Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Medical History Halloween Costumes

Episode Date: October 30, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin dip into their archives to find some great/terrible ideas for costumes from the history of medicine. Also: Spooky medical stories to help you impress around the campfire! Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Hello, and welcome to the song bones and metal tour of Miscite or Miss guided medicine, I'm your co-host Justin McRoy and I'm Sydney McRoy Happy Halloween, Sydney Very spooky Justin. Don't you mean spooopy? Sorry, that's right. It's spooky It's a very spooopy episode of Salbones and it's late because We couldn't pick a costume for Charlie and it took us days upon days. We bought all the costumes. We put her in every single one and it was just, it was a big ordeal plus she got all this candy for trick or treat and we had to eat it. Oh.

That took up a lot of time. And once she's a baby and she can't eat candy. And we had to protect her from it because a choking hazard so yad all So we had to eat it in her defense which jokes on you everybody who gave us candy that baby candy Baby candy candy you idiot that was for us. Those dumb dumb just kept giving us candy Like they don't even know like that's where the adults and like we could even buy candy like we have money and a car and people will sell us candy. They don't know any better. We want to prep you.

We assume you're going to a Halloween party this weekend. This is a very special Halloween themed episode of Sabons because we want to get you ready for a Halloween party from the annals of medical history. I'm assuming that if you are like us, you have not picked a costume or are not prepared. Now that, no. Generally, we're not. Generally, we are, we are, at the last minute,

trying to throw something together. We did a good. We did a good. We did a good job this year. We actually prepared. We ordered costumes ahead of time. I'm going as the man from another place from Twin Peaks. And. I'm going as Audrey Horn from Twin Peaks.

So that's gonna be good, but we already ordered our costumes. But maybe you did- This was a first though. This is a first for us, but maybe you're not that prepared. So we're gonna talk to you about some costumes from medical history,

some recommendations on how you can maybe achieve those looks. Costumes that everybody will get and appreciate. Now, I know immediately you're thinking, well, if solbons is going to recommend a costume, I mean, who else will they recommend? Plenty of the elderly. Plenty of the elderly. That's costume number one. What you're going to want to do here is, I mean, it's a very cheap costume. You get a sheet. Right. You can cut the ball beard going. And you just walk around the party. We want those like laurel wreaths.

Yeah, one of those lorl wreaths around your head. And just walk around the party putting the honey on people. Just wait till they're not looking. Just give them a good glob of honey on there and just say like, you know, that'll do it. Or not just honey, because he had many more ideas than honey, Justin. You know, you could just easily, anybody who gets injured or sick or like complains like, I got a splinter the other day. Just grab something at the party and tell them to smear it on there, tell them about maybe using various animal furs, just whatever, like whatever's available, you can really let your imagination run wild with this costume.

Literally anything within reach, just smear it on there. Yes, and that's pretty much what Pliny the Elder did. Now if you want a slight variation of this theme, you might want to dress as Pliny the Elder the beer. Oh, yeah, that's a good option too. Which is an excellent beer. Yeah, we, we, is an excellent beer. It's also why we can't make Pliny the Elder T-shirts,

because they have a trademark on that. But, that's okay, they got their first. So, Pliny the Elder, That is our number one top, it's not a countdown, but is that number one top costume recommendation? No, because then we did it backwards. Yeah, right, because that would be number one. Who else we got to say?

So our next suggestion for costumes is Max Joseph von Pittenkoffer. Do you remember him, Justin? I don't remember him. What was his story? So Max was, can I call him Max? Do you think? Yeah. So he was Bavarian born. He was a doctor. He was a chemist. He eventually became a hygienist. And he liked to study cholera. Okay. That seems like a noble pursuit.

The thing is that Coke of postulate fame had recently already discovered the bacteria that caused cholera. But Max was a skeptic. He wasn't sure that that was the case. He thought that maybe a bacteria spread the disease, but probably it was like situational. It only happened among patients who already, you know, didn't clean themselves very well, didn't wash very often, lived in poor conditions. He didn't think that just anybody could get it.

