Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Heroes of Patent Medicine: Volume 2

Episode Date: April 16, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin introduce you to some of the craziest operators in the patent medicine game. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

And all the blood and bones in China is germinated and in two times is aged, staying with life and pumping grows. Hello! Hi! Hello Milwaukee! This is nice. Hi, I'm Justin Macroi. Welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miscite and Medicine. I, as I just said, am your co-host Justin Macroi. And I'm Sydney Macroi. Okay, that's cool.

Cool start to the show. Now if you could all just keep it down, we have a baby. Yeah, just to keep upstairs. So just pipe down a little bit. Yeah, just don't get too many munchies. That's brother's problem now, so. Yeah, what? Just gonna find out.

I scream as much as you want. So, we've been visiting here in Wisconsin. We went through the Wisconsin delts on our way here. Shout out to the Paul Bunyan Lumberjack show. We didn't mean to stop there. The baby just needed to eat. So, there we were. We were like, where are we?

Sydney, have you visited Milwaukee before? No, Justin, I haven't, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. Is that right? Yeah, in fact, French missionaries and explorers have been coming here as early as the late 1600s. In fact, isn't Milwaukee a Native American word? Yes, it is, Justin.

It's actually pronounced Milly Wa-K, which is Algonquin for the Good Land. Does this go to how to party or what? It's my favorite movie. Well, oh wait, we don't have a transition. What is the show about? Wait, are you do okay? I'm sorry. Pretend I didn't say that.

We'll get it in post. Speaking of Native Americans. Okay, cool. We've talked before about patent methods. If a podcast host starts a conversation that way, you're cool. If your uncle does it, thanksgiving. You should just leave the room. If things are about to break back.

Well, we've talked before about patent medicines. Do you remember this? Yes. You're familiar. I am. Because I told you about it. We're in the middle of a three-part series. You don't know this yet, but you are a part two of a three-part series. You don't know this yet, but you are a part two of a three-part series

during this lovely Midwest tour of Pat Madison. Right, heroes of Pat Madison. Heroes of Pat Madison. If you're listening, I just did Airquence. And the way this ties in more or less to what we just did is that one of the... So Pat Madison, let's talk about what they are first. Okay. Okay. So go ahead.

I've told you before. I'm going to let you. I'm going to let you educate everybody. Well, well, Sydney, surprise you don't know. Well, a little lady just sit back. Let me explain it out to you. Pat medicines are defined almost by their absence of having a patent, because to get a patent in the way that we traditionally think of it would mean registering their ingredients with

the government and their ingredients were usually poison and garbage. So you don't want to put that on. And booze. And booze. You don't want to put that on the label. So the patent that they're referring to is actually a patent issued by royalty. Basically, it can do like a celebrity endorsement

is how they would use patents. And these were really popular in the US, especially in the 1800s and into the early 1900s. And basically, they were heavily marketed and advertised, but they didn't really do anything. And one of the most popular kind of themes that you'd find in patent medicine was to call on the wisdom of the Native Americans

to market their product to you. You know this is good because it's all natural and we talked with some Native Americans and they told us it was good. It was good stuff. We went to the trees that they were shaving bark off of and said, hey, let me get a slice when you're done with that. And anybody who wasn't white basically

was seen as a great resource for kind of medicines that were closer to the land and more natural. So a lot of these salesmen would pretend to be some other ethnicity in order to sell more of their product. Can you give me an example? So our first hero of Pat Madison that we want to talk about is Prince Nanzetta. That sounds exotic. It doesn't it?

From a distant land. From the distant land of Los Angeles. Oh. Yes, so he was from LA. He was actually, his heritage was Mexican, but he was from LA. And he was a patent medicine salesman, and he wasn't very successful at first. He would stand on corners and just sell whatever

mix of alcohol or opium or cocaine or whatever that people would buy that day. And he would use a, do you know what a tripe in Kister is? No ma'am. It was one of those, if you've ever seen like the suitcase on the tripod thing. Oh, you know. And he's just, yeah, I know.

Tripe and Kister. Like the Wizard of Oz had when he was crappy. Exactly. Like just a regular dude. At the beginning in Kansas. Right, when he was crappy. He was, well, he was just like, was crappy. He was like, was crappy. He wasn't giant or green or anything.

He was just a regular black light dude. He's got a crappy by comparison. Crapie. Well, when the prince was just pitching as just a guy, he wasn't selling very much medicine. So he was like, you know, people don't really know what ethnicity I am just by looking at me. So I could say I'm anything. So he made up this whole story about being from the Himalayas. And he said, so my family was captured

by a tribe of Himalayan Yakk herders. Natorious the Natorious Himalayan Yakk herders. Exactly. And all of my family was killed, but they spared me because they liked me, but they made me a slave because they didn't like me that much. So it's like Princess Bride, it's basically Drapider Roberts, basically. Yes. And that's exactly what happened. Eventually they were like, hey, do you want to be a prince instead of a slave?

We like you a lot. Oh, let me ponder for a second. I might kill you in the morning. I don't really like working for free all the time till I die. So yeah, I guess print sounds pretty good. So they made them a prince. Right. Can you just make somebody a prince?

Don't you have to like... Well, if your whole story is a complete no-der fabrication, I mean, you... I guess you can do whatever you want. Yes and, right? And as you do with princes, they taught him all of their medical secrets. Of course. That's the first thing about being a prince. That's why it's so exhausting.

You know all the medical stuff. And then you ever see a prince in concert? If you, somebody breaks a bone in the first five rows, he's like, hold on one second. Daily beloved. Daily beloved, I need to make a splint. You are about to get the sexiest splint anybody's ever got. It's pure velvet. Velvet splint.

So the prince learned all of the medical secrets and then one day he escaped, which why would you escape your prince? Yeah, while you learned all the medical secrets he had to get out there on the road. So he escaped and he brought him back to the US. And to support this whole story that he'd created in this new persona that he had, he would wear these long crimson robes because like the people he was selling to, they didn't really know like what the appropriate clothing would be or what people from, you know, anywhere in the Himalayas looked like or would wear.

So he would wear these long robes with gold trim and he carried a sword in an ivory case And he said that it was the royal sort of Tibet Mm-hmm, and I I mean does Tibet have a royal sword? What does it look like? I don't know how flimsy is their customs department there Is this from no no no no no replica, not real. It's fine. I'll just go ahead and take it, take it through. He would wear a medallion that he said was the royal seal of Tibet. And again, like, there's no Google. I don't know. It made it. There was Google, but it was just a giant book. And you, and only one guy could have it at a time. So it was like, who has the time to wait? Check Google, hold on.

This guy was so convincing. And this worked. He sold tons of medicine this way. And he was so convincing that at one point a politician that was popular in that time period, Marcana, appeared with him on the campaign trail. I invited him to sit with him up on the stage as he was making his speeches and was like, take it from my buddy, Prince Nanz. He's got his royal sword here and he's going to vote for me so you should too. I would, I mean I vote for somebody who has that guy to do that for sure. He also, one other fact about him that I really like, he had a valet that would carry around his sword or whatever.

And he would get the amount that he would get paid each day was based on how many times he referred to him as your royal highness in public. That sounds good, but could get obnoxious basically pretty quickly. Did you want ketchup, your royal Highness? I don't think it would. Do you want to try that? Do you want to maybe? Oh, yeah, I'll give it a rough experience.

Let's give it a run today. Let's just try a run and see how it feels. Try it on. Your royal Highness. Thank you. There we go. OK. No, it's fine.

It's really, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah, it's good. No, keep that up. It feels right. So let's talk about somebody else. OK. OK.

So another one of our favorite Pat medicine salesman was J.I. Lighthall. J.I. Lighthall. Yeah, those are weird initials to have, like, and to go. Julio Iglesias. J.I. Julio Iglesias Lighthall. What's better? He was known as the Diamond King. And I if I were him that's what I'd go by. Right. Yeah

Yeah, she's your remember. So the diamond king was born in Illinois in 1856 and he left home at 11 to seek his fortune 11 11 was he kidnapped by Emily and Yakkarton? No He's left his own volition. He was not yet the diamond king. He was the diamond. Elementary school. Yeah. He called on his heritage. So as we talked about something exotic or something that wasn't like a white guy was seen as like Oh, you have more wisdom and so you probably know more about medicine. And he was one eighth, wine dot, Indian. Wine, so wine dot? Wine dot.

Wine dot. And so he would use that, that, hey, I'm one eighth Native American to try to form relationships with Native Americans that he met in his travels. I'm sure that would ever great, by the way. Oh, yeah. I saw people try that in college, and it never panned out very well. Oh, you were one at, yeah, me too.

I have like one 16, one 32, some like that, some fraction of. See? Then I'm wearing. Yeah, look my hair. See how it just lies well like that, like half alcohol. So he really did want to learn about Native American medical traditions. And so he really tried to study herbal medicine.

