Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Fainting and Corsets

Episode Date: July 30, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Justin and Dr. Sydnee stop making corsets and build two battleships as they explore the history of fainting. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

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! I'm not a sense the escalant my cop for the mouth. Wow.

Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones, a rattle tour of Miss Skydided medicine. I am New York. Oh, it's just from macaroni and I'm Sydney macaroni Sit I am so excited About what well I I think our delivery of our furniture should be coming soon. Oh Yeah, hey. You know, we might be coming soon. And we have an extra room that we didn't have before. So if I got an actual living room type thing. Exactly, we got a bigger place and we realized we don't have a lot of furniture.

We don't, so we got furniture for a room, like a living room set. I got, and I'm one of most excited about, I got power armchair. I got power armchair. I got power armchair. It's like a sectional. It's like a big sectional. And then Justin got to assemble all the different pieces

that he wanted in his- For my father's day gift, I got to have one that has power in it. So I got a power armchair. Listen to this, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, it was like Tim Allen. Oh, that was very manly.

Topical humor for you. I'm almost overcome by all the manliness. Yeah, so I got a power armchair on the sectional. So I'm thrilled. I can't wait. Gotta got corn piece. Got the love seat, got the power armchair. Feeling very good about it.

Right, well with all that manly power armchair going on over there And did you get a did you get a fainting couch maybe a power fainting couch for me? No, I didn't get you a fainting couch or a power fainting couch, but to be honest I didn't see that in the list of available options. I'm not sure how that would work like how you would power a fainting couch Well, I cut you I guess after you fain on it you push the power button and it lifts you back to a seating position so you can pretend you didn a fainting couch. Like, I cut you. I guess after you fainting on it, you push the power button and it lifts you back to a seating position so you can pretend you didn't fain. Like, oh, me? No.

I've been reclining this entire time. That seems helpful. Will it also like get you the remote and a glass of water? No, it's sweethear, it's not a robot. It's just like it either goes up or down. There is no scent. It's not scent-y. There is no robot coming with this cow.

There's no robot butler. Even though I request one specifically, they said that does not exist, and it would not be manufactured by the lazy boy company. The only reason that I agreed to the power chair was that I thought you were getting a robot of some sort. I am, I know the machines are coming for us. I'll be darned if I'm gonna put a robot in a home with my family

My actual human flesh and blood family. Thanks Stephen Hawking for making Justin afraid of robots I'm not afraid of robots. There's a ready for them Fainting he's you've been listening to him. He's warning he's warned us that they're coming and that they're gonna take over Why did you mention a fainting catcher the way? That's not, nothing I've heard you request before. Because I've just been thinking a lot about fainting and I thought maybe some people would wanna hear about it and there you go. Pfft.

That, okay, that was perhaps the greatest segway deflection in solbona's history. Why did you ask about Fanny couches? Is it because we're doing an episode on them? No. It's because I've been thinking about them back to you, Justin. All do you think we should do an episode on it? Um, yes, we heart-wine on it. Let's just go for it and see.

Let's just go for it and see. Okay, well good. I was planning on it. Okay, good. Thank goodness. What a relief. What are they made? Okay, well good. I was planning on it. Okay, good. Thank goodness. What a relief. So first of all, thank you to several people

who suggested this topic, Devon Ryan, Katie Jason, Jillian and Hillary. That's the masses are crying out for fainting. For fainting. Fainting or perhaps you prefer to call it syncopy? I don't. No, syncopy is the medical word we use for fainting or perhaps you prefer to call it syncopy? I don't. No, syncopy is the medical word we use for fainting, by the way. Okay, so what do you guys have to come up with fancy terms

for everything, confused the rest of us? So you won't know what we're talking about. Ah, I always suspect it as much. So we can talk about you in the hallways and you'll have no idea what we're saying. No. Now, I don't know, just to terrorize medical students mainly. Okay, I can look at that.

