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

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

There are lots of things that aren’t medicine. Taxes. Pound cake. One thing that is definitely not a medicine but at a time was thought as one? Ketchup! Dr. Sydnee goes through ketchup’s journey from a fermented non-tomato condiment to the condiment we know and love, including its brief stint as Dr. Miles’ Extract of Tomato.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saw bones 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! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

I'm your co-host Justin McRoy. And I'm Sydney McRoy. What, you look so grand, were you about to show me something? I was about to show you something. What do you got? Bernadette Peters is coming to the Paramount Art Center in Ashford, Kentucky.

And now you love Bernadette Peters, so I'll show you. I gotta get back stage. See Bernadette, hang out, get a hang going. Yeah I'm showing you. I'm gonna give backstage. See Burnin' It Up? Hang out, get a hang going. Yeah. I don't know, see where it goes. What would you ask Burnin' It Up Peter's about?

Oh my gosh. What was it like filming the jerk? That's exactly what I would ask. I would wanna know about the jerk. Did you like playing the witch? What's up with heartbeeps? That was a wild flick. You and Andy Kaufman is robots.

I mean, come on. Yeah, Burnin' It. I could talk for a long time, but that's not what this episode is about. I'm suspecting you would not bless me with an episode that's just about burning it up, Peter. No, I wouldn't do that. Your reaction would make me too jealous.

Okay. No, we had a recommendation for an episode from Britt. Thank you, Britt. About something I was not familiar with. This was a history that I didn't know. There are lots of things that aren't medicine. That's that's I can 100% gotta agree. Just to name a few taxes, the Sun, a pound cake. Yes, those are examples. Maybe the Sun. I mean, you could actually make an argument for this. Well, I wasn't I I would, yeah, I don't mean the medicine

is broad term, but yeah. That's the only prescription you gotta get you gay. They're, okay, there's something there. There's something to that. No, what I was going to say is there are a lot of things that aren't medicine that we used as medicine. And we've given examples of that like every day, like alcohol-based products and all kinds of like herbs

and flavorings and spices. Like there are lots of things, right? That we were like, that tastes strong. I bet it's medicine. We've got a whole podcast about it if you're interested. This one's all-vens. Yeah, but one that I didn't know is that there was a very

brief period in American history where we thought ketchup was medicine. But I didn't know that, but I feel like it makes sense for us. Yeah, I mean, if you think that we thought ketchup was medicine, like that feels right. Like, yeah, of course, of course, we here in America thought ketchup was medicine briefly. I can think of few times where I've ingested some delicious fries dipped in ketchup and I haven't felt a little bit better afterwards. You know? Ketchup is great.

Ketchup is great. I love ketchup. I don't like too much ketchup. You can go, it can go a little while. Now I didn't use to be that way. I used to be no condiments guy. And I don't know use to be that way. I used to be no condiments guy. And I don't know how. Condiments guy.

I used to be no condiments guy. And now I'm few condiments guy. You would say that on dates. And they'd be like, what did you say? Condiments. I said no condiments. Condiments. Yeah.

That was a very Justin Tricks. But I'm in, I know. I'm into ketchup now. Yeah. Well, just like Randy Moss is into juice, I'm into ketchup. Ketchup did not start off as a tomato based product. Did you know that ketchup is a tomato based product now? Did you know that?

I did know that. Yeah. Ketchup is the only form in which my father will eat a tomato. I figure he said once that he doesn't like when food looks too much like it started off. He likes it when it looks really pro. He doesn't, yeah, he can't, he doesn't even like like a fruit pie. If you have chunks of fruit in there, he's not going to mess with it. He really doesn't eat much fruit at all.