Was he correct about that? Well, no, he was not corrected at all, but he had to prove it first before he figured out how incorrect he was. And in order to prove it first before we before he figured out how incorrect he was. And in order to prove it, he decided to mix himself up a very special cocktail. Of course listeners, you remember this by this point. We're hitting all the greatest hits here. This is a man who mixed up his patients, his dead patients diary and drank it. That's right. He drank the cholera cocktail. He did become quite sick, proving once and for all that Coke was right, that you just

drink this bacteria and you get pretty sick. Yeah, so that was proven. So costume, what do you want to do? Well, I think he's got one component is you're going to want to go get a frosty. Hit the Wendy's, get the biggest frosty that'll legally sell you. Are you trying to insinuate the frosties have cholera in them?

No, I'm trying to insinuate that if you want to drink something that looks like a duke milkshake and isn't, you don't want to go with a frosty. A frosty will be delicious. It'll be refreshing during the party. And if you put it in a jar labeled perhaps, poop experiment? Poop experiment?

That's the best you've got. How about cholera? How about cholera cocktail? cholera cocktail, but not poop experiment. He probably won a little late. I mean, what would you lay, like if you're gonna have that jar in your house, you have to be so clear about how you label it, right? The Oregon Trail surprise.

Now, as far as what you wear, it doesn't really matter, right, because people are gonna be distracted by the fact that you have a big jar of collar right that you're drinking. I figure you just wear a t-shirt that said max. Yeah. Maybe just a t-shirt that says I'm with stupid and it's pointing up at you because you're drinking collar and water. I don't know. You're from Bavaria, so like, leader-hosen? Leader-hosen, that's perfect. Carry a big beer mug in one hand and a glass of diarrhea in the other.

Here's another prop suggestion for you. Remember Wilhelm Reich? He was the guy who believed in orgone energy, a sexual force that was permeating the entirety of the earth, generated by people's sexual energy. And the only way you could capture this, you may remember, was by sitting in one of his sex boxes. And just big, big box. Hammond, you know, an adult revelation. Well, I mean, you didn't have to. You could just sit in there naked.

That's another option too. This is another one of those prop costumes. Because what you wear is important is I think you just carry around a box. A big one, like a human size box. A human size box, maybe a refrigerator box, if you could score one of those from Bestbuyer, or something, and it's just labeled sex box. Right. And then all you have to do is, and it's a great icebreaker too, if you think score one of those from Best Buy or something. And it's just labeled sex box. Right. And then all you have to do is, and it's a great icebreaker too,

if you think about it. Just walk around the party and invite people to take off all their clothes and sit inside this box and promise them you won't look. But you will. Of course you're gonna look. You're gonna look. Curiosity killed the cat, right?

Halloween doll about. If you want to really complete this look, put a knife in your belt You may remember that he was drummed out of the international Psychoanalytic Association and he camped out at their next conference and walked around with a big knife in his belt They did not let him back in but the sex box is the main thing right you just carry that sex box Sit I got my costume, but what if I want to tell like a spooky story for medical history to kind of creak people out?

We have any of those that we could, uh... Absolutely, we have spooky stories. If you try to out to wig people out at my Halloween affair. Exactly. For that moment at your Halloween party, when everybody sits around the campfire, they toss the handful of sand. Yeah, whatever the heck that was. Like, magic, I don't know where these teens

from are afraid the dark are getting, like exploding powder, but yeah. Yeah, you just toss that on the fire and then you can share with your... It might have been Nondairy Creamer. Does that work? That does work, does it? Yeah, it might have been Nondairy,

just big mithels of Nondairy Creamer. If anyone knows. Yeah, if you're in the Midnight Society, okay, anyone knows. Yeah, if you're in the midnight society, okay, first of all, and if you're in the midnight society and haven't emailed us already, don't be an idiot, just drop us lines who can become best friends. Can we please be in it?

