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

Episode Date: September 24, 2016

If you've paid even passing attention to the American presidential race, you've probably heard a lot of talk about pneumonia recently. This week, Dr. Sydnee and Justin try to provide some historical perspective. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books! One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on 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 Bowen's Ameeratel Tour of Miss Guided Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Hey, Sydney, how you doing? Well, I'm fine. Good, I'm glad to hear it. I'm a little worn out, you know, from the Greek festival and everything.

Yeah, we would say Greek festival. It was fun, but man, oh man, is an exhausting time. It was hot. It was hot, too. There's all lines. Long lines for food. This is not related. This is not related at all. It's just you asked how I was.

And they did have Baccholvas Sundays, which were interesting and good. And interesting and good. Interesting and good. Interesting. It comes there with you from Sydney. We, I don't know if you all noticed, but about a couple weeks weeks back there, pneumonia was

in the news. It was like last week, kind of. Like last week, gosh. It wasn't that long ago. I'm sorry. I'm still shooting this show and I've lost all touch with reality, but I have heard that pneumonia was in the news recently. That's right.

One of our political candidates, one of our presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton committed the horrible sin of getting sick, getting the money. Obviously, if you're going to run for a public office, you can never get sick. Ever. Ever. Uh, certainly not pneumonia, which it seems like a lot of people are not quite clear on. Yeah, it's one of those that, you know what, I'll be completely honest. I think even, like I realize that I don't have a great understanding of what pneumonia is. And judging by the reaction, it last week, a lot of other people don't either.

So we thought we'd talk about it. So we could all have a real good understanding of what pneumonia is. And I think it's a good, not just because it was in the news, but it's a good thing to talk about because chances are You either know someone or personally have had pneumonia in your life or will someday. It's really common I just and I've had pneumonia. Did you know that? Oh gosh Sydney? How could you reveal something like this to me on air?

I'll never be president So we're how far back to this go Is this one we've recognized fairly recently? No, not at all. But first of all, let me thank a few people, Amy, Starlin, Krista for all recommending this topic. And again, I know a lot of people have also tweeted about it and Facebook does about it as well, because it was in the news.

So thank you all. I hope that this helps. We have... Also, I should mention real quick, in case you're worried if you've had a bellyful political nonsense that this is not what this episode is about is just a convenient place to hang hang that yeah no this episode's about pneumonia I would I would not call healthy political discourse nonsense no I don't think yeah but it is not the show for it I'm not you've been getting healthy political discourse please let me know where you're scooping that up

because it's not in abundance. You should talk to your wife more. Oh, okay. Whoa. Pull your mind. Okay, I'll give you $5 to talk about pneumonia. Okay. Well, I have a lot of things about it.

So here we go for it. Hypocrity's wrote about pneumonia. So we have known about it a long time, but it was also mentioned when Hippocrates wrote about it that it has been written about by the ancients. So whoever Hippocrates considered the ancients We're also writing about pneumonia. Yeah, oh, he thought we're very yes the ancients to him Which he would be ancient to so our grand ancients grand ancients So it's been around a really long time,

and I would imagine that that's because as long as there have been lungs, which is the organ that we're focusing on here, and as long as there have been bacteria or viruses or fungi, there has been pneumonia. The two would meet, it was inevitable, and so there will be lung infections. So to start with, that's the most important thing to know. That is what pneumonia is.

It's a lung infection. Lung infection. Yes. I think for some reason I thought which is like fluid in the lungs, but it's not just that, right? No, no, no. Nomonia references some sort of infectious process in the lungs.

There could be fluid involved. Okay, but that's not necessarily true. And it can be caused by a lot of different organisms. When we say pneumonia, we just mean you have a lung infection. It could be a bacteria, it could be a virus. Like I said, it could be a fungus. A lot of different things can cause lung infections. pneumonia just means there's an infection of your lung. Now, I will say though, Justin, the idea that pneumonia references fluid in the lungs,

you're not alone in that belief. Okay. That is part of the reason when you start reading about the history of pneumonia and how we used to treat it, it gets really difficult because terms got really confusing. As you can imagine, we didn't know when someone, we didn't know what infection was, so we certainly didn't understand what, like what the cause of pneumonia was. So a lot of stuff got mixed in together. For instance, if you had fluid in your lungs, we may have called it pneumonia. A long time ago. Right, a long time ago.

