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

Episode Date: June 28, 2013

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We put mercury on your chancre. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

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. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones and Meryl Tour of Miss Guided Medicine. I am Justin McRoy. Hey and I'm Sydney. Sydney is a medical doctor but of course nothing she says should be taken as literal medical

advice here on our program. No, everything I say may not be true, I may have completely made it up, or I didn't just completely make it up. You do the reverse, should everybody do the reverse her? Do the reverse of no, because what if I say something that's a good idea? That's just don't listen to it. Just don't just consider this, you know, just infotainment. You're in the super infotainment highway. It's interesting and you're glad you listened to it and then don't ever remember it again.

Don't ever think about it. Just remember it as a pleasant, pleasant haze. You were in there for 40 minutes. Sit back, have a drink. Don't do any drugs though. So Sydney and listen to this show. Teach me something. Well, I have a question that's completely unrelated but has been

praying on my mind for some time, Justin. Hit me, Sid. Who's your favorite character from Alice in Wonderland? Um... That's a normal thing that married people need to know about each other. You got, we have these flash cards. They keep, they, they say, keep it fresh flash cards. Keep the conversation going.

Keep the conversation going. Long after you have things to say to each other. You have, my favorite character from Alice in Wonderland is the caterpillar, I guess. Wrong answer. Okay. Try again. The rabbit.

Bear rabbit. That's not, okay, that's not a character from Alice in Wonderland and that's still not the right answer. Okay, the little mouse and the teacups. No, you're really killing it. and that's still not the right answer. Okay, the little mouse and the teacups. No, you're really killing it. I really thought this would work and it's not working anymore. Okay, I guess I'm running out, the madhatter.

There you go, that's it, I knew it. What coincidence, me too. I knew there was a reason we were married. Finally, some common ground after all these years. Your fourth favorite character in Alice in Wonderland is the same as what I'm pretending mine is for this show. Now, Cindy, why are you pretending that that is your favorite character from Alice in Wonderland?

Well, do you know why the hatter was mad? I don't know, I guess because Louis Carol wrote him that way, right? Well, I mean, it's more than that. Why would you, why would, where does that even come from? Where does the idea that, I mean, what is a Hatter? Do you know what a Hatter is? He's a guy who loves hats. He's a guy who makes hats.

He makes hats. He makes hats. Yeah, and when, and he's mad, he's not angry, right? Right, he's crazy. Right, he's crazy. Right, he's crazy. So how did he get that way? I don't know, Sid. Really, after Christ.

Well, don't get so upset. I won't. I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna try to keep it under control. So a lot of people are actually already familiar with this. So the mad hatter was named, so and actually this is just to be completely fair, this may be apocryphal that this is why he was named the madhatter. It's not a hundred percent

clear that this was what he was referencing, but what a lot of people so think is that the madhatter is a reference to the fact that you used to use mercuric nitrate in the process of fulting a hat. And a lot of people who made hat suffered from chronic mercury poisoning, which could have neurological effects and psychiatric effects on the patient. Mercury. Now, here's what I know about mercury. Uh-huh. Is that I saw it on Mr. Wizard once, and they played with it. And what did they played with it.

And what did they do with it? It kind of just jiggled around, because it was like a liquid, it was like T2. It was like Terminator 2. It's like a liquid metal. And they played with it? I mean, I, if memory serves, and I guess this was dangerous in our respect, but like if memory serves, they were like picking up with their hands

and playing with it Well, it's actually it depending on what formats and mercury is not actually quite as dangerous as you might assume But let's let's go into what what does Justin know about mercury to begin with I literally just gave you everything I have For starters Mercury has an atomic number and it is Any number that's on the periodic table and I'm going to let you guess it Number by number until you get it right. Okay, so just start and when you get there We'll stop in thrilling thrilling podcast audio. Let me start with

Okay, it's 80 that was boring. We're not gonna talk about anymore. I was gonna get 80 that was my Okay, it's 80 that was boring. We're not gonna talk about anymore. I was gonna get a baby. That was my Mercury Mercury is actually the symbol for mercury on the Peer Act tables hg because it comes from the Latin Hydrarter room, okay, which is liquid silver. It also our Gentum vibam living silver because mercury looks like it's alive Which is what makes it so interesting. And it has fascinated chemists and alchemists and scientists and physicians and all throughout

history. It is the only metal that's liquid at room temperature. Did you know that? I did not know that. It's so dense, it can float lead. Whoa. Yeah. Thanks for pretending to be impressed.

I am impressed. I wish I had that much mercury that I could see some lead fluid in it. I would like to do that on the podcast. As you'll learn later than you might, then you might get the shake. So be glad you don't. Okay. So the thing about mercury that made people so fascinated

was one that it's appearance. You've probably seen it at some point. It's referred to as quick silver sometimes. That's what people mean when they say quick silver. Yeah, mercury because it's silver and shiny and it's liquid and it looks cool and yes it looks like T2. The second terminator for those of you who aren't familiar. And the thing about it is that so do you remember just in about atoms? There's like a little bundle of protons and neutrons in the middle, like a bunch of grapes in the middle. There's space. There's space in there. And there's space in space. And then there's stuff floating around on the outside called

electrons. Correct. Can I remember that? Yeah, I got it. Okay, well the thing about mercury is it's got these two electrons floating around on the outside of it that bond really easily with other metals. So you can make a malgums with it. You know what's in a malgums? You know, it's just two things mixed together, two metals mixed together. Oh, okay, do it. Yeah, so the thing about it is that you can use, the reason that mercury became so important is you can use it to collect precious metals. Oh how? So you take like a metal ore, so like a gold ore or a silver ore, which is

like the raw material that contains gold or silver. Okay. And then you mix it with mercury and mercury will bind to just the precious metal part. So then you just have this amalgam of gold and mercury will bind to just the precious metal part. So then you just have this amalgam of gold and mercury, or silver and mercury, or whatever. That's crazy. And then you can heat it up, the mercury evaporates off, and you've got pure gold or pure silver. That's fantastic. Yeah.

So it became very important for a long time in like Spain, and Italy, and Peru, you would mine cinnabar, which is the like raw elemental form of mercury, and you would take it and send it over to the new world and make these golden silver amalgams in the new world and then send that back over just a purified precious metals. That sounds very useful. Yeah, so anyway, for Egyptian, Kimis, Roman, medieval, Arabian, European, they were all using mercury in all these different experiments. They actually thought because it bonded so well with other things that it was the mercury

itself that might be able to change form. So it was very important in alchemy. They were trying to use mercury to make gold and silver as opposed to just using it to get gold and silver. They were trying to use it to make gold and silver. Now Cindy, I'm hearing a lot of information about Mercury and God knows I appreciate anything I can do about any really any relevant information about any topic that I can take into the world

and use maybe on Jeopardy here or something like that. But this is this shows about medicine. Right. So what what what are like tell me about some of the applications for for Mercury outside of just weird old wizards. The thing about Mercury is that any material like that, that has so many uses kind of takes on a magical quality among scientists, especially before we really understood

the way the world worked. The most basic application of this is actually mercury amalgams that were used for dental fillings. Oh, that's not good. So on a very basic level, the fact that mercury made all these amalgams, made people think, hey, you could, you know, use it with other substances and stick it in teeth. I guess. And so we used to do that. That's not really. That sounds unless than healthy. Yeah. Less than ideal.

Less than ideal. And before we get into the actual ways that we used mercury itself as a treatment, I think the most widespread use of mercury in medicine you're probably very familiar with. Loub. Did you just say Loub? Loub. Ah, Loub. Did you just say Loub? Loub, yes, Loub.

What kind of mercury are you using? What kind of Loub are you using? Liquid metal. Loub. No. For robots, robot sex Loub. No honey, no. Possibly. No, thermometers.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't see, you don't see those much anymore so it didn't occur to me. I prefer the digital kind It's easier for reckless use We'll leave that be so in in 1714 Fahrenheit And then the thermometer the mercury thermometer. There's actually a guy named Fahrenheit. Yeah Joe Fahrenheit Joe Fahrenheit. Joe Fahrenheit. Douglas Fahrenheit.

Joe, old Joe Fahrenheit. I don't know. Crazy Joe Fahrenheit. He's always putting mercury in glass tubes. He says one day's going to come to something. No, it's believing, but who the hell knows? I don't know. He seems to have it going on.

Seems to have figured it out. Okay, so other, so we, I wanted to get across to you the idea that mercury was this important substance. And especially in traditional Chinese medicine is where you see a lot of mercury used as an actual treatment. It was thought in like second century China that you could actually ingest mercury

and it would make you live longer. Oh. So very small amounts of elemental mercury you would just eat. Now I'm assuming this goes in with the, of elemental mercury you would just, you know, eat. Now I'm assuming this goes in with the, something that's becoming, I would say a common theme here in a saw bones is people just fucking guessing, just guessing.

Yeah. Just making it up and doing a thing and hoping it didn't kill people except yes it did. Well, and I think what you see is that something seems really cool and interesting, like mercury, like you know, quicksulver, and it seems like it might have magical properties. And if you just eat elemental mercury or the cinnabar form of mercury, it actually, in small amounts, is probably not going to cause you much problem. I just, I mean, if you're, well, no, I'm not, don't do it.

But the people who used it traditionally probably didn't have a lot of problems from it. And you know, placebo effect, they thought, who knows, you know, maybe, maybe it was the mercury. Why not? Aristotle actually thought you should use it was the mercury. Why not? Aristotle actually thought you should use it for skin disorders. So at least he wasn't eating it. He was saying just, you know, rub it all over you. There was also in the four century, it was believed that you could smear it on your feet and you could walk on water. You think you'd think that that probably was just spelled pretty quickly. When you did, I made it into a book the first time.

So it's like, I'm just going to give it a shot. You could you could smear it over your door to ward off thieves. That's a little bit harder to quantify, I guess, because if you if the first time a thief reached it is like, oh, what is this? Of course. If you mix it with raspberry juice, then you can give it to old dudes, and it's better than Viagro. Is that true, or is that some more,

again, something they thought? They also thought it was an Aphrodisiac for women. Okay, but no, I'm assuming. I, well, you wanna, hey, hey, hey. Why don't we find out, big guy? Hey. It could also be used as a contraceptive, which seems pretty handy that it was an affidiziac and a contraceptive.

So there you go. It's got it's an only one. Get her in the mood with no worries. Um, and I think like the music of young Elvis and the music of old Elvis, I think it works. Conveniently, affidiziac contraceptive, Viagra replacement, early Viagra, and in the 15th century in Europe, we learned that it was a treatment for syphilis. When you say learned, you're saying, I mean, still, still just making it up, right? Well, if you apply enough mercury to a syphilis shanker, you probably are going to kill something

there. And actually, that was the most widespread medical use for mercury. Probably of all of them was as a topical treatment for syphilis. And you have to understand, at that time in Europe, everybody had syphilis. And it's a...

The dreamy thing would be alive. This thought was, hey, let's just try everything. Something's gotta work. I'll put everything on my I'm gonna go on that. Liquid metal? Okay. Hey.

I'll Johnny. I'll Johnny Tramay, my penis. Hey, this is a clean show. So it was very popular to treatment for syphilis for a while. That was probably, again, that was the most widespread medical use. It's just, no. Did it work?

Again, I don't know, probably not. But, you know, the thing with syphilis is that the initial sore, the initial shanker, does go away. So if you put mercury on it, it would go away, but it probably had nothing to do with the mercury. The problem with mercury is that, obviously, it's also a poison. It mainly has effects on the central nervous system, especially if it's an organic form.

There are different forms of mercury, which would be boring to get into, but certain forms if ingested can definitely be toxic. They can cause chronic effects. They can affect your thyroid, your kidneys, definitely a central nervous system. That's where in Danbury, Connecticut There used to be a hat factory and that's where if you've ever heard the term the Danbury shakes You haven't no 80. Sorry anyway, it was because if you worked in this hat factory, you all had a trimmer Because of the central nervous effects of of mercury. God the price we've paid for hats

Actually Chinese Emperor Shen Nung, the father of Chinese medicine, he believed in a potion of powdered jade and Mercury to promote eternal life. Wow, that sounds really bad for you. Yeah, he died from Mercury poisoning into NBC. Oh no. Oh, no.

Oh, I trusted you. Nice to meet you. I've got a big thing about plants.. I think it's also important to know, and it's probably in the less toxic side of mercury. You know, there were a lot of older religious traditions and medical traditions like the Vedic religion and the Ayurvedic medicine that's the kind of the root of Hinduism. They would use mercury just in the form of like beads and rings and bracelets and you know, to wear and rub on your skin and hold against you as kind of an herbal, it's not even an herbal medicine, but you know, a religious-based medical treatment, like faith healing and that kind

of thing, which isn't, I know that outside of the bounds of what we consider medicine, but at the time that's a very valid cure for something. So you've got tuberculosis, you've got epilepsy, you know, you have a stroke here where this mercury ring and... Yeah, why not? See how things shake out? Give it a try. What's the worst that can happen?

There's a whole rassa-shastra, which is in the vetich religion. It's the science of mercury. And it basically combines mercury with herbal medicine, so different herbs with small amounts of mercury to treat people as well. And that's a whole medical, you know, that's a whole medical tradition based on mercury. I said to this ever, this ever like kind of catch on as a medical, and a slightly more,

you know, official medical application. It did. I think the most interesting medical history when it comes to mercury is in the 19th century, it became popular in the young United States. Ah, that's a country with wine, which I'm well acquainted. There were pills that were called blue mass, and they were little blue pills, and they actually, they recreated this recipe

many, many years later in recent times to see what exactly was in blue mass And it was a it was a combination of mercury, licorice, root, rose water, honey, sugar and dead rose petals So it sounds like basically everything is flavoring right except for the Moose of the mercury, right? Well, and then and we could get into hey That could be a whole show to itself, the medical properties of honey. That's a whole thing to talk about. But you basically put them all together with a mortar and pestle, grind them all up together, and then make them into these tiny little grayish blue pellets.

And they prescribed them for everything. Again, probably not with any basis, there was no evidence that this worked, but they gave them for two things. If you were constipated, if you needed help getting pregnant, if you had consumption, you know, anything, anything you would give it for. Probably talk about this at some point. And maybe, you know, at what point do we stop just making it up? I mean, I kind of feel like by mid 1800s, by the middle of the 19th century, we should have been basing at least something in reality.

There's not, well, I mean, to a degree, as much as terrifying as the sounds were still guessing about oh good good No, but the the idea We're running into that time period about now where I'm talking about in the 1860s and they actually moving on past that Into the late 1800s. We're really starting to think about Evidence-based medicine the idea that you have to use the scientific method, take a hypothesis, test it, see if it works, collect objective data.

We're starting to move into that time period. But we're just, as we go into the 1900s and I'd have to check my old books to make sure I'm not wrong here. But I think we're just heading into the era of the germ theory of disease, you know, that germs caused illness and not, you know. Evil, sin and stuff. Well, and we've, you know, it took us a while to get out of the whole humors era, and it's, I mean, antibiotics weren't ill around until the 1940s.

I think about what we did before that. Just guessed, apparently. what we did before that. Just guessed apparently, just made stuff up. Well, so, well, we did, and we used something worked once, and we hammered on it until we figured out that it was a fluke, and then we tried something else, because we didn't know what we were doing. And I mean, we really, it took a while for people to start saying,

hey, maybe we should have like a regimented way of doing stuff, and not just kind of guess. There's a whole great thing that I, a whole great book I found, it was a pamphlet that went out weekly back in the, I think it was in the 1800s in Europe that was called Quackerie and No Strums. And it was just to let people know about treatments that they were finding out were just pure quackery and different doctors who were doing things that were totally off the reservation.

And it's interesting because that was probably when people first started recognizing that, hey, there are facts in medicine, there are things that work. And it's a science and it's not just, you know, guesswork or faith or, you know, take all the fun out of it. Do you think you're not for the patients? You're a doctor. Do you think you would have liked being a doctor when you were just like guessing at

stuff or do you like having all the answers? Well, let's first of all, I do not have all the answers. So I'm the answer. And I imagine it would be awfully anxiety-provoking, because you never know what you're doing. Although nobody seemed to care at the time, they just kept doing it. Yeah.

These little, for instance, these little blue pills that they were giving people, blue mass, were delivering about 9,000 times the amount of mercury that is deemed safe for people in each pill and Or no, not in each pill in a daily dose, which was usually one or two pills three times a day. Okay, so maybe one pill. Yeah No, okay one or one or two balls three times a day. Yeah 9,000 times the amount of mercury that is safe for people to consume Now what's what's interesting about this is one of our most famous historical figures,

took Blue Mass. Leonardo da Vinci. No. Charles Nelson Riley. No. Come on. He's one of your favorites. Favorite what?

Favorite, give me a category. Favorite what? give me category favorite what favorite president? Warren G. Harding These are funny. It's president. You see that's not what I said. I didn't say our funniest. I said your favorite Oh, I didn't even hear our best necessarily. I just said your favorite. Okay. My favorite is Lincoln It's kind of boring answer, but he's my favorite. He's awesome. I guess maybe one of our best. Maybe one. Probably up there. Probably up there, right? He's on that mountain. Yeah. I don't know anything about history. He's not like McKinley. It's a nice to let him do it twice. Abraham Lincoln was prescribed

described blue mass at the time for depression. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you have a hard road. Uh-huh. And it actually probably made things worse for him. How so? Because it has a lot of psychiatric effects. And it could have made him moody and very volatile and have angry outbursts in one of the Lincoln Douglas debates. He kind of

flipped out and yelled at him and the thought was that he was probably, it was probably because of the Mercury he was taking. Wow. He stopped taking them because he was worried that they were having some kind of negative effect on him and he stopped before the Civil War started and a lot of historians believe that perhaps if he had not stopped taking them he would not have been the steady, you know, calm hand that he was at the wheel during the time of a... Or maybe he would have wrapped it up. Our country's great struggle. Maybe he would have wrapped it up faster.

Maybe I'd be like, I'm so angry when Nukum. Well. Then Nukum all. I don't think we had new stuff. We had a newcom back to the Stone Age. Get ready for the Lincoln bomb, I'm gonna drop it. Cause I'm angry for the mercury. Now, that's, okay, so that's 1860s. And obviously, if Lincoln wise up,

I'm assuming the rest of the nation like read about it in people and they were like, oh well, I'm not gonna take this anymore if Lincoln read about it in people and they were like, oh well I'm not gonna take this anymore if Lincoln's not well I don't think Lincoln wanted anybody to know that he was like popping these little pills to calm himself down These are mince They're all there's the peppermint They're mintos

They're horned candies fresh maker the mintos candies They're out toys. I just they're curiously strong. They're so strong. I'm angry. Oh, I'm angry. You would think that that would have been the end of it, but actually, we continue to use Mercuricrone. You familiar with Mercuricrone? Only from the brief mention of it in the hip musical, Rhett. I knew you were going to say Rhett. Sorry, it's the only musical rhythm. I knew you were gonna say rent. Sorry, it's the only reference. It was my only reference too. We used to use it as a topical antiseptic.

Oh. Yeah. So, merbromine, which is a mercury thing. And it was actually okay. It probably was not the safest thing to use simply because once you're giving something, once you're selling something over the counter, you tell people use a little dab of it

and who knows how much they actually use. No, is it still around? No, in 1998, they banned it. Thanks, thanks, people. In the US anyway. Okay. There's still the interesting thing is that as of 2011, and I didn't find anything about now, I'm sure it probably hasn't changed or else it would have been notable. You still can sell liquid mercury in the US if you want to.

Just sell it to people. But it's not, I mean, it's not as far as like poisons go. It's not super like, you know what I mean? Is it really dangerous in terms of toxicity? There are forms of mercury that are. Mercury gas that can be released if the liquid mercury is heated up and inhaled. That can be quite deadly. Okay.

And then again, there are forms of organic mercury, mercury combined with carbon, different forms of that. I don't, we're getting organic chemistry there, but the point is that can be absolutely deadly with one single exposure. There was actually one, there was a scientist, I wish I'd written down her name, who was killed in recent times.

It's only been with them the last few years, and it was from, she was exposed to working with, she was working with Mercury and organic forms in her lab. She was exposed to working with, she was working with Mercury and Organic Forms in her lab. She was exposed to it through a tiny little hole in her glove. Six months later, she died, and it was from Mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning can be a chronic thing, too. It's not necessarily like cyanide or something

we think about somebody ingest and it's gone. They deteriorate slowly over a period of time. But the thing with organic mercury is that you can't get it out of you. You know other mercurys there might be some ways to let it run it, you know kind of run its course, get through your system, but organic mercury kind of binds to you, becomes part of you. It's an easy way to think about it. But it's still used and a lot of the religious traditions that kind of when we think about, so because of the slave trade, there were a lot of new religions that formed

in like the Caribbean region in South America and the Creole region, and these kind of, these new religious traditions all used mercury. And to this day, there are practitioners, I don't know if I would call them physicians or spiritual leaders or practitioners who still prescribe this. And you can buy mercury capsules for 10 gram mercury capsule for anywhere from two to 10 dollars depending on where you buy them.

Can I get an Amazon? Probably. I didn't look, but probably. And they tell them to, you can take it for indigestion or you can use it to ward off evil spirits. I mean, it's for everything in between. And there are even some people who give themselves injections of mercury. And obviously, this is not recommended because, you know, the best case scenario is what you're taking is not going to do anything to you. You're taking such a small amount

that it won't actually kill you. The worst case scenario is you take enough that, you know, it's deadly. Now, Sydney, I wanna put Mercury to the treponation test. To what extent are you and your medical cohorts trying to keep Mercury from us to come people because you're afraid it will make you obsolete. As always, it is a vast conspiracy

and we are desperately trying to keep real medicine from people so that we will maintain our jobs and our high standard of living. So there you have it. Straight from the doctors valve. That's a lie, don't use mercury. Don't use mercury. Don't use mercury.

It's probably not a good idea. It's interesting, it's cool looking. Don't use mercury. Don't use mercury. It's probably not a good idea. It's interesting. It's cool looking Fun, you know, unless you're a terminator. I would I'd stay away from it. So don't use mercury, but do use your favorite podcast subscription service to listen to our show Saw bones We certainly appreciate you taking the time to listen to us this week. We'll be back of course next week

with another episode for you to enjoy. You can find our show on iTunes or on Twitter or on Facebook maybe, maybe we have Facebook page. Well, by the time this goes out, we better have a Facebook page. We're not, you're nobody without Facebook page. You're not allowed to say you have a Facebook page until you have one I think legally right. That's the long. Is that a thing? That's the long. I don't know. But we sure appreciate you you listen to us. You can actually follow us individually on Twitter. My lovely wife

is at Sydney McRoy as wide D in E E MCO-Y. And Justin is at Justin McElroy, but you already knew that, that's why you're listening. Aw, she also. You're so famous. Make sure you join us next week. And as always, don't go home. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture

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