Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Episode Date: December 2, 2018

When Dr. Sydnee and Justin find themselves in Colorado, an episode on Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever seems a natural fit ... except it's not really that common in Colorado. But when the story of a disease is able to tie together cow-dipping terrorism and frozen food, how can they resist? 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, my body for the home. I have just a back right. Whoa, listen, they're going crazy for it. Oh, the hall! Hi, I'm Justin McElroy. Whoa, listen, they're going crazy for it.

Yeah! Man, this time, they're the lottists for me. I didn't, you didn't do the, I haven't done me. I haven't, you didn't do the thing. Hi, everybody. Welcome to someone's male tour of Miss Guy Domest. And I'm your co-host Justin Tyler McAroy. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm Sydney Smirl McAroy. Yeah. It's bracing. It's bracing. It's bracing. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right.

I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right.

I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right. I'm not sure if you're going to get it right Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. road, as it were. Yes. And so whenever I started asking people,

like, oh, we're going to do Sean Denver. What medical thing, when you think of Denver, Colorado. Yeah, everybody says weed, y'all. Everybody, which is great, except one, we already did an episode on marijuana. Sorry, we did that already. And two, like, you guys all just do it for funzies here. Yeah.

Oh, my god. Our whole medical. Yeah, you're just kidding. Hi. Which is totally fine. But it's not the show. As people who hail from a state that still respect the vision of our forefathers, when they made weed illegal.

You mean, you mean a state that legalized medical marijuana last year, but has no dispensaries. So it doesn't matter just legal in name only. I know, it's the bummer. So we didn't do weed. No. So Justin and I started talking. What else could we do? And we came up with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Because Rocky Mountain... Sounds good, right? Right there. When you make your world famous beloved chorus beer, you're tapping the Rockies. I hear all about it. So we assume that that would be Rocky Mountain Spot if people would be like,

you'd be every one out of three people here. It's gotta have it. You assume, right? There's gotta be like clinics. That's why they made weed legal for all the Rocky Mountain Spot Fever. That's not on favorite. So I did all this research.

I found all these neat stories about it. And among in my research, among the facts that I discovered about Rocky Mountain's Body Beaver, is that it almost never happens in Colorado. It's incredible. Which is great. I mean, that's good for you guys. But it's incredibly rare here.

So I just feel really Excited about that. Congratulations Colorado. It's actually what's really interesting. It's completely misnamed because it doesn't really even occur very often in the Rocky Mountains anymore like it can, but it's mostly in the south and southeast United States, so. So what is it? Okay, well first of all several people recommended this Heather Kendra and Brittany. Thank you but it's mostly in the south and southeast United States. So. So what is it? OK. Well, first of all, several people recommended this Heather Kendra and Brittany, thank you. And Rocky Mountain's Pot of Fever is a bacterial infection.

It's caused by an organism called Riketsia, Riketsii. Whoa. Mm-hmm. That's good. That's good. It's named for a dude, which we'll talk about the dude. Did he put his name in both of them? He did. Nice.

My man. All right. His bacteria. It's carried by ticks. They're different species of ticks that can carry it, but the most common are the American dog tick and the Rocky Mountain wood tick. And you do have those ticks here. It just, they don't tend to carry

rockamounds about a fever here, which is good. The tick is both the vector and the host, which is kind of interesting. So like it carries it around for its whole life. It's not taking it from one human and giving it to another, although it could do that, it just carries it. It's infected with it. And then it can pass it along to its little tick babies. Great. You know. Gross.

And then on to people. About one to two percent of these ticks are infected. So it's fairly rare, which is a good thing. One time I got back from camping and I thought I had marshmallows stuck in my hair. And I sat on the couch when I was like 12, watching Dark Man. You know that one? So I had some dark man in the was like 12, watching Dark Man. Remember that one?

So I was watching Dark Man, the movie, and filled in with this march, and I'm like, man, that march feel is really in there. And then I finally pulled the chunk of march and then I'm like, you know, smorse. That was the smorse. I finally pulled the chunk of march and then I'm like, and the tics legs are still wiggling.

And I'm like, so I don't like tics now. Now I'm against tics. don't like ticks now. Now I'm against ticks. Did you like ticks before? Agnostic. No. I did believe in ticks. Embivelect. I was in biblical exhibit.

The thing about ticks is they exist, whether or not you believe in them. So the symptoms, should you ever be unlucky enough to get this, are a fever that's in there. Dead giveaway. Yeah. Simnaja, some vomiting. You can get aches and pains all over,

and your muscles and your joints and an upset stomach. And then you also get the rash, that's where the spotted part comes from. And it's an interesting rash, if you think rash is interesting. And then it starts. At least half the people on this stage certainly do. It starts on your hands and feet and moves inward. And it can occur on your palms and soles,

and there aren't a lot of rashes that can do that. Ooh, fascinating for some. Oh, no. The big deal with Rocky Mountain's body fever is that it can lead to very serious complications and even death in some cases, not so often these days, but back on the American frontier, it very often did. And so that's where we're gonna focus, because it was first documented all the way back in the American frontier, it very often did. And so that's where we're gonna focus.

Because it was first documented all the way back in the 1800s. Back then, a lot of different names for similar diseases, probably overlapped. So they called it a lot of the time black measles because the rash can get, the rash is patechial, which is like broken little blood vessels under your skin, and they can like get darker. So it looked like measles, but really dark.

Like black. Potechial, is it, you get those on your nose? Is it gym blossoms? Is it the same thing? They were really spotting on your face when you throw up. If you throw up too hard, yes. Good job. Good job.

You're learning things. This also could have been called just mountain fever. There are a lot of different tick-borne illnesses, as well as just other random things that settlers got. And they kind of called them all the same thing. So when you hear old descriptions of black measles or mountain fever or typhoid, typho malaria, all these different names, they could,

I mean, who knows what they really were. They were one of these, this variety of diseases. This was one of the most feared among settlers, because if we went back and did statistics at the time, it had up to like a 30% mortality rate. So this was a really scary disease to get on the frontier. Thank you. It doesn't now, don't worry.

The nobody knew why people got it. They knew they went into the mountains and then they got sick. And so they came up with a lot of odd theories as to why that might happen. One of the most popular was that if you drink melted snow, you'll get this. It also, I saw one doctor comment that they thought it was that all of these lungs that weren't used to breathing pure mountain air did for the first time and then got sick.

It's too good. The air is too good for us. Have you felt that since we've been here? Hmm. I can't handle this air. Where's the coal? This, obviously, since nobody understood why people were getting sick, it led the way for a lot of quacks to come and pitch whatever their wares were for you to buy. Or one of the most popular things doctors would do, well, doctors, you know, people who called themselves doctors,

would do is offer to test your water, your snow runoff water, to see if it had the Rocky Mount Sweat of Fever in it, and then they would give it the clear. They had no way of doing this. So this was all completely made up, but they would take a lot of money from you to do that. And then just either say, say, don't drink that,

or no, that seems fine. There were- They would test your snow? Well, like melted snow water. Like, we're off. Sure. Yeah, it was specifically that water. Okay.

I mean, they were wrong, it wasn't. Perfect, okay. Yeah, it made it really matter, right? Like I'm challenging them. Now, they're dead, long dead. Um. At this point in history, It doesn't really matter, right? Like I'm challenging them. Now they're dead, long dead. Um. At this point in history, homeopathy was alive and well.

Yeah, where's the round of a huge round of applause? Our great friend, homeopathy. On the American frontier. And so there were a lot of like kind of poisonous, but then you take the poison and you dilute it and dilute it and dilute it until it's really just water that you could prescribe for any of these fevers that people got. And one in particular that was very popular was the venom from a dagger-headed viper that is only found in Brazil. So you can't find this. And then diluted, diluted, diluted, diluted,

diluted until it's water. Yeah. And that was a very popular cure. Which you had to wonder, like, the guy who was selling this, like, how do you get all these snakes here? Psst! He was lying. Well, yeah, no, I mean, I know that. We knew quinine worked for other things that caused fevers by now, so like malaria. So, why not for any that caused fevers by now, so...

Like malaria. So, why not for any kind of fevers? So that was very popular. Whiskey, as always. Sure. Class treatment. Why not? Stric 9 was very popular. There was something called Dovers powders that a lot of people use. And Dovers powders was a specific patent medicine.

So just a medicine that a guy made and sold to a lot of people. And most patent medicines contained something that was either narcotic or just made like drunk, like alcohol. This contained Ipacac, opium, and morphine. Whoa! So, that's legit. I'm throwing up, but I feel great about it.

And also, who could use a nap? Because... Now, a lot of people just had no idea. They didn't have access to these medicines. And so they were just like, I don't know, drink a lot of water, take a sponge bath. People were really desperate. And so the state of Montana was suffering the most

from Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And so when it, well, when it became a state in 1889, I know that fact now. And by 1901, right, like soon after they became a state, they had set up a board of health specifically to address this problem. They wanted to try to get doctors to come. They're like, look, we got a lot of sick people here.

You got nothing else to do. They'll buy your medicines, whether they were going up. Please come, we need your help. So they started attracting doctors. And among them was Howard Taylor Ricketts. Ricketts here. Ricketts here. And he became involved in the search for what was this.

And they already had this idea that maybe ticks were responsible because there was this one documented case where a doctor was unfortunately doing an autopsy on a patient who had succumbed to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. And he found a tick in his pubic hair. And this poor guy, this is what we remember about him, is that he had a tick in his pubic hair forever. This is what I know. All right, straight up, but quick note. You can give me a pass for not realizing

that was a tick in my hair. You're gonna, you should notice. You should notice the taking your... I know religious morays were different at the time, but you should notice a tick there. You should notice that. Well, he didn't... Tragically. Maybe the Jean-Paul was the first to say, but he didn't say,

you should notice that. Well, he didn't. Tragically. Maybe the Jean-Paul was the first to say, You should notice that. Well, he didn't. Tractically. Maybe the gene pool without this particular individual is a little bit cleaner. I'm just saying, you should notice a tick in your pupil.

To be fair, unlike, this is something I should have mentioned. Unlike with Lyme disease, which is spread by ticks, and the tick has to be attached for quite a while to get Lyme disease. With Rocky Mountain Spot of Fever, it doesn't. You can actually get it pretty quickly from the tick. So, you know.

Maybe the tick left? It may be it was, oh no, I'm saying maybe it was only there for like an hour, probably not. Because he died of Rocky Mountain Spot of Fever. So I wasn't. It was there for a long'm saying maybe it was only there for like an hour. Probably not, because he died of rock and metal. It's about a fever, so it wasn't. It was there for a long time. It was there for several weeks. The tick no scope this dude.

I'm just saying. Like the tick's like, what's up, your dad? Bye. And I'm sorry, sir. Did you say several weeks? Excuse me. I mean, it could, well, at least a week in keeping... So hard.

And then it could have been as little as 10 days. Yeah. It's too much though. When you said to be fair, I thought you were gonna say, back then, pubic hair was made of ticks. Like, that's the only excuse. You've got to notice that. Listen, there's not a lot of medicine.

You're going to have to meet science halfway, such as it is. And you've got to notice the ticks in your pubic hair. Old-timey people. The medicines, the medicines, that ask you let my car be for the mountain. So, Dr. Ricketts, based on this story of the pubic hair tick, began to investigate, could ticks be the source. And he actually was the one to confirm, of course, that yes,

this is being spread by ticks. And here's the organism. And he got to name it in 1909. So that was pretty quick. Then he figured all that out. And this is kind of the story of Rocky Mountain Spot of Fever is somebody would come in, figure something out. And then I don't know, people don't like to stay

in Montana for very long. I don't know what the deal is, but then they leave, and somebody else comes up and takes over. So like, he figured that out and was like, I'm gone now, I'm leaving. So he took off to go study Typhus in Mexico right after that, and tragically, he died of Typhus in Mexico. Unfortunately.

I mean, first-hand experience is the best teacher, at least. The next person to come take over to confirm all of this and collect, like, to try to see, like, well, how many ticks? And what other animals, maybe is it in just ticks and humans, or there are other animals getting this too? The next guy was someone named Clarence Birdzye. And he was training in the Bitterroot Valley, this is where a lot of these cases were,

to understand like the life cycle of these ticks and the Rickettsian, all that. And so he collected just tons, with 717 small animals and 4,500 ticks. He bagged and tagged and figured all this out and gave everybody this knowledge. And then he took off to go develop the concept of frozen foods because this last name is bird's eye

and I'm not kidding, bird's eye frozen food. Whoa, we're there. Yes, so he had like this little brief segue into catching rodents and ticks, and then he went and made frozen food. And I was like, It's the first time I'm ever glad I didn't make a dumb joke. I was like so close to me like,

who am I going to break the break? But it wasn't, it wasn't. It wasn't, it wasn't. It was the one. The frozen vegetable guy. I guess it's bird's eyes. I'm proud of that. Comment of a name.