Fainting, syncopy, swooning, perhaps, if you're feeling romantic. Yeah. Swooning. People have been passing out and then writing about it for a really long time. Yeah, it seems like one of the oldest tricks you could do. Yeah, and it wasn't really something that

it was necessarily always a medical thing to write about Yeah, it seems like one of the oldest tricks you could do. Yeah, and it wasn't really something that Was necessarily always a medical thing to write about because I mean It kind of fixes itself, right? Like for the most part Yeah, by the time you get the the village doctor over to take a look at you You're already like up and at him exactly and like you've already come out of it. And unless you have a really serious condition, it's probably not going to happen to you a lot. Right. And it's probably not dangerous unless you like fainted into a bear. Well, that would okay. Yes. Or I mean, in general, like where did you faint? Like did you hit your head? You know, I mean, it can be dangerous. Yeah. But everybody had a name for it. Everybody recognized it. The Greeks called it a cardiac passion.

Very romantic. I really like that name. You have a cardiac passion. Does it have to do much of the heart though? It can. There are a lot of different causes of fainting. There are a lot of different ones. And there are quite a few that have to do with the heart.

So, relating it to the heart is not a bad idea. And relating it to a passion, to passion in general, is kind of a theme that we'll see. The idea that it has something to do with like an overwhelming emotion. Galen wrote about it and he related it to fevers, which isn't totally off base. Really? You go, well, you get sick, get a fever, get dehydrated, pass out. Okay. What happens?

It used to be thought that it was a type of epilepsy. A lot of people would describe it as a sort of epilepsy. People with epilepsy do have spells, right? Were they all lose consciousness? Well, I mean, you're talking about seizures. Right, yeah. Yeah, and it's certainly... Didn't want to get termed colonial.

Certainly, if you didn't know much about either of these things, either we're just talking about synchpy or seizures, if you saw someone have a seizure, you may think that it was fainting, and if you saw somebody fainting, you may think that it's seizure. So I mean, yeah, if you if depending on what kind of seizure it is, it could look very similar. Yeah, I don't know why the term seizure didn't come to me earlier. It just spells. You're just putting yourself in the mindset of the, you know, old timey. There we go.

I'm basically an old timey medicine guy. It's about where my knowledge races at. Like I said, it was previously associated with a strong emotion, which is why it wasn't always kind of like a medical problem. You know, Hippocrates wrote about it, Gaelin wrote about it. There were lots of commentary, but there were also like poets and authors writing about it as well, you know, kind of like it was this interesting time where you would, if you passed out and when you wake back up and you're being brought back to life, so to speak,

and so a lot of people had a lot of already things to say about it too. So it was thought that you could be overcome by love or anger or hatred or amazement and just, you know, hit the floor. Can you tell you what, like what feigning is? Well, I mean, it depends on exactly what causes it. But in general, what we're talking about is that for a moment, um, your brain is not getting quite enough blood flow for some reason. Generally, generally speaking.

So, and this could be because you had an irregular heart rhythm because you're dehydrated because your blood pressure dropped. There's some, you know, neurological issues that can cause this, but for some reason, for a second, the pressure that keeps blood pumping upwards against gravity to your brain was not enough or your brain thought it wasn't gonna get blood flow. And so it's actually kind of a way to save your life. As a result, you hit the ground, makes you go horizontal.

So then you'll get blood flow to your brain. That's kind of a general way to think about it. And of course, when you pass out, you lose consciousness. So syncopate, fainting, swooning. You're losing consciousness. That's part of the definition that you lost consciousness. You can be out for a few seconds, up to a few minutes. Generally, it's just a few seconds. And usually when you wake up, you feel okay.

Like you're not confused, you're not disoriented, unless you smacked your head or something as well, or if you did have a seizure. Usually you wake up and you're not disoriented unless you smacked your head or something as well or if you did have a seizure usually you wake up and and you you know you're kind of back to your old self again Have I have you ever fainted? Yes, I have when What yeah, how do you not know this about me? I don't know When when I was in middle school

I had a kind of syncopy called vasoagal syncope, and I used to pass out not all the time, but not infrequently either. Weird. I, and it's something that some adolescents get and usually grow out of, especially young women tend to get it, and I did, and so I just had to be really careful when I would stand up, because if I would stand up too quickly and start walking, I would pass out.

So I had to like stand up for a second and chill and take my time and. Only faded once when I was at a sleepover at a church somewhere. These kids are doing this thing where you breathe real deep ten times and someone grabs you from behind and lifts you up and it makes you faint.