No, he doesn't. He will not mess with fruit. So okay, ketchup didn't start off as a tomato based condiment. It dates back, way back to ancient China, like 300 BCE, where it started as a paste that was made from things like fermented fish and trails. Yeah. Meat by products. Yeah, you use every bit of it. What can we do with soybean? Let's make this into a paste. Yeah, so like and this and this paste, you can imagine it would be like a salty, fishy, fermenty, kind of flavor, or not necessarily fishy, but like, you know, salty fermenty is kind of the vibe. And this would have been used on various dishes, like as a flavoring agent, but it also was chosen

because like this is something that you could carry with you and would be preserved pretty easily. If you think about what it's made of, like something fermented like that, you just let it keep fermenting, I guess, right? You just ferment forever. You just eat it forever. Probably not forever. At some point, it might gross you out. At some point, yeah.

So the advantage of that, like I said, is it can be carried over long distances, like for instance, sea journeys, you know, across the sea. And so, a lot of stuff came about that way. Ails? Yeah, exactly. Like that's why IPAs are IPAs, India Pale Ails. They put the hops in there to preserve them.

And it made them better. It's got used to drinking it. Made them better hops in there to preserve them. And it made him... Just guy used to drink it. Made him better. Yeah. And now I like them. The end. No, that's not what this is about.

So they were carried along various trade routes. They went to different places in the world and as ketchup, well, as it was initially known as either getchup or k-chip, then that would have been in like various Southern Chinese dialects. But you can see where this word is coming from. It became known as either catsup or ketchup, which is, you know, the one I prefer. Does anybody still say catsup? I've never heard anybody say it, but it is funny. Yeah, I've never heard anyone say it in real life. I've seen it written.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, on bottles and stuff, but is it pronounced that way? I thought that was just an alternative spelling for the same word. No, it's cats up. I don't know. I assume. Sure.

I mean, it must be, right? If it was pronounced catch up, why wouldn't you spell it catch up? Why would you spell it catch up? No, and we've been helping Charlie learn to read. You know that that is a tenuous rule at best that the English language looks like what the word like, how rarely is that true that the word looks like when it's trying to spell.

I hate explaining that. She'll sound something out and I'll be like, now I know that's what it looks like, but that's not how it sounds. It sounds like this. And she says, why? And the answer is always English is stupid. I don't know why we did it that way. I'm sorry.

I don't even fear the day when she has to learn how to spell convenience. And I just have to stare at her like, I don't know why we did it that way. I'm sorry. I didn't fear the day when she has to learn how to spell convenience and I just have to stare at her like, I don't know honey. I don't know. But I made it this far. I don't know. You cannot learn this one. Um, I, I'm still embarrassed about the fact that I am a physician and every time I have to write the word hemorrhoid. Oh, that's a tough one. Uh-huh. I have to stop and think. Yeah. How many ams hold on? I had a tiny more arms. More than my share of times, I think. I've always said, look, get up.

Okay, so it was either known as cat supper ketchup as it moved around different places. Sometimes it would be called like just a spiced sauce. If you saw a recipe for a spiced sauce, it was probably a variety of ketchup that you were talking about or sometimes a high east India sauce. High east India sauce. That's again, I like that. The first recipe for ketchup appeared in a cookbook in 1758 by Eliza Smith called the complete housewife. And this was a, this was a kind of savory chutney. It had anchovies, cloves, ginger, and pepper. And basically, it would have been put with like meat or fish, something like that, right? And this is all ketchup, like as you may have noticed, tomato has not entered the picture. On an extra, yeah.

Right. There is another recipe that I appreciated from 1736, which was again, this is a recipe for catchup. You boil two quarts of strong, stale beer and a half pound of anchovies. This is awesome. And then ferment it. This is from a time period, though. And there's a lot of condiments like this, where the idea was to cover up the flavor of meat that had gone rogue because we didn't have modern refrigeration techniques. So it makes sense that a sauce in this time period would have been

pungent over everything else because they're trying to give you a big bowl flavor to ignore the gross. They're rotting meat. They're gross. They're rotting meat, you're enjoying. It's interesting though, because you'd think you'd want them to enjoy the big bowl flavor of the meat of the rotten meat. No, the big bold flavor of the

and half pound of anchovies that you boiled in they'll be here. They didn't have anything good yet. You know what I mean? I think they had good. They didn't have anything good. This is may not have been one of them. Um, and there are all kinds of recipes for English, I said English food in the past 10 years. You know what I mean? Imagine it 200 years ago. Oh, our English listeners are gonna be really mad at you. Yeah, they get it. You're gonna get, you're gonna get email from David. David's gonna tell you, listen. I've eaten at the Rosencrown pub at Disney World.