Yeah, just let us in. It's gonna be a deal. We have a great story to share and it's a story of lobotomies. Mm-hmm. So you may remember from our episode or just from like cultural osmosis, what lobotomy is, that it was a procedure where we removed or damaged a part of a person's brain in order

to the idea was to try to fix some sort of psychiatric illness or things that weren't psychiatric illness at all, depending on what was going on and what time it was. What year it was. What year it was. Yeah. It came to America really in 1936. It was practiced widely by a doctor, Walter Freeman. Now, Walter Freeman really was a big fan of this procedure. And he felt like it was unfair that it was bound to the confines of the operating room and the use of anesthesia because you couldn't find those things in most state hospitals. So he invented the

transorbital lobotomy. Now you may remember that this is when you insert an orbital clast which is basically an ice pick. Essentially what it was initially. Yeah, fancy ice pick through the inside corner of the eye along the nasal bone. And you just kind of make some cuts with it. You can switch it around until you've severed all the nerve fibers in there. Dr. Freeman would travel around the country when he was on vacation with his family so that he could perform these at various hospitals. And he would do them in whatever, you know, kinds of conditions he had, even doing them in the hallways, if necessary. And doing both eyes at once, to show off

that he was ambidextrous. Horrifyingly, Dr Freeman, performed 3,439 lobotomies in his career. 2,500 of these with an ice pick, but for the low low price of $25 pop. Tell that story next time. Somebody try to try out something about like a ghost that was on the highway and they died 40 years ago this day. Ah! Then you really freak you out. you really put the Trump card there. Yeah, humans have really come up

with much scarier stuff in real life. I got a costume sin, plague doctor. Ooh, that's a great one, Justin. It's a creepy costume, right? So tell me about how you would dress as a plague doctor. I think the main thing you got in a nail are the masks. They have these masks that basically make you look like, like beaks. Like, things weren't scary enough already with the plague and stuff.

You have these grim spectres just roaming the countryside like retro slender man, just like horrifying beaks like masks. If you really want to get the realism going, put some popery inside and breathe through a straw because that's what they did. They also wore wax coats and carry the cane that they used to examine people and they had glass eyes in their mask that warded off evil. So that is what I would go with if I wanted to go to the plague doctor. That would be a creepy costume I mean freaked out. I still somebody wearing that it is. It's a really creepy costume. It's an excellent costume

I'm kind of regretting that's not what I chose to go as this year. Yeah, and if you really wanted to sell this You should try to treat people at the party for the plague because who doesn't love that right? It's a great idea for the party one and I spray and the best way to treat somebody for the plague is to try to strap a chicken to them. So if you can, I mean, everybody gets a kick out of that game, right? Strap a chicken to the guests. Right. Right. It's like pin the tail of monkeys. You play that, right? Yeah. We all play that. It's not just doctors. I promise. You know another creepy costume. Tell me. Resurrection men. Oh, yeah. I love the resurrection men. Where's that movie? Where's that movie going, brothers? Right. So resurrection men. Oh yeah, I love the resurrection men. Where's that movie? Where's that movie going, brothers? Right. So resurrection men, you may remember, were people who worked as basically grave robbers

because doctors and medical students didn't have enough cadavers to train, you know, students in an anatomy. So the only way that they could get more cada average was to hire people to go steal them late at night. Resurrection men, which was a cool name for an awful practice, a coolest name, could exuma body and under an hour. And they had a very particular way of going about it. It was very much like an ocean's 11 kind of heist description of how they would scoop out the dirt and get in the coffin and get the body out. And there would be secret tunnels to get it into the med school. So what's this costume that look like though?

Well, I mean, I guess the main thing is that you look like you've been out all night digging up bodies. You know, it might be fun is if you had like a straw man kind of thing like a shirt and pants filled with like paper towels or something that you could just like wrap its arms around you. Like you're giving a piggyback ride or something. Exactly. Yeah. But people might confuse you for like a week in at Bernie's costume. So you got to be careful. There are worse things to happen than for people to think that you're celebrating a cinematic achievement that is we can aburge. Also look really cool, because you're a resurrection man.