So when you say that, there's lots of different words that might have been used and they actually meant pneumonia. So when you say I'm not alone in my belief that it was fluid and long, it's me and some old dudes from a billion years ago who didn't have access to any scientific tools was over. Right, exactly. Got it. So you're in great company.

Absolutely. I mean, Hippocrates. Yeah, I mean, it's just me and Hippocrates. That's true. That's true. There were words that you will find pop up throughout writings, like parinamonia or parinamony or pluresis. All of these things may have been referencing pneumonia. They may have been referencing pleuracy, like an inflammation of the lungs or a pleural

effusion, like fluid in the lungs. Sometimes it could even be asthma. Asma was kind of a catch all term for a lot of different lung disorders. So it may mean asthma, it may mean pneumonia. If they say pneumonia, they may mean asthma. So all of this would have been mixed in together. So to differentiate how exactly they treated pneumonia

versus pleuracy or some other lung problem, would get really tricky. One suggestion that hypocritees had is that if they were still alive, because most of the time this was more of an academic debate afterwards, like what do you think they had? Well, because they didn't have the tools, right? Right, and well, and because pneumonia back this long ago

would have been very, very serious and often fatal. So a lot of the times this was more of like an academic debate as opposed to any practical application. But if they were still alive, you could try to diagnose them by shaking them. And you just hear they sloshed? If you heard pus rattling around in their lungs, then you thought maybe That was pneumonia that they were about to die from because you really didn't It was really more like a topic of conversation for the funeral. Yeah, right as opposed to actually, you know, changing Topic of conversation really like you could probably do better and there were a lot of autopsies back then

So you wouldn't have you didn didn't, we didn't really know. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, had devil eggs back then, which I don't know, I'm not an authority on devil eggs or the foods of ancient Greece. Fair enough. If you had fever, pain in your side, and your sputum was blonde and frothy, then that was usually a bad sign. They knew that. Yeah.

But it really didn't matter what you had because they were gonna treat it all the same way. Hypocrity's favorite treatment for everything was rest, exercise, a healthy diet, plenty of sleep, and good hygiene. I mean, he's not wrong a lot of the time. Sure. It does not fix pneumonia. Well, maybe.

Maybe? Maybe. Maybe. We'll get into other different kinds of pneumonia and sometimes there's not much to do, but wait for it to get better. Okay. Which is why, like, not everybody died of pneumonia always. Because so he was exercised?

No, no. Some people just got better. Oh, fair. But if that wasn't working, some things that you would have tried again for just anything that may have been thought to be pneumonia or any other lung problem, bleeding of course. Sure. Obviously, if there's anything wrong with you, let's just cut you open and let's blood out and see if that fixes it.

That's the best historical treatment. If you have a fever, an animal was thought to be particularly helpful. Sure. That's a real natural choice. Right. Because you've already gotten pneumonia. Why not also give you an animal? Let's see where else we can get liquid.

Yeah, great. Just, you know, and a lot of this too, we go back to the humors. We're trying to balance out your four humors. So that's why we would, if you think about why were they bleeding people and making people poop and puke and all that. That's cause there's something in there that we, yeah. Yes, let's just balance the humors. If there was pain in your chest, they thought like a hot water bottle, or a sponge of hot water, or a lot of different things

would be applied to the chest that were thought to be warming to the chest, like something with linseed in it. Something to warm the chest was thought to be good for pneumonia, because pneumonia was thought something cold. There's some kind of a cold. There's some kind of a cold treatment, then.

Exactly. Well, symptomatic, but also we'd never understood we didn't we had no idea it was happening inside the chest. So maybe it fixes it. A symptom getting better would have been see-and-its as the disease getting better. True. If you think about it. There were all kinds of things like honey and pinefruit that were suggested, you know, different different kind of herbal remedies. There was something called oxymel we've talked about before.

Do you remember that? It was in our vinegar episode, honey and vinegar. Right, you would put something called southern wood and the oxymel makes that together and give that to somebody. There was a specific bitter resin called apaponics. Well, no, what is that? It's just a kind of plant resin that was very bitter, had a garlicky taste.

You would mix that with some oxymal, so that was some honey and vinegar. This is a killer dressing so far. These are, these would all be tasty on salads or on your chest, should you have pneumonia? Also, I'm pretty sure I said that when we talked about oxymal initially, and if so, forgive me.

I'm sorry. That's okay. so, forgive me. I'm sorry. That's okay. I'll forgive you. I don't have the listeners. They're all out of you. That's a whole other thing. He also noted that if you, and these are a lot of these come from hypocrites

and from his Greek contemporaries, that you could tell if things weren't going well if the patient stopped peeing, that that was a bad sign. Yeah. If they were peeing a lot, that was a good sign. Okay, I mean, I don't know what you're doing with that information,

but there you go. If they may stop peeing, that's probably a bad sign. Yes, no, that's true, that's true. And a lot of this is kinda straight, because you also noted like, by the way, you're probably gonna die in like seven days. So if you don't die in seven days, you're probably through the woods.

If you, I mean, if you do like, we're all done here. Right, that's, which is a weird position. Like, it makes me think that for a while, physicians were more just like predictors of death as opposed to people who actually did anything to stave it all. Yeah, they're just running the numbers. There's a weird sort of logic thing in there. I've like if I wait long enough, I will have fixed you or

you won't be my problem anymore. So it's really an illusionary. And there was a lot of debate at this point because pneumonia was seen as such a serious disease. If someone had it, should you even try all these things. There was even a recognition back then of some sense of palliative care, meaning things to just make the patient more comfortable. Sometimes that was the way to go was like, listen, we know we're not going to be able to do anything for this. So just like, you know, give them some opium. Once we had that, that was wine. That was that was off unrecommended wine. We're added to the list of cures. Galen was one of the first

ones to distinguish pneumonia from pleuracy to actually start to kind of tease out these different long problems. We'll just like an infection versus an inflammation kind of thing. But it didn't really matter because he just said you do the same thing that hypocrite said. Man, it must have been good on them. It's differentiating infection from inflammation those times must have been quite the fee. Specifically infection along tissue versus inflammation of the plural lining, like kind of the lining of the lungs. That would be very hard to tease out. And a lot of this was interesting.

Especially when you don't even understand when infection is. Yeah, but a lot of this, it's interesting too because he was able to tease that out. And that was without any kind of obviously imaging to do it. Sure. So just based on physical exam kind of findings. But again, I don't know why these things back then.

There was no attempt to try to treat it differently. In the 1100s, we started to really hone in on the symptoms that were specific to pneumonia. So we move past something's going on in your chest-stool region. Yeah, this zone right here. This chest zone, something bad is happening. I don't know, put a leach on it.

We start to say, look, if they're coughing, if they're breathing fast, if they're short of breath, this probably means that they have pneumonia. But still, it was more of like a, so call the coroner. Yeah, or don't, it's hard to say. If it's been a week. This isn't my problem, it's what I'm saying. It's interesting because that week,

that seven day cut off, I wonder if that has to do with the fact that, and I'll tell patients this a lot, a lot of viruses, after a week, you can tell that it was a viral illness, because in the beginning, the symptoms are very similar. But after about a week, you're probably going to be getting better. Right.

So like if it's a virus, it's seven to 10 days is what we'll tell people. Most viruses last about that long. So after seven days, you should say, yeah, feel a little better. Maybe not 100%. But yeah, I feel a little better than yesterday. A bacterial illness, that's not necessarily true for. After seven days, you may feel just as bad or even worse. So that's kind of a loose cutoff if you're trying to figure out what might be causing a problem.

