so the dark, is the dark part? Yes. The stuff that we don't necessarily have. Exactly. And the white one is lost.
Starting point is 00:53:36 The white is what we do have. Oh, the white is what's lost. Exactly. And the dark one is what is conserved. How tall, roughly, is this? Oh, she's very... Oh, the size of a small child. Yes, yes.
Starting point is 00:53:46 No more than one meter, a little bit of a little bit of a... one meter. But she was already a mother. Oh, wow. Really? Yes. That's so cool. That's amazing.
Starting point is 00:54:01 3.2 millions. 3.2 million years ago. Exactly. It's another humanity. You cannot imagine. It's another humanity. It really is. It's hard to imagine what the world looked like 3.2 million years ago, let alone 2,000, 3,000 years ago.
Starting point is 00:54:22 So Lucy is the oldest hominid that we have found? No, we've got older now. Oh, we have older than Lucy. Yes, we've got two miles, for example, which is older. Yes, yes, we've got, I did not study them, so I can speak about it. But we've got older, humanid, so pre-human. Proto-human. What is the, how old is the oldest? I don't know. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:54:50 Okay. I don't know, sorry. Is it around the same timeframe? Around three two one. No, no, no, it's maybe five millions. Maybe five million years ago. Wow. Two my old.
Starting point is 00:55:04 Have you ever, have you ever done any studies on any Stone Age humans? Yes, I've been studying. Oh, maybe you can show the picture. Cromagnon one, Cromagnon. You know what Cromagnon is? Uh-uh. Cromagnon. Cromagnon.
Starting point is 00:55:20 Yes, Cromagnon. Cromagnon. Cromagnon. Cromagno. Okay. In French, we say Cromagnon. Cromagnon. Like a French one, because it's a French word.
Starting point is 00:55:30 It's a French word. Cromagnon. So Cromagnon, or Cromagno, for you, is one of the, yes, this scale, especially I studied. This is the oldest. This is the exact skull that you studied. This is my patient. That's your patient. You're looking at my patients.
Starting point is 00:55:47 That's incredible. In this case is really interesting because when it was discovered, in 1860, people found it in a not a cave, but something like a cave. And you can see a hole at the level of the forehead. Go up. Go up, Steve. You can see the hole. Yes. It's five centimeters length. Okay. And people originally thought that it was the water filling from the upper part of the cave that made something like a dripping on it. Yes, like an erosion, you see. After people thought that it was tuberculosis after they thought that it was syphilis okay so venerial disease stone age syphilis exactly yes so in fact everyone thought that it was the disease of its time okay and in the 90s
Starting point is 00:56:39 people thought that it was caposi syndrome so the cancer induced by AIDS okay okay got it yes but Please. Well, it's absolutely unrealistic. Okay. So because they didn't have the same diseases that we have now. They don't have. It's, it's okay, it's the normal and it's a it's a kind of modern man. We are almost cromagnon. Okay, you, me, we are cromagnon. This is the same species. We are like an alien species compared to these things. No, no, no, no. We are alien compared with lucy, but compared with chromagnon. Similar. This is really similar. Okay. This is us. This is us. This is us, okay? But all the disease, we are not the same, okay, because not exactly the same
Starting point is 00:57:27 alimentation, not the same environment, not the same microbiome or microbiote. Microbiome, yes, absolutely different. So we don't have to think the disease the same way as now, okay? So we did a full medical examination of this head, this skull. So we did a city scan, but a very precise one. And we saw that we were able to put a diagnosis for this individual. The diagnosis was Recklinghausen disease. Recklinghausen disease.
Starting point is 00:57:59 Recklinghausen? Yes. It's a kind of neurophibromatosis. Okay. It's a disease. A neurodisease. Don't be afraid. No, it's...
Starting point is 00:58:09 I'm scared. No, no, don't be scared. It's a disease where you've got many benign tumor all around the body on the surface, but also in the inner part of your body. Benign tumors everywhere. Yes, but growing, growing, growing. So if you type, Steve, facial reconstruction chromagnon, then you will find our reconstruction
Starting point is 00:58:36 of the face of this individual. Oh, wow. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills. Starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill, and bring big flavor to your backyard.
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Starting point is 00:59:35 Cro-magnon Cro-magnon Cro-Magnon hair here and images Yes This is it The first one
Starting point is 00:59:47 The first one This is our study Oh so the tumor was eating away at the bone. Exactly. This is exactly what it looked like, you see. Wow. He looks so, so modern. So modern, but we did not want to make a strong difference between Neanderthal, which is always represented as a kind of archaic form of humans,
Starting point is 01:00:09 on Chromagnon, which is a very well-dressed, very modern one. So we did this way with something like a dark skin, but also with hairs which have not been cut since a very long time, et cetera. And you can see all the aspect of the disease with this tumor at the level of the forehead, at the level of the eyelids also, next to the nose, etc. This is exactly what chromagnon one looked like. And for people that aren't familiar with the timeline,
Starting point is 01:00:41 the stone age was how many years ago? This was approximately maybe 60, 60,000 BC. 60,000 BC. Yes, approximately. Before language. Yes. You see, it's 45 till 10.
Starting point is 01:01:01 We don't have an exact... Sure. Sure. Yes. Wow. Is it true that human beings nowadays have the same exact lifespan with natural lifespan, that they did back in the Stone Age without if you if you want to take out the diseases and dying from hand-to-hand combat or plague or whatever it is but if you depending depending when you when you
Starting point is 01:01:30 speak at the birth no we don't have the same time expectation okay at the birth at birth am i clear are you saying are you saying that um that more babies died during birth yes in fact many baby or many children died within the first three years of life okay if from what main fever the dehydration because of diarrhea of viruses something now you can take just you make a perfusion and you will survive without any problem or you take some paracetamol or aspirin and then it it goes okay but at this period you did not have this so for any very slight virus infection, you were dying when you were a child. So that would still be the same today if it wasn't for all the medicine and technology that
Starting point is 01:02:28 developed. Exactly. Exactly. So the time expectation, the life expectation at birth, it was really, really short. Okay. But as soon as you are at least three or four years old then, including in prehistoric time, You can expect living 50, 60, maybe 70 years old, okay? Because the most important part of the death was during infancy.
Starting point is 01:03:00 Yes. Of course, when you've got plague, when you've got war, when you've got any epidemics, you die a lot. It's going to show up. But in a vacuum, if you took a human being from 40,000 years ago and a human being born today, each in individual vacuums take out all external influences all external ways they can be murdered or killed or die and you project their life expectancy would it be the same or would it be similar without or with medics zero medicine zero intervention at all the same the same the same that's so interesting that is so bizarre and this is something that we can say you know i'm studying of the scuritans from the Parisian catacombs. Maybe you can find some pictures of the... Persian catacombs?
Starting point is 01:03:51 Yeah, the catacombs of Paris. Oh, the Paris catacombs. The Paris catacombs. Oh! Yes. So we've got almost between six and 12 millions of dead below the level of... Are they baby? I've heard about this.
Starting point is 01:04:07 Yes. It's really fulfilled with skeletons, okay? I heard they were baby skeletons, no? Not only, no, no, no. No, no, not a lot of baby skeletons. mainly adult skeletons. This is it. And we are studying them, okay?
Starting point is 01:04:20 One zone after one zone. So it's really, it's many skeletons. It's 1,000 of life in Paris between the 10th and the 18th century. Between the 10th and the 18th, AD. So you've got almost 800 life of Parisians inside. So you've got skulls, you've got long bones. and you may make a lot of diagnosis. Why did they do this?
Starting point is 01:04:52 Initially, everything took place in the 18th century. Imagine you were eating in a taverna, Occo. And suddenly, next to a huge cemetery, which was the Cimiter des Innocent in the center of Paris, the wall crashed on all the skeletons, all the cadavers fall on the table. where people were dining and drinking wine, etc. So at this moment, the Parisian people understood that it was really complicated and maybe dangerous from a pure health point of view to have
Starting point is 01:05:30 such proximity between the dead and the living ones. Okay, so they asked the to take all the cadavers from the inner part of Paris to clean the cemeteries and to displace all the scholarly outside of Paris in ancient quarries. So these were not originally catacombs, like in Roma, for example. These were quarries for the extraction of stone for the building of Paris. So it was fulfilled with the skeletons
Starting point is 01:06:03 of all the cemeteries which were initially in the center of Paris. Ah, that makes sense. For health reasons. For health reasons. That makes a lot of sense. quick I got to take a bathroom break real quick
Starting point is 01:06:16 and we'll be right back we'll be right back okay so Lucy was the earliest patient you had and the latest one that you had was Pablo Picasso yes and how did you get your hands
Starting point is 01:06:28 on Picasso's remains thanks to his great daughter which is Diana Vidmeyer who is Picasso and she was preparing an exhibition in Paris at the Museum Picasso
Starting point is 01:06:40 about all the testimonies about her grandfather. And she discovered in her private collections fragments of nails and fragments of hairs from Pablo Picasso because Pablo was really, he had strong magical beliefs. And he thought that magical beliefs. Magical beliefs. Interesting. Yes, yes, yes. And he thought that people were able to make some black magic using his nails and using his hairs. So we sent them to Maritime. Ceres Walter, which was one of her lover, and she conserved them in envelopes with the date, the exact date of sampling by Picasso, because Picasso thought that if someone took them,
Starting point is 01:07:29 for example, in the garden or in the shop where you can cut your hairs, okay, this person could make some bad evil to him, because it's a person. part of him. You see what I mean? They could make some sort of a potion or witchcraft? Yes, witchcraft. We say bad Hevil, something which is like black magic. You see, black magic against him. It's like voodoo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:08:01 Something like this. So he did not trust all the people around him. And when he cut his nails, he put them very delicately into some envelopes, sending them to Marie-Teres. Walter. And this is amazing for us because it's the possibility for us to analyze the alimentation, but also all the toxics that he eventually could have taken for his artistic creation. And we discovered that he didn't have had any kind of toxic. The only one that we can find is some coffee, a lot of, so very few caffeine, because he did not drink a lot of
Starting point is 01:08:40 cafe. He did not drink a lot of coffee? Not a lot of cafe. No, no, no. But he was smoking a lot. So nicotine, we found a lot. And that's all. And what we found also below the nails were all the food that he was preparing.
Starting point is 01:08:57 For example, we find some proteins of watermelon. Okay. Really? Yes, yes. And also fragments of goat, he has. goat. Under his fingernails. Yes, because at this period
Starting point is 01:09:13 he had a goat. And this goat had all the rights. The goat was able to come in the atelier to eat some canvas and to the goat had all the rights. Yes. It was like a house
Starting point is 01:09:29 cat, but a goat. Exactly, yes. So we found some fragments of these goats below the nails of Picasso. Oh my God. It's really a travel. It's a travel into such artist intimacy. Yeah. It's interesting how you can
Starting point is 01:09:43 you know discover the toxicology and the chemicals that were in their bodies or the drugs that they were using but like it's so like it gets really interesting when you want to examine
Starting point is 01:09:59 the psychology of these ancient people like is there are there any any theories of how you could use the matrix of the chemicals and the toxins that exist in their bodies and in the remains of their bodies to sort of draw an analogy to any kind of psychological illnesses or psychological complexes that these people might have had? It's very difficult to do so. For the moment, we are studying the
Starting point is 01:10:33 hairs of Victor Hugo, you know, the famous... Victor Hugo, you know, the famous French writer. Yeah. And we found a lot of lead. He did not interact with his creativity, okay, but it may represent the cause of death of Victor Hugo. Because you don't do it because it's an electronic pen or pencil. Yes. Give it to me just one second. Yeah. Victor Hugo, when he was writing, he was using a pen or a pencil what is inside the lead ink one ink ink he was using ink which was rich in lead so he was writing then putting his pencil in his mouth in his mouth exactly so lead was coming from the ink to the tongue or the inner part of the of the mouth then he was intoxicating himself day after day while writing.
Starting point is 01:11:38 Okay. On this we can see it on the hairs. In fact, it's not hair from the head. It's hair from the barb. Oh, wow. Of maybe five centimeters. Yes, exactly. So we can see that, you know,
Starting point is 01:11:51 hair is growing one centimeter each month. So we've got hair from the barb of Victoria Gaux of almost five centimeters, which represent five months of his life. So we can see that the exposure to lead is growing, growing day after day. And this may have be a cause of not death, but facilitating death for him. Wow. It's called Saturnism. We call it Saturnism with its chronic exposure to lead, which is toxic level. So out of all of the patients that you've examined, what would you say the predominant time period it is that you've studied? Or is it just all over the place?
Starting point is 01:12:35 It's really all over. Is it all over? Yes, yes. I can study skeletons from the Paleo-Christian period, from the Greek Roman, from the, I've been studying the two children of King Tut in Egypt. Children of King Tut. Yes, exactly, yes. Which were dead in the womb of his wife and sister, Anxen Amon. And we were able to say that they died, there were twins inside the womb of Aung San Amon.
Starting point is 01:13:04 but the twins did not die at the same moment. One twin died the first, then shrink inside the wound, and the second died some weeks or month later. Then they were extracted out of the body of Hengen Amon, but with two different kinds of development. You see what I mean? And this was really forensic on what we say, phatological examination of the bodies.
Starting point is 01:13:34 it like to examine an Egyptian mummy? It's very fragile. It's very, it's very little because these were embryos, oh, not embryos, fetuses. Yes, exactly. So it's really, and it smells very good. It smells very good. Yes, mummies smell very, very good. What would you compare it to? Because, no, not you. You smell good too. Oh, thank you. I don't know, but I compare it to a cadaver. But because when you make a mummy, did you already smell an Egyptian mummy? Not yet. Not yet. It's on my list. You should. Because it's, you've got bitumen, but you've got also many aromats, maybe a lot of... Aromas? Yes, aromas, yes. Like you've got salt and you've got botanical samples that are here to conserve the body for a very long time. All of this smells very good.
Starting point is 01:14:32 Wow. And you know, I've got another story to tell you. Yeah. Painters at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century currently used fragments of Egyptian mummies to make a kind of pigment which is red turning into dark. It's red with some metallic reflections. Okay.
Starting point is 01:14:59 This pigment was called mummiya, like mummi. Mamiya. Yes, mumia. It's a word for mummy. So some famous painters used such pigments in the end of 18th beginning of 19th century in Europe, okay, but also in America. So they paid a lot to use such fragments of Egyptian mummy. In fact, you take a fragment of Egyptian mummy, you crush it, you put some oil with it, you crush it again, then you use it like a pigment for paintings. paintings.
Starting point is 01:15:32 I wonder who the first person to come up with that idea was. I don't know. Who thinks of that? In fact, it's very, the color is really unique, but it's also symbolic because you think that, you know, an Egyptian mummy does not destroy through time. It's really, it was preserved. It's preserved for no, not only centuries, but millionaries. Okay.
Starting point is 01:15:58 So you consider, millennia, yeah. So you consider that your painting too will be conserved the same way. You see? But during the French Revolution, so we are at the end of the 18th century in Paris mainly, some painters had the opportunity of buying fragments of the mummified hurt of the French kings, which were not Egyptian mummies, but they were hurts that have been mummified, and emboldened almost the same way. The hearts.
Starting point is 01:16:32 The hurts. Yes. So they bought the hurts of Louis XIV, the 14, for example. And my lab has been able to track the path of this sample, and we were able to find in the Louvre Museum, in Paris, but also in another museum next to Paris in Portoise, two paintings that have been made with the mummified hurt of Louis, the 14 and Luis the 13, but the hurt transformed into pigments. So now if you want to see
Starting point is 01:17:07 the hurt of such kings, such French kings, you have to go to the Louvre Museum and to the Pontois Museum. And when you see in these two paintings a dark and red parts of the of the canvas of the painting, these are the fragments of the Hertz. If you want the name of the paintings, can give them to you. So I was going to ask you, so you followed the chain of transmission of the mummified heart of this king and it went to a painter. Exactly, yes. Yes. It was sold during the French Revolution. It was both by the painters and the painters used them to make two paintings. The first one is interior de cuisine and the second one is Vue de Kahn. I can type them and I... So did you have to go and look up all the paintings that those painters ever created
Starting point is 01:17:58 and then analyze all of them to find out? No, because we've got archives, and we know that he did such paintings just after buying the... Oh, wow, that's fascinating. If you want to see them. Yes, let's see them. Let's see. Pull them up. Oh, we'll type it, yeah.
Starting point is 01:18:12 Okay, okay. So punch the... Yeah, zoom that in. So all the red... Yes. Is... All the red pigments and the darker pigments are the heart of Louis the 14.
Starting point is 01:18:23 And exactly, yes. We reached the 13 for this one. and for the Vue de Kahn, which is the other painting, it's Louis XIV. This one is the father of Louis XIV. So, Louis XIII. And on the other one, Vue de Kahn, this is it. Yes. No, no, no.
Starting point is 01:18:47 The second. The second and the, yes, this one. Yes, here you can see the red, the red people. You see. Oh, wow. This is Rizzo 14. That's incredible. And when we did the microscope examination of these pigments,
Starting point is 01:19:08 we saw very clearly fragments of muscles from the hurt. Really? Yes, yes. It's really clear, yes. So you took this and put it under a microscope and you could see this? Exactly, yes. Then we did proteomic analysis, and we confirmed that this hurt is where a human hurt.
Starting point is 01:19:28 And we were even able to find some proteins related to, diabetes because Louis the 14 diabetes yes exactly because Luis the 14 was involved by diabetes and we found such proteins into the into the samples wow man that is freaking insane and he he was he was from you said the 18th century yes he died in 17 he died in 17 15 17 17 17 17 At more than 80 years old. Wow. Maybe you can show us Luis the 14.
Starting point is 01:20:11 Yeah, show us a photo of them. Yes. Oh my God, look at that wig. Yeah, the second one. Yes, this one is perfect. That's amazing. So, was diabetes prevalent back then? We suspected it. We suspected it and we had the confirmation by our analysis, yes. And what would be the cause of diabetes? My understanding was that that's a recent phenomenon.
Starting point is 01:20:42 It's difficult to know. It may be related to alimentation. It may be also of age. It may be due also to familiar predisposition. We don't know exactly. But if you want to know, we are still working on such samples. Because we know that Luis XIV, died of an infection at the level of the leg, okay? It's supposed to be a complication of diabetes.
Starting point is 01:21:11 When you've got diabetes, you make strong infection, especially at the level of the lower legs. Yes. And especially at the level of the two on thump. For him, we are still working on the samples, and we are finding some bacteria and some fungi also that may be the cause of death of Louis XIV. But understand me well, we are not working on the cadaver in itself. Not the cadaver. No, no, no.
Starting point is 01:21:41 We are working on the remains of the hurt that the painter did not use and gave back to the church because he wanted to do it well. So he just used half of the hurt for painting. And the second half, the movement, is intact. And it's now back in the Basilica of St. Denis, which is at the north of Paris. Wow. So we are still working on such samples. Have you ever been into the catacombs under the Vatican? Yes, of course. Really?
Starting point is 01:22:19 What kind of things did you find under there? I've been there for tourist purposes, but not for studying. Oh, not for studying. Yes. But there you've got very interesting. Would you like to study anyone down there? Oh yes, there's a skeleton that is really interesting there. It's the remains of St. Peter. The bones of St. Peter, this one would be really, really interesting. But you know, almost everything has been made on it by my colleagues from Italy. Okay, we know that it's the skeleton of man of almost 50 years old, then died at the first century AD. So it fits with all the characteristics of St. Peter. So honestly, I would not have a lot of things more to the files already written by my colleagues from Italy.
Starting point is 01:23:09 Wow, that's fascinating. But the study of relics is really interesting. I've been studying also on the relics of relics of relics. Relics, yes. You can type another patient that I had is St. Madeline, Holy Magdalena. Holy Magdalena. You see what she is? Holy Magdalene?
Starting point is 01:23:29 Yes, Holy Magdalene. Yes. Not Mary Magdalene. You see it? Oh, Mary Magdalene. Oh, really? Yes, yes, it's Mary Magdalene. She's one of my patients.
Starting point is 01:23:40 There is a story in France. We say that at the beginning of the attack of Christians, a boat started from Palestine at this period. And on this boat, there was Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome, Mary Jacobi, Mary Sarah, Lazarus, and others. I don't remember all of them, but there were many. Then the boat came to Cyprus, to Cretta, to Malta, to many islands, then arrived in province, in the south of France, in a small city which is called now Les Saint-Marie de la Mer.
Starting point is 01:24:25 Anyway, if everyone escaped and Marie Magdalene went to a cave, She spent 33 years in the cave. Then after this period, she got out of the cave and she died and she was buried in a place, which is now a basilica in what the name in France, it's Saint Maximin la Saint-Beoume. Anyway, it's a huge basilica from the Middle Ages. Inside the basilica, you've got the bones on the skull of Maria Magdalena. So we did the examination of these relics. Maybe you can see, you can find them also. And...
Starting point is 01:25:08 Where are the bones and the remains of Mary Magdalene right now? Still there. They're still there. Yes. Oh, this is it. The first picture is mine. That's for real? How have I never seen this?
Starting point is 01:25:21 That looks so badass. Because you have to come to France. That's all. So this is my patient. This is my picture. It looks like a golden astronaut helmet. with hair with Mary Magdalene's skull in the middle of it. It's a relicurray, in fact, and you can see that the most important part of it,
Starting point is 01:25:39 which is the face is still missing. It looks like the cover of a death metal album. It may, yes. So we did the examination of it, and we were able to reconstruct the face based upon the surface of the skull. And if you type facial reconstruction Mary Magdalene, you will see the face that we reconstructed. Because this skull is the skull of a woman of almost 50 years old.
Starting point is 01:26:06 And, you know, there is now a methodology very well practiced. In forensic anthropology, it's the reconstruction of face. We saw it with chromagnon skull. Yes. On the surface of the skull, you put sticks using your computer, which represents the common. thickness at the level of the face with muscles with fatty tissue and skin. So it gives you really the surface of the skull, which is the face.
Starting point is 01:26:41 And here we had also fragments of the hairs, fragments also of the skin. So we were able to be much more precise than cromagnon that you saw before. You will see the reconstruction. Did you find it, Steve? Oh, a reconstruction. Facial reconstruction. Facial, facial. Look at the bigger one, the bigger image.
Starting point is 01:27:02 Yes. And look, it's like little angels or cherubs or something like holding her up. Yes. Oh, wow. Wait a minute. Here, the skin fragment. The skin fragments are easy. Zoom in.
Starting point is 01:27:13 Zoom in on the skin fragment. Dude, this is gnarly. I've never seen this, dude. The skin fragments, because when the... That's, that's almost like, it's pretty terrifying. No, not at all, because you're not forensic practitioner. No, for me, it's terrifying, right? Yeah, I haven't.
Starting point is 01:27:33 No, it's... Zoom out? And these fragments of skin come from the forehead. Just the symbolism of it and the fact that they have this ancient human skull inside of a trophy, a golden trophy with angels. It's like... I have to tell you the story of the skin fragments. Yes, please.
Starting point is 01:27:55 Initially, they were put here at the level of the left, the right forehead. The story is that one. During the patient, Jesus escaped from the grave, as you know, because he was resuscitated, okay? And Maria Magdalena was here, and she was trying to catch Jesus. And Jesus stopped her. May I do it? This way. So stopping her with two fingers on her forehead saying in Aramaean but I translate into English for into Aramaic yeah in yes this was he's speaking Aramaic Jesus spoke Aramaic Aramaic yes and I translated into Latin for you if you want noli me Tangeri which means don't touch me so it's really it's a very important part of the of the New Testament
Starting point is 01:28:51 okay these are the two fragments of the skin which has been touched by the Christ on the forehead of Maria Magdalena. And we also have a stick of hairs from Maria Magdalena because later, still after the patient, she cleaned the foot of Jesus using her long hairs. She did what was she? She cleaned. She cleaned the feet. The feet.
Starting point is 01:29:23 She cleaned his feet. Yes. the feet of Jesus using her long hairs. Wow. While they were still on her head? Exactly. Exactly. So they were conserved in another reliquary.
Starting point is 01:29:35 So I studied the skin, the hairs, and the skull too. And we were able to produce facial reconstruction of the face of this individual. This is it. The second one. That one. Oh, wow. This is her. This is the face from the skull.
Starting point is 01:29:56 I cannot tell you that this face is the true face of Maria Magdalena because we are still missing carbon dating on genetic, but this is the face of the skull presented as the one of Maria Magdalena. So we don't know for sure if that skull was the Mary Magdalene that's talked about in the Bible. Exactly. But we do know that that skull was from the first century AD. No, we know that this skull is the one conserved and presented since the medieval period, the Middle Ages, as the one of Maria Magdalena in this tradition.
Starting point is 01:30:30 But we, so you... I don't have carbon dating, so... You don't have carbon dating of the skull, got it. Unfortunately, no. Whoa, go back, Steve, go back to that, where they were showing the 3D renderings. Oh, wow. That's how they built it. Is there, what is the difference in the skulls of males versus females?
Starting point is 01:30:50 There is not a huge difference, in fact, because if you want to make sex, determination using a skull, it's really not the perfect bone. The most accurate bone is the pelvis. Pelvis, you've got 98% of giving the chance of giving the correct sex for this individual. If you use the skull, for example, my skull is a female skull, okay? But if you look at my pelvis, you will be sure that I'm really a male, okay? Because looking at the skull, it gives you maybe 55 to 65% of chance of giving the true sex. So it's not, it's really not perfect. What are they like wider, like birth-bearing hips? Yes, it's, in fact, the pelvis is much more induced by, in its morphology, by hormones, much more than the skull. You see what I mean? I say it again.
Starting point is 01:31:49 Yes. Sex hormones Yes Sex hormones Are much more involved In the morphology of the pelvic bones Than the skull So if you look at the skull
Starting point is 01:32:03 It's not the perfect one to be sure Sometimes you've got a very Male one Sometimes a very female one Then you can be almost sure But in most of the case You've got Almost male
Starting point is 01:32:17 Almost female So making a sex diagnosis based only on the skull, it's not the best way to do it. Okay. That's why we always prefer to do it on genetic samples, so DNA. And why won't they, so they're not letting you take a carbon date of that skull? The authorization of opening of the, of the recreate was on the office of Pope Francis. So, as you know, he passed.
Starting point is 01:32:44 No, he passed away. He passed away. So we have to wait for the new Pope, which is American. Leo, Pope Leo, he's American? Yes, he's from your country. Really? I didn't even know that. Please. Pope Leo's American.
Starting point is 01:32:59 Yes, it's from the US. So are you going to ask if you guys can pop open that astronaut helmet and see if that's actually Mary Magdalene? We will write to him and then we would see. This is a Bose moment. You've been there before. Somebody's apartment, small talk that's going nowhere, plastic cup that's almost empty. It's not great. Then someone hits play.
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Starting point is 01:34:04 Actual mileage and range may vary. Wow. Are you religious? I'm Catholic, yes. You're Catholic. Catholic, yes. I'm papist, as you say. Papist.
Starting point is 01:34:20 Wow. So I want to ask you, so we talked about this, briefly. You were the only person, the only academic person to do a peer review, Bryn-Mar peer review on the Chemical Muse book by Amin-Hilman. First of all, how did you come
Starting point is 01:34:40 across this and how did you get chosen to do the peer review? How does that, how does, I don't know how this process works. I made some peer review for Brynmore University, which is a kind of research, and also a newspaper. It is like the holy grail of classical scholarship, peer review on classics.
Starting point is 01:35:02 Yes. Yes. So sometimes I make some peer review when the book is between paleopatology, which is my specialty, forensics and antiquity or other periods. So I found the title very interesting on the topic also. So I wanted to read it first and then to make a very objective analysis. analysis of the of the book. Yes. So, so, um, my understanding of what a classical philologist is, and correct me if I'm wrong, is it's someone who studies the ancient texts,
Starting point is 01:35:35 the ancient Greek specifically, um, because I believe there's way more Greek than any other language. And they try to use all of the sources that are, um, all the sources they can to corroborate what specific words mean based on that time period. Exactly. So, words can have semantic drift. So if you're looking at one word that was
Starting point is 01:35:59 used in 100 AD, it might have a very different meaning 500 BC. And at the same period, the same word may have different
Starting point is 01:36:07 meaning between two different authors. This is also a speciality of antique period. Between multiple authors. Yes, exactly.
Starting point is 01:36:14 And there's also different types of authors, right? You have people who are writing medical texts, you have people
Starting point is 01:36:19 who are doing philosophy, poetry, theater, theater, comedy. So it's very dangerous. Yes.
Starting point is 01:36:27 It's dangerous because the meaning is different and the conclusion may be different too. So this is why you need to make a very precise scholarship analysis and studies before writing such a book. The book was not bad anyway, not bad at all. But my opinion was that maybe it was a little bit going too far. Going too far. Yes, going too far. And it was also missing a very important part, which was paleotoxicology. I mean, analysis of ancient bone sample of what was inside antique vases, for example. All this part, which is present already in many studies, paleotoxical studies, it was not included into this book.
Starting point is 01:37:19 And this was for me... The book was, so the book is in the, what is the word I'm trying to think of right now? The premise of the book, his background is specifically in reading texts. It's not a multidisciplinary book. That's what I'm, that's what I was trying to get across. Yes, yes. This was, for me, a limitation of the book. Right.
Starting point is 01:37:46 And the second is that the author, which is absolutely respectable, had his own previous idea before doing the book. And he used all the arguments for confirming his previous ID. Normally, when you do such a book, you have to remain and to stay objective. And you have to make your own criticism of your theory. You see? In such a book, there was only one way of thinking. Everyone was using drugs in past period. this is what he said.
Starting point is 01:38:23 He said drugs were ubiquitous in antiquity. Yes, exactly. And sincerely, it needs to reach strength a little bit more. Because we've got so much colectance, we've got so much ceramics. So he had the opportunity of proving his theory using paleopatology, paleotoxicology. Please do it. Please do it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:38:51 Because it's a very interesting theory, but you must. prove it from a pure independent way. So this was really something which was missing for me. So my understanding of it is he wrote his PhD dissertation on drugs in antiquity. And the PhD, the panel that was reviewing his dissertation said, we will approve your PhD as long as you remove the chapter on recreational drugs. So he removed that chapter because they said that the Romans wouldn't do such a thing. The Romans, they would never engage in recreational drug use.
Starting point is 01:39:34 So he decided to take that chapter after he received his PhD and basically turn it into that book. And that book was like based on that chapter. So for whatever reason, he felt slighted by the academic institution, that the fact that like, why would you try to take this out of there just because you have an idea that they wouldn't do such a thing. Now, let me ask you this. Do you believe that the Greeks and the Romans would not do such a thing as engage in recreational drug use? I have nothing against recreational use of drugs like alcohol or anything else during the past period. But I'm not a historian and I do believe that drugs were used in past period.
Starting point is 01:40:20 on opium, for example, on other kinds of drugs. And we can see it with very good examples in that book. For example, in sanctuaries, like the PT in Delphus, or the Cybilis in Cuba in Italy now. So I think drugs were present. Yes, drugs were really present. Present, but do you believe it's possible that they were used recreationally, not just medicinally? Maybe partially, yes, may. Yeah, from a pure conventional point of view, practical point of view, I don't have any argument against it.
Starting point is 01:41:00 But I would really like to have scientific proof of it. And we've got so many skeletons. You will tell me, okay, skeletons in bones, you cannot find everything. Remember, you've got dental calculus, okay? and you've got sometimes fragments of blood inside the skull which has been conserved. In that blood, you can find many organic material, et cetera. So it's really possible to find signs and fragments of such drugs in dandal calculus, in remains of blood, et cetera, and also in all the ceramics that have been conserved from
Starting point is 01:41:46 antiquity. So it's it's really possible to do it. So maybe he has to to create a research group about this to go further. Do you, in your studies of classical antiquity and Athenian cultures, do you find in your studies any evidence of psychotropic drugs or anything like the, anything like this? I read or no. I did not search for it. So I don't know. You did not search for it. No, no. When you're doing your work, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you work with people who, and you know, not saying that this would be necessary, but it would be very interesting to see a forensic pathologist and a classical scholar, a classical philologist,
Starting point is 01:42:30 team up and try to corroborate things in some sort of presentation. This is the best. The best is to mix all the sources, texts, iconography, skeletons, and also everything is. that comes from archaeological excavations, from houses, for example, but also from latrines, from traches also. So when you mix all of this, then you've got strong data to analyze all the past populations. And is it true during this time period that plague and famine and hand-to-hand combat and what were very, very prevalent and just a part of life?
Starting point is 01:43:16 life in that time in those cultures. Was that something that was just constantly? Like, I think in that book he mentions that there was a, there was plagues almost on average, like every 50 years, I think it was. I don't know if it was true plague or epidemics. Epidemics or plagues, yeah. But you had many of an epidemics, then war, then lack of alimentation. And you had many crises with prefection.
Starting point is 01:43:46 prefer to speak about crises, okay? Alimentary, demographic crisis, problem of alimentation, of food supplementation, yes, this was really common in the ancient period, but not only in antiquity, also in medieval period or modern period too. We were speaking about Luis XIV, the 14. There were a lot of crises during his reign also. So it was really common,
Starting point is 01:44:12 but we were speaking about the use of drugs. I remember working in Venezuela, Italy. In Venice. In Venice. In Venice, yes. Venice. And I studied some pipes from Venice. At this period, people...
Starting point is 01:44:31 Pipes? Pipes. Oh, smoking pipes. Smoking pipes. Yes. Smoking pipes. And people were smoking tobacco mixed with cannabis. Oh, really?
Starting point is 01:44:42 Yes. But not for recreational purposes. this normally, rather against malaria. Bad malaria. Yes, malaria, not the sense you use it for pallidism, okay? But malaria means in ancient Latin or French or Italian, bad air, bad air, you see? The miasma. People who are considering that in this period, plague on other diseases were spread
Starting point is 01:45:15 by bad air, mal a ria in this area. And it was a way of cleaning the air, the air that was coming into your mouth, as you were smoking pipes mixed with tobacco and cannabis. Tobacco and cannabis. It was cleaning the air all around you, you see. So how would you discern whether it was only being used for this purpose rather than being used just for fun?
Starting point is 01:45:43 Texts, only texts, yes. So testimonies, archives, you have to use such things. But you have also to prove the use by the analysis of deposits inside the ceramics, for example. And if you find also remains of such drugs in Dental Calculus, in fragments of blood still present inside the skull or elsewhere, then you can see that in, I don't know how many percent of the population, you find it. So you need a kind of statistics. You need a kind of demographical representation of such the presence of drugs in past populations. This is really a key point. You need numbers. You need statistics. How much have you looked into Galen, Marcus Aurelius's physician?
Starting point is 01:46:41 Say it again. Galen? The physician of Marcus Aurelius? Yes, yes, yes. Galen, I think his literature, his medical literature makes up, I think, what is it, like 10% of all classical literature is from him? We've got many physicians from antiquity. Galen is one of them, but we've got also Soranus of Ephesus. We've got also the Hippocratic library, et cetera, which is not all from Hippocrates himself, but maybe of a lot of people. from the same school.
Starting point is 01:47:17 So we've got many, many, we've got also Celsius, which is another... Celsius, yes, exactly. So we've got many texts by ancient physicians. But Gallinus, in fact, Galen for you is one of the most important one. But he made errors. He made mistakes. For example, he described some anatomical structures that do not exist in men because he did autopsies on animals.
Starting point is 01:47:45 He said that as it was present on animals, it was also present for humans. So it's not, you don't have to take the words of Gellon as 100% true. And I don't know if you've heard, but Amin Hillman also talks about the use of essentially like ancient vaccines. You know how we use vaccines to create, the way that we create, the way that we create. create vaccines is by growing cultures on organisms, right, or on organic tissue. And one of the things that he talks about is the use of inducing viper venoms into people by impregnating the bandages with the venoms and then putting a cut on the human body and then wrapping that cut in this bandage with viper venom, just enough to create the antibodies or the anti-venoms. And they
Starting point is 01:48:44 were using that to according to almond to extract the bodily foods from his people and use them to treat snake bites and things like this and other ailments i don't know that at all i don't know that at all sorry no yeah so yeah it's uh it's one of the things he talks about along with uh with galen's theariac which apparently had like 66 different ingredients if you're familiar with it i don't know but i know it had a lot of different viper venoms a handful of north african viper venom's, viper flesh, various bodily fluids. Have you, have you looked into that at all? No, no.
Starting point is 01:49:21 No, no. No. No. Because, yeah, when he was reading, you know, there's so much, there's so much literature from Galen. It's impossible to read it all in a lifetime. Oh, no, you can do it. You can read?
Starting point is 01:49:35 Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. I think there's like 11 volumes or something like this, and they're all like 800 to 1,000 pages. So, in one year, you do it. In one year? In one year. Oh, yeah? Yes. Yes. Can you translate Greek?
Starting point is 01:49:46 No, no, no. No, Latin, yes, but Greek, only some words. Latin, yes, no problem. But Galen wrote in Greek, so no. Right, right. It's just fascinating. And, you know, he talks about how, you know, according to Galen, that Marcus Aurelius was taking a lot of opium,
Starting point is 01:50:03 and he was constantly having to up the dose of his opium and all these things. But we do not know if it was for medical purposes, reasonably yes, whether than for how do you say pleasure and they were also doing vivisections on prisoners where they were basically doing
Starting point is 01:50:25 live autopsies on people no Garen did autopsy of how do you say it sorry so we Garen did autopsies of gladiators
Starting point is 01:50:40 on soldiers too So he was able to take all the fresh bodies of such individuals and finish to open them and to see what was exactly inside. But while the cadaver was still hot, this was really interesting. Vivisection was performed in Alexandria, Egypt. Yeah, because it was not allowed in Rome. There it was possible to open the bodies of living individuals, which were not living for a very long time, imagine, which were prisoners. Yes. And what was the purpose
Starting point is 01:51:16 of doing that? What kind of stuff were they looking for? It was their interest was to see the physiology of organs. Because when you do an autopsy, as I do, I always see dead people. So the organs do not move anymore.
Starting point is 01:51:33 But when you do vivisection, you can see the bowels moving. You can see the hurt beating, not of a wee long time, but you can see it. left, right, left, right, left, right, okay? But when you do autopsy, the heart is absolutely flat, so you don't see him moving. This is the reason why they did such analysis.
Starting point is 01:51:57 Right. Yeah, such a brutal, brutal thing to do to human beings. You have to imagine, of course, it's brutal for us, and of course we don't have to do it. But you have to judge it from another point of view, which is the, one of this period. Normally, a historian does not judge. He just describe. He does not judge.
Starting point is 01:52:20 Because it's another period, another context, another kind of knowledge and thinking. So let's do as historians do. Don't judge. Just describe it. Right. So one of the one of the recent analysis that Hillman makes, which I don't believe was in the Chemical Muse book, was that in Mark 14, I believe, it's the description where we were talking about the shirt that he was
Starting point is 01:52:49 wearing when he was arrested by the Roman cops in the park, that he was with a young boy who ran away. And when he ran away, he was his cloth, his linen cloth that was covering his privates, basically fell off. And the first thing Jesus said to the cops was, I'm not a lace lace. And one of the, there's many terms for, or there was many meetings for the word laystace. One of them was pirate, I think robber, bandit. And another thing that it was used for was human trafficker. And according to Hillman, that human trafficking was a very popular thing during those days. Humans were being trafficked all the time.
Starting point is 01:53:31 And in fact, according to him, Marcus, or according to many people, Julius Caesar was kidnapped. out when he was younger by some human traffickers. And he eventually when he escaped and when they traded him, he crucified them. So he is claiming that these laystace or human traffickers, one of the common ways of prosecuting them or condemning them to death was by crucifixion. And Jesus was arrested, said, I'm not a laystace. And then a few hours later, he was crucified in between two lay stays. So his, I don't know if he's, he doesn't actually say this, but I mean, he says it looks like what, you know, the fact that he was caught in this public park, that he was using this kid's bodily fluids as an antidote to some psychedelic drug or some, some, um, um, viper venom concoction that he was using before that when he was in the upper room. and he needed the antidote to the viper venom that he ingested from the kid.
Starting point is 01:54:40 Because the theory is, if you give this to young people, young people have the most robust immune system. So they can produce the strongest antibodies to relieve you of whatever, this death-inducing venom that you're on. And when he was on the cross, it's written by multiple authors. What was the one? I can't,
Starting point is 01:55:00 the one who specifically wrote about the spun. I can't remember his name. But it's described as, you know, he's dying of thirst when he's crucified. He's very thirsty. And that was one of the side effects of ingesting these venoms. And when he was offered the sponge, there was one specific author who said that that sponge was the antidote to the viper venom. He denied the sponge. He didn't want the sponge.
Starting point is 01:55:30 So, you know, his, his theory. is that, you know, he was tripping when he was crucified and he didn't want the antidote, so he would survive. So that would be really interesting to have somebody like you try to look into that and see if there's any sort of pathological evidence or anything like that to corroborate this. As you know, Jesus is not yet one of my patients. Yes, exactly. But who knows?
Starting point is 01:56:00 The problem with it is it's so provocative sounding, you know, it's it goes. against so it goes against every you know the religious people are going to i will be honest with you um when we read the gospel and when we read all the texts describing the crucifixion um the process of natural death if i can say of from a crucifixion is honestly very well described oh really yes really i already studied two bodies of women which were crucified um um from the island of Delos also. And so I know the process. Okay.
Starting point is 01:56:40 And I've got also more than 10 years of forensic practice on contemporary cases. So I really know it. When you look at the description, what the cause of death of a true crucifixion, vertical crucifixion? Yes. It's dehydration. It's what, what is that word? Deideration. Dehydration.
Starting point is 01:57:03 Dehydration. Yes. It's the blood that precipitates inside the blood vessels also at the level of the veins, but also at the level of the lungs. And it's also one last thing, which is tiredness of respiration. It's at the end of this position, it's really difficult, difficult to breath. When you're like this, you can't breathe, so you sort of suffocate. This or this. Or this.
Starting point is 01:57:35 Yes, yes. It's after hours, it's really, really hard to breath. Okay. So when we read, he did not die in 20 minutes or one hour. He died after hours of such a process. So honestly, when we read the text, we don't need any other explanation for his death. Toxics, venom. But he did die early, though, right?
Starting point is 01:58:01 According to the text, he died far earlier than everyone else. Yes, but remember that during all the patient, when he was walking inside the streets of Jerusalem, he didn't have a lot of water. He did not drink a lot. He was suffering. He was losing some blood also. So, sorry, but he has enough reasons of dying without imagining something else. From a pure forensic point of view. Sure.
Starting point is 01:58:30 In forensic, we always prefer the simplest way of dying. And very often, this simplest way is the correct and the true one. Right. That makes a lot of sense. It's just when you're relying on the biblical canon to describe the things that were going on back then and ignoring all of the vast amounts of classical. literature that surround the Bible.
Starting point is 01:59:05 It's like, are you getting the truth? Because, you know, it's a, it almost goes against it to, like, it's like, it's, you're not looking for the truth when you're only looking at the religious texts and not trying to corroborate the religious texts and the meanings of the words with all of the other literature, right? This is the problem, if it's a problem, is these are religious texts. These are not historical chronicles. strong archives made by lawyers, et cetera.
Starting point is 01:59:38 So this is one problem, if it's a problem. But I want to tell you, if you want to know the truth, give me the sponge. Find me the relic of the sponge. Find me some fragments of blood or I don't know from the body of the Christ. Then we will see. Maybe the holy shrewd or something else. Maybe if we've got some traces of the body, maybe we can find. some answers on it. I can say give me the skeleton of the Christ because normally
Starting point is 02:00:09 there is no. But who knows? Who knows? This is honestly this is one of the most important reason of the story, the study of relics. When you study relics, first of all you can say relics. You can say if the relics are the true ones or not, sometimes they are not true. That's a problem, yeah. That's a problem. Same thing with texts, text fragments. Exactly. Yes, some are apocryphic, so written many years after or changed a lot,
Starting point is 02:00:39 etc. But if the relics are the true one, then we can work on them and maybe we can have some strong and good information. Yeah, and like the idea of using biological
Starting point is 02:00:56 things like humans or animals to process new drugs is not that's not exclusive to any certain part of the world. I believe you wrote a whole book on the voodoo religions of Haiti, right? And using these pufferfish venom. Tetrodotoxin.
Starting point is 02:01:18 Ttis trotoxin. Yes, yes. And toads and venom from pufferfish. And these people would bury themselves up to their necks and believe they were zombies. I've been working on this for years. I made an exhibition in Paris about this. This is absolutely true. This is absolutely true.
Starting point is 02:01:40 You put some zombie powder inside your shoes, inside your shirt, and... But I can put something like all of this of powder on your skin, nothing will happen, because the tetrodotoxine powder does not come through the skin. skin. So you have to put something that you scratch your skin and the poison goes inside the scratch and goes inside your body. Then between four or six hours later you are considered as a living dead if I can say, meaning that you really look like a dead one but your heart is still
Starting point is 02:02:22 beating, you are still breathing but very slowly, your temperature is really down, okay, so you You look like a dead, but you are still living. Okay. Then you are put into a grave the same day. And during the night, you are extracted from your coffin by the Priests, which is called a Bokor. And this one takes you out and gives you the antidote. Then you are transformed into a zombie during days, month, years, working in rise production, in any way. but far away from civilization and you will be giving some, I don't know, barbituric or benzodiazepine
Starting point is 02:03:08 any drug. And also you will be giving alimentation without any salt. So something like brain edema will develop and you will be really like a zombie. So a body without any spirit, a body without any consciousness, okay, and it will lack for years before one day your Bokor, the Priests will be dead because of, I don't know,
Starting point is 02:03:39 a traffic accident or maybe a traumatic event. Earthquake, or hurricane, or hurricane, tornado. And so you will not have your each day
Starting point is 02:03:53 drug, psychiatric, Barbiaturic, or a disappear in or you will be able to eat something and you will eat what you will found and there will be some salt in so the edema will go down slowly and you will take back some part of your consciousness and this will be the end of the zombie state and you will recover a human state day after day this is true and this is still happening in in iatee but it's not for anyone it's not for you It's not for me. It's for people who are...
Starting point is 02:04:26 It's for people that believe, right? You have to believe in zombies. You have to believe, yes, you have to be initiated to voodoo initially, but also it's for people that do something bad to society. This is made by a secret society, which is called B-Zongo, and it's made for people doing something bad. People that are selling territories or plantations that they do not really have are people which are raping girls. So it's a kind of parallel justice, justice, you see? Justice, yeah. Justice, it's a parallel justice.
Starting point is 02:05:05 Yeah, no, it's really interesting, like, would these rituals and, like, burying somebody up to their neck while they're starting at the stars all night, under the intoxication of these, Venoms have the same effect on an individual who didn't entertain the belief system, right? Like, how much does the psychology and the symbolism of the whole ritual play into it? The psychology is really essential, and this is really a key point that you're absolutely right, because you have to believe and you are prepared to this. Before getting intoxicated, you have a judgment in seven steps. So seven times you are taken at your office. you are put in a car and then you are obliged to be facing the Bisongo secret society
Starting point is 02:05:58 and you are kneeling just in front of them and they are judging you. And seven times you have the possibility of saying, I'm absolutely innocent or no, I'm really guilty. Again, there are also some signs that are placed just in front of your house. For example, chicken legs, okay, or some... some voododol also, which is made with fragments of your hairs, etc. So inside the zombie powder, you've got also other fragments. You've got human bones fragments.
Starting point is 02:06:41 You've got also a scratching from the grave of previous zombies. Like if you were transferring death or zombie state, using this this powder. So it's really a mix. And as you said, and it's really true, you have to believe. This is why also
Starting point is 02:07:01 only people which are Vodoo practitioners in IET may be converted into zombies. If you are not a Vodoo practitioner, if you're not a voodoo
Starting point is 02:07:12 practitioner, yes, I don't have any other world. Yes, right. Then you cannot do, you cannot be turned into a zombie. Right. Do you believe in, do you believe humans have souls? I do think so, but I think the soul is not only in the brain, but in all the parts of the body. We say it in French.
Starting point is 02:07:35 L'espri tout an entire and in the core tutentier. The spirit together is in the whole body together. So it's a part of everything. It's a part of, it's in every fiber of your being. Yes, it's not just in your brain. There is no reason for the spirit to be only in your brain. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
Starting point is 02:07:56 And what do you think happens to the soul when somebody dies? I have no idea. I have no idea. You know, I've got some colleagues in my forensic department that are speaking to the cadavers. There is one which opens the window in the morning. They're speaking to the cadaver? Yes, I don't speak to my patient. I don't speak.
Starting point is 02:08:16 But some people do. Some people, some forensic people. some forensic practitioners do speak to their calavers that they are supposed to study. I know one which opens the window to let the soul getting out of the autopsy room also. But I don't do that. For me, before doing the autopsy, you know, like the piano player, I make a turn all around the cadaver. patient because I want to see all the aspects of the skin, all the scars, all the tattoos,
Starting point is 02:08:55 all the deformations, etc. So when I arrive in the autopsy room, I don't begin immediately the autopsy. I take some time, you see, just to make a turn all around, but it's an observation. It's also a kind of philosophical meditation, but it's not religious, not at all. It's just taking into account the fact that me, the living one, I will be studying a patient which is different. It's still a patient like you, like me. For me, it's still a patient. It's not a cadaver, fresh calaver or not fresh calaver. It's a patient, meaning that I have full respect to him.
Starting point is 02:09:38 So I make a turn. I look at it, her or him, and then the autopsy can begin. how many autopsies are you still doing nowadays and how do you determine like like how do you pick who to who you want to study or or who you can collaborate with and how does that whole process work and who are you what are you most interested in studying i'm making autopsies for justice okay so for the for the ministry of justice oh are you really yes and i maybe did 2,500 autopsies already The most important one for me, the most interesting one, are exhumations. Exhumations, meaning that the body was put in a coffin for one, two or three years. Then there is a justice action, and people want to know, finally, if the death is natural or not. So we make an exhumation of the coffin, and the coffin arrives in the laboratory, Then we open the coffin and we make the autopsy.
Starting point is 02:10:46 I tell you why this is really interesting for us, because it's during the process between a fresh body, a fresh cadaver and archaeology. We can see the transformation process of the cadaver inside the coffin, the moving of some parts, the deterioration of some, the conservation of other parts, etc. How do the cloth move or conserve the body, it's really interesting. So you see it's a kind of, it's an analysis of the degradation process of the corpse between forensic, finishing in archaeology.
Starting point is 02:11:35 This is for me the most interesting part of the study. One week ago, I worked on the body of a woman that probably died seven years ago, but she was only found some days ago, because she didn't have any more relationship with her son. So she was discovered only because of bad smell from all the neighbors. Even seven years later still smelled. Yes, yes. And what did you? Because there was an electric stop, and there was no more ventilation. So, the body electricity went out exactly oh wow have you ever gotten anybody like say somebody was accused of murdering somebody right and they were like went to prison maybe they were on death row and then
Starting point is 02:12:23 you you had to go do more forensics to confirm or deny this no this no this no or maybe i but i don't know the other issue but what i did is i did autopsies and then i was a medical practitioner in jail And I cured. I was the healer of patients that were prisoners, but they were the killers of the bodies that I autopsied. And this was really interesting because during the examination of these living individuals, they told me, oh, I already saw you. When was it? At my trial at the Justice Department. And they said, okay, now I will tell you exactly what really happened. as unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis.
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Starting point is 02:14:13 the new best skin ever ultra-slim precision concealer from Sephora Collection. It's full coverage with a matte finish and perfect for any look, whether you're building it up for a full glam moment or targeting correction for a more natural vibe. At only $12, it's great for affordable touch-ups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. I will tell you exactly how I already killed this individual. Sometimes they told me, you already did it well, sir, speaking about me.
Starting point is 02:14:49 You saw exactly what I did, et cetera. And sometimes some of them told me I did this also before killing her. This is exactly how I killed her or him, etc. But sometimes it's really impossible to find it in the autopsy. So it's really interesting for me. And from a pure humanistic point of view, it was really interesting. interesting also to manage this. Yeah, that must have been terrifying to be in the same room with these people.
Starting point is 02:15:17 There are people like you and me. I didn't kill anyone. You can trust and I hope you didn't either. But these are people really like you and me, really. Oh, yes. Jail, 99% of people in jail are people that for one reason, one day, do something. of course, extremely bad, of course. Yeah, of course.
Starting point is 02:15:42 Right. But there's got to be a certain percentage of them that are just completely nobody's home. Yes. Just psychopaths. This is maybe one person. No more. No more.
Starting point is 02:15:51 In French, jail. I don't know in America. Yes. That's wild. So why were you, so what kind of things were you doing to help these people? I was just their doctor. Because in jail, in France,
Starting point is 02:16:06 you have, when you enter into jail, you have to see the doctor. And for three years, I stopped doing autopsies, and I was a doctor for living people. When you are a doctor in France, you are a doctor for all kinds of patients, okay, the living one, but also the dead one when you are from Swiss practitioner.
Starting point is 02:16:25 So for three years, I was dealing with living individuals. And this was my specialty. And wow, what kind of ailments and things were you treating? What kind of diseases were you treating? infection trauma cancer hemorrhage how do you say hemorrhage
Starting point is 02:16:45 all kind of disease in fact in jail you've got all kind of disease but it's a place which is very it's dangerous not for the doctor in itself but you've got a lot of violence a lot of violence what do you think there's like
Starting point is 02:17:05 going to the looking at the evolution of medicine and modern medicine versus ancient medicine, what do you think the biggest differences are? And do you think there can be anything that could be
Starting point is 02:17:21 gleaned from ancient medical practices that would improve medicine today? I think the most accurate medicine is the one that has been described by Hippocratus. in a treatise, which is a very ancient one, probably 4th BC, which is, I say it in French,
Starting point is 02:17:45 les air, les au, le le le leu, meaning wind, water, places. Wind, water, and places. In this very short treatise, no more than 12 pages, Hippocrates says that you do not treat the same person living, for example, example in Tampa, Florida and Cleveland. And you don't treat the same person coming from, originating from South America and Northern America, because we are not made physically and physiologically the same. Okay. He does not take this kind of examples. He speaks about the slaves and the masters. He speaks about the island and the continent. He speaks about the island. He speaks about the island. He speaks about
Starting point is 02:18:34 about northern Greece and southern Greece, okay? You can't broad brush medicine. And this is, it looks like personal medicine, and this is really accurate. This is what we only now rediscover. We don't, we will not treat the same disease between you, Danny and me, Philip, because we are not born in the same country,
Starting point is 02:18:58 we don't have the same physiology, we don't have the same alimentation. We don't have the eat the same thing. things. Exactly. Our microbiome is absolutely different. So this is really important. And this is, for me, a rediscovery. Hippocrates already knew it. And we are now rediscovering what Hippocrates said to us. Wow. Yeah, I think about that all the time. You know, one of the things I think about often is the ancient world and the foods they were eating and the animals and the plants. Like I imagine, and correct if I'm wrong, but I imagine there wasn't
Starting point is 02:19:34 foods that were exported from the opposite side of the world and shuttled into one part where they're eating things or had diets that were based on things that were not from their native environment. On top of that, they probably weren't eating ultra-process stuff like that we're eating now. So it makes me wonder that, you know, what the future mortality rate or what the future of diseases look like and how that's going to, how that kind of stuff is going to, how that kind of stuff is going to evolve into the future as we develop more technology
Starting point is 02:20:07 and more convenient ways of consuming foods and being exposed to the natural elements of the world far less. You know, now we're inside more often. We're sitting in front of screens all the time. We're not getting sunlight. We're not eating foods from our native environments. We're not catching the fish that are right,
Starting point is 02:20:27 you know, coming out of the ocean that are right next to us. We're eating fish that are grown on farms in the middle of the continent. The problem is that we are getting sick of what we are eating. We are getting sick of conservative, we are getting sick of antibiotics, and of all the exposure also to lead, to mercury, to antimony, and arsenium, etc. Everything is already present in our alimentation, and we are really getting sick of all of this. But you have to imagine that during
Starting point is 02:21:00 the ancient period, everything, everyone was a... involved by parasites, parasites. Parasites, exactly. So health status was absolutely different from now. Now, you and me, we don't have any parasites because of antibiotics, because of anti-conservative, etc. But in ancient periods, you were so much fulfilled with parasites that when you had a small fever, when you had a small diarrhea, your health was so, fragile, that you died very frequently and very easily.
Starting point is 02:21:39 Now it's different. Now, and we can see it with the forensic process, you don't add, you do not die of just one cause of death. You die of maybe two, sometimes three cause of death. I don't speak about decapitation, bullet. I speak about natural process of death. For example, when you've got to. cancer, you don't die of your cancer, you die of cancer plus dehydration plus dehydration plus
Starting point is 02:22:09 infection. It's an accumulation of things. It's the accumulation. And usually there's one thing that will be the straw that'll break the camels back. Like I think during the recent pandemic, a lot of the people that died were people that caught this this COVID and they had already like a lot of things wrong with them. A lot of co-morbidities, hypertension, yeah, all these things combined. which you know which explains it's like a plane crash you know we say in France that when a plane crash arrives you don't have one cause of plane crash you've got two or three causes for which the plane crash right okay right right it's the same your health human death and plane crash is the same yeah and and you know going like to the technology the technological advancement of
Starting point is 02:23:01 humans and you know coming to the point where now we are we are using these parasites and and viruses as weapons for and and tools of war that could if they got out they could wipe out vast amounts of the population like but you know we have examples of this during antiquity right i've learned about that recently yes with projection of cadavers of people died of an infection and these cadavers were projected on the opposite army just to provoke an epidemic on the opposite army so this existed in ancient period and also during the opposition between Americans and Indians it's like they they were launching infected in facted corpses yes human one sometimes animal ones but really
Starting point is 02:23:55 human ones too this is biological war biological war ancient biological warfare. Yeah. Yeah, there were so, and there were so many examples of the things that they were doing back then and chemical warfare as well. I was, I just started reading the book by this woman called, it was called, I forget her name, but the book was called like Greek fire, scorpions. It talks about all the different ways how they would fill bags with scorpions and throw them on people. They would light pigs on fire and try to get the pigs to run towards the elephants and just all kinds of just bizarre, wacky things that you would never, at least. Like, just, you know, it's amazing how they came up with some of these fantastical ideas. Reality is much more fantastic than imagination. It really is. And a lot of it doesn't make any sense. That's it. Greek fire, poros and scorpion bombs.
Starting point is 02:24:46 Oh, Adrienne Meyer. Oh, she's one of the best. Yes. She wrote an amazing book about fossils. Fossils. Fossils. Yes, yes, yes. Interesting.
Starting point is 02:24:56 Yes. Which were considered by the ancient Greeks as skeletons from mythological animals. Really? Yes, yes, yes. The first fossil hunters. So this is about fossils of mythological animals? This is an amazing book.
Starting point is 02:25:15 I loved it. And I love Adrian Meyer. She describes the fossil hunters in Greek antiquity. People were considering such paleontological bones as bones from all the mythological animals. Yes, not dragons, but something like it. Like Cicrops, for example, or Ciren's, et cetera. It's really an amazing book.
Starting point is 02:25:40 Wow. And Adrian Meyer is really a good one. Didn't you do... Didn't you do some work on like some mythological theories? I did. You can type, if you want, Les Monstres Humain with my name. Good luck, Steve.
Starting point is 02:25:59 I can do it if you want. Les Monstres Humain. Les Monstres Humann. In French. Yeah, I remember one specifically that I read. There was a myth about a woman who was pregnant for five years. Yes, and this is possible. You may be pregnant for more than this.
Starting point is 02:26:16 It's called Lithopedia. Littopedion. Littopedion is when you are pregnant. Then the baby dies inside the wound and stayed it, but petrified. Then you can find it maybe 20, 30, 40 years later. Yes, but it's really petrified. It's a lithopedian. I have failed.
Starting point is 02:26:36 Okay, I'm back. Okay, okay, okay. It's all in French. Is that like monstrous humane? Yes, exactly. This was my medicine PhD. It was my medical PhD. And I was studying, I took one year making a kind of tour of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, Greece, Turkey,
Starting point is 02:26:59 and I visited many archaeological excavations and I did a lot of bone analysis and I saw that all the creators from the Greek and Roman mythology did exist in theoretical cases meaning that's in what was that word malformations human malformations oh okay theoretical okay okay got it so for example syrians Cyclops, also, centaurs, all the kind of animals that you are monsters that you can see in the Greek and Roman mythology, you can find them in skeletons. I saw some of these skeletons and some of them were also described by scholars, by doctors, by philosophers in classical antiquity. For example, here on the cover, you've got an exvoto. It's a piece of four.
Starting point is 02:27:57 stone where one hascated to be healed to be cured for a disease so you've got the face of a young man you've got two eyes and you've got a foot which is not well formed because you just have three
Starting point is 02:28:12 tons toes toes toes oh yes ton is here because you just have three toes okay so this corresponds to a malformation process and to
Starting point is 02:28:26 this corresponds to a medical syndrome where you've got disease at the level of the face because the eyes are absolutely the individual is blind is a young man but the hairs are absolutely white and you've got a malformation at the level
Starting point is 02:28:48 of the foot all of these corresponds to one syndrome which is the syndrome of Shidiak-Igashi don't not eat, but it's almost rare, but it exists. So this is a kind of rebus, okay, and you have to read it like a patient presentation. So we can work on this is icono diagnosis, again, like the fun arena of Raphaelho.
Starting point is 02:29:11 It's the same way. It's the same way. So Shidiakigashi, great. You type it right. Oh, look at that, Steve. Yes. Great job. Correct.
Starting point is 02:29:17 Correct. So it's a rare inherited immune disorder, characterized by aculocutaneous albinism, immunodeficiency, and a tendency to bruise and bleed easily. Autosomomal recessive condition, meaning both parents must carry the gene for the child to be affected. Often diagnosed in childhood, there's no cure. So children that were born with these physical abnormalities, people just thought they were like mythical monsters. Yes, exactly. And they asked the gods for a special healing of them because medical doctors were not able at this period to do it. And still now, it's absolutely impossible to cure such a disease. So they were asking the gods to heal them. This is the kind of malformation that we can find either on plastic figurations of human beings or in skeletons, and sometimes mummies too.
Starting point is 02:30:20 What about like descriptions of like giants or things like these? This is much more the case of the animals described by Adrian Meyer in her book. Giants are much more paleontological case. But if you type, maybe you can type elephant skull. I will show you something on elephant skull. Okay. Steve, you can figure that one out, right? Yes. Great.
Starting point is 02:30:52 There, the fifth on the... This one, perfect. Okay. When you look at this, this is an elephant skull. Okay. When people from antiquity found something like this, what did they think? They think that this was a skull of cyclop. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 02:31:11 Looks that you're right. Because the hole in the center, which is normally for the trump. Is it the trunk? The trunk. Yes, sorry. I made a mistake with, you know what. That's fair. Sorry.
Starting point is 02:31:23 The trunk, yes, the thought it was the eye, the global, the central eye of the cyclone. Yeah. So this is really a misunderstanding between anatomy, animal anatomy, and something like a phantasme, fantasy of mythological individual. Oh, that's fascinating. But no evidence of like giant human skeletons. No, this, no. This is much more paleontological cases described by the excellent Adrian Mayor.
Starting point is 02:31:57 Right, right, right. Wow, man. That's fascinating work. What else do you have? What else do you plan on doing in the near future? Anything exciting? Any fascinating historical individuals that you hope to excavate and examine? What we would like to study within the next few years
Starting point is 02:32:15 are the mass graves of French kings. During the French Revolution, all the graves of the French kings from the medieval ages to the end of the 18th century have been opened, desecrated by the revolutionists, and put into mass graves outside of the Basilic of San Denis, which is the Royal Basilic. And 20 years later, almost, all these skeletons were taken out of the mass grave and put into two crypts. crypts inside the basilic. We really would like to study all of these bones, which are mixed one with the other, and give them back to their grave. These are the bones of Louise XIV.
Starting point is 02:33:05 These are the bones of Henry IV. These are the bones of Luis, I don't know, which numbers are. And this will really be very interesting. We are also studying on another thing, which are the cloth of Marianne. You know Marie Antoinette, of course. And we are studying now on the corset of Marie Antoinette, on the shoes also of Marie Antoinette. And we are able, and we are trying to be the most accurate as possible, we are trying to recreate
Starting point is 02:33:35 a double of the body of Marie Antoinette. That's fine, that's fine. Because the corset is really next to the body, and we can see how thin she was. So we already have a three-dimensional reconstruction of her trunk, a three-dimensional reconstruction of her feet because of the shoes that are conserved of Marie Antoinette. So part of the body after part of the body, we are reconstructing the whole body of Marie Antoinette. And the last thing that we are doing, maybe Steve you can find it. If you type Henry IV, larynx, larynx, or mummified head. Maybe it's better, mummified head.
Starting point is 02:34:20 Henry the 4th, mummified head. Exactly, please. This is the grandfather of Louis XIV. Oh my God. This is one of my best preserved patient. Wow. This is the head, the mummified head of this king, the French king. He died assassinated by a man, Ravallak, in 1610.
Starting point is 02:34:42 He was decapitated? He was decapitated during the French Revolution. The mummy of the king. king was decapitated during the revolution. Okay, so later, later after his death, during the desecration of all the bodies and all the coffins during the French Revolution. The head is so well preserved that is not just a head. You still have the vocal cords, you still have the track, the tongue, everything inside.
Starting point is 02:35:13 So now we are recreating the voice of this king. We can already, and we are able to say R, E, O, U, because at that period we did not say you, you say, who. And next step is making his speaking, absolutely. So speaking as you, as me, and this is what we are working on. Normally in September. Would you use AI to do this? Yes, we do, but we do, we have recreated the whole larax. on the whole vocal tract of Henri IV. And we are using IA for putting some air inside of it artificially and making noise. This is what we are doing now.
Starting point is 02:36:03 That's bizarre. So give me six more mouth and you will be hearing the king speaking. So you see, remember our first sentence when we met, I told you that my work is to make the dead speak. speaking, but very scientifically, this is exactly what we are doing. To bring them back. Bring them back, but also they have so many things to tell us. They tell us many things using skeletons, hairs, nails, etc.
Starting point is 02:36:36 But also they can speak to us directly. Imagine if they could speak their thoughts. This is a dream. This is a dream. Unfortunately, this is a dream. no. Well, Philippe, thank you so much for coming here and talking to me, man. This has been totally, absolutely mind-blowing some of the stuff that you're doing.
Starting point is 02:37:00 Where can people do find out more of what you're working on or get in touch with you or find any of your work? You can type, you can follow me on Twitter if you want, X on Instagram also. I will give you everything. I'll link everything below as well. And we are creating a museum about all of this that will. open normally in 2008 in an ancient
Starting point is 02:37:25 castle next to Paris just over Paris in Saint-Clu Royal Castle in 10,000 square meter we will be presenting all the cases we spoke together on many others too so we will be able to
Starting point is 02:37:42 go there to see all these artifacts the original one of course and there you will be able to hear the voice of Henri the 4th and we will recreate also an anatomical on theater. You will have a restaurant, one star at the Michelin. It's important. It's important.
Starting point is 02:38:01 And no, it will be a new museum. And if you are interested in joining us for this, then you can contact us. I would love to. Well, thank you again for making the trip down here. This has been totally mind-blowing. I don't have to watch this podcast back like three times. And I'll link all your stuff below. And that's all.
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