He liked the idea that vegetables would be a great source of medicine. And so he tried to make all different kinds of medicine out of vegetables. Sesame Street has been trying to sell you that line for years, though. I don't see why this guy is such a bad. But how many times do you have to see Popeye jam spinach

and get huge muscles? Nice try, nice try science. Nice try. Now I know you're a fraud. But he wasn't having a ton of success. I'm assuming because at this point he's like, what, 12, 13? I don't know. Remember, he started when he was 11.

Yeah. Listen, if an 11-year-old tried to sell me Pat Medicine, I don't know. Remember, he started when he was 11, so. Yeah, on the gray, listen. If an 11-year-old tried to sell me bad medicine, I would guarantee 100% by it. Especially if he had to scroll the label with crayon or whatever they had instead of crayon back then because it sucked. Like charcoal.

I don't know. Charcoal. And he was like, hey, Mr. you know what some stuff? It's not poison and garbage. I promise. And I would know it was poison and garbage and booze, but I buy some anyway.

I might even take a bowl just to play Kate that old guy. Well, things really took off with the Diamond King. I'm assuming after his voice changed. And then also, when he met up with Dr. Neff. Dr. Neff. Dr. Neff. Dr. Neff was out digging, jinsing and ran into the diamond king. And they struck up a conversation and he said,

you know, we could really sell this stuff. If you just stop trying to like talk about what it does and why it really works and don't worry about the science so much, let's just market it really well. And just say that they're all secret Native American cures that nobody else knows about. Okay. And so the Diamond King was like, okay, I'll try that. So you made a bunch of different medicines.

He was the Steve Jobs of the pairing to the Wasney Act of the Diamond King. Sure. I don't know. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me. He told her what. He was a great, it was great.

There's a great, there's a great. Somebody afterwards, tell her how great that was. I made a lot of sense and it was really uppercut and a great pull. Just tell the later, save my dignity. So they started creating all these medicines together. There was Spanish oil. Their most popular was called King of Pain. Okay. So wait a minute. Okay, hold on. This guy's like, okay, kid. Big fat cigar. That's what this is. I'm just telling you, I'm not good with prop comedy

and like invisible mind stuff. So I'm just telling you, it's a big fat cigar. Big fat cigar. Listen kid, you gotta get better at marketing. What's this one here? Heidec tonic, that's no good. I got a name for you. King of pain. It's a medicine called King of Pain. It's irony.

It's gonna be real big in a hundred years. You're gonna be ahead of the curve. Trust me kid, where are you going? Hey, come back. I'm trying my best. I just need a shot. The thing about the diamond king, he was really trying like a traitor there at the end. Sorry. He was really trying to do good. He thought like he was really studying like herbal cures and he was trying to help people. He thought he was really studying herbal cures and he was trying to help people. So when you look at the recipes for things like the King of Pain and there was a blood purifier and Indian hair tonic and all these different things. They were things

like okay one recipe, rattle root, prickly ash, saspirilla, popular bark dogwood, wild cherry. But then all of them specify that you cut up all these ingredients, you cut them up very fine. You fill a bottle half full of that stuff, and then you fill it up the rest of the way with whiskey. And then you take it, and that is every recipe ends that way. Half, whatever root, half whiskey. Somebody's been working out of my nanny's recipe book.

Because most of her recipes in that way, too. Sometimes I've been in the book. She's just like, trust me on this one, J-Man. Look, look, look, look. I'm just kidding, nanny, I love you. You're sort of kidding. We're sort of, I'm one fourth kidding, nanny. I'm worried about you, Nani.

This is the video I've taken here in Milwaukee to tell you, in front of 600 of your closest friends from Milwaukee. Nani, I'm worried about you. Love your son, the Diamond King. Grandson, whoa, sorry. Slow it, slow it down. Slow it down.

It was good as medicine. It's half medicine. It's halfway to medicine. So once he started adding whiskey to everything, he really took off. No kidding. So this is when he started adding whiskey to everything, he really took off. No kidding. So this is when he started calling himself the diamond king and to keep up with that name, he had to look the part.

So he started wearing like seal skin coats and hats, red velvet suits, jackets with big gold pieces on them for buttons, and then just covered in diamonds. He would sew diamonds all over anything, like a red velvet suit covered in diamonds. It's cool, look. Who else do you wanna buy medicine from? He liked to wear a sombrero a lot that he would tell people this was given to me by the president of Mexico.

And whenever he would come to town, he would be led by brass bands, and he would have all kinds of, like, he'd recruit Native Americans to come along with him, and just, it'd be like a big party, and the band would come into town, and he would ride in a chariot covered in gold. Nice. If anybody were downtown a few hours ago, you would have seen us arrive that same way. We demand it's

in our writer. Justin's Red Velvet suit that's covered in diamonds is actually the cleaner right now. Yeah so I'm wearing this but come back tomorrow. It's gonna look good. And he always kept a doctor on staff which is something you see in a lot of these cases. You would keep usually a doctor who lost their license because they were drunk all the time. That was typically the case. Not me. But you would keep somebody on staff so that you could say when the fed showed up, be like, eh, look, they're got a doc. He says it's great. He said. That was good stuff.

Thank you for me. I probably have one of those big shiny disks of my forehead. I'm a fish shell. Look at my bag, my leather bag that I carry around. The laws at the time were pretty much as long as you have a dog hanging out with you who's saying, like, yes, per scribe that, you're fine, whatever it is, you know, you're fine. Go for it. But this was not enough for the Diamond King. He's wearing the suits and he's selling the whiskey medicine and he's making tons of money, but he wants

something showier, something that'll like really draw crowds. So he decides to start pulling teeth. Awesome. In front of everybody. Like, so he'd have the medicine show come in, he'd set up his stage, and he'd say, who has rotten teeth? Get up here. Here we go. And it wasn't enough, of course, just to pull them in front of, which, who wants to watch teeth being pulled?

I mean, I bet it's on YouTube. I bet it has a million views. Somebody wants to watch that. Guarantee. Somebody wants to watch everything. YouTube.antee. Somebody wants to watch everything. YouTube. That's just like a now, by the way. But the reason people wanted to watch him pull teeth

is how fast he would pull them. So he could pull up to 14 teeth in 19 seconds was his record. So that was really, that was part of the show, was just calling up volunteers and they'd strap them down to a chair and they would actually have like a band playing and the band would get louder as he was about to pull the teeth and like build up the suspense and then it would play really fast and he would just yank yank yank yank yank as many teeth out as he could. I hope it was losing my religion.

Wouldn't that be the best? That would be the best. That would be transcendent. I'd pay $30 to see that. Eventually the patient would either pass out or start screaming or get loose of their restraints and run, and then he would have to go on to somebody else. But he said, one, he told people it was painless beforehand.

OK. I mean, if they had had enough of any of his stuff. Yeah, eventually it would be. Maybe. Wait long enough. But because of that, he owned this huge house in Illinois. And he said that he paved the garden paths with human teeth that he had pulled so many.

I don't know that that's true. I don't know that's true. I don't think that you would have paved over that, right? Like if you bought the house that had that, like you would probably preserve it. Like you should be able to go see that. Nobody's gonna cover that up, that's amazing. Do you think they say that on Zillow? I don't think so.

You've got granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and then the garden paths. Paved and human teeth. paths for the human team. And a jacuzzi? Well, it's not a jacuzzi, it's a pad for a jacuzzi. And yes, it's made out of human tea. Fine. Now, unfortunately, for the Diamond King, he is a sad ending to his story.

Alright, things are going so well. No, I know. So, he was at the height of his career and he had just made these liver pads that you would wear. Liver pads were really popular in the patent medicine era. And they were basically, a lot of people thought that any problem you had, you were tired, you were weak, you just don't like getting up in the morning, it's your liver.

Your liver is the issue, you need to wear something or take something that will stimulate your liver and give you more energy. And so liver pads were really popular. His liver pads were just these like sacks of herbs that you would hold on your side. A lot of them would have something like cayenne pepper or something in them, so it would burn a little bit.

By the way, before you laugh too hard, go to your local CVS. There are still liver pads available. They go on your feet and they remove toxins. Remove toxins, but I mean really they just change color reacting to your sweat, but there is still a little available. You can buy some liver pads if you want. Now, now this truth, these liver pads specifically were supposed to prevent smallpox. Cool. And here's the sad irony as he was selling these liver pads and making tons of money, he died of smallpox. Oh man, that's going to put a cramp in business. Both are being dead, but for sure, but also that's not a good endorsement for the product

and all thing. His legacy carried on for a little while because his wife said, well wait, no, I'm the diamond queen and she sold his meds for a little bit. Nice try. Yeah. She got in trouble because she kept giving babies OPM so that was the end of her career. Spoil sports. Maybe they just wanted 30 minutes to themselves. For once. Why didn't they just do a podcast?

There you go. Can't bring a baby to a podcast. Sometimes we do bring a baby to a podcast. Yeah. No, no. You can't bring her out here. We learned that the first time. Oh, man. We did a show in, well, some of you might have heard it.

We recorded it in the Huntington. And we had this great bit. We were going to pass the baby. You're supposed to pass a newborn around something. So we're gonna pass. It's supposed to be like under a donkey, and instead we were passing her around a Santa. In our credit.

In our credit. Yeah, Santa was like, to our credit, we didn't try to pass her out of a donkey, but she didn't like that. So we learned our lesson the hard way. She doesn't come out anymore. He didn't like that. So we learned our lesson the hard way. She doesn't come out anymore. She's sleeping in the back.

I want to tell you about my favorite though. This is my favorite hero of Padmetic. Give me your favorite. So brother Jonathan. Jonathan Maloney, better known as brother Jonathan, operated towards the end of the 1800s. And he sold a cure all called the giver of life. Now that's all over King of Pain, way better than King of Pain.

And the thing about it is that he wanted to market that name, the giver of life all the time. And so as soon as he would meet you, he would introduce himself to you, saying, hello, I'm brother Jonathan, the giver of life. Why would he do that? So say it like under his breath, and then you would think like, you, you, you, you are the giver of life? You? No, it's just his medicine. Right, no. The formula for the giver of life was mostly water. So this hasn't as fun. I know this was a pretty boring one. He also had some other stuff, some Epsom salts,

rhubarb, licorice powder, winter green and sugar. So it tasted pretty good, I would say. But he was criticized a lot because people would say, you know that's mainly just water, right? And he'd say, yes, the reforce of the earth's surface is water. So water is clearly the greatest. It's fine.

And this worked. Yeah, well, of course, back then, I wouldn't fall for that today though. Don't worry, Sid. You'd fall for this guy. I'd fall for the heart, but yeah. He had, so brother Jonathan, the giver of life. He had a long mustache. He wore a dark suit with a long coat. He had matching gloves and spats.

He had the whole look going on. He carried a gold-headed walking stick. And the inscription on it said, to the giver of life from the children of Chicago. I've got the children of Chicago to finally get together on something for once. They always have their meetings and they're like, we totally got a next time, no next time, we'll do something for sure. We got a lot of, we got to figure out, you know, the policies for the group and everything.

For once, the total of Chicago like, guys, this time we're going to do it. We're going to actually make an impact. We're going to buy a patent as in sales to actually make an impact. We're going to buy a Pat medicine salesman a walking stick. Take up a collection. Everywhere he went, he would carry two books with him, a Bible. Yeah, so that coming. And an anatomy textbook. As you cover all your bases.

Yeah. Like our other Pat and medicine, fiends, heroes. He also had a doctor on his payroll. He was named Fitzmoris. He was definitely an alcoholic, because he was paid in courts of old Kentucky bourbon. It's a nice work of you can get it, I guess. Is anyone hiring?

Yeah, is the give of life hiring? Wondering. Yeah. Some of us are willing, no, I don'tver of life hiring? Wondering. Some of us are willing. No, I don't like bourbon. No. Be here. Now, of course, like all the other doctors

who worked for these patent medicine guys, he had lost his license. So this was pretty much the only gig that he could get that was legal. So what he would do is have consultations while the medicine show was in town. So Brother Jonathan would bring his show in town because that's all these people operated in medicine shows.

You would have like this big medical carnival that came to town. And you could schedule a consultation with a doctor who was drunk and you'd sit down with him. And he'd say, he'd listen to all your complaints and say, mm-hmm, you need the giver of life. Next. And that was pretty much the whole. One size fits all. Exactly. Whenever he would show up in a new town,

brother Jonathan would, this was his opening move. He would stroll up Main Street. He would introduce himself to the mayor, to the sheriff, and to the newspaper editor. And then he would head to the pharmacist, and he would give him as many bottles of the giver of life as he could fit on his shelves And then just build a business there. Well, that's good

That's a good thing to do if you come into a new town So injuries to some of those people because if somebody doesn't trust you then you just be like well I heard that guy knows the mayor and also the chief of police and the guy runs a newspaper So he's got to be okay. It could be alright, dude now like most of our Pat Medicine Salesmen who didn't die of smallpox, the ones that lived, were foiled by things like the FDA was formed. And eventually we started to make laws about what you could

put in medicine and what you had to tell people what they were taking. And so a lot of these guys. So that's the end of our show. As you heard, they're kind of cut off, but the only thing we said then. It was basically the way Justin wants to end all of our show, which is telling me that I'm boring and moving on. So now, thank you, dear.

Now we're recording a special exclusive outro here next to where the baby is sleeping. So we're trying to be quiet. You didn't miss much. We were just basically like, thank you so much. And then there was like a huge standing ovation. And like people would rush the stage to hug us. It's gonna do for us. Until next one of these days, I'm Justin Macro. I'm Sydney Macro. And I always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported

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