Yes. And they did that was not pleasant. It was scary. Now it's and a couple of times I've laughed so hard that I've almost fainted. Like I've you know what I mean? Like you kind of lose control and you black out for just a split second. Yeah. I've done that a few times. There's this sound like really good times that you were laughing so hard you blacked out. Yeah it's usually about something I said though. Something really. You're kind of talking about vagal reactions there and then the fainting game or the choking

game I think I saw it called. That's something that a lot of people do. I did that when I was younger too. I passed out from that before, yeah. Yeah, it was a good time. It's good to carry all the time. It's not a good idea. Don't do it.

Don't do it. You're hyperventilating which is throwing off your acid base balance in your body, and then you're obviously you're attempting to kind of deprive yourself of blood flow to your brain briefly. Don't do that. No, no, no, your brain loves blood. It's letting it all the blood it wants. If you're that desperate to pass out, may I suggest what we call stintol syndrome?

No, what is that? Stintol syndrome is, it's actually kind of a psychogenic fainting, meaning that you're not really passing out in the way that we kind of think about it from a medical standpoint, but it was named for a French writer who described the first time that he saw Florence, the first time that he experienced the city Florence. Basically, he almost passed out.

He was overcome by the beauty and the art and just the romance and all that his Florence. So, like the first time I watched the second Ace of Insurance movie, same basic principle. Exactly. You had Stindall Syndrome. You must pass out. Good to know. Got this name for it. There is. And because of these associations, it was actually okay for a long time for both men and women to pass out. Hmm. Yeah.

Like it was something that could, like a great passion or a great beauty could overcome you, regardless of your sex and you might pass out. You're plugged in. You're living life to the fullest. Exactly. And the reason I mentioned this is that a lot of what we talk about when we talk about fainting is really related to the Victorian era. And that's when fainting is probably become swooning because then it becomes a very feminine, delicate, romantic, like, you know, what we typically associate

with like fainting couches. Like, oh, oh, oh, oh, my, oh, it's too much for me. And it really was, in the Victorian era, it was thought that if a woman was rich and well to do and high class and the kind of woman that was socially acceptable would just be overcome by anything that was shocking or scary or vulgar or too sad, anything like that. And the socially acceptable way to respond to any of that stimuli was just to pass out.

And it probably had something to do with the fact that at the time women weren't allowed to have a lot of emotional responses in public, it would have been considered vulgar if you were of a high class to have any kind of outburst other than this codified way to express your emotions. You can pass out. So codified they had like couches for exactly. So there were in, you know, when we're talking about richer households, you know, upper class households, you may have a fainting couch, which is just a really nice couch with like one side. Everybody's probably seeing them with one side in the back and so that you can kind of

just like access it by, I mean, I guess you have to be standing right next to it at all times really. Well, I, I think you, you feel it coming, you feel a spell coming on, you say, I got a faint, somebody get me the fanning room so I can get this done. Well, and you, you can, you, I mean, I, and I think that they, they would have experienced it like that. Someone would have exactly like you imagine, like, throw the back of their hand to their head and gasp suddenly and begin to get the vapors fanning themselves in the yard, dragged over to the couch.

Joseph Maher pulls the sack from over his head and the gays upon the elephant man in his all-to-splender and they're just overtaken, they have to head over to the fainting room. They just hit the couch. And you mentioned fainting rooms a couple times and that was something I hadn't realized existed. There were fainting rooms as well.

I thought I made that up, sorry. No, no, there were actual, and that would be in your, in your really nice houses. Really nice houses. You would have a whole room devoted to fainting. And part of this too though, there's a little bit of overlap. Remember in the hysteria episode, we talked a little bit about the

secret pelvic massage that women could get to relieve their hysteria. Yeah. Well, the fake disease hysteria was also correlated with fainting. And so in order to fix this problem, you may invite your doctor to your fainting room where you would lay on your fainting couch and get a little bit of massage to relieve your issues. Cool doctors back then. Cool docs. So similarly to this, by the way, there is something called falling out, which is still a, the sounds kind of like the Victorian

fainting. It's like a, it's a culture-bound syndrome, meaning you only see this, like, nerves are around here. You only see this in certain parts of the world, like the American South or in the Caribbean, where something is very emotional and so you would pass out, except that you're, you're really awake the whole time, like you can see and hear what's going on around you, but you passed out. So, it's a whole other thing. It's like the most extreme response

you can come up with at the time. It's overcomes you. And it's acceptable because that's what we understand. That's how you react. It would be like, you know, in some cultures, it would be okay to scream or to laugh really loudly, or whatever. Where there, you know, I know there is the obvious treatment for this, which is weight,

but were there were there other things that clicked up? There were. So, um, as far as treatments, the most common that we have had for a really long time, this goes all the way back to our buddy, Pliny. Ah, Plenty. We haven't talked about Plenty in a while, so Plenty of the Elder recommended this, smelling salts, which were originally made from the, it was called heart shorn, and that was because, and I didn't know this, so heart is an old word for stag or a deer, and shorn because of, it's like you would get shavings off the horns of the deer. So heart shorn is like the shavings from the... Okay. Yeah. And you could... there were ammonium salts in these shavings and you

could use that as smelling salts, which is... yeah, gross. I don't know who figured that out. It's basically ammonium carbonate. And like I said, it's been around since ancient times. The way that it works because smelling salts, I think most of us are familiar with those. Right. I was wondering about that because I've never actually seen them

in their and every movie and TV show ever made. I've never actually seen them either. It's weird. I'm sure I've seen it right in there. I don't know that, right? Do you get them there? I don't know that I don't know that you can just buy them weird But it a monium gas is made by the by the salts and it irritates the mucus membrane So the lining of your nose so you hold them under so many snows

it irritates the lining and makes you inhale and breathe quickly And it also starts to stimulate your sympathetic nervous system, which is what's in charge of like your fight or flight response. So it kind of eminently, that's how wakes you up. It stimulates everything. Most fainting is mediated by the other kind of nervous system. The parasympath. You know, this is like that. Mothballs, speaking of things with ammonium, ammonia-based sense, like. And they do. Yeah. they do yeah mouth balls like I know that's a thing

Where are people getting mouth balls? I've never seen them like Walmart like are they in Walmart? Have you like really try to picture ever seen mouth balls like what really big? I think you have to look for them to know you think there's a mouth ball and Smelling salt like section? Do we just been missing all the time? Well, I know. We're doing tomorrow. Yep.

Now, in Victorian times, police officers, constables, or other just generally helpful men, I guess, would carry something in order to be helpful to all of these poor, fainting upper-class women who were, you know, unable to express their emotions in any other way. Oh, man, you never let them down. That was called a vinaigret. Mmm. Delicious.

And not, yes, not that kind. Oh. A vinaigret is, it's a small container that has, like, a sponge soaked in smelling salts, and then usually it would be dissolved in like vinegar, alcohol, and you'd also have perfume in it, so it would also smell kind of nice, like bad and nice. And you would have it closed at all times, but you would have these little like silver fancy,

they were all like, you know, in late and in grade, and you could open them and helpfully hold them to the nose of the woman who has just passed out. I'm just gonna start doing that. Like, just a woman mid-conversation. It's like, madame. Madame, excuse me. Are you seem to be on the verge of a fainting spell?

Allow me. I have some vinaigrette. Allow my disambult by a vinaigrette. Madame. It's red wine. It's Delicious, but for you you seem to be about to faint I'm about to tell a story so scandalous of

On my color years in college that I'm afraid you shall faint So I have a vinaigrette prepared. And that's the opening to Animal House. That is the beginning of Animal House. In addition, gentlemen, God, your ladies, for the tale of collegiate scandal, your eyes shall be whole wood wash, the white paint from a picket fence. Are you done?

Bluto is the first of the characters. Okay, nope, nope, we're gonna move on. If you don't have... Organist begin the soundtrack. If you don't have smelling salts, you could try just lavender water, I guess because it smells better. There was something called hungry water, which

was the same idea. It was like, the creators were hungry man. There's hungry water. It was just water with like some nice smelling herbs and floral things so that it would smell good. To be clear, that's hungry like the hungry. Yes, hungry. Lodnam was a popular treatment, which I think if I were a Victorian woman and I was forced to the only way I could, you know, especially acceptably express my emotions to pass out. I'd be like, yeah, I need some lodnam for that. Oh, Valley. Yeah, that helps with the fainting all the time. And then bloodletting throughout history was a popular treatment,

especially if you fainted from blood loss, blood letting was a good idea. I don't know if you have a lot of fainting at the Red Cross round donation time, you think? Yeah, oh, that's a very common cause of fainting is blood, like the sight of blood. There are a lot of people who haven't. I just mean after you give blood, and like you can do that too. Right, you can faint. Some people do. I mean, you generally don't give enough that it should, but it's possible. But, uh, fainting,

like I said, it's very much when we think about it in a medical and social context, it's very much a Victorian thing. And a lot of people like to blame corsets for fainting. Oh, yeah. Like, how did they, how did that work? Well, I want to tell you all about corsetsets and feigning, but before I do that, why don't you come with me to the billing department? Let's go Hi, I'm Lisa Hannah Walt and I'm Emily Heller and if you're not listening to our podcast, Baby Geniuses, you're missing out on Stuff Like. Camille Nanjiani is solving the Zodiac murders. Who's like, will you ever go to a friend and you're like, hey, could you? Look all these envelopes for me, you'll be like, you're a serial killer.

Definitely, I'm leaving right now. Guy Brannum talking about Ruth Bitter Ginsburg. And it was just a great moment of like. Oh no, I'm here boys. Like I'm on this side of the bench. Megan Amram talking about intimidating baristas. Just feel like they're always in character. Like they're always in character as like cool hipster girl. And I just want to break through that barrier. Plus every week we explore a new Wikipedia page and talk to a crazy expert in the field of nonsense.

Well, any hack can make you not have a poner. I mean, it's about how you do it. Right. And we're the only podcast with regular updates about Martha Stewart's pony or your money back. We're not going to give them their money back, are we? No. Let's keep it.

Yeah. Listen to our show. Every other Monday on Maximum Fun. Yay! Yay! No, let's keep it. Yeah, listen to our show every other Monday on Maximum Fun. Yay Said tell me about corsets. So let's talk about corsets. Yes Because I don't think you can mention Victorian times and fainting without it So when we talk about I think most people kind of picture corsets is like The thing that they're all wearing and like the lady Marmalade video. Yes, okay

the thing that they're all wearing in the Lady Marmalade video. Yes. Okay. Originally corsets were a pair of, what we would have called stays or bodies or like bodices. And they were these two, like these two pieces of something stiff, like stiff brocade kind of stuff, that you would put on either side of your trunk

and then lace together and it would create like an inverted cone. Okay. You know, out of your upper body. Very direct. And it would also have these little flared out pieces on the bottom that would kind of go underneath your skirt, kind of keep your skirt out and to keep the bottom of the bodice from like cutting into your skin and all that kind of stuff.

They were initially an Italian creation but they became very popular when Catherine Di Medici introduced them to the French court and all the French ladies loved them. You'll see like these old like iron cages and things from from this era we're talking about like the 1500s. That was probably like some really bad attempt at like an orthopedic brace and not what an actual corset was made of at the time. So if you see that and you're like, oh my gosh, women suffered in these corsets, that probably wasn't a corset.

So you would lace the stace together and then you would put all your clothes on over top. But a lot of women didn't use them at first because the bodices of their dresses were kind of stiff. So you wouldn't necessarily need these. It wasn't until we started, like women started wearing kind of looser things over top of that, that these became like undergarments now. Okay. So you wouldn't wear a stiff bodice dress, you would wear something stiff underneath, something

looser on top. And so as we move forward, we kind of see that kind of trend. And instead of just lifting the bust and smoothing the waist, we really start to attempt to shape the female form into something that, that's be honest, that men liked. Got it. Yes. Yes. Now, when we talk about corsets in like a medical context and especially in like a, kind of from a feminist perspective, what we're really upset about, I think, what most people get upset about is the tight lacing.

So you get this image and I think most of us, you remember you saw gum with the wind. Oh yeah. So you see, you remember Scarleto hair up against the bedpost. Yeah, I remember in the book it said she had a 17 inch waist. That's even saying to me. Right. And that's when people start talking about, oh my gosh, that was so unhealthy and so many women

were in these tight fitting corsets. They looked right. I mean, we can all agree on that. Am I right, guys? Did they? Guys, let me hear you, a dog pound, where you at? For corsets? Where's my corset dog pound? I

See one guy corsets You know We're hand dogs Anyway, so most women did not I like I like a woman who just is like seems to be on the verge of blacking out constantly They laugh at your jokes more, which I appreciate Most women didn't lace themselves that tightly. It was rare to find a woman who would have tightened herself below 20 inches. So that whole 17 inch thing, I mean, yes, certainly there were women who did that, but that was not the majority of women. And that was really the Victorian era when we see that kind of association that you're not

just using it to kind of shape the body that's underneath your clothes, but you're actually shaping your body, you're actually trying to force your body into a different shape. And from the beginning of corsets, you hear like there are accounts of doctors upset about them. Even when corsets really weren't that restrictive, when they first came out, they really weren't. But you've got doctors talking about how it's gonna smush their internal organs, and they're not gonna be able to breathe.

Does it smush them? Well, I'm gonna tell you about that. Let me tell you a little bit more about Corset. No, I don't get ahead of me. I'm gonna tell you about that. It was interesting in response to this in the awarding area, we saw like a different corset introduced that they called the S-shape corset, because it would kind of form your body into an S,

like your upper body and your breast would be kind of thrust forward, and then your butt would be kind of pushed backwards, and you get like an S-shape. Oh, nice. And that was supposed to be better for you. It was called like the health corset. Like we had ads where they had like five year olds in these. And they had a TV ad. You know it would be set to like I will survive. This women dancing around in their

S shape corsets. Like come on girl. Get it. But this one unfortunately was probably worse for your back than the original. Oh no girl. Don't get it. Sorry, sorry girl. As we move forward through the into the 1900s, women want to move more. Now they were able to do a lot of stuff in those corsets contrary to popular belief. Women were like riding horses and doing all kinds of things in the corsets, but they wanted to move a little freer dance trends affected this. It was hard to tango in a lot of corsets. And then finally, I think kind of the death now for like the widespread use of corsets was World War One when they needed to free up all of the steel that they were using in the corsets. And so the war department asked

everybody like, hey, would you please stop wearing corsets? And do you know that they- Did that really make an impact though? Made a huge impact. Women stopped wearing, I mean, maybe they were just looking for an excuse. But women stopped wearing corsets. There actually one site said that there was enough steel saved from not selling corsets to make two battleships. Two battleships were entirely made out of, you could think about corset materials. And they almost came back right before World

War II, but then World War II had the same problem. Right. That's still back. Sorry, ladies. Not that corsets have ceased to exist. I hate this appointment. I hate this appointment, but unfortunately we need those to make battleships. Certainly, there's still more people wearing corsets and there are, you know, fashion trends with corsets, but the health effects. So this is incredibly controversial. Naturally. You could read about this for decades if you wanted to.

But if we're talking about what was detrimental, the most detrimental were people who did the tight lacing. So when you talk about people with like 17 inch waist, there is some documentation that it can decrease your lung capacity. So you get a little more short of breath Which is probably where the association with fainting was Although not everybody was passing out because of corsets. Of course. Yeah

It can misshape your ribs like if you look at they have x-rays of people wearing corsets And it actually can kind of push them into different positions Although that whole story about how women would remove their ribs to fit into corsets, as far as we know, that never happened. I mean, if you imagine surgery in the 1800s, who's going to go through that, I mean, they would have died. You would have died. Guaranteed. It can cause because of the way it's kind of squeezing your gastrointestinal track.

It can cause indigestion. Tight corseting can cause constipation. It does shift your organs a little bit. And so there was some thought that maybe it could have led to uterine prolapse, where like your uterus kind of pokes down into the vaginal canal a little bit. Oh, man. And so it may have contributed to that,

possibly, in some of these tight-corsitors. It can absolutely cause back and hit pain and get abnormalities in some of the tight corseters. It can absolutely cause back and hit pain and get abnormalities in some of the corsets and some women. And then there's this whole concern about pregnancy because women corseted while they were pregnant. And did it cause miscarriages? I don't really know.

There was one study where they studied skeletons and like tight corseters also had slightly smaller pelvises. And so there was this whole theory could have led them. We don't really know. I don't really know. I can't answer that question. It can cause muscle atrophy because you're not using your muscles to hold you upright. The corset is. And it can cause skin irritation depending on the design of the corset, you know, where it rubs you. A lot of the things that doctors freaked out about and said that it caused are not true. It didn't cause

tuberculosis, obviously. It didn't cause tuberculosis, obviously. It didn't cause hysteria because that's a fake thing, so that wasn't real. It didn't cause cancer, it didn't cause liver failure. Because that's your fake. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, quite as bad as we've all been led to believe. If you use them appropriately and certainly women who and men who like to course it now, I think take the proper precautions and so you don't have to worry about all of this stuff quite so much. There were the extremists who did, but they probably weren't the horrible thing

for your bodies that we always thought they were. So you're arrayed for courses? No, I'm not saying that. Because it gets into the idea of who wanted corsets. My opinion of it was always like, men found it beautiful and so women conformed to the male idea of beauty and that kind of thing. But there's been arguments that, well, no women wanted, all women wanted to course it. And so it was just women choosing to wear what was fashionable at the time. But I think, I don't know that that makes much sense because saying that like, at

the time that it was socially acceptable to be corseted, all women also happened to want to wear corsets is like saying saying that before Elizabeth Blackwell, no women really wanted to be doctors anyway. And then afterwards, we all decided that it might be fun to be a doctor. So I don't know that I buy that argument. But people have said that they think that the reason doctors were always so against them

is not because of health concerns, but because they thought male doctors didn't like the increased sexuality of women who were able to maintain these womanly figures even after they were mothers. Oh. Which I don't know. So the horse has a female empowerment. Exactly.

So it depends on how you look at it. Yeah. Either way, if you didn't do it right and you lace too tightly, you could probably hurt yourself in some minor ways. But I don't know that it caused all of the all of the fainting that we saw in the Victorian. Is fainting ever like an actual concern? Like, is it should I do anything about it if I start fainting? Yeah, if you start passing out, go see your doctor. Absolutely.

Like I said, there are lots of different conditions that can lead to fainting, and we kind of talked about some of them and why it could happen. I have a brilliant ER doctor, though, who always told me that if I had a patient who came to the ER fainting, the money is in the heart. It could be, so that's why. It may be nothing. You may be dehydrated. You may just, you know, some people pass out every time they poop,

some people pass out when they pee, some people pass out if they cough too hard, those are all vagal reasons, totally benign, no big deal but inconvenient. But there are some serious causes of syncopy or fainting. So if you pass out, I'd go get checked out. What's that mean the money's in the heart? What is it? That's where you should look. That's where you should look.

Yeah. Not like that's where you should look to raise money to get more money. So what do you mean? No. No, that's where the answer would be. Got it. That's where, yeah.

Look at the heart. And if nothing else, that's the thing you want to rule out because that's really the scary stuff, right? Sure. I want to tell you said, we have two new podcasts on the maximum fun network of which we are proud members. We'll tell me about them. Well, the first is called We Got This with Mark and Hal,

which features Mark Gaggley-Arty and Hal Lublin from the very funny thrilling adventure hour. You may know it from there. And also the other is called Can I Pet Your Dog, which is produced by my brother, Travis McElroy. Not that guy again. Not that guy again. But is the episode that has just premiered, the very first episode features our buddy, Lynn Mann, Miranda, talking about his dog, Toby. And I think you should listen both of those. So go check them out. That's what Miranda talking about his dog Toby and

I think you should listen both of those to go check them out. That's what I think Sid but listen to our show first Listen to our show first always twice in case you miss anything and then think I listen to their shows Maximum fun is your home for comedy podcast hits. That's a new slogan that I'm working on for them. I should. A little appreciate it. Should catch on like wildfire. You can find both of those shows and mention at maximumfund.org as well as on iTunes or wherever find podcasters sold. And thank you to the taxpayers. Let us use their song as the intro and outro of our program. If you search for taxpayers, the medicines, you will find that track and you can buy it or just

tweet at them and say, hey, thanks. What I remind you that we're going to be coming to the Pacific Northwest in the last weekend of August, we'll be in Seattle and get tickets to that bit.ly4tslashmb mbmbam Seattle. And we're also going to be in Vancouver bit.ly4tslashvanmbm We're gonna be performing with my brother, my brother me, which is an advice podcast I do with my brothers. We'd really like it. If you come out and see us, Charlie will be there, and Sydney Sister Riley is gonna be Charlie on 15. When we're in Vancouver. So, if you want to bring a birthday present, go nuts.

She'd love that. Anyway, that's gonna do for us until the next day. We're gonna be Charlie 15 when we're in Vancouver. So if you want to bring a birthday present, go nuts. She'd love them. She'd love that. Anyway, that's gonna do for us. Until the next time, we have a topic to discuss with you. I'm Justin McElroy.

I'm Sydney McElroy. It's always dope. Drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture Artistone Listener Supported Comedy and Culture, Artists Don't.

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