Twice, I think I have a pretty good hand-worn British food, okay? Please, if you send angry emails. Why must she be? Will you address them to Justin? Why must she be? I'm the one who, I'm the one who checks the email. So just like be? Will you address them to Justin? Why must she be? I'm the one who I'm the one who checks the email. So just like put in the subject like this is I am angry at Justin. This is for Justin. For his correct. But his correct taste. Please know it's not me.

So anyway, there were all kinds of in this in the 18th century, there were all kinds of recipes for ketchup. There were some made with oysters, there were some made with muscles. Mushroom ketchup was very popular. That was Jane Austen's favorite type of ketchup. Was a mushroom-based ketchup concoction. There was walnut ketchup and lemon ketchup and celery and fruit. Sometimes we use plums or peaches. You would like boil them into some sort of, I mean, you can imagine like a consistency kind

of thing. A fermentation may have been a part of the recipe a lot of the time, adding a ton of salt to it, something that would be preserved easily, right? Something that you could carry around. And maybe not in your pocket, per se. Does that catch up in the mouth? That's weird. Do you think, do you ever think when you're reading stuff

like this, where of the moment when someone with a book and a pen was like, Hey, Jane, what's your favorite ketchup? And she's like, why are you asking? It's like, well, I'm doing history. And for history, we want to know what your favorite, my kind of ketchup is. History wants to know about it. So just in case in a couple hundred years, if somebody's like a podcast and are, you know, almost 300 years,

somebody's been going to podcast, and it's like, what's her favorite kind of catch up? I just, his three needs to know, so please. Right, and if the only thing that is mentioned about you on this podcast is what your favorite catch up recipe was, are you cool with that? Is that what you would like to be known for Jane Austen? Yeah, you're gonna be so famous that we could just say,

your name and your favorite kind of catch up, and that's interesting. That's kind of cool though. Yeah, I mean gonna be so famous that we could just say your name and your favorite kind of catch up, and that's interesting. That's kind of cool though. Yeah, I mean, it's... I would like to be famous enough that if you just off-handedly mentioned, and you know what Sydney Macroise favorite catch up was, somebody would be like, oh, what was it?

Like, I know who that is, and I am interested in what her favorite catch up may be. Yeah, and that's true, but also like, why did history have to grab that one? You know what I mean? Like, there's lots of stuff we could have pulled. Just where that made the cut of history. If history remembers me for a food fetish,

it will just be soup. Yeah, yeah, but like, what if it did? I didn't know what I mean. What? There was an entire week where Sydney ate soup twice a day every day. You've been bragging about double soup day all week. I've had a double soup day.

Yeah, yeah. I made up a song about having a double soup day. It's different, the song's different every night, but it's always about the joys of having a double soup day. I love having soup. Yeah. I'm not having soup for breakfast. You had a double fun day.

I did. Yeah. I had fun for lunch and dinner last night. Not left over. Yes, it's no. Two discrete fuff. Uh huh. This is fuff, balls of fuff. Two fuzz.

Anyway, there was a recipe that called for 100 oysters, three pints of white wine, and then you would take a limpial, you know how you could poke mason cloves in there like you do. Mm hmm. Anyway, why were people not using tomatoes, you may wonder. Yeah. Why haven't it at this point, like nobody's even stumbled on throwing a tomato

into ketchup yet. They may not be big there yet. They may not be big there. Maybe tomatoes weren't in the game. They may not be big in the world. What? There were recipes for ketchup everywhere. You think that in the entire world, tomatoes weren't big?

No, that's fair. Some were tomatoes were big. Somewhere someone liked it to make it. Someone liked tomatoes. I'm not saying sometimes stuff like that comes into the Western culture later than you think it does, right? Well, and part of it, I will say specifically in Western culture, there was a fear around tomatoes.

This is why tomatoes weren't being used. People thought they were poisonous. You know why? The theory goes that people thought they were poisonous. You know why? The theory goes that people thought tomatoes were poisonous. Why? Because a lot of people ate off of puter plates, tomatoes are very acidic. And if you put very acidic food on puter plates, you can leach some of the lead out of the plate, out of the puter. And then you're eating lead.

And then you get lead poisoning. So the tomatoes weren't poisonous, but the combo could have been making people ill. So perhaps that was why for quite a while, especially Europeans avoided tomatoes because they thought that they were poisonous. So that's why it takes a while before tomatoes are thrown into catch-up is because people thought they will make you sick. The first published tomato catch-up recipe was from James Mies, who was a scientist from Philadelphia. He wrote about that he had found a cat's up recipe

that he particularly enjoyed. And he recommended as a new ingredient for your cat's up. Let me guess, tomatoes. Love apples. Oh, ew. Oh, gross. What's that? Those are tomatoes.

Is that a slang term you just came up with for them? No, that is what they were called sometimes. Not just by James Mease, but by other people of the time period. That's great. Would refer to tomatoes as love apples. That's the blonde. Wonderful. That's just wonderful.

What a wonderful wrinkle to put in my brain. Thank you. As people started eating tomatoes, I guess off of dishes other than pewter, which I mean, it's hard to imagine having dishes that weren't pewter, right? Right, right. Sish. What are you eating off of? And what are you eating?

Plastic. What are you eating? There's no name for it yet. I'm thinking about lust grubs. No, but people. People with thin skin orange. No. Love apples. You think hold on, but people. What about thin skin orange? No, love apples. You think, hold on, hold on.

You think a tomato is like a thin skinned orange? No, that's the hilarious thing. It's also not like an apple at all Sydney. In what ways do I get an apple? I mean, they're both red. So is a fire truck, but you don't call a tomato a very soft, small fire truck. No, but like I think that a tomato and an apple have at least a thing in common.

What do a tomato and an orange have in common? Fruit. Okay, but like, no, I mean like visually. What are you talking? You think you have a point right now and everyone who's ever listened to this show right now scream, you like, Sydney, you don't have a point. I don't know why you, that your first thought would be that a tomato is a thin skinned orange. I'm saying that they didn't have a name for it. An orange is orange. It's name that. Okay, so Sydney, let's focus it on the love part

if you're so smart. Why is it for the love? People thought tomatoes are aphrodisiacs. Okay, I guess you got me. Love apple. But why did they think it was medicine? I don't know. Well, you're about to find out, but I'm gonna take you to the billing department first. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled at my car before the mouth. Well, Russ, hey, hey, I'm glad it found you in mine.

These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line and boy, what do I? These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not, and they've such short neck. But I'm here and we need to get on this. We gotta get on the art. It's about terrain, about a spout to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, yes, probably. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that.

And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boat. We came two by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun.org. What do you think? Tony Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun.org. give us an improvised motivational speech. Why people should listen and subscribe to Troubled Waters. I look around this ad and I see a lot of potential

to listen to comedians such as Jackie Johnson and Josh Gundamon and they need you to get out there and listen to them attempt to figure out sound remiss glutes or determine if something is a Game of Thrones character or a city in Wales. I have chills. I'm gonna give you 15 points. All that and so much more on Troubled Waters.

Find it on MaximumFun.org or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts. I don't like tomatoes by themselves. I meant to mention that earlier. I don't like raw tomatoes. I know this about you. But I like them in sauce. So I shouldn't give in your dad our time because I don't like, I don't like raw tomatoes. I know this about you. But I like them in sauce. So I shouldn't give in your dad our time

because I don't like, I don't eat raw tomatoes. I don't like cooked tomatoes either, but I especially don't like raw tomatoes. I don't, I like them whisted. I don't like to just eat a slice of tomato on its own, but like if you put salt and pepper on it and then you put it with something else, like I'll eat like just some chopped up tomato and avocado.

Or like if you put it with an egg, I'll eat it. We're on a piece of bread. So you like them. But I don't want to just eat like just a slice of tomato on it. So I mean, I mean, I'm not, I'll eat anything. I'm not picky, but anyway, this is not interesting. It would be around the 1830s that tomato-based ketchup. So ketchup was not thought of as medicine until the tomato became part of the picture. It would be around the 1830s that tomato-based ketchup.

So, ketchup was not thought of as medicine until the tomato became part of the picture. That's when you started to see applications in the medical world. First, the first person that I think that we can trace all this back to was someone named John Cook Bennett, which I believe he was an actual doctor. I'm not 100% sure if he was an actual doctor. I'm not 100% sure he was an actual doctor.

I've read a lot about John Cook Bennett because at first I wasn't sure. I found like two different stories. There's this John Cook Bennett, Dr. Dr. John Cook Bennett, as they keep calling him, who is responsible for catch up being thought of as medicine for a short moment in history. And then there's this John Cook Bennett, who I read about all this wild stuff that he did, some like sex scandals and some attempted murders and things that have to do with the Mormon church. And I didn't know if it was the same John Cook Bennett,

but I finally found... Tell me you got an answer on this. Yes, it is the same dude that I was able to finally connect these two stories. And it's weird because I think there's some books written that if I had found the entire book and read through the entire book, I would have been able to find this. But like searching articles online, there's like two very distinct John Cook Benets and it's hard to cross reference. But it's the same guy. So he initially, Benet, tried to, launch colleges and medical schools.

He like handed out fake medical degrees and stuff like that. So like one of our, one of the classic soblins characters, right? Like, slam man. Yeah, exactly. The kind of stuff that people do. He was like president of a medical department at a university for a while. And he did a lecture at the time

on the health benefits of tomatoes. Now, he was not coming up with this idea on his own. There were other doctors, and I mean, in this point in history, we were theorizing about a lot of different things what the health benefits could be. And you know what, we still do that, right? Every year, there's a new food that's a superfood that you should always eat.

Why not the tomato in the 1830s, right? So there were already doctors who were saying, like, I think tomatoes might be good for you. And so of course tomato based ketchup would be a vehicle for those healthy tomatoes. And specifically for things like diarrhea or indigestion or even jaundice, people or doctors were recommending, like eat some tomatoes or have some ketchup, you know.

It's yummy tomato juice. Oh. He went around talking about tomatoes and you know trying to sell people on ketchup as medicine. That was like his next snake oil kind of thing, right? Like yeah, just buy my ketchup and then whatever. And he found a guy. Not the most effective bitch, but sure. Buy my ketchup and then whatever. And he found a guy not the most effective bitch, but sure, buy my catch up. Then whatever. He found a guy named Archibald

Miles who was selling something called American hygiene pills. Nice. Yeah. That's loaded by the way. American hygiene pills. Anything. That is terrifying. Hey, listen, kids, if anyone ever tries to sell you American hygiene pills, run and tell an adult, okay? Immediately run and tell an adult. And I'm saying this no matter how old you are listening to this podcast. So he told Miles, like, hey, listen, I think one of the things in your pills is a tomato extract. I think you should start selling these as like tomato pills because tomatoes are so hot right now. Everybody's into tomatoes.

Everybody knows that tomatoes are so good for you because I'm telling everybody tomatoes are good for you. This is a great thing. Listen, I go around to everybody tomatoes are good for you and then you start having to have to have pills. Good news. And so why don't you sell tomato pills? So he started selling them as Dr. Miles compound extract of tomato.

He was really successful. He sold lots of tomato pills. He would, he'd go buy tomatoes from people so that he could make his pills. And he would sell out all of his pills. Please don't say pills anymore. I can't hear you saying the word pills anymore. Why? so that he could make his bills. And he would sell out all of his bills. Please don't say pills anymore. I can't hear you saying there were pills anymore. Why? I just started to echo in my head.

It started. Are you hearing pills instead of bills? Not what? The song, bills, bills, bills. Pills, bills, bills. The problem is that Bennett was telling lots of people to sell tomato pills. Oh, really? Yes.

This wasn't an exclusive offer. No, so there were lots of people that were selling tomato pills in the 1830s. And like Bennett would support different ones. They were like tomato pill wars where like there was a guy named Holcomb who was selling tomato pills and Ben it was like yeah he's the real guy who sells tomato pills so listen to that other guy which was the guy that he like told he should sell tomato pills yeah there was another guy named guy There was another guy named Guy, Dr. Guy Phelps, up in Connecticut, who was like, I've got my own tomato pills, and I'm sorry, I don't know what else to call them other than pills, tomato tablets.

I know it's bothering you though, tomato. No, it's just the current. I don't know. Current uses of pills. It wasn't bothering me. Okay. I was just pointing out that you'd said pills a lot. So he was selling different ones.

Like they were made slightly differently from like the leaves and the stalks of the plant as opposed to... For the nutrients are. The tomato itself. What? That's where all the nutrients are. I don't think that's true at all.

No. I'm not a horticulturist, but I was just making it up. I'm sorry. So everybody was arguing over who got the first tomato extract patent, or probably didn't have a patent. They were just like, I sold them first. I had the tomato pills first. And this John Koch Bennick, I was going around sort of like,

egging on the tomato wars. Nice. But the thing is, this was an incredibly short-lived medical fat. And we've covered things like this before, something that it catches the imagination of the public. Everybody goes wild for them. Everybody's got to go get this new, you know, it's a new snake oil. It's the new cure all. It's the thing that will make you feel

amazing. Everybody buys these tomato based medicines. They probably did nothing. And then people are like, I don't really think, I don't really think I want to get these anymore. You didn't put any law in them at all. I don't eat this. And then the guys who sold them went on to other things. Miles went on to do some real estate and Phelps went into insurance. And here's the wild thing, just on a side note.

So John Cook Bennett. So it's wild because as I was looking up the John Cook Bennett that was like, at one point I saw him called the Lucifer of the Mormon church in an article. So obviously there's some other unsavory stuff in this guy's history, but like all these histories pick up

like after the 1830s. So it's like this little ketchup chapter of his life gets lost. And we always forget about his favorite ketchup. Because then he went on to like, he basically had a lot of adulterous relationships and like unauthorized polygamy because this was at the time where like, you know, that was very much part of the Church of Latter-day Saints.

And so he, but he was sort of like doing it in a way that, because he was like buddies with Joseph Smith, it was like, no, this not, no, no, no, no. And he like pulled the wool over everybody's eyes for a while and finally got excommunicated. Oh no. From the church for doing stuff that, I mean, for having all these affairs. And like, he lied like for a while, they didn't know he was married and he was sleeping around with all these different women. And they didn't even know that he had a wife and he did have a wife. And then there was this hole where he said that they tried to murder him later, like he accused

people of putting out a hit on him. And he said that the people who showed up to murder him were all dressed in drag. And that was a big scandal. And did that really happen? It's wild. If you're interested, there's lots of articles about this part of John Cook Bennett's life. Yeah, I imagine that probably gets a lot more ink

than his brief dollions as a ketchup sales one. Well, but I didn't know, I mean, it's really wild because like I obviously had never heard any of these stories. And you can read, there's whole biographies about him if like if that's the kind of thing you're interested in if you just want to know. I found this really cool. You know what put it together for me? Cincinnati. Oh, okay. Cincinnati put it together for me. I found a Cincinnati curiosities by Greg hand, who wrote, like, finally pulled together that this was the same Bennett, who was responsible for, he was called the saintly scoundrel. The

life and times of Dr. John Cook Bennett is a book you can read if you wanted the whole thing. But anyway, so pulled it all together. And so after his time selling tomato pills and getting people to fight over who made the first tomato pill and sort of like stoking the flames of the tomato pill war, he went on to get excommunicated from the church ladder to say. Wow, wow journey. Yeah. Now, at this point, it's like the 1850s, the last of the people who were selling tomato products as medicine, whether it be like pushing catch up as a medical entity telling people to eat tomatoes for their medicinal benefits, or just like tablets or pills or something

made of tomato product. Everybody's sort of like given that up. That whole fad had worn off. Nobody was really using it as medicine anymore. And this is like perfect timing. It's still being used as condiment. It's still obviously at this point, extremely popular. In all of the ways we know that we use ketchup.

But the final flame, like that ketchup would still not have been the ketchup we know today. That was a lot more similar to like some sort of very tomato-y kind of sauce. And ketchup is not tomato sauce. They're two very distinct things. They're both tomato-based, but they're very distinct. Adding vinegar was a big change in... Change the game.

Yeah, and that's where we get the ketchup that we know today. And in 1876, there was a relatively new company called Hines. Oh, my. OK. And they mixed tomatoes, vinegar, brown sugar, salt, and I guess spices that we're not supposed to know. Are they secret? I don't know.

I don't know if the Hines recipe is secret or not. I don't know. There's spices in there. I assume the bottle, if I were to pick it up right now, which I do not have a bottle of Heinz next to me, but I assume it would say like natural and artificial flavors. Because everything says that. Yeah. But I don't know.

If you want, there is a food that build America on Heinz, so you can learn about that. Is there. About that, of course. It may be their podcast that I can't tell if there's an episode of the show about it. Well, I'm sure there's a very interesting story about finding this exact recipe because a lot of people were making different catch-up products and cats-up products,

and there were still a lot of homemade recipes that people were using and making for all these various spice sauces. The four Hines sort of dominated. That's one of my favorite scenes. It's in almost every episode of Food the Bell America is like someone will bring someone a tray of like 30 different kinds of something,

like gum or whatever, and they're like two each piece and they're like, oh, then finally, they pick up that one thing and they take a bite. I mean, they probably like, I didn't want to even offer you this one. It's not ready yet. They take some bites. He's like, this is the butter finger.

We found it. Make a million at least by the end of the week. So just as like tomatoes as medicine are falling off as a fat. And I should say part of what contributed to that is that there were lots of copycat pills to these people who were actually trying to push like, this is a pill made with tomato extract. There were also people who were like selling you laxatives and saying like this is a tomato pill. I promise. And you're like, well, this helped my diarrhea and they're like, oh, sure, yeah,

definitely. And then you take it and you're like, no, it's worse. It's actually worse. What did you eat? It can't have been our pills. It was, it was, it was a laxative. But then It was a laxative. But then, Hines came out and do you know why it was 57? Hines 57. No. It is not because it was the 57th formula. That's formula 409. Yeah, that's what I would assume.

That's what I would assume. It was not. It was not that. It was because 5 and 7 were Hines and his wife's favorite numbers. That's very eccentric. There's that bit of... It's very eccentric choice they made. There's that bit of history, but anyway.

So that's the history of catchabas medicine. Thank you, Cincinnati, for coming and clutch and putting it all together for me. Yeah, you were, you were losing it, trying to figure out this is the same guy because it didn't feel like anybody could be the center of it. Well, I know, and I really like,

I wanted to explain that a little tangent about John Cook Bennett, but not if it was two, what if it was two different guys? What if there was the one who sold fake tomato pills and then there was the one who did all this wild stuff and got excommunicated and I didn't know if it was the same guy, that it was.

Thanks for listening to our podcast. Hey, if you like this show, we would hope that you would do the right responsible thing and find one friend this week. Just one person where you're like, hey, I know you like interesting stuff. I think you love this show. It's great. Here's how you listen to it. And then you put it in their hands, whatever that means.

Put it in their hands. Put it in their hands. whatever that means. Put it in their hands. Put it in their hands. And we would really appreciate that. We have a book, it's called The Saul Buns Book. You can find it wherever you get books. Thanks to the taxpayers for using their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening.

We hope you have enjoyed yourself. And that's gonna do it for us. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!