And it's like the coolest name. Just tell people that all the time. Can you go with like a superhero theme? Like kind of a Superman, see if I can arm on the front. Yeah. I'm a resurrection man. I'm here to dig up dead people.

Yeah, it doesn't really come from the parts apart. No, that is something. You know what, I don't think Superman would have approved of that. How about this? Let me hit you with this Alexis St. Martin. Oh, That's a great costume. Right. If you want to go the gory route, you really want to dress up as early 1800s fur trader and voyager Alexis St. Martin who was accidentally shot in the stomach and had a chronic gastric Fistula, which is basically just a hole in his stomach that opened up to the outside world. Right.

You might remember this episode, the gut hole romance. This could be achieved. What I was thinking was you get two mirrors, two round mirrors that you attach to your front and back. So basically just achieving the look of a whole clean through you. But why, if you were looking in a hole in someone's stomach, why would you see your face reflect that? It's not a great effect, but like, it's the best thing to come up with.

I think that was really bad. That was a really bad suggestion. Yeah, I guess it was like a... That's not how a hole works. It's not how a hole works, it's not how a hole works. I did my best. This isn't even a medical thing. This is how holes work. I just did my best.

What would you do smart Alec? Well, I mean, I guess you would just want a really nasty wound in your stomach. Because it doesn't go all the way through his body. Like, it doesn't go through the back. It just goes into his stomach. Yeah, but visually, I think through his whole body is going to be like the best.

I think you would just want something that look like a window and you could see like food through it, like little like chicken wings or... Well, you're nice. You could get a false stomach with like a hole that people could like put their hands into. Yeah. And maybe you have some spaghetti in there. No, whatever the treats are at the party,

just get some real quick and put them in there. Yeah. So like people know, like this is what you've been eating. This would also be a great couples costume because you know your boyfriend or girlfriend could go as Dr. William Beaumont, the doctor who who experimented on Alexa St. Martin and you can and they could just periodically stick things in the hole in your stomach all evening. Very interesting. Yeah, just make sure you stick together because otherwise nobody's gonna do. They are said, I want to hear another story

about medical history that can scare people with it by hauling party. Well, I'm to hear another story about medical history that can scare people with it by Halloween party. Well, I'm going to tell you a spooky story right after we visit the billing department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled in my car before the mouth. Now, give me my promised spooky story.opy story. Don't keep me waiting. So first of all, let's say that unfortunately you've died. Okay. Oops.

Had a good run. And you want to know how to come back. Yes, absolutely. Well you are not the first one to seek the secret of reanimation life after death. Back in the 1700s, Lazaro Spellanzani was a priest that used to cut the heads off of snails in an attempt to try to make them grow back.

How'd that work out? I mean, it didn't work, but it didn't stop him from trying. He wasn't the only one in history. He would have heard about that if that weren't. Yeah. We probably have learned that, like, we're doing it.

We're probably doing that. Cossily. And everybody that had ever been alive would be alive always. For it. Yeah, right, right. So you would know. It would be really crowded. There was also Johann Dippel, who used to rob graves

and make elixirs out of the corpses that he would find in an attempt to keep himself alive forever. And Luigi Galvani, an Italian doctor and physicist who used to stick electrodes in frog muscles in order to stimulate them and make the legs twitch. But perhaps the most disturbing story of reanimation was Giovanni Aldini, who, I'm sorry, is George Forester. George Forester, right? Yes, who was a murderer who was put to death.

And the place that Giovanni Aldini comes in is that he had paid off one of the executioners to get a hold of poor George Forester's body immediately after death, so that he could attempt to bring him back to life. Now why you want to bring a murderer back to life of all your choices? This is unfair, but I mean like you go where you get it.

Right. You get the bodies where you can. Right, right. So, so Al-Dini stuck electrodes in the head of George Forester in an attempt to re-animate him. He also stuck him in his arms and legs. And he managed to make his face contort and his arm raise and his fist clinch,

but couldn't bring him back to life. So if you see anybody at the party dressed like Frankenstein, just corner them and tell them all of this. And just see how long it takes when I go to the bathroom, just wait the makeup off like, I give up, I'm just a regular Joe. I'm not Frankenstein anymore. I'm very upset. I need some more costumes Justin. How about this said, Finneus Gage?

That's a great one. It easily recognizable right? Yes everybody knows Finneus Gage at this point. I was the last person who didn't and and then I did a saw-bones about it, and now I'm due. So that's everybody. It's all covered. If you don't remember that episode, he was a dude who was working on a rail road. Yep, he was a railroad worker, and the costume was gonna be really easy at first. Your average height and build,

you were in some like workmen's kind of clothing, you know, maybe some overalls, or like a rough workmen's denim shirt or something. You know, some jeans, nothing too complicated to put together. I look like you're from the mid 1800s, so a little older, maybe a little dirty, like rough hands, rough dirty hands. And then key to this costume, I think. Yes, this is the key. Is that what you're gonna want to do is get a three foot seven inch long, 1.25 inch in diameter iron rod that weighs approximately 13.25 pounds

and just have it kind of like sticking out of like the front of your head. So that sounds unpleasant. I know, here's what I'd suggest. You know that hilarious arrow through the head that people wear sometimes? Just take that spray paint at silver and turn it frontways instead of sideways.

Boom, finniest gauged right there. That is a great costume idea. Yeah, that's a really good one. You can use, these other ones have been dumb, but this one, that's pretty good. This is the one. This is the one I feel. I feel really good about it now.

And this picture didn't happen. Let's say you're a woman, for example. I am a woman. For example, Justin, tell me. The bad news is men have kind of kept women from a lot of medical history because they were oppressed. So, or maybe it's just that women haven't done as dumb things as men have done in medical history. That is absolutely a just. Well, like mine was not mean.

Like I was like, you shouldn't get angry with me. I just think women were saying, okay. All right, pump the brakes there. Smirral. Okay. Uh, speaking of typh, Mary, that's one. She was an early 1900's Irish cook who had typhoid and just loved to pass it around. You see, you want to have dirty hands, I would say, and do everything you can to make

people at the party sick. So you want to sneeze on their tortilla chips, for example. I mean, this is great because it's a costume and it's an activity. Sure. So like your goal is that by the end of the party, everybody you came in contact with should be puking or pooping. Come back to it. Get a typhoid before the party.

Oh, that's even better. That's worse, said. Remember we talked about the difference between better and worse. That's worse. That's like way worse. You don't want to do that. Also, you know, you could try, if anybody like notices that you're making everybody sick

and that your hands are dirty, and when we say dirty, we mean like we mean poopy. You get that right, we mean poopy hands. We mean poopy. If anybody, not spoopy. Nope, no, no, no, poopy. If anybody catches you doing this and like accuses you of making people sick,

you can have a carving fork and you can chase them around the party with it. Because she totally did that, right? Yes, she did. And then try hiding in a closet. Because otherwise the people at the party might try to isolate you on an island for the rest of your life.

Because our sharks don't appreciate your whimsical behavior. Speaking of whimsical behavior, said, do we have time for one more story? I think we do. I think one last story for you to share for that moment. Because by now you've already shared the other two stories around the campfire and they're still letting you tell stories. No one has drummed you out of the party. Why not go for spontaneous human combustion? I think of one of the very scary stories because it could happen to anyone. It can't.

There have been around 200 reported cases of people just kind of catching on fire and burning with no external known source. It's similar to the idea, you know how dead whales can fill with methane and and explode only with people. But not documented, right? Like this is fake. Exactly. Well, you have as 200 people who fell asleep smoking, you've been one eight minute because they get a job. Maybe or maybe something scarier. In the 1700s, Countess Cornelia DiBandi was one of the victims of spontaneous human combustion. When she was found lying on the floor between her bed and her window, it looked as if

she had tried to get out of bed and go to the window in the middle of the night, presumably because she was on fire. Right. Right from the exploding. Sure. And everything but three fingers and her lower legs were completely burned. There were candles present, but the wicks were still intact and there was soot everywhere but Nothing was damaged by the soot

They did find a piece of bread on her nightstand. This is my favorite part of the story Which was offered to a dog who refused to eat it? Wow Now this this story is scary But when you talk about the theory behind spontaneous human combustion, I think it gets even scarier. So we think what this is is the wick effect.

So like these people who are supposedly combusting are actually just accidentally catching on fire. And the way that this works is that, so there is probably a candle or something, the clothes catch on fire, and they burn the skin and this creates like an opening in the skin through which we can like catch the fat on fire and it can start melting and it continues to like the fat continues to wick along the clothing and it's kind of spread along the clothing just as wax does with a candle wick

and the person burns as long as there's more fat to fuel it, this is why the feet and the hands might not burn, you know, because there's less fat there. But there's plenty of fat in the human body to basically just burn it all up, even like, even like really skinny people, like we got a lot of fat. So there's plenty of fat if you want, like, you know, to burn somebody. Great. Great.

Anyway, so if that, you know, if that doesn't drive everyone away from the campfire, I don't know what else. Was that the goal? Were we trying to get everybody away? I got one more costume for you said, Robert Liston. Oh, that's a great one. I know fastest knife in the West, who's a Scottish surgeon in the in the early 1800s, who's the first in Europe to use anesthesia, after it had been used in the USA, he amputated a leg in two and a half minutes. He, in one case, accidentally amputated the patient's testicles.

And can you tell about the worst case, or best case, depending on how you look at it? The best work of Robert Liston in his illustrious career was when he was doing an amputation and he accidentally amputated his surgical assistance fingers while he was slicing and dicing. In addition, there was an observer. This was not uncommon at the time for people to like pay to come watch surgeries because they were, I mean, there wasn't a lot of entertainment, I guess. Right. And so he, while he was swishing his knife about, he sliced through the coattails of the

observer who dropped dead from fright. So the patient who was getting the amputation unfortunately died, which was common at the time from gangrene, the assistant whose fingers were sliced off also died later from gangrene. And then the person who was watching also died from fright after his coat was sliced, which means that this was probably the only surgery in history that had a 300% mortality. Unlike a lot of the people on this list, we know just what you're going for image wise. This is a quote, was six foot two and operated in bottle green coat with Wellington boat boots. He sprung across the blood stained boards

upon his suiting sweating strep down patient like a dualist calling time agent, all men time me to students craning with pocket watches from the iron railing galleries. Everyone swore in the first flash of his knife was followed so swiftly by the rasp of saw on bone that sight and sound seemed simultaneous to free both hands. He would clasp the bloody knife between his teeth. These were really the good old days of medicine, right? Like, we never see heroes like Dr. Liston in the OR today as a medical student, I never got to see anyone with that much panache. Panache, that's what we want to work. They're all scrubbed in and sterile

and using proper surgical technique. What a snooze. Nobody puts a knife between their teeth anymore, nobody. That has no place in Halloween and at this point, now they do we, because we're all done. But before we go, we want to say first off, have a happy and safe Halloween. It's one of our favorite holidays. We hope it's one of yours.

Make sure you have a lot of fun. If you do have any kind of like fun medical costumes or just a fun costume, whatever, send it to my citizen. It doesn't have to be medical. Send us a picture. They're tweeted this at sobons or sobonsatmaxbom.org. So we can check that out and let us know if we can like put it on our Facebook or whatever. So because we wouldn't want to do that if it's not

coopsetted with you. Thanks to maximumfund network for having us on. There's a ton of great shows for you. Listen to maximumfund.org. Thanks to taxpayers for letting us use your song Medicines is the intro now to our program. And thanks to you, our beloved listener for being so patient with us and giving

us a half hour of your time. We hope you have a very spooky, spooky and enjoyable Halloween. But until next time, we have an opportunity to talk. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't throw a hole in your head. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported