Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Bad Bugs

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

There are many ways people get sick, but sometimes diseases are carried to people by insects. Dr. Sydnee and Justin talk about the top ten "bad bugs" including mosquitoes, ticks, assassin bugs, and some beetles that are big and bad. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Sawbones 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. from that weird growth. You're worth it. All right, time is about to books.

One, two, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy.

Happy Friday to you, Sid. Thank you, Justin. Happy Friday to you as well. Folks, you gotta understand how wild it feels as a married couple to try to improv some like light things that we've been talking all day, folks. We've been talking to each other all morning. And so now we're just sort of continuing to talk to each other, but now we are recording the conversation and it will be more medical centric than our usual conversations, but there's still quite a bit of medicine

discussed in our house pretty much every day. than our usual conversations, but there's still quite a bit of medicine discussed in our house pretty much every day. So. Well, but you usually aren't willing to engage with me on it because I want to tell you about gross stuff. Or sometimes I accidentally casually share a story that is maybe sad or even like. Say tragic.

Yeah, well, I was going to say almost traumatizing. I feel a little guilty about because I don't little guilty. I don't always realize. Yeah. Let's not unpack that here. We don't you don't need. You don't know. No, no, no. Basically, Sydney takes all of her mental garbage and dumps it on my stoop and then wanders off not a care in the world. It leaves me to sort through the rubbish.

I've gotten better about that. Have you? I can tell. I have. I have a dear- Maybe I've just gotten tougher. Maybe I'm harder to shake. I think I've got better.

I have a dear friend in a similar line of work who I can commiserate and share. Right. So it's not as bad now. It's important to find your people. But this is where I can talk to you about medicine in a non-traumatizing way. That was the original.

You can laugh and learn. That was the original subtitle for the podcast. Sydney talks to you about medicine in a non-traumatizing way. And Justin can laugh and learn. Yeah, and Justin can laugh and learn. Yeah, and Justin can laugh and learn, but it wouldn't fit on the logo. No.

Justin, this is a topic that we created not necessarily for our listeners, but we are also sharing with our listeners. Yes, that's right. Who do we create it for, shit? For the Entomological Society of America, the Eastern branch. Yes, they were very, very nice to have us

to come talk to them about their favorite topic, which is bugs. I'm assuming it's all their favorite topic. Otherwise, it's a wild career poll, but still. I don't know, you know, you always assume that about people in science, and like it's true about me, right? Like I was passionate about, I always say like, I like the Gushi Sciences.

The Gushi Sciences? The Gushi Sciences. Physics seems not Gushi. about, I always say like, I like the Gucci sciences. The Gucci sciences. The Gucci sciences. Physics seems not Gucci. It's a more sterile science. Chemistry can be somewhere in the middle there. And I feel like biology is the gushiest of sciences. Right? What science do you think I should have gone into?

Like if I had to have gone into a science, what do you think would have gone well for me? What would have been the best science field for me to go into, do you think? Well, of the three I just mentioned, like without going into, oh my gosh, well, I mean, I was immediately gonna say like, you love baking and you like,

the reason you like baking is cause there's very clear, precise instructions. And if you follow them exactly right, you get a predictable outcome. That's very chemistry. That's a very chemical approach to things. It was why like I liked chemistry, I found it fun, but it wasn't my final.

I like the thing in biology, especially when you get into medical science where there's a little bit of unpredictability. Like I thought I did everything right, but then whoa, why did that happen? Chemistry is a lot less like that. Generally speaking, if you do it right, you get the same answer every time. We were actually looking for sociology. The runner up was statistics. That's what we're looking for here. Okay.

It was a trivia question. I wasn't thinking about those sciences. It wasn't a thought starter. You can tell. I'm going to get you. I think statistics are fascinating. Of course that's science. I understand them just enough to be dangerous.

Like a bad, someone who barely understands statistics is actually worse than someone who doesn't understand them at all. It's funny, statistics I think you could argue is a very dangerous science in that sense. Yeah. Because you can manipulate it for evil. Yes, but who would ever, who would do such a thing? That is true about all the sciences. Wow. Let's talk about bugs.

Yes. This episode for our entomological friends is about like a greatest hits of bugs in medicine. We're gonna talk about some bugs and some illnesses we have discussed previously on the show, but we're focusing on the top 10 most wanted bugs. Top 10 most wanted bugs. From a medical standpoint.

