Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Asthma and Allergies

Episode Date: November 18, 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 cure your sniffles with fox blood. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saabones 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 twin that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Salbo and Dermatal Tour of Miss guy to medicine. I'm your coach just macaroid and I'm Sydney, Macro Sydney Get all nervous About what well, you know, thank it's Thanksgiving in a week or so Yeah, and you're nervous about Thanksgiving. I'm nervous about Thanksgiving and not for the usual reasons not good What are the you hold on. What are the usual? Gas throw in testinal. You have wait, you get worried about gastrointestinal

problems. Well, I know you need enough while I eat the right things. And my baking, I'm worried about my baking. Well, I bait, well, everything I bait come out okay. I don't, I don't, I wouldn't call these like the usual word like usual for you, but I don't think that those are normal concerns for people. Well aside from, aside from them, you know, you can control like what you eat and Can you? That's debatable, but for me Thanks, give me his kind of scary time. I got a little bit of like a kind of flashbacks sometimes to Turkey. No, not Turkey football. No, not to football family.

Well, sometimes no, I have flashbacks to this is still really hard for me to talk about, but that one Thanksgiving that I had asked. Okay, well, oh wow. Now wait. Wow, that's still so fresh. You didn't have asthma. Asma, I remember, it was like seven or eight years ago, but it's still so vivid and I had to get in an inhaler

and I remember that. Right, but I mean, you don't have asthma. Like that's the only time you've ever to get in an inhaler and I remember that. Right, but I mean, you don't have asthma. Like that's the only time you've ever had to use an inhaler in your life. I've seen it, yeah, I know, but I know. You had like a post-infectious reactive airway disease. Well, I had that inhaler, that asthma kid inhaler. So, and I think the doctor said I had asthma.

So I'm pretty sure I had asthma. Are you thinking that it was triggered by Thanksgiving? Is that the connection? Every time I start to see that it's turkey's pop up, I find it gets harder to breathe for me. That's every time you feel grateful, your airway starts closing. I feel grateful and I'm like,

oh, can't get somebody get me a paper bag or a straw? I can't remember, it's been so long since I had asthma, but man, did I ever have asthma? I can't remember. It's been so long since I had asthma, but man, did I were half asthma. I don't think you know much about asthma. It would be incorrect as I am a survivor, but maybe you could try to educate me about it, I guess. I think I will. I think I'll tell you some things I know about asthma.

And while I'm at it, I'm also gonna tell you some things I know about allergies. Oh, I got those too. Because the interesting thing about if you go back and history. Living with allergies. Well, and I'm not dying from them. I'm living with them. I would agree with you on that. I think you do have allergies. And I do as well. And probably anyone who's listening in the Ohio River Valley where we live. Hello. Also has alert. I think I treat allergies

Maybe more than anything else. Seriously. I mean, it's it's just rampant here. So so why did you want to talk about these two topics together? The main reason is that when I started researching one I kept stumbling upon the other, and so then I switched to the other and vice versa. And the reason is, for a long time, people really didn't understand what caused allergies or what caused asthma or what would distinguish one respiratory illness from another, basically. If somebody's coughing or sneezing or short of breath or wheezing, you know running nose

It was all the same. We used to treat it all the same way No matter what caused it and so if you're trying to read about the history of how did people treat asthma or how did people treat allergies or really any How did people treat colds? You're gonna come across the same things over and over again because you know, didn't know that it was allergies. They don't know what an allergy is so so when did we start to become aware? This might be a thing well before I tell you let me real quick I want to thank specifically Whitney suggested one of these two I think Asma and Nicholas suggested allergies and many many other people have suggested these topics, but thank you guys for bringing them up.

We want to suggest a topic you can email, sobhones at maximumfund.org. That's right. I try to get around to them. I know some people have tried to email the same thing a couple times to bump that up. I'm trying to get to them all. There's a lot of medicine out there. Anyway, so we...

We're not complaining. No. That's good. It's a good thing. out there. Anyway, so we, yes. It's good. No, it's good. It's a good thing. We can keep doing our show. So we have known about the idea of allergies. Let's start there. As far back as ancient Egypt, we understood that for some reason, there were foods, substances in the air,

things people came into contact with that would make some people ill, but other people seem to tolerate fine. We didn't know what that meant, but we understood that concept. That's, I guess, it's a fairly obvious one to see. One person drinks the cow's milk and has a really bad diarrhea. I don't know if you guys know that.

Exactly. So we knew that for some reason, that know, that was something that doesn't make everybody sick with some people. And the first example that was documented was the, I would say, unfortunately named King Minzies. Not a great name for it. He died from a wasp sting from anaphylactic shock, presumably, although not that they would have used any of those words. Right. They didn't know. Maybe wasp sting from anaphylactic shock presumably although not that they would have used any of those words

because they didn't know maybe wasp. Although like you imagine wasp in Egyptian like not wasp. You might sound crazy would be English without an understanding of allergies that sometimes bees kill people and sometimes they just hurt. That's a pretty horrifying way to live. That's terrible. find way to live. That's terrible. Similarly, the son of the Roman Emperor Claudius, his name was Britannicus, the encyclopedias. Encyclopedias family was severely allergic to horses, which is actually tragedy that is because they wrote him a lot. And he couldn't, he would actually end up, he couldn't see.

I guess his allergic response was so strong. I don't know if it was that his face would swell up or his eyes would watered at the point that he couldn't see, but he couldn't see. Now my eyes water when I see horses, but that's because they're just so free and beautiful. That's why we have so many paintings of horses in our house. That's why I keep so many. That's right.

And it was suggested in some of the things I read that maybe that's why his other son, Nero, became the next ruler, because he was a... He could get down with a horse. Yeah, he could ride a horse. You know, Botanicus couldn't like survey all that they, you know, all that they... Surveid?

Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean. You get it. He couldn't like check out the property, unless he walked there and that was gonna take days. Right, because the property was so big. King Richard III was allergic to strawberries. I think you could work around that.

This actually, this came into play in history. He ate some before a meeting he had with Lord William Hastings, and then he developed hives and he blamed the hives on Hastings said that he cursed him and caused the hives and then had him beheaded. Trasting. Should have ground the grimber lay dog. But who's this job, Barry? That's rough. It's really yeah. But most of the time like I said allergies were treated like any other respiratory symptom. I mean, if we're thinking about like allergy symptoms, runny nose, and sneezing, and coughing,

and all that, it was treated the same way that we would treat a cold or that we would treat asthma, or bronchitis or anything else. So what I'm going to talk about next is kind of a lot of these treatments are the same no matter what the actual ailment. If we could go back in time right now and diagnose these people, what it would have been. So, the Egyptians understood the idea that breathing was important. Yes. That's pretty good. Good job.

They had this whole system that they figured out where they thought there were tubes in the body that delivered both air and water to all of our organs. Okay, you could be further off. Yeah, no, I mean, that's not totally wrong. And that if for some reason those tubes got blocked so that you weren't getting air somewhere, which you would demonstrate by, you know, not breathing, that you could use something inhaled to fix it. Okay. Good, good, we're getting there. So they actually had a kind of a recipe, if you will, for, I guess, the first inhaler. So you take seven stones.

Okay. And you put them in a fire so they get really hot. Okay. I'm done. And then there are three different substances you could use at this point. I guess for the medicines, so to speak. Frankincense, yellow, ochre, or grapes. Okay. You take whatever you have.

I'm gonna say grapes because that's what, of those three things, that's what I would have. Yeah, give me that choice. Yeah, well, I mean, I just don't, I don't know where to buy Frankencents. So grapes, and you put some on the hot stone, you know, so it creates fumes. And then you put it in some sort of vessel

that has a hole in it. They're not specific here. So whatever you have that has a hole in it. Okay. So that you can put a reed into the hole and then inhale the fumes through the reed. So basically a hukka. Yeah, I was gonna say a bong, but yeah. Basically it's a hukka. Yeah, I was gonna say a bong, but yeah.

Basically it's a hukka. I mean, especially like the hot stones, like I made that to that basically. That's true, that is a hukka. Yeah, it's basically a hukka. And asthma hukka. But the idea... So there's a lot less nerdy than the inhaler, I guess.

It is. I mean, you look pretty cool as you were doing that. I'm from Alson, Wonderland. It is. I mean, you look pretty cool as you get on that. You look better from Alicin Wonderland. And so you could do this. Oh, man, please. Not me. You could do this. And it supposedly would help your asthma.

And this probably worked, I don't know, maybe, worked better than the prevailing theory at the time, which was, you're either possessed by a demon or you've done something to anger God. And so just basically go sacrifice a lot of goats or something. So which I would guess doesn't work at all. Hapocrates understood that, you know, again, breathing was important and that he recognized panting specifically as a bad sign, if somebody was panting. Which I would say that this is probably what we would now say someone is short of breath or just or disnic

or they're breathing fast maybe or weezing even, but all of these things, he knew that whatever the cause was, you know, this was a bad thing. And he didn't know what triggered it, but once, you know, the cascade happened, so to speak, he said, what would happen is that you'd get extra flim, and that was one of the humors. Flim was one of the, if we go back to the humor system of medicine, different liquids in your body that caused problems.

Flim was a bad humor. It could accumulate in your brain, flow through your pituitary gland, and then clog your sinuses and lungs. So they have a pituitary gland and then clog your sinuses and lungs. So they have the pituitary gland. They knew about that one. They knew about that one. Just not just the outside thought of humors were involved. They just also thought that flim clogged up your brain and your sinuses.

Okay. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to give you guys the E for effort. That's a good try. Kind of got a few things very, very wrong, but you know, I like the that you discovered the pituitary land. Yeah, and I mean that they gave asthma, the name asthma. That's it comes from a Greek word for panting or for wind. Here's a true

story, embarrassing when I was in elementary school. We had a probably a medical student in retrospect come to give us a sex ed, but it was a medical student or a resident. I did that as a resident. Okay. I bet it was a medical student. Probably it was a medical student. Or a resident. I did that as a resident. Okay, so maybe it was a resident. I remember he was British and kind of snooty, but he... We all are. Doctors are all British and so many are here.

It was supposed to be a very, like, sort of open conversation, you know, back and forth. And he mentioned the pituitary gland and started talking about, you know, it's effect on puberty or whatever. And I said to him in this like open sort of free exchange of ideas, keep mind and mental, mental school, I said, I told him, oh, the pituitary gland in your head, I thought it was in your penis and he laughed and he said, maybe yours is a whole class laughed at me. That was me. That's why I never asked another question about medicine.

That's why I found myself in the sorry state I was gay. That was really me. It was me. I don't approve of that at all. Thank you. When I taught that class, I had similarly odd questions, and I don't think I made fun of any of the children. Okay, moving on.

Moving on for that embarrassing sidebar. So he did, by the way, make some connections to the environment. I thought that there was something around people that was triggering, maybe these symptoms, whether they be in reality asthma or allergies, but he didn't know what. And throughout the Greek, you know, Greek period in the Roman times, there was a lot of study on respiration, the discovery of respiratory muscles that we used muscles just specifically for breathing. They used to think before that that it had something to do with warming up the heart, you breathe, then it warmed the heart, and then that

made you breathe more. I don't know. So it warms. You know, heat was always a big theory, right? Yeah, it feels good. Heat makes everything work. But the treatments they used for all these different symptoms really didn't improve anything very much. It was the same kind of thing we've covered many times in many episodes.

The idea that if it's a problem with your humors, you just need to get rid of one or all or some and things will get better. So they give you medicines that make you pee, make you poop, make you puke, they bleed you, you know, or put a hot compress on it. Yeah. That feels nice. Which I guess is more benign than all those other things, but, but making you throw up or pee probably didn't fix your asthma. No, not pleasant. What's interesting is that as we move forward, especially in this, this probably started in China, but you see the use of this in different cultures,

even when we come across to the Americas, some of the indigenous cultures were using ephedra. Now that sounds familiar. You probably remember it from diet drugs. Yes, it is, yes. It was banned for from diet drugs. Yes, it is. It was banned for choosing diet drugs. Like fenfin? So the same?

No, different. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes. Nice. Part of it. But yes. But if Fedra is a, you know, it's an herb, it's a naturally occurring substance.

And it was used by many different cultures for the treatment of what we would call now asthma because it actually also works to open up your airways that Bronco dilators what we would cause that call that and so it did work for that obviously we don't use that now but you know it has other it has other side effects but it does work for that And you see that echoed all throughout different places and times. Plenty actually had something, Plenty R elder. Okay.

Actually had. Friend of the show, Plenty the Elder. A very important contribution to this kind of conversation. He noted that Paulin could cause a problem. Plenty, getting the rare, the rare hit there. He was all on bass. He noticed that there seemed to be some association with pollen, and he advised use of the Chinese herb,

a fedra. Plenty, good job, my friend. Now he did say that you should probably drink it in red wine. Okay, well, which doesn't hurt, but, and then he said, you know, if that, if you don't have that, I guess, or if it doesn't work, or if you don't like it, or whatever, instead you could drink some wild horse blood,

or perhaps some millipede soaked in honey, or maybe just some fox liver. Ah, plenty. So, he blew it. He came so close. We took close to the sun. He came so close. So close, plenty. And then you got to throw a horse blood in there. And Justin, I'd really like to tell you some more about this, but before I get there, I'm going to need you to visit our billing department. All right, let's go. Let's go. So as we're moving forward, we have figured out that something in the environment, plenty told us something probably pollen, is causing some kind of respiratory symptoms for people.

In the 1500s, a lot of people started calling the condition, you know, the idea that you would have breathing problems or, you know, upper respiratory symptoms from something in the environment, they started calling it rose-cutar. Rose-cutar. Blaming it first on roses, that's where the row, I mean, they're saying it's triggered by roses, rows, and guitar meaning any kind of like cold-like symptoms. Okay. So you have a rose guitar. So you get called symptoms when you're around roses.

Roses were unlikely as the main culprit, but they were very pretty and prominent. And I don't know, it sounded romantic. Check the heat off the navel. I have the rose guitar. Yeah, it does, it sounds like very fancy disorder. Doesn't that sound better than allergic rhinitis? Much. I have allergic rhinitis? Much.

I have allergic rhinitis. I have rose guitar. Certainly when you say it like that. The popular girl's always got rose guitar. I just got allergic rhinitis. You can have rose guitar after the one sweetie. Later they started calling it summer asthma. It's nice.

I mean, maybe a little less than that than rose guitar, but not bad. But I guess that's kind of the same idea as your Thanksgiving asthma. Yeah, right. Sure, a day asthma. My summer asthma is kicking in. But again, the reason that I'm lumping all this together is that they didn't know any distinct pathology.

So, somebody could be accused of having summer asthma when they really do have asthma. They have allergies, or they just got a cold. So who knows? In India, physician started advising that people use an herb called strenonium or gymsin weed and that they actually buy smoking it. Now, okay, I'm no expert, but I cannot imagine that helps. Here's the interesting thing.

So no, the smoking part is not good. Obviously inhaling smoke, no matter what it's smoke from, if you have asthma or other respiratory illnesses, is a bad idea. The herb that they pick, though, is an anticholoneurgic, which means that it also, here's what you need to know, it also would help dilate the airways somewhat. It's similar to data, if you've seen commercials

for Spareva. Okay. It's similar to data if you've seen commercials for Sparriva. Okay. It's kind of similar to that. I am not advocating you go smoke, Jimson weed. I'm just saying. See, I already blazed it. I'm just saying it was probably not the worst idea. It was the smoking part that was not so great. Okay. I even I would have known that one. Hold the Indian dudes. But early Americans took it a step further. They said, you know, in India, they want to smoke some gyms in weed.

Well, let's just smoke tobacco. That seems like that should work. Probably. I like that better. Yeah, taste better. And it feels good. I'd rather just smoke that. So they would actually just smoke cigarettes.

Okay, that's not, you're not treating anything. No. Fellas. But it seemed good. It didn't, they were lying, but okay. They also advised smoking cocaine. Okay, well now I do feel better. Yeah.

Um, as a treatment for asthma, and that was both, it's a treatment for asthma or is a treatment for a cold. Again, these would be used for any kind of breathing issues. So this may be blocked on your novel. That it's good for that too. Man, what's the cocaine fix? The treatment for sleepy.

Back treatment for bad party. No matter what problem you have cocaine is the answer. Too much to suppose Blinkum cocaine is there. Later arsenic became a popular treatment. Okay. Sure. I don't know. It's very a nice and your chest. We're moving into that period of time where anything that evoked any response in the human body. Well, let's try it. Let's give it a whirl. There was a physician working at a Spain who noticed association with the time of the year, like the weather. And that was where we first started to get the idea that a dry climate would probably

help with respiratory illness. And we saw that with tuberculosis, but also with any kinds of asthma, cold, whatever, that cold wet weather was worse, dry climates are better. And he also threw in there, you should rest, and don't have any sex and drink some chicken soup. Okay, sure. Not a bad idea if you've got a cold or something. You feel better?

In the 1500s, there was an interesting footnote in the history of allergies. There was an archibishop who was severely ill with many respiratory symptoms, and he was actually diagnosed with tuberculosis, and no physician could help him. Everything they tried to do wasn't making him better. Until one of his doctors advised that he switch from his feather bed to all silk. Now, the reasoning was actually kind of shallow, wouldn't a man of your stature be sleeping on silk

and not feathers? But it totally cured what turned out to be just an allergy to you. So awesome. I love whatever back into her right answer. Yep. But I will say that back into her right answer. Yep. But I will say that the physician did take note of that. There was a recognition like, ah, okay.

Those feathers were clearly the problem. We didn't know it, but we know that the feathers were probably finally because of his status. His status was what was making him sick, his sense of the finer things in life. So it was keeping him ill. And finally, he was sleeping on a class appropriate bed. And that's why he started to breathe a little easier.

And that's all it takes. I was trying to sleep on an air mattress, and I started, I coughed up a lung, because I'm a fancy gentleman. I can't be caught dead on an air mattress. I'm always trying to sleep on that. What is that weird pillow that I sleep on that you got? It's got water in it or something? Yeah, yeah. I don't know why you still use that. I thought it would stay cool, but it doesn't really. No, it doesn't. I'd laziness. I don't know where my other pillow is. And I'd

have to go find it. And then I'd have to put it on the bed. And oh, we got a kid now. I just don't have time for that. I didn't know you just like that. No, I hate it. Really? Yeah, because it like flops around. It's like heavy. And if I try to just pull it, like I've pulled it down and it, I don't know. I just get you normal pillow. Yeah, I really need a normal pillow. Okay, next time I'm not gonna get you normal pillow. Sorry. Did we throw away my normal pillow? Yeah, it's certainly, certainly. Certainly we did. Probably.

Oh, man. We got like 50 pillows. Oh, my God. This is a podcast. Sorry, Go ahead. So continuing things that are thrilling. There was a big breakthrough in the 1800s when John Boehm stock, a physician, wrote a description of hay fever. The that was probably as fun to read. And no cow, the no coward plan was assuming. It That's our pillow discussion was to just listen to. He was a sufferer of hay fever. And allergies are no fun. And so I guess he just was finally like, man,

I'm just gonna write all this down and see if I can define this and describe it. And then maybe if we all agree that there is a thing that is triggered by stuff in the environment that is a problem maybe then we can fix it. And he linked it to some sort of substance in the air. Just writing about his own stuff. Yes, writing about his own symptoms of hay fever. This summer, the CW, the Asmadiaries.

I do think there was a vampire in there too. Vampire's game is as well. I mean, it's science 101. I mean, a book. But allergies came from mummies, and we know that now. We know that now. This was important. The sounds like the most boring thing ever, but it was important because the most popular

belief still at the time, even though it had been proposed otherwise, obviously, was that heat caused problems. And so the idea that, oh no, no, no, there are the things in the environment they definitely definitely do, because he was a very respected physician. This was the first time that people started reading this description of hay fever and going, oh, okay, well maybe this is right, I buy this. And other physicians begin to build on this work actually testing the theory. So they started injecting themselves with pollen and rubbing it at all over their skin and rubbing it in their eyes and trying to trigger symptoms to prove the theory.

It's heroic. Yeah. And it worked. They did. They gave themselves terrible allergic symptoms. It's a cool few weeks, but I guess that I'll pay off the end I don't think any of them wanted to like anaphylactic shock that I read about which is nice. That's good Well, who would write that up? They would probably give that guy a pass. It's a rough way to go You know somebody would write it up

Guarantee if I did it if I was that doctor and I injected myself with something and triggered anaphylactic shock and then I Presumably am surviving if I'm gonna write it up, you know I would. Yeah. Because I think I was so cool. So cool except for giving yourself anaphylactic shock. For science, for the name of science, we did a whole show about, you know, doctors think that's cool. Okay.

So the following century, what really was the breakthrough for allergies and asthma and complaints similar to those was immunizations. Not because they fixed these problems, but because this is really when we started to understand the immune system. So as we understood the immune system better, we understood the idea that for some people, there are things in the environment that their immune system just goes nuts to. And we don't know, you know, exactly why this person, every time they come in contact with, you know, pollen, they can't breathe for two weeks. And this other person doesn't seem to notice.

Do we understand that now? Like, I mean, I was talking about a basil, but like the why? I mean, part of it is like, it's, you know, we started to understand genetics, right? Why some people are, you know, have different diseases and other people don't but then the other thing too They're all kinds of theories and I mean this is just me kind of talking about it But there's something called the hygiene hypothesis that a lot of this is a lot of these problems are becoming more prominent as we're getting cleaner We're not exposed to allergens things that would trigger these problems early enough. So we're too clean, basically. If we were all dirty error and more covered in germs and

allergens at an earlier age, we wouldn't have so many people with allergies and asthma. I don't know. I'm not saying that that's necessarily true, but that is a popular hypothesis. So don't take so many showers. I tested that, I thought this is still a lot of middle school. Well, it didn't work, you got Thanksgiving asthma. Yeah, tragic Thanksgiving asthma. So, one other thing, I think, we kind of talked about smoking as a cure for asthma. Right. One really popular treatment.

I was active in the UK and then in the US. And this was again, kind of in the patent medicine era, where asthma cigarettes. Awesome. So not just cigarettes because we talked about that. Those are ones with actually tobacco in them. These did not have tobacco. They were specifically for asthma. They were marketed that way.

It was like potters asthma cigarettes. God, if you need a name for your band, now you have it. There you go. The asthma cigarettes. They usually did have an urb in them of some sort. And there was some basis here. They contained some kind of herb that would have atropin in it. Atropin again, acting as an anticholinergic that would dilate your airways, open up your

airways. Mildly, this is probably not the best way to do this, but they did work somewhat. Bella Donna was a very popular thing to put in asthma cigarettes. So they kind of worked, but at the same time, they also probably made you hallucinate somewhat. Okay. So they were fun cigarettes. They were jazz cigarettes. I'm not worried about my asthma ever. They were very popular, you can imagine, because one, people love smoking back then, right? Like everybody was smoking. And they could fix anything.

Yes, it could fix anything. It may have dilated your airways and moreover, you were tripping on them. So everybody loved them. People were getting hooked on them, which is why they continued to be popular even after the nebulizer wasn't been in. Which, do you know what a Nebulizer is? I think most people do. Yes, we'll see.

But, like, breathing treatments, if you've ever seen a little kid, they get the little, there's the machine and you dump the out, be it or all liquid and the thing and they get the treatment. Anyway, even after the Nebulizer was invented in the 30s, they were still smoking as my cigarettes. It wasn't really until the 50s when the inhaler came out, which was cheaper and easier to use and everybody understood it

and it worked so much better than smoking that people started to use that instead of the cigarettes. But they sold those up until like 85. I like crap. You could find packs of asthma cigarettes. There are probably people listening who were like, hey, I remember somebody told me about those. I read one comment about them, somebody who was talking about asthma cigarettes and said, you

know, actually, I was around and I tried those. And he said, it wasn't a particularly nice buzz, but very, very debilitating. Which was an endorsement, I think. I think it was an endorsement. Awesome. The last sidetrack before we get to today was that in the 1900s, especially in like the 30s and up to the 50s, asthma became viewed as a psychosomatic illness for a while. They didn't think that it was really a physical problem. It was something that you could probably overcome with the right amount of talk therapy

and like cycle analysis. Is that why we have some of the like unfortunate stereotypes like connecting people with asthma to like being sort of nerdy or a feminine or whatever? I think that's exactly where it came from. Back in the 50s, when if you were carrying around, I mean, think about it. We have an overlap where asthma is still being seen as something that is primarily of the mind. And then at the

same time, the inhaler was invented. So now you've got kids wandering around using an inhaler and their adults looking at them going, that kid just needs to be in therapy. So yeah, I think that's probably where that unfortunate connection comes from. They thought that wheezing was the suppressed cry of a child for its mother. That's why you wheeze because you're really just crying for mom and you don't know how. It was considered there were seven holy psychosomatic illnesses at the time. I think that might be another show altogether. But anyway, the way that they treated it was by treating the underlying depression that they thought was there, which obviously does not fix asthma.

No, that doesn't make sure it has... What about now, Sid? Well now, we understand that there are distinct illnesses. asthma, of course, allergies to various substances, and then all kinds of other respiratory problems that were lumped in with this stuff. Asma has a wide variety of treatments, inhalers, pills, you know, you can go see a specialist if you need to. Allergies are very well understood. We can treat you for them over the counter medications or prescription medications and we can

also test you. Much in the same way that those doctors who just rub pollen all over themselves We can test you with like skin tests like you know expose you to a bunch of stuff and try to figure out what you're allergic to So so it's all very well understood and when we can treat them now, but what a relief. Yeah So should my Thanksgiving asthma flare up again doctors will be there to treat me. Yeah, and in the meantime, I'll just keep taking my loradidine because it is the time of the year that again, everybody around here has allergies. Our air quality is just terrible.

Hey folks, thank you so much for listening. Thank you to people tweeting at the show using the at solbonains as our user name or you can use the solbonain hashtag whatever you want. A lot of people getting their flu shot. Yeah, thank you. people getting their flu shot. Yeah. Thank you. Everybody get their flu shot.

23.herz. Other people tweeting about the show will crumble. Vanessa Van Olstein, Jeff Lacon, recovering an Inja Cat, Nick Taylor, Jedi Outcast, Dugie 2k Williams Skeebie next I heard social media Brian Russell Patricia Metivi Fun bust and so many others Listen if you're gonna be in the area of Huntington West for Janion December 21st and we got news for you We are doing a live show with my brother my brother me Called my brother my brother me home for the count of, a holiday spectacular to be a hunting city hall.

We're going to be recording a live episode and opening up for my brother, my brother, my tickets are just 15 bucks. We sold about half of them a little over half actually. So get on it. If you are, are interested in going, you can go to bit.ly4dslashcannoni.ly and get those tickets. So hop on that. This is your chance to see Honeykin, West Virginia. You've waited long enough, treat yourself. Just cross it right off that bucket list and get on down here. We're a member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network.

There's a lot of great shows for you to listen to there. This week, I want to recommend the Goose Down hilarious podcast that you would really enjoy. Sort of general topics, but a really hysterical. So treat yourself to that, those two are hilarious. And want to want to thank you so much for listening. Thanks to the taxpayers. Oh yeah, for letting us use their song Medicines as our intro and outro music. You should go buy everything they make and finally thanks to you so much for listening. We'll be with you next Tuesday until then I'm just a macro. I'm Sydney Mackerel.

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