So I wonder if that's where that seven days came from. As if it was viral after seven days, your patient probably looks like they're not going to die. Yeah. This was bacterial, maybe not. Back in the 1400s, a lot of pneumonia would have been just blamed on like evil things. Sure. Or like bad behavior.

Yeah, things always get better. Just when we start to start climbing back. There were like evil spirits in the air that you breathe in. Or like bad smells. Remember we've talked about this before the idea that like bad smells or bad things in the air you can breathe in and those make you sick. Capping would have been a popular treatment

at this point, which we've talked about before. Like applying suction in a cup. That great effective treatment. That was very popular at this time. Again, we're still kind of basing it on like a humoral like move the humors around kind of but nowadays it's not that anymore. Nowadays it's scientific. Yeah, no nowadays. It's because it helps you swim fast. Yeah. Back then it was to pull the pus out of your chest or something. Yeah, so it didn't work back to the bed It was now no Mustard plaster's became common at this point which would just be like mustard seeds

Like kind of smashed inside some sort of like a dressing material and then put on your chest You wait mustard seed smash inside dressing No, like I don't mean it. I don't mean like dressing like on a salad. I mean like a wound dressing like something that you would put on you know like Sure, so my fabric some sort of mustard. Oh, not dressing and then you're just good to go And then you're good and then you need some chicken tenders Oh, no, you're salad broke back. I get our bees later. Yeah, what no, ew I really like their honey mustard.

I've not sampled it. What are we doing? I don't want to put it on my chest. More science. Up until the 1600s, a lot of deaths that were blamed on something like plague were probably actually pneumonia because one fact about pneumonia we didn't talk about

is that who gets pneumonia will anyone can. But the people who are at the biggest risk for it are either- Elderlier kids. Yes, exactly, which is true for a lot of different illnesses. But also if you have any kind of chronic illness, like lung problems or heart problems, or anything that would affect your immune system,

and then also if you've just had some sort of illness, you're at greater risk for pneumonia. So if you just were recovering from the plague and you've been super sick, you may be at risk're at greater risk for pneumonia. So if you just were recovering from the plague and you've been super sick, you may be at risk at that point to get pneumonia. Same thing with the flu that can happen after influenza, epidemics throughout history. We probably had a lot more pneumonia. Anything that would have made you sick, you would have been more likely to get pneumonia afterwards. So also after surgery, but we weren't doing surgeries back then. We're right to that. But it really didn't matter what it was. I mean, the fact that they

thought it was plague, well, whatever, they were just bleeding everybody. Yeah. They're treated very similar. Yeah. They could have named it anything. Yeah. And you're going to get a leech on your chest one way or another. So Well, I always time discussing it. Exactly. Well, okay, Sid, so we're, I feel, I feel a breakthrough coming. I feel like we're getting close to maybe understanding something at all about pneumonia.

So hit me. There's a light at the end of this long tunnel, but first we got to head to the billing department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you lift my car before the mouth. The medicines that ask you let my God for the mouth. So it said, let's fix pneumonia together. We're almost there.

So we have moved on to the 1700s. Like I said, we are somewhat better distinguishing pneumonia from other long problems, but we're not necessarily better at treating it with bleeding still being the mainstay. Now, the one thing that was interestingly added in the 1700s was called Huxum's Tincture. This was by Dr. John Huxum. And this was a mixture of the Sincona bark, which you talked about before. Oh, yeah. Use it to apply nine. Yeah, because it's got a client nine in it.

So thought process, it's good for other things. Maybe this is medicine. Is this medicine? Is this medicine? This is medicine. It was back in the time where like this worked for a fever. So this works for fevers, maybe. Maybe.

It also contained bitter orange peel, some serpentary root, saffron, and it was all mixed in some sort of spirit, of course. Natch. Obviously. Always got to have an effect of some sort. And I mean, I think that's when you look at a lot of these kind of old medicines,

like things like a guy's name, Tinkshire, it could have been a Gowls name as well. Just often was a guy's name, Tinkshire. It could have been a gals name as well. Just often was a guy's name. Their Tinkshire, their tonic or their whatever. It usually was mixed in whiskey or rum or like that. Sure, because it was in thought here or having an effect. Exactly. I feel all warm inside. This was used for years, along with bleeding. We were still bleeding people, but this, you would also say, but maybe go get some Huxham's tincture.

I wonder when you see in old movies, somebody who has to travel, like we gotta get to the pharmacist, because little Billy's sick with pneumonia, so we gotta, he got the fever. He's got the fever, right? Just to go get some, I wonder if this is the kind of thing they were getting.

This would have been that kind of medicine. In the late 1800s, pneumonia at this point has been declared the most fatal of all acute diseases by William Osler. This was a big deal at this point. We knew there was an entity called pneumonia. We distinguished it from all these other long problems. We were trying to figure out how can we treat all this stuff, how can we keep people alive. Nomonia was still alluding us. By now, bleeding is beginning to fall out of favor as the mainstay of treatment for

pneumonia, but it's being replaced by things that aren't necessarily more helpful, just cathartics, things to make you puke and pee also, and laxatives. So like mercury as a laxative, antimony for vomiting. Capping, of course, is still being used. And then they also start blistering the chest at this point. So to try to draw out whatever is inside, we'll just, we'll blister. And this was, again, used for other sorts of like what we now understand are infectious processes to draw something out.

The only thing I can say is that at least we had opium by now. So made a little more comfortable. Yes, a little less painful while we were blistering your chest and making you poop with as much mercury as we could get in you. This is actually a lot of these treatments I read about because Stonewall Jackson went through all this. Really? He was, he was shot and then went through any reputation

and then developed pneumonia afterwards and became quite sick. And then all of these things happened. Right. And then he passed away. Rough, rough, rough putt there at the enrolled Stonewall. In the 1800s, pneumonia was, as I mentioned, it was very common.

It was the third leading cause of death, but it was often called the Old Man's friend because it was also considered outside of the treatments, a fairly painless way to go. What's charming come with me, old friend. It's me, pneumonia, I'm a good who is QL. Oh, thank you so much. No, it's no problem.

Come along. Oh, that's so nice. One of of the I mean, it's better than Dissentary, I guess. It's better than Dissentary reads that Cindy McRoy, the Greek festival and the Greek festivals, Baklvas on a better than Dissentary, good and interesting. This is why I can never go on a campaign staff. What's our new campaign slogan? Better than Dissentary. Me the worst one I've heard. Yeah.

It, one of the less offensive treatments for pneumonia that came around in the 1800s, was something called a pneumonia jacket. Okay. You can look at pictures of these, they're easy to find, but they were these little, little like warm jackets

that you would have like tied on or fastened on that were made of like muslin or oiled silk to keep your chest warm. Again, the idea was like, I don't know, maybe if we keep the chest really warm, it'll be better. Sometimes they would even have little systems of like rubber tubing inside that you could run warm water through.

Oh, sometimes. To keep the chest really warm. Sounds really soothing. Again, they probably, they might not have helped very much, but they probably weren't. They're probably kind of comfy. They look comfy. The cozy. There's some cute little ones you can find, like for kids. Lots of kicky, funky colors. No, no, no. Fun designs. I got some elephants and giraffes on them for the kids. Not so much. They were the 1800s. so like everything's kind of tan. Yeah, just that general tan.

The page kind of color. We began to understand that there were different kinds of pneumonia and what may have been happening in them in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. A lot of this, I kind of already alluded to this, is that the influenza outbreaks led to lots more cases of pneumonia,

because people were sick, and then they got pneumonia And so we were able to kind of investigate all these people Pasture Louis Pasteur was actually instrumental in this he began to isolate some sort of bacteria a pneumococcus he called it in the saliva and in the Fluid from the lungs of patients who had pneumonia Other physicians were doing this as well. He were other scientists. He wasn't the only one who found this.

But it wasn't until 1875, Edwin Klebs actually put that together that this little bug, this bacteria that we're seeing, has something to do with the pneumonia. That is actually is like the causative agent of pneumonia. That's when we finally figure that out. From there, we see two other scientists, Carl Friedlander and Hans Christian, Graham of the Graham stain. Whoa, big name. This is a big guy. Graham of stain fame started working together in a hospital in Berlin, actually in their morgue, and they started to identify other specific types

of bacteria that were causing pneumonia in different patients. So in 1882, we found a bacteria called streptococcus pneumonia. Streptop. Right? Well, no. No. No, it's one that causes pneumonia. What streptococcus is streptococcus? Well, there is, okay, so there is a whole family of striptococcus.

Okay. Cool family. Yeah, and there are different groups in them. There's group A and group B and group C. Anyway, group A strips cause striptophthwrote. It's not striptococcus pneumonia. It's not striptophthwrote. Yes. I mean, if you had an infection in your throat from striptococcus pneumonia, that would be strepthorode great

So I was both right and wrong something easily. That would you say well yet? No, I mean you're you're right You're right. Yes This just we're talking about a different thing. Okay. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you with my attempt to Some small carbus and my knowledge. I'm a part my part. No, no, it's important to know that when we say streptococcus, that's a whole genus. Okay. Right, do you understand that? Right, yeah, I know genus is,

okay. I may not be a genus, but I know genus. Oh boy. That was a pun. Oh yeah, that was a pretty good point. Just to make right that down. Uh-huh. In 1884, we figured out Clebsiella.

Cause genus, and the money I as well. It's a pretty good boy. Just remember I had that down. In 1884, we figured out Klebsiella, because Gemius, different causative agent of pneumonia. So we figured out that there are some pneumonia that are caused by bacteria, which is groovy. Like we have put that together now. But again, we're still in the 1800s, and then early 1900s. So we have no idea.

What do we do with that? We still don't know what to do. Ossler did come up with the idea of giving people with pneumonia oxygen, which was a good plan because if they didn't have enough giving them more, it would help keep them alive through the pneumonia if they survived the pneumonia. But it really isn't until you probably know where this is headed. The 40s? Good old Fleming and his penicillin in the 40s.

Oh yeah. And the antibiotic error is really what changed things. That's what changed the game for pneumonia. Once we were able to treat bacterial pneumonia, and of course we probably would have thrown antibiotics at everything that was pneumonia, not knowing the difference between virus and bacteria or what caused what back then. But we actually started to see the mortality from pneumonia turn around at this point in history.

Good job, Flamingo. So, and then in 1977, we get the pneumonia vaccine. That's a thing. Did I get that? Well, as kids, since the year 2000, we've had one four kids, but not back in seven, in 77, the Numa Vax was the first one to come out. Have I been vaccinated? You have, I'm pretty sure you haven't. Well, come on. Well, there's no indication to vaccinate you right now. Why? You don't have any of the risk factor. Okay, so not everybody will get the pneumonia vaccine at like at the same time. Okay. It depends on chronic illnesses you might have or other like

behavioral factors or if you have a compromised immune system, that kind of thing. Is it because my risk factors for pneumonia are low enough, should I get it that I, it's contraindicated I should I get it that I it's contraindicated? It's not contraindicated. It's just you are not you are not the at a higher risk population. Okay. You are not in that population. That makes sense. So everybody does get a pneumonia shot at 65 if you have not gotten it already for some

other reason. Right. But then you're probably going to get a booster at 65 anyway. And then kids get the Prevnar. And now since 2010, we're expanding the use of the Prevnar actually to adults as well. So depending on their, if they have certain illnesses or, you know, so not everybody gets these. So it is a good thing, I will say this, to inquire of your doctor.

Am I someone who needs this? Because they'll know. And it's a good reminder to say, oh, you know what, actually, for instance, if you smoke, you may be eligible for a pneumonia vaccine. So it's a good thing to ask your doctor, am I somebody who needs one? Not everybody does. So if they say, you don't, they're not lying. You don't.

I have not had a immunoboxane. But kids get them now. So most people younger than us are going to have had them. They're just too old. As if they needed another advantage. We're just too old. We missed it. Now, currently, like I said, not only do we live

in the antibiotic era, where we have multiple different antibiotics that can treat. There are many, many different kinds of bacteria and viruses, and like I said, even fungal organisms that can cause pneumonia. But again, we have two different vaccines that if you are eligible for, if you are someone who should be getting these vaccines, you absolutely should get these vaccines, which is why you should ask your doctor if you need them. It is most often treatable, so it is not nearly the death sentence that we thought it was, you know, thousands of years ago. Now we expect that we should

be able to treat most kinds of pneumonia. Anyone can get pneumonia. Of course, we talked about specific populations that are higher risk, but again, like I mentioned, I had pneumonia. When I was a young healthy college student, I got what you probably have heard referred to as walking pneumonia. Yeah, the buggy, winky foot. I never got that. Yeah, the buggy, winky foot. But walking pneumonia, just meaning that it's a pneumonia, but you can usually still kind of function with it like you're sick, but you could like me

drag yourself to class if you really need to. That's also called microplasma pneumonia, but that's fairly common actually. Okay. And it's treatable with antibiotics. It is an acute illness, not a chronic one. Now, there are people who have certain illnesses that put them at risk for getting pneumonia

multiple times throughout their life, but pneumonia, the infection of the lung is an acute problem. Which means it can be cured and over and done. Exactly. It is not something that you carry with you forever. So like for instance, getting pneumonia does not mean that you were hiding some sort of medical issue from people that you had. It just means you got pneumonia.

You just means you got pneumonia. You just means you got pneumonia. It's not particularly contagious, depending on what caused it. Once you have, let's say you have a bacterial pneumonia that's infecting one lobe of your lungs. At that point, I mean, obviously you don't want to spit in anybody's mouth, but like you shouldn't ever do that. And we should all wash our hands,

but being in the room with someone who has pneumonia, most of the time is not an incredibly risky thing to do. Now, if you got pneumonia because of some sort of viral upper respiratory infection that we can do your immune system or because you had the flu first or something like that, those things are all contagious, of course. And obviously, you know, if we're coughing on each other and not washing our hands and sharing food and drink and all that kind of stuff puts you a high risk.

But I mean, in general, like the idea that being in the room with someone pneumonia is gonna give you pneumonia is not really well-founded. Okay. And again, having pneumonia, I would not think should make anyone less qualified to hold any position in government because we'll make them better and they will no longer have pneumonia.

And again, I had it. Yeah, and I'm sitting and get it. She's strong. Right, exactly. And I should still be president someday. And remember, our early presidents, the majority of them had things like smallpox and dysentery and typhoid, and we all voted for those guys. So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do?

So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do?

So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? So how do you do? Okay, so everybody chill out about pneumonia is what I'm trying to say is chill Get vaccinated if you go talk to your doctor if you are somebody who should you should get vaccinated If you if you are eligible for it go ask them about it And of course, it's always important to take proper precautions and you know if you are sick you need to rest

A lot of these illnesses do require like to take a day off and you know the thing is some people are just really tough and devoted and work really hard and just don't want to let anything stand in their way. And so maybe they just try to work right through a sickness, you know. Yeah. Maybe that's all it is. Maybe that's all it is. Maybe just that tough.

Okay. Folks, that's going to do it for us here on Solvon. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks to the taxpayer for letting us use our song Medicines is the intro and outro of our program. Thank you to the maximum fun network for having us as a part of their extended podcasting family. There's a ton of great shows you can enjoy over there at maximumfun.org. And that's going to do it for us. Sorry that the episode was a little late this week. This TV thing has just been just a lot of time, but.

It's so hard. It should be famous. All right, all right, get bent. So this is, it'll be over next weekend and then we'll be back on regular schedule, but until then my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And it's always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!

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