I'm talking about like their relationship with us humans. Yes, us people, us folks. Right. Number one, you could, I'm dispensing with the biggest offender of all because it's the most obvious and I feel like we've discussed the most thoroughly on the show. Yes. If there's a villain of Sawbones other than humans.

If there's a villain of Sawbones other than people, people are both the protagonist and the villain of Sawbones. Can I tell you, can I tell you? So like, I wanted to confirm that this was still, I don't know why I thought this would have shifted. The most dangerous animal, the most dangerous when it comes to like. Mosquitoes.

Yeah, mosquitoes. Mosquitoes. Right, like you worry about sharks because there's movies about them, but there should be movies about mosquitoes because they're scarier. But harder to make movies about them. In our goblins.

Jaws would have had a very different feel if it was just one mosquito. Yeah. Just one big mosquito. The size of the mosquitoes really not the issue with mosquitoes. No, no feel if it was just one mosquito. Yeah. Just one big mosquito. Yeah. The size of the mosquitoes really not the issue with the mosquito. No, no, no, no. Any mosquito. It's almost worse that it's small.

Yeah. Right? It would, well, if it was a movie about a mosquito that is notable. The size of Jaws. I mean, the mosquito has to be notable in some way. Size is a huge differentiator. Maybe it could talk. I don't know.

I'm just praying for me here. Mosquitoes kill the most humans. Yes. They're, yeah, they're the, they're the worst. Um, by far, if you look at list, by the way, of the most deadly animals, um, the savviest out there include humans. Really? We're on there.

Yeah. We got to be. Yeah. So there you go. But maybe, but we almost got a woolly mammoth back. I don't know if you heard about that. Oh. So, maybe, you know, the us giveeth and the us takeeth away. We may extinct you, but you don't know if you're really cool. Maybe we'll bring you back. We'll bring you back and then it can become one of the deadliest. Is that what you're proposing? Like maybe it'll take over and kill more humans.

We need a new number one and it's woolly mammoths. They're back, maybe. They're everywhere. So glad we're focusing on that. Stanley, woolly mammoth is the new Stanley Cup. Everybody's got woolly mammoths. Mosquitoes are in a class of their own. They kill around 725,000 humans a year.

And they do that not because they bite you, but because they spread disease. I feel like that was understood, but I'll say it anyway. The number one problem is malaria. That's the big offender that is spread by mosquitoes. There are obviously a lot of other mosquito-borne illnesses that contribute to their harm, to their danger they can cause.

But malaria is the big reason the mosquitoes are so deadly. Mosquitoes may be responsible for the deaths of half of the humans who have ever lived. Whoa. Yes. What? That's so many. That's so many. That's so many people.

I mean, and that's like extrapolating out all the diseases mosquitoes can cause a malaria's impact on society and trying to tease it. I mean, so like, yeah. But it's like a lot. But like the point is. It's a lot a lot. Mosquitoes are really dangerous.

They are so, they have changed, they've dictated the course of human history on multiple occasions. Like you can read, we've talked about it on the show before, but you can go back and read articles about elections and wars and all kinds of human events that were drastically altered by, I mean, largely malaria, but other mosquito-borne illnesses.

And they are so deadly to us that we have debated removing them from existence. We've debated intentionally extincting them because they're that dangerous, which what else have we, I don't think, is there anything else we've talked about? Like let's wipe that off the face of the planet, that insect? No, but like if I was a mosquito,

I'd be pretty freaked out about that. Honestly, like listen, we've had our fun tormenting these people, but like, did you see what they did to pandas? And they love pandas. They're wild about pandas, and they almost wiped them out accidentally. Mosquitoes seem harder to get at.

We have talked about- There's probably more mosquitoes than pandas, if I had to guess. Absolutely, absolutely. I am not an entomologist, but absolutely. We have talked about ways to introduce like, knockout genes, making them sterile, absolutely. I am not an entomologist, but absolutely. That we have talked about ways to introduce like knockout genes, making them sterile basically, introducing those mosquitoes,

genetically engineered mosquitoes that will then breed with other mosquitoes that will then become infertile and then... Yep. Well, we will eventually have no more mosquitoes. We've also talked about infecting them with a bacteria called Wolbachia, this automatically infects mosquitoes. like they already, some of them already carry this bacteria. It can live within them and it actually does not allow viruses to replicate inside them.

So we could infect them with that little secret bacteria. And then they wouldn't. I feel like if we wipe them out, maybe that's it. Maybe we win. We win. That's it. Maybe we win. We win? Maybe that's it. That was the whole tech point. We were, it was been us versus them the whole time.

There are people whose job it is to study, to see if we wipe out all the mosquitoes, will we be okay? Is that cool? That's their question. If you wipe out all the mosquitoes, is that cool? Is that all right? Is that all right?

Like what will that do to the, you know, food web and all of human existence? Anyway, so mosquitoes are in a class of their own. So let's talk about some of the other big, bad bugs. Big bad beetle borgs. They're number two. There is a beetle on here. Okay.

Not this, this is an assassin bug. Ooh. What I like is that, okay, I had to untangle this because what, when I was looking through various lists of like the big offenders, some of these I knew from our show, but then I wanted, you know, entomologists to weigh in on this. What are the scariest bugs?

And I kept seeing a Sassan bug, which is an alias of sorts. That's like a scary name. And so you need like, it needs to like be undercover and not be so scary to get away with all of its tricks. So this is what I'm talking about is usually called the kissing bug. But sometimes it's the assassin bug. So okay, the assassin bug can be used for members of the Reduviday family of bugs.

Oh yeah. Or Reduvid bugs. I've also heard them called the Reduvide bugs from that. And they, most assassin bugs in this family kill other bugs. So they assassinate other bugs, which we humans care less about, I'm learning. Yeah, no problem. But there is one that is the cone-nosed bug

in this family, also called the triatomine bug. The triatomine. Anyway, this is the kissing bug. I'm gonna call the kissing bug. And that sounds so, oh, it's so cute. It's the kissing bug. It's not cute. It's in the Southern US.

It's in Mexico. It's in Central America, South America. It is not at all harmless because it carries a parasite. Again, most bugs danger to us is through the, the infections that carry. they can't eat us. Unless there's a lot of them. I could. Yeah, but they need a lot of time.

They get it if they wanted to. There's a lot more of them than us. Thank you. But they carry the parasite or they can, tropanosoma cruzi, which causes Chaga's disease. We've done an episode on this before. Chaga's disease is a very serious disease. It causes chronic illness for thousands of people,

around 10,000 deaths a year. It causes some severe heart issues that can lead to heart failure and death. The way the parasite is spread from the bug is particular. I think this adds insult to injury. Like, when you think about how you get something from a mosquito, it's sucking your blood and while it's in there, it's leaving behind one of the malaria parasite

or whatever, right? That's how you think about getting something from a mosquito. When it comes to the kissing bug, the way that it spreads the parasite is that it poops on you, and then that poop gets sort of like ground into the wound that it's created because it's also biting you. And so then you like rub the poop into the wound. Or it gets absorbed through like your mouth or nose, the poop, and the poop has the parasite.

So this is your non-traumatizing. Was that traumatized? Anyway, and there are a lot of efforts with a lot of these that we're going to talk about we're getting into the realm, not malaria, but some of these other illnesses of what we call neglected tropical diseases. And these are these cause a lot of either morbidity, meaning a lot of illness or, you know, people who are unable to like carry out their activities of daily living as a result or mortality, meaning they kill people. And we don't have enough research or efforts to eradicate them or to treat them more effectively or to get to the root causes. And there are a lot of efforts

being made to construct houses and things that are not as likely to have the kissing bug nesting in the roost. Or may it unpleasant for them to hang around. Yeah, try to keep the bugs away is the main thing. It's kind of like with mosquitoes, standing water is a big risk. You don't want places with standing water because that's where mosquitoes lay their eggs and breed malaria, you know. Less than ideal to for their own habit. We're gonna talk about another culprit that carries a similar parasite. This is another form of trapanosomiasis.

This is this category of parasites. But this is a different bug. The way you can say that is so cool. I would never say that was such confidence. You're amazing. There are plenty of things I say on the show with less confidence. So I won't ever brag about that.

The TTC fly, which I just said, the fly fly. I didn't know this. TTC literally translates in Swana, one of the Bantu languages that is spoken in Southern Africa, literally translates to fly. So when I say the TTC fly, I'm saying the fly fly. I did not know that. Yeah. So I don't really need to say that. I could saying the fly fly. I did not know that. Yeah.

So I don't really need to say that. I could say the titsi. And then that would be enough. That is a specific kind of fly. Well, that look at that. You could say the fly fly. Feel it. That is a pleonasm.

Pleonasm. I learned this word. Okay. That's when it's a repetitive phrase. Okay. Did you know that? No. There, I just, that has nothing to do with science. Pleonasm is what is a repetitive phrase. Okay. Did you know that? No. There, I just, that has nothing to do with science.

Leanism is what is a repetitive phrase. It's like saying TZ fly. Oh. Or like, oh, what's a good example of that? I always use the example when people say Mount Fujiyama. Oh, yes. Instead of Mount Fuji or Fujiyama. Or ATM machine.

Yes. Yeah, that's a, yes, that is a good example. And there are other, like, it doesn't have to be something where it's an abbreviation or a language issue. It can also be like, you just said the same word twice, but different, you said synonyms. We do that. I mean, like you find that and you're,

sometimes you'll write something and you'll be like, why did I put both of those? I don't need to. Like if you said something that's totally unique. Yes, there you go. Anyway, the titsy can carry a different kind of trapanosome Bruce-Eye, and this is the parasite that causes sleeping sickness.

Oh man. Yeah. That's too bad, because Bruce-Eye is, that's a fun name. That one feels a little bit more avuncular to me. We've done an episode on this before. It is almost certainly referencing a guy. Name Bruce. Name Bruce. Or, but that's not fair. It could be last name. So it could be any gender. Okay. We can't assume a guy, but somebody with the name Bruce, almost certainly referencing a Bruce. Actually, someone female presenting went by the name Bruce, I would think that's pretty cool too,

honestly. No, it would be. Well, we shouldn't talk too big of a game. It could be the last name, is my point. Yeah. Yeah. So it could be anybody. I would be, well, we shouldn't talk too big of a game. It could be the last name, is my point. Yeah, so it could be anybody. I don't wanna assume anything, but yes, it is probably someone's name. This is a very severe illness. It can start with some relatively common symptoms, but then sleeping sickness can progress

if untreated to severe neurological disease. And if it isn't treated, it is pretty much 100% fatal. It's a very severe disease. It's important to catch it early because a lot of the treatments that we have for early disease are more effective and also less toxic. This is one of the big,

again, when you get to illnesses like this that, I mean, there's, it's inequitable. We don't spend as much time and money and research dollars on illnesses that don't spend as much time and money and research dollars on illnesses that don't affect people who are the wealthiest and who are in the majority. And so in this case, there's not enough research into treatments for late stage disease

and a lot of the treatments are pretty toxic and can also cause death. So it's important to catch it early. How did we settle on sleeping sickness, do you think for this? Cause I would say dying sickness is probably a more accurate one, it sounds like. And it's interesting too, because it,

while certainly anything that's gonna cause like this kind of systemic response inflammation, like fevers and chills and headaches and all those kinds of things tends to make you feel like you're in a T- feel fatigue and wear you out. So like the sleeping, but with the neurological symptoms it actually can in the later stages lead to this like inability to sleep,

like this constant irritability, wakefulness thing. So it doesn't necessarily always cause, but yes, when I think sleeping sickness, we're using this euphemistically. Okay, got it. Yes. So the titsi, that's another big culprit in the bug world. One more that I wanna talk about before we take a pause

is the black fly. It's from the simulium family of flies. There are some things that you just learned in medicine as like a collection and like in my head, I have a visual because I do not have a fantasia. I can visualize things in my head. I have a swift moving river with a black fly flying around it and then someone losing their vision.

That's like in a little composite in my head because I was taught that in medical school, that black flies, they reproduce around swift moving water sources like rivers and they bite you. And if they bite you, well, that hurts. And then they might transmit a parasite to you. And Ancho Circovolvulus is this parasite. It causes Ancho Circiosis,

which is the second biggest cause of infectious blindness in the world, because this little worm can just crawl all over your body, including to your eyes. I would imagine- That's called river blindness. I would imagine Elanus Morissette with two glasses of Chardonnay, each with a black fly in it,

and she's handing one to Rivers Cuomo and one to Taylor Swift. And then I can remember Swift Rivers, Black Fly. That's how I remember. How do you remember that it carries the worm on Cicero that can cause blindness? Well, what I would do is I would put a me in it too. And I would say, wow, this seems pretty wild.

Just remember that you're remembering this because of the parasitic nebotode alka-sera of all the those. So I would be in there to do it my best. You'd be in there too. I don't know that we should have you creating medical mnemonics anytime soon. Doesn't seem that way. No, it doesn't seem like my strong suit. All right, Justin, we're only four in. We've got six more to go and some and some honorable mentions. So before we do that, let's take a quick break and go to the billing department. Let's go.

The Medicines, the Medicines, that escalate my card for the mouse. Back for another game. You know it. What's going on? Just one more week till Max Fund Drive. Hard to believe. It's been a heck of a year since the last one. We're now a worker-owned co-op.

We raised $50,000 for charity last year. And we've added a bunch of awesome new shows. But do you think we're ready to do it again? Absolutely. Lovely new gifts are lined up. The episodes will be amazing. And wait till everyone hears the bonus content. Yeah, plus they know to go to MaximumFun.org slash newsletter so they're getting all the news.

Oh, like that Meetup Day is on Thursday, March 21st. Then what's bothering you? Me? Oh, nothing. We're all set for Max Fun Drive to start on Monday, March 18th. I just didn't want you to see this coming. Check. What? Hang on! Most of the plants humans eat are technically grass. Most of the asphalt we drive on is almost a liquid.

The formula of WD-40 is San Diego's greatest secret. Zippers were invented by a Swedish immigrant love story. On the podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, we explore this type of amazing stuff. Stuff about ordinary topics like cabbage and batteries and socks. Topics you'd never expect to be the title of the podcast. Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Find us by searching for the word secretly in your podcast app. And at maximamfun.org. All right, Sid, who's next?

I wiped out all the mosquitoes during the commercial break. Oh, thanks. And now I gotta knock out next. Let's see what happens to all of all living things on earth now. So this one was one that as I was looking up different lists of like, by the way, if you Google what bugs kill the most people, like does that put you on a list?

Maybe, maybe it does seem to be why, why Sydney? Why do you need to know this information? It doesn't feel like something that like a human, like a real human in real life would do to like, like murder other people, but it does feel like a Batman villain. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Locust kept cropping up. And I was thinking, why Locusts?

What are like Locusts, do they, what are they transmitting? Are they biting people? What are the Locusts do? I mean, I know some people get freaked out by them. They can be loud. I collected many a locust shell in my youth. But it is because it's an indirect reason.

Locusts can be responsible for a lot of famine and have been at times where they're one of the years where the locusts- Crop destruction. Yeah, exactly. If they swarm in large amounts in an area, they can completely devastate crops. I mean, completely.

And they can lead to a lot of famine in those areas. So I feel like locusts belong on our list indirectly. Maybe. So are they on the list? Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, I know. I'm putting them on the list. I don't know if this is one of the honorable mentions. No, no, no. I'll get to those at the end. But I believe that they deserve a mention.

Okay. The next one probably could be a whole episode of Sawbones that we haven't done. We have never talked about blister beetles. Never? Not that I can remember. Have we ever talked about blister beetles? Gosh, Sid, you know, I don't know. I don't know if we did talk about blister beetles

No, it doesn't didn't I don't maybe I don't know what blister beetles are. I'm sorry. I was just pretending. Have you heard of Spanish fly? Yeah, okay, so you've heard of something related to blister beetles, okay? Or can tharadin can't the Raiden is what I always said, but it doesn't look like it should be pronounced that way because there's an A in there. But Cantharidon, Cantharidon is a compound that is secreted by a type of beetle that we call the blister beetle. And it has a long history of being connected with humans, both good and bad. So first of all, it is secreted by the male blister beetle.

And the way this is worded is I was reading descriptions of like what is its function. I've found numerous articles where it is called a gift. A gift? As a gift to the female, which I guess I understand what is happening, but the word gift here feels so weird. I don't know. I do this too though. Like I put these narratives on top of the weird science stuff that I like. So whoever decided it was a gift, I understand you. It's a gift. We are alike. They

give this as a gift to the female blister beetle to put on her eggs to protect them because it is a toxic substance and it will kill things. So if you put it on the eggs, the eggs won't be attacked by, they won't be eaten by other bugs. But as a side effect, it's bad for us. It will also severely damage our skin. So it's a blistering agent.

That's why they're called blister beetles. If you touch the substance that is inside these blister beetles, which by the way, even after the beetle is dead it serve it can likes be stable for a very long time So like if you crush a dead beetle and it's in there It it can like burn cause chemical burns on your skin basically It can kill you if ingested now There are not a lot of cases to be fair if we're talking like sheer number

There aren't a lot of cases of humans eating this, right? And it would only take 10 milligrams, by the way, to kill you. Oh, wow. Sheesh. Yeah, that would be a fatal dose of cantharodin. So, but I think it's interesting because it does, first of all, it is more responsible for the deaths of animals, like horses specifically, because these beetles can live in hay, and if they get like crushed up in there, and the horses eat the hay. Oh, the horses consume them, yeah. Yeah, especially since even dead beetles can still carry the, you know, stable compound that can be fatal. So they do have like, they do kill things pretty regularly. They don't kill humans as much, but it will hurt your skin. We have used them both as a blistering agent intentionally.

And, you know, we've talked about that in a lot of like older like folk medicine traditions. And then it used to be the mainstay in like what common medicine traditions to like, if you had something, if you had a fever, we would try to like blister your skin or if you had a wound, we would try to irritate it somehow to like cause it to get red and swollen

and maybe even stimulate infection, right? We used to make things to create cause. Yes, because we thought that was part of the hearing process. And so it was used intentionally as a blistering agent at times. It has also has now more recently been approved for use to treat things like moluscomcontagiosum. Meluscomcontagiosum.

Meluscom, which is this illness that That sounds like a spell. ... the kids get. They cause these little like bumps, like you can look up a little picture of the of the small bump. Go on, treat yourself. That is that it can cause they can be used to like remove those or like warts. You could use certain like preparations of this, obviously you don't wanna squeeze it out of a dead beetle and put it on a wart,

you'll just burn your skin and that would be very bad. But there are like formulated preparations using this. It also is what is contained in the supposed aphrodisiac Spanish fly, which is not to my knowledge, Spanish or a fly, it is a blister beetle compound. Okay. Our next, our next big bad bug is a little bad bug.

Very little. You can't keep saying big bad and not giving me beetle borgs, Sidney. If the beetle borg, if the big bad beetle borgs are not on the list, I think you owe it to me and the listeners to just say that. Like, I don't know why you're dancing around the beetle borgs are not on This list. Okay. Thank you. Was that so hard? Sheesh. I want to talk about fleas. Oh, okay Now chili peppers I can get into Now I'm back. I'm back. I feel our cats are in the room staring at me

And I feel like when I said fleas they looked at me like why you got to bring that into it? I don't have those. Will you treat us for those? You gave all of her flea medicine, didn't you? Yeah. Okay. I saw the alert on. Yeah. Uh, so please.

This is a weird time to do that. Well, it made me think of it. Um, fleas, uh, can carry one thing that, that fleas can carry, which is less important is typhus. A base. The siphonoptera of the fleas, they like to carry, or they like to feed on all kinds of animals and they spread germs around when they feed,

and they flee the flea feed on animals. Typhus is one of them, but that's not the worst kind of typhus that fleas spread. So we're gonna get to that in a minute, Typhus is one of them, but that's not the worst kind of Typhus that Fleas spread. So we're going to get to that in a minute, Typhus. We're going to talk about Plague. Fleas spread the Plague. You know, it's interesting because obviously mosquitoes still continue to be the big threat. But like, Fleas really had a heyday there.

Fleas had their moment, huh? Like Flees did some damage because Plague caused more than 50 million deaths. Like famously devastated Europe. They're the worst. Yeah, I mean, you know, there are books and poems and plays and songs written about Plague. It's because they can't fly. You think that's why? I think that's it. I think it's because they can't fly. You think that's why? I think that's it. I think it's because they can't fly

and mosquitoes are cooler because of that. I think fleas don't seem very scary. And I mean, I will say the other thing is fleas are not as scary anymore because we can treat plague with antibiotics. Right. Right. Which I mean, I don't know.

We also can of course treat malaria. I don't mean to say we can't treat malaria, but plague is not the big danger it once was. You'll see plague very much. I mean, who knows the way things are going? I don't know. We're trying to forget about vaccines in West Virginia, not that we vaccinate against plague, but who knows what we'll bring back. Maybe plague someday. It really saw its heyday back in the 1300s, but basically what happens, the flea bites a rat, it gets your synia pestis, which is plague. It lives in the rat, the flea carries it,

it bites the human, the human gets plague. We can treat that now, we couldn't back then. Like I said, typhus is also carried by fleas, but the kind of typhus that is carried by the flea is not as dangerous as the said, typhus is also carried by fleas, but the kind of typhus that is carried by the flea is not as dangerous as the kind of typhus that is carried by another bug. The body louse. The body louse. Oh, lice? Lice. Well, this is pediculus humanus, which is the body louse as opposed to pediculus capitus, which is the head louse. Of course. Yeah The body louse. Yeah, you I mean most of us have not been exposed to the body louse some people have certainly

You may have been exposed to the to the head louse That is a pain in the butt to get rid of. Oh, yeah. Yeah But the body louse carries epidemic typhus. This is the typhus that has really caused a lot of illness and death, especially in times of like war and displacement. Like you think about like people in trenches or in refugee camps, people who are not able to like routinely access showers and washing services, hygiene, clean water.

And so like these lice can live on your body and your clothing in a way in those sorts of horrible situations that they wouldn't, if you are able to wash your clothes on a regular basis and take a shower whenever you need to and that kind of thing. And so that form of typhus has definitely caused a lot of impact on humanity and is carried by

the very very small body louse. Good to know. Say I had an idea. Our next mention Now here's what I like about this one. Well not much actually. I don't like anything about this one But while it has not done the kind of damage, certainly, that the mosquito has in terms of sheer numbers, I would propose that it is more creative. There's a lot more variety.

And the timelines and illnesses can be confusing. So they're tricksy. Those are the ticks. Ticks can carry a lot of stuff, right? Like they're Trixie. Yeah. Those are the Tics. Tics can carry a lot of stuff, right? Like they're working overtime. They're packing, they're packing heat. Like mosquitoes have malaria, they just do, well, they do lots of things,

but they do that one thing that makes them at the top of the list always. Tics are like, we have Lyme disease, we have ehrlichiosis, we have babesiosis, we have anaplasmosis, we have Rocky Mountain Spot. We're also like hugely unpleasant. at least the mosquito has the dignity the restraint To top off to fill up and then head out Ticks just sit there stay there

if you ever taken a tick out of your head and You thought it was a chunk of marshmallow because you just went camping and then you find you pull it out That it that that will stick with you. I'm not a chunk of marshmallow because you just went camping, and then you find, you pull it out. That will stick with you. I'm not a fan of ticks. I agree that ticks are creepier and grosser in that way. I also think if you see a mosquito flying by, there's an elegance to a mosquito. You don't think that?

No, I've never seen one. Ticks have no elegance. Ticks don't have any elegance, that's true, Sydney. And the little teeny ones, ooh, with their little legs wiggling. Oh, I hate ticks. Anyway, and I think like the best example, and we've talked about it on the show before, but like all of these illnesses,

which by the way can be very hard to diagnose. They have confusing like time courses. So like the symptoms change throughout the time that, you know, from the moment you're actually infected to later on. And so depending on when you catch those symptoms, they're gonna look different. So the time course and presentation can be, it's so they can be really hard to diagnose.

They're slippery. And I mean, I think like when you get to Lyme disease, there's so much misinformation that also surrounds some of these illnesses. There is no entity called chronic Lyme disease. That is not a thing. Year-long courses of antibiotics are in no way ever necessary,

you know, for this entity that does not exist called chronic Lyme disease. So with that, with all of that, ticks have really thrown humans for a loop. And then you consider that they have alpha-gal, which we recently did an episode on. Thanks for your huge red meat. But I mean, think about that.

You get bitten by a tick, and you don't think anything of it, and you don't get a rash or anything, so you think like, I dodged all that other stuff that everyone sort of understands. And then you eat a hamburger and you get sick. Unbelievable, you can't even comfort yourself with a delicious hamburger.

Stealth, creativity, diversity. It's an inspiring bad guy. Yes. So I want to propose a tie for the last couple that I'm going to talk about. We haven't talked about wasps or bees or hornets because I mean, they're not that bad. I mean, it sucks to get stung. And certainly like, have you seen my girl? I think they've traumatized a generation.

Yeah, we're all always skittish about blackberry patches because who knows what bees may lark. We all saw what happened to Macaulay Cawkin and it like scarred us for life. So, so bees have done some damage in that sense. There's a few others. There's the assassin caterpillar, which I appreciate. Not quite as scary, I will say. So the moth that it turns into is not dangerous, but the caterpillar itself, the Lonomia Oblica, which is native to South America. It has these little spines

on them that can deliver a small amount of venom. And while a little bit is not going to kill you, it interrupts your blood's ability to clot. That's how it harms you. If you were stung by enough, it could harm you. And they like to chill together, so you you were stung by enough, it could harm you. And they like to chill together so you could get stung by a lot if you like stumbled into a bunch of these caterpillars. That's great, Sid. So I think that's kind of scary.

There's the monarch butterfly. What? Okay. I can't imagine that people eat monarch butterflies very often, but if you did, it could make your heart stop. Okay. Well, I imagine you'd have to eat more than one, but maybe just one.

The reason is that monarchs exist almost entirely on milkweed, and milkweed contains substances that affect the way your heart beats these glucosidic substances called Cardinalides anyway, the point is don't eat monarch butterflies Kids And so I guess I guess it's like an honorable mention then in that sense The one thing I will say at the end of all this All of our relationship with insects is not antagonistic, right? Right.

Like, we have had good bugs. Good bugs and mad bugs. We've had, and I kind of mentioned that with the blister beetle, you can use cantheridon to treat moluscombe and to treat warts. So like, it's not all bad. And in that sense, I'd like to mention the humble maggot. Oh Yeah, we love the magnet what okay, so maggots we have observed for years That if a wound and a lot of this came from like battlefield wounds where people might be like wrapped up quickly

And then transported somewhere and there might be a long period of time before it's unwrapped and looked at and tended to again because of, you know, war and all that. Military surgeons observe that the wounds that got infested with maggots, those patients tended to fare better than the wounds that weren't infested with maggots. They eat the diseased tissue? Exactly. And up until the 1930s, we routinely used maggot therapy to treat wounds, put some maggots in there. They eat all the dead tissue, leave the healthy tissue behind, the wound heals. We used to do that.

What happened in the late 1930s and the early 1940s? Antibiotics. Antibiotics. And so we stopped using maggots so much because I mean, you can kind of understand that. Got him, that was right. I'm so glad that was right. I said it was such confidence. God. I was really proud of you.

That was harrowing. I was really impressed. You're right. Ant'm so glad that was right. I said it was such confidence. God. I was really proud of you. That was harrowing. I was really impressed. You're right. Antibiotics came along. We stopped using maggots so much, but what did we do? Dumb doctors like me, we overused antibiotics.

Oh no. And then we rose resistance to those antibiotics. And so in the 80s, we started reconsidering, maybe we bring back the maggots. And so now there are ways that we can use maggot therapy in certain wounds, chronic wounds that we're having difficulty healing. It's a special dressing.

So they, which I like this, I found this description, it prevents them from leaving the wound unescorted. If the maggots are going to leave the wound, you want to be, you want to be escorting them out of the wound. You don't want them to leave on their own. So, and then of course there's specific kinds of maggots are gonna leave the wound, you wanna be escorting them out of the wound. You don't want them to leave on their own. So, and of course there's specific kinds of maggots. We breed them, we make sure that they're not carrying any sorts of diseases.

There's a certain strain that we use in the US, the LBO1 strain of Phoenicia lucilia sororacida. And they're applied to the wound at a dose of 5 to 10 larva per square centimeter of wound surface. And they're left there for 48 to 72 hours. And they're removed. How, Sid? When the maggots are satiated.

Oh boy. We love that. That's great. Maggots are our friends. They can, please do not use maggot therapy without the supervision of a physician or medical professional who knows how to use maggot therapy. Any old maggot won't do the trick.

Please don't go find maggots and put them in your wounds. There are maggots who eat living tissue and those would do harm. And you don't know, I don't know. None of us know the difference. Well, some of us know. Special maggots. There's special maggots.

You gotta get the medical maggots. Prescription maggots only, please. Please don't go. They are professionals, okay? You want maggots that have some restraint. They're not gonna leave a big mess. They're not gonna leave their cigarette butts everywhere. You want the real.

These are maggots that went to medical school. They've got their little white coats. They've got their red books coats, they've got their their red books in their pockets and they're ready to do work. Yeah. You want you want the right maggots. So please don't go freestyle this and try to put maggots in a wound on your own. Please don't. That would be bad. Don't do that. Thank you so much to maggots. And thank you for listening so much. And thanks again to the Eastern branch of the Entomological Society of America for having us as their guests.

We always love to come talk to some people where they are, especially talking to other science folks from different disciplines. It's always fun. So we're really appreciative of them. Thank you. And thanks to the taxpayers for these. Their song Medicines is the intro and outro of our program.

And thanks to you for listening. You're the best. It's going to do it for us. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Yeah! Maximum Fun. A Worker-Owned Network of Artist-Owned Shows. Supported directly by you.