So he did his thing thing and then he went off to make frozen vegetables, so that's nice. So more people came in and a lot at this point, we needed a lot of entomologists, which I like doing, I am not an entomologist, I'm just a family doctor. But entomologists are so cool. They're always, are there any entomologists here? No way, hold on.

Yes. Wait, really? Wait, hold on, shh, really? One more time, the everybody's super quiet. Are there any entomologists here? OK, can you turn the house lights on, please? Oh, just... Can you turn us down a little bit?

If you're an enemologist, please stand up. Where are people? Those are enemologists in the crowd. Please stand up. Seeing enemologists right there. There's another way. You better stand up and wave the hands at Amologist. This is your moment.

It's your moment in the sun, and Amologists, everybody, big round of applause for An Amologists. Thank you for your service. Thank you, An Amologist. See you over there. Thank you. Thank you, An Amologists.

You know, there's an... There's just so much more. I'm a recorder person. This, you know, there's an that, you know, there's an anemologists listen that almost came and they're like, ah, dang it. I knew I should have come. I don't know, but I feel like,

like in the scientific world anemologists are kind of like, are you like the bad boys, bad girls, like the teabirds of the scientific world. That's my feeling. Because I mean,

anemologists like led the fight against malaria in the early days, like they were the ones, like they weren't, it wasn't medical doctors. There was an anemologists figure, you know, this stuff out. An anemologists were the ones who said, okay, listen,

the only way we're gonna control this, because right now we have no treatments. We don't know, we don't know what to do, doctors are going, I don't know, here's some whiskey, we've got to get rid of the ticks. So we're going to start a tick eradication program and we're taking on the ticks. Man, kind, let's do it.

And they started with that, and then they said, and the only way we're going to do that is if we get the ticks off of all this cattle. So here's what I want, and I'm imagining like all of these cattle ranchers would probably be pretty intimidating, like weathered cattle ranchers, like I don't know, frontier. And the animologists are like,

here's what I'm gonna have you do. You're gonna take your cows, and you're gonna bring into this big vat of arsenic solution I have, because I'm gonna get all the ticks off of them. And of course, the cattle ranchers are like, no. They were like, oh yeah, because I've got the whole state governments behind me.

Bring your cows. And that's what they did. They started this ticker-radication program with cattle dip to dip the cows and get rid of all the ticks to stop the spread of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. And that's how French Serbs Amateurs were invented. Okay, no. This set off this huge war where they were bringing their cows and it took them a little bit to get like the right arsenic solution.

So it wasn't killing the cows. It wasn't killing the cows, but I don't think it was pleasant. And it was not great for all the humans who were involved in the process either. And so it took them, so obviously the cattle ranchers were pretty mad. And they weren't wanting to do this, so they started fighting back and protesting. And they actually blew up one of the cattle dipping locations,

like with dynamite, like went and like blew it up. There was another one that they just took sledgehammers to and like destroyed it. Man-com. We're on a roll. But it really like this in this story of Rocky Mountain Spada Fever, you have this constant battle between the locals who are like, who are these weirdo scientists who are coming in and they're

trying to like dip our cows in arsenic and they're killing our ticks and they don't know how to treat this stuff and I'm just going to stick with my dovers powders because I feel great on these. And this really like, this headbutting was the rest of the tale. So meanwhile, doctors are like, we got to come up with something better. We have no treatment for this, and they're blowing up cattle dipping stands. So we need something to do if people are going to get this. And especially because people started to kind of get, like, it spread the idea that ticks

for the bad guys. And so people started carrying carbolic acid just a strong corrosive acid with them. And if they would find a tick, they would remove the tick and then put carbolic acid on their skin, thinking like this will stop whatever the poison is from spreading. And it did.

No. No. All right. No. I'm 50-50 folks. I had to take a shot. So, so two doctors started, as two new guys came in, Roscoe Spencer and Ralph Barker decided, here's what we need. We need a vaccine.

Because vaccines are awesome. And, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We have no treatments. Instead of dipping the cows and killing the ticks, why don't we just prevent it? Why don't we just vaccinate everybody? So easy a solution. Let's mash up a bunