Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Acne

Episode Date: October 7, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We make your face smell terrible. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books! One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

The medicines, the medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Wow, we're getting welcome to Saul B bones a marital tour of Miss guy to medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McRoy And I'm sitting back right sitting good news. We're done with this podcasting business. Oh No more podcasting no more Doctoring for you no more writing by video games for me. We're done with all of it. Did we want to be done? What was this a goal? Yes, this is our goal. And finally, I'm ready to make our dreams country with the release of my new product

that I just invented in my head. It's called Jake Up. What do you do with that? Jake Up. Jake Up. Jake Up. Like wake up or? No, like make up.

This is like make up. We're freeing. You're gonna make sometimes you're gonna create makeup Sometimes I get a zit right and I gotta be camera ready 24-7. No, you do a podcast. I actually don't know the paparazzi The paparazzi 35,000 followers on Twitter are gonna get some pop you never you never leave the house gonna get some rosy You you I mean literally you don't leave the house. So I gotta be camera ready all the time. So I like go to my parents house. There's a stigma though for guys using makeup, I think.

So what my product Jacob does is it removes that stigma, right? It removes that stigma so you can enjoy being camera ready as a fellow. Is that the only reason that guys don't wear makeup, the stigma? And the laziness, I mean they're lazy. Yeah, because I'm going to tell you it's not like you're missing out on anything. There's no joy in it. It's not particularly pleasant, but now guys have that option with Jake up.

So that is my, my million dollar idea. What in particular are you trying to hide there? Acne, I mean basically just acne. That's, well, I mean that just means you have youthful skin, right? That's true. Still having acne in our 30s, that's, yeah. That's my excuse.

Mine too. That's something that people with acne say though. Just make the guess so bad. You know, acne is something that a lot of people have asked us to talk about. Well, I think we should. Well, I think we should. Yeah, I think we should. I know.

We've gotten many tweets and emails. People are really interested in acne. I think it's those proactive commercials. I think everybody's, they've got all those celebrities, but they're beautiful skin. So acne, and when we're talking about acne, I'm talking about acne vulgaris, which that makes it sound worse. It does make it sound worse.

Let's just stick with acne for now. Yeah. So that's the kind of acne that, I mean, I hope you know what I'm talking about, the kind of acne you get on your face when you're like going through puberty or a 31 year old woman who it's never gone away, either way, you know, you can have pimples like the white heads, black heads. Most of the time like I said, it hits the impuberty, it's associated with changing your hormones. There's some bacteria that are associated with it, your oil glands.

Anyway, it usually goes away as an adult. Usually. Usually. And this has been a problem since King Tut. I would imagine even before that perhaps well probably but the first we know about the ancient Egyptians Recognize acne as an issue and King Tut had acne scars. Oh really? Yes, so King Tut definitely had acne because it was like a kid King Sure, you know, it's like 12 or something. I don't know five four An age that a child is baby King basically. Yeah Sure, you know, it's like 12 or something. I don't know five four

An age that a child is baby king basically. Yeah We're not historians folks. We're just yeah, just observers if you've been listening to our show for a while you know that yeah And you also know that we don't know about anything else literally anything we barely know about this definitely not animals Sorry as many people have pointed out. Thanks for all the door mouse info everybody. We get it the pictures were adorable So they found not only acne scars on King Tutts skeleton, which how do you? How do you find how? I guess was there like tissue there like mummified I don't even want to think about it. Yeah, but They also found acne treatments

among his possessions and his tomb. Because you know kings would be buried with all their stuff and I think sometimes their slaves as well like living like well he was buried with like his you know persegell his retinue. For the afterlife. You've got your gold you've got your jewels. I prefer to think when I've got your new trichina. I prefer the thing where I didn't have to worry about acne anymore, thank you. He just wanted to get his look right. Yeah, I don't blame him. The Greeks had acne and they actually recognized that it was connected to puberty.

One of the words they used to describe acne actually means first growth of the beard. So they saw this connection between the time when men were becoming moon and getting acne. Aristotle wrote about it, Hippocrates wrote about it, and if you get into this, this is like I was looking into the history of acne, there is a lot about the history of the word acne. Really? People are all writing about this. I started reading this paper that was called the history of acne and I thought that would be helpful. It was written in 1951. I thought, well, this will be interesting. No, it was six pages about the word acne. Wow, really?

Somebody's doing this research. There were more and there's more. There's lots. If you want to know the history of the word acne, the internet has lots of inspiration for you. I don't want to tell you anything else about it because I thought it was boring. Oh, sorry. Well, so let's talk about ancient acne interesting stuff. Yes. The Egyptian thought it was. No, not words. The Egyptian thought it was called by telling lies. Okay. That's it's not. No. No teenagers love to lie. And they would use honey sometimes for a cure. Also sometimes a sulfur. They also advise you could try wiping at your pimples with a cloth while watching a falling star. That is a complicated remedy right there. That may be our hardest day

to execute yet. You have to be really prepared. Like have the cloth next to your face at all times, just in case. Just stay any outside staring up. Mm-hmm. Now you have acne and you have a crooked your neck. That's unpleasant. They thought that it would cause the pimples to fall off. Like the star. No. No. And they also use a lot of charms and spells. Sure. You know, all first to the gods. The Greeks also like sulfur that was one of their biggest treatments. They also would mix the sulfur with molasses, make like a paste and put it on your face. It probably did dry out your skin to some degree which is a lot of what some acne curse really just do is dry your skin out and attempt to

you know stop the oil production that's causing the zits and whatnot. They also had a lot of other plant-based remedies. The Romans like that too. Sofra is a big thing. Then they would put sulfur in their mineral baths and hang out in their bath houses all day. Sofra treatments.

The baths we were doing. The baths had a strong sulfur element. So there you go. That would have been a great, well, treatment. I don't wanna secure it at the time for acne. I don't know, keeping your skin clean, I guess. A plenty, of course, had something to say about acne. Plenty of the elder.

Sure. Classic, sobba and favorite, plenty of the elder. Yeah, all right. Our recurring character, plenty of the elder. Our one-row recurring character, plenty of the elder. One recurring character, when you be elder. He advised, I'll play by the endowment will Kristen wig. Take it inward, take it to Wakers.

If you're waiting for me to do an impression of Kristen wig doing an impression of plenty of the elder, I'm waiting for a while. You do not know your wife. I do not have enough room on this hard drive for the white and silencer. That is not coming. Sorry, listening audience.

But he would advise you to use butter, okay? And mix it with a little bit of lead. Oh, fantastic advice, Plenty. You're really nailed at this time, right? You know, your streak is unbroken of great treatments, butter and lead. I like to think he said, somebody came to him, and was like, oh, plenty wise elder.

I don't know if people said that to him. If I called him, plenty the old plenty, the elder, you wise man, how do I treat my acne? And he was like, really, that's what you have to worry about? I don't know, go put lead on your face, kid. Butter and lead was the name of the Western eye filmed starring Paul Adine back in the early 2000s. It was...

How did it do? Widely Pant. I would say almost universally Pant. You can probably dig that up on YouTube. I'm certain. Cell Salt Therapy was another popular treatment that came along for acne much, much later. It's based on... It was created by Dr. Schussler. This is a part of homeopathy, so anybody familiar with homeopathy may have heard of this.

And it's based on the idea that the body is made of 12 minerals that you have to keep in balance. And so you give people various mineral salts in homeopathic doses and then they in homeopathic doses and then they, their acne vanishes. Sure. Which, you know, if, I guess if you're gonna use homeopathy to cure something, if you're gonna rely on homeopathy solely, I guess it might as well be acne. Yeah, at least that's gonna work eventually,

which I hiccups. And acne's not gonna hurt you and not curing it, isn't gonna hurt you. So I guess I'm okay with that. I guess that's- So if you're gonna use something up at the use it on your acne. Yes.

Cause I mean, you know, it's acne guys. In the 1930s, acne went by a different name. Which was? Chastity pimples. Not as good. I like that name though. Now I assumed it was because if you had really bad acne,

you were a, I'm always alone. You're forced to be chased. Forever alone, yeah. This isn't like a, you know, you're not chastity by choice. Chastity by nature. I guess. No, just, you know, nobody,

nobody wants to do it with you. That was kind of my fear. That's hurtful. But I guess you're a lot of authority around in the 30s. That's why you're not here. Nothing was politically correct. That's true. It was a crazy time.

People said all kinds of inappropriate stuff. But that isn't what it, what it was referring to. They thought that virgins were more likely to get pimples. That if you chose to be chased, you would end up with pizza face. That's just unfair. That's cruel, honestly. Yeah. I don't know if that was like a- Like, our teens need more pressure to participate in premarital sex. You know some guy came up with that.

Yeah. What if Adam O'Neill, Levine was in those ads? Yeah, you start prong with acne. Ladies. And that, you know how I fixed it? Ladies. I guess that's a little better than what if, like, it's the world ending. Let's do it.

Let's do it. You're going to get acne. Let's do it. Let's go for it. But they thought it was because you need to rid your body of certain toxins through sex. And if you don't, you'll get acne. I bet you just,

just who came up with that? Men. Yeah. Guaranteed. Which by the way, not a great line, like I need to rid my body of toxins on you. Yeah, that's not oozing with romance. Yeah, I'm good.

I don't want your toxins, thanks. They also, sometimes would use laxatives as a cure in this time period. Oh, it was a radiation therapy sometimes, which I would not recommend like X-rays. We came popular in the early 1900s. Also, on the flip side, there was a theory for a while that masturbation caused acne. So. That probably just seems like chronologically. Yeah, because they also positive

that thinking about sex would cause it. So you're a teenager, you're going through puberty, your hormones are raging. I would have been riddled with terminal acne as a team, I think. Well, thanks for sharing that. As a team. Well, still. Well, how for sharing that. As a team. Well, still. Well, how do we cure it, Sydney?

Everybody knows we hate it. How do we fix it? So some cures for acne. Okay, one that was very popular for a while was to avoid spicy foods and strong beverages, which just underlines the fact that food, what you eat and drink has been tied to, or thought to cause acne for a long time,

even though there's not a lot of basis for that. That's a pretty harmless one. Just don't anything spicy and don't drink anything strong. That includes really strong coffee, not just booze. One less appealing cure that was used for many, many years was urine. Just rub urine on your face. Just pee right up there. You don't have to drink it or anything. Don't get gross.

You just rub it on your face. Rub it on your face. The best. Doesn't matter who it is. Well, it doesn't matter. Anybody's will do, but your best is a baby's urine. Oh, right. So I was wondering what babies were for.

That's what babies are for. Have a baby, they pee in a diaper, you just take that sucker off, make sure it's just a pee diaper. Thank you. Yeah, no poopy diaper. And rub that wet diaper all over your face. Go on, you've earned it. And your acne will vanish.

It will not. And your face will smell like baby pee. You're a pee face Continuing on the baby theme you could also try diaper cream Especially a big problem for parents because they're really looking to get all the meat off the buffalo of having a child around This is a great reasons to have babies guys. Yeah, if you don't have one yet and you have acne there you go Are you waiting for? I again, I don't know if maybe diaper creams, certain ones are more drying than others depending

on what the ingredients are. Perhaps. Because I mean, I remember once as a teenager, I read that toothpaste would work and I tried toothpaste. I've heard that I think. Yeah. I mean, it will dry your skin. And then your face smells minty fresh, better than maybe pee.

You're better than maybe pee. Yeah, for sure. Another cure I found was don't have sex for two weeks. and then your face smells minty fresh, better than maybe. Yeah, for sure. Another cure I found was don't have sex for two weeks. Just hormones or something? No, I mean, none of these work, honey. Oh, I know. I'm just saying. Did you think these were real cures? I'm trying to guess why the reason would be

that maybe they would work. I think, I mean, it's that link between something to do with hormones and sex and acne. People were just kind of trying every iteration of that. Like do have sex, don't have sex, stop thinking about sex. Whatever, go to shop. No. Let's talk about sex. Bay, bee.

Let's get that diaper filled with bee. As I mentioned, X-rays were used for a while. Back when X-rays were popular for everything. Oh, good. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that because of the dangerous. No, I think you're running a small risk of getting a worse problem than that. Yeah, just a few. Your head smells up like King of the Junior in that episode of... Sorry, no, Darrell Strauberry in that episode of The Simpsons, where he has the, the tonic, you know,

I mean, you love that episode. That's one of my favorites, you know. You could also try, it might be King Griffey, Jr. Go to our Facebook page to tell us, cause I can't remember. Well, we're, I figured you were gonna make a stop until you figured it out. Nope, nope, no, no time for that.

I got to know about more Agni Gears. You could try a cabbage leaf bound to your face, just like peel off a cabbage leaf. I think you're supposed to like wash it off and get it all wet and clean and then like tie it to your face. Well, I am happy to have used for cabbage finally. What's it been for?

Gross. Arsonic tablets were recommended. Because it got so bad, you just couldn't take any work. Yeah, I guess that's when the acne is just, I'm over it. I'm fed up with this world. People keep calling them chastity pimples. That's just mean.

I'm taking all the oxidives I can take. I'm done. I have this cabbage strapped in my face. I wiped my face with a baby diaper earlier. I haven't had coffee or beer and months. Everything's the worst. I'm taking arsenic. Garlic is a popular home remedy.

Now, I think this presents a different problem. What's that? As long as we're talking about unpleasant odors. Oh yeah. Again, I think chastity pimples would be appropriate if you have wiped garlic all over your face. The face smells like garlic and pee and the cabbage that I can clearly see on there.

I'm not into this anymore. This I think would be guaranteed to help you avoid vampires. Right. And anyone with a nose. So just people in general. As long as your vampires have noses there, I included. How about home remedies? There are lots of different things.

Drinking a lot of water is a popular ingredient. Anybody ever tell you that? Because I heard that a lot growing up. Yeah, I think so. You need to drink more water and your acne will go away. Staying well hydrated is a big thing. People will start. No, I mean, there are plenty of good reasons to drink water.

So I'm never gonna mix that, but if that's what you're banking on to cure your acne, I don't think it's gonna work. Veneger, again, with the rubbing stuff on your face, it's not gonna smell good. Yeah. And still, you know, drying out your skin and killing, you know, trying to help kill the bacteria

on your skin, I can see where they're going with this, but acne's a little more complicated than that. A lot of these cures not like they are invented by parents to keep their teenage children chaste. Oh, oh, oh, that's no problem. You just rub some baby pee, inventor and garlic on your face and go to school that way. And the boys will love you.

The gals will be lighted up. Now you're not gonna tell Charlie this. Are you? No, she'll never listen to this podcast. I wanna teach her everything. QCumber is a recommendation. Again, I guess I can't. Type the ice cream.

And then rub it all over your face. Lemon. Some of these can be dicey if you have an open, like if you have a zit that you picked at. Can you imagine? Unpleasant. That would be really bad. I wouldn't do that if you're one of those pickers.

Don't pick, by the way. Yeah, that's a good idea. You got your hands are filthy. Trust me, they're just filthy. And then there were a lot of special teas that are recommended. You just drink these really special herbal teas. Again, probably not bad for you.

No, but again, I don't think they're going to cure your acne. Now, one treatment I found was a O'Licca chant. Okay, I'm ready. So first, you have to mix together some dirt and some vinegar and some water. Your halfway to salad dressing. So I like that mixture because vinegar and water have been done, how can we mix it up?

How can we make it new? Dirt. Dirt. Let's put some dirt in there. Your mom thought your face was too dirty. Well, we're gonna show her. We're gonna make it dirtier. Take that. So I guess you make some sort of paste.

You rub this all over your face and then there's a chant that you have to say. I don't know. Do I have the chant here? Do you want to like sing it for everybody? No, I thought you could go on the same thing. No, just stage reading, I think it'll be fine. I think you're usually good at this kind of thing. Curial my skin of zits and rash and make it smooth in a flash.

Blimish, vanish, pop marks two. Magic make my skin a new. If you're an actual wick of listening to this show, I don't know if that was real or not, and I'm sorry if I got the pronunciation wrong. My wife made me do it. I thought you would sing it or something. That wasn't really the one I wanted.

I wanna mock their religion. I just thought you'd give it like a funky beat. I mean, I try to give everything in my life a funky beat. That's how I live my days, but I didn't feel like that was the appropriate moment. And you've still got a zit, so it didn't work. Yeah, it did not. Well, to be fair, I didn't have any dirt or vinegar on him.

I prefer, I found a method from Chinese folk medicine, which just called for rubbing peach blossoms on your face. Finally, something to make your face smell decent. Yeah, I like that because you know maybe you have zits but you know in those intimate times your your special someone gets close and oh mine is that peach blossoms? Oh, you smell like peach blossoms. It's almost a strap from how your face looks. Did you did you do that from me? I was distracted from how your face looks. Did you do that for me? And then they're really touched.

So one of the best cures that I came across was actually, it's kind of complicated. It's from the British Medical Journal, but it's way back in 1878. So take that for what you will. And here, if you're really that interested in curing your acne, here is their recommendation. Okay, go. So take a tank, sure, a viadine and a sulfur vapor douche or a vapor bath. Okay. Say a vapor bath. Say a vapor bath indeed. And then if

you're sebaceous glands and follicles, so if your pores on your face, if all the little pimples on your face should become overloaded. So basically I think if you got whiteheads, they should be relieved by pressure between the finger and thumbnail. Well, that's not exactly groundbreaking, I don't think. Right. That's squeezing, got it. And then frequent washings with warm water and oatmeal, after which a good rubbing with

a flesh brush. What? We'll remove the contents of a number of the pimples. I do not know what a flesh brush could be. A flesh brush, that sounds horrible. That's terrible, it's like the lead it's from saw. So this, so we've already gone through now a tincture via dine, a sulfur vapor douche, a male bass, squeezing all your pimples, an oatmeal bass, and now a flesh brush.

Right. Now we're on to a cooling zinc or calamine lotion to be painted upon the face with a camel hair brush two or three times a day. This is like you're having to devote your entire life to acne treatment. No one has the time for this It is that what like our camel hair brushes. Is that standard? Is that easy to come on? Nice back then back then We don't have to find some camel hair. I don't even know where a camel is mine is a badger hair Mike shaving brushes badger hair. That way or now

Badger hair. Now, you're not done. I know this is already done. I'm gonna complicate enough. I'll just keep the acne. You're not done because you may have gotten rid of the overloaded pimples. You know, you've removed their contents with your flesh brush, but there's still some trouble, some redness

that you may want to get rid of. Okay. So apply the acid nitrate of mercury with a spun glass brush. There are a lot of brushes required for this procedure. Then once you've done that, once you've applied acid nitrate of mercury, that's unseeable, with your spun glass brush, not your camel hair brush. And not your flesh brush. And not your flesh brush and not your fingers.

And forget about the douchey right now. Divide each engorged vesicle with the point of the Lancet. So I guess you need a Lancet. And you're going to cut open anything that's swollen. And if you bleed a lot, apply a small ring of silver or steel. Then, you're still not done. So you've cut open your face, you're bleeding.

You're gonna insert a minute grain of nitrate of silver. Okay, wonderful. This is getting better and better. And I'm just trying to myself and do a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome style freak show. So you've got cuts all over your face. You have you you've put silver or steel on them. Okay.

And now you're putting the silver inside these cuts. And that's hopefully going to stop the bleeding. That's the idea there. The silver nitrate. Perfect. The only problem is it's going to leave a small black, discolored spot, the silver nitrate is. To replace the red spot.

Yeah, to replace the pimple, you now have a small black spot. But don't worry, because you can remove that too. Oh, good. Just put some iodide. Get some more camels. Kill some more camels, and get a solution of iodide of potassium and put those on the black spots and those warm of the black spots. And now your acne is cured.

Just like that. And just 17 simple steps. And that's what proactive is. Order the box, see if we're allowing. Just all that stuff. That is exactly that is proactive. You've always wondered. And that is.

And the commercials make it seem like a miracle cure. Yeah, that white box. It looks small in the commercials. It's actually the size of a refrigerator. It just brushes and brushes and brushes. I like that at the end of this description, the author writes that the above treatment may appear somewhat heroic for so common and eruption.

So at least he recognizes like, I mean, I guess if you want to do all this, but maybe just like wait. What about the stuff that like that were still told has a impact on like chocolate or stress or those? So chocolate is not true. There have been some some thoughts that maybe a high sugar diet, more carbohydrates in your diet could increase the production of acne or increase your problem with acne

But even that is tenuous, but chocolate has not been proven so don't worry about chocolate so much Stress is not linked to acne either So don't worry about that So those are two things that people tell you along with drinking a lot of water that I mean probably aren't true Although, you know, don't eat too much chocolate, drink a lot of water and try not to be stressed. Those are all good advice. One thing that a lot of people think is that you're supposed to scrub your face really

hard. That if you clean your face often and scrub it with a washcloth or some sort of rough, you know, surface, that that'll help prevent acne, that's actually bad. You don't want to be constantly abrating your skin with a rough cloth because you're actually just going to encourage the production of more oil and more zit. It's good to keep your skin clean. There are lots of over-the-counter treatments for acne. And at the end of the day, most of us outgrow it, not all of us, but most of us do.

Don't stress about it. Don't stress. It won't change your acne anyway. Thank you so much for listening to our show. So don't stress about it. Don't stress. It won't change your acne anyway. Thank you so much for listening to our show. We hope you've enjoyed it. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at saw bones. Thank you to the taxpayers for the use of their music for our intro and outro.

And thank you to you for listening. If you get a chance to rate and review our show on iTunes or give us a subscription, that would sure help us out. Thanks to the Maxime with Fun Network for having us on their show. We got three new shows on the Maximum Fun Network, Destination DIY Baby Geniuses, and I'll know. My brain has just collapsed down. It's half the flop house, there it is.

I knew it was in there somewhere. We've got those three programs. Of course, all the other shows that are already there should go to MaximumFun.org and check that totally out. Either way until next Tuesday, I'm Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. Always don't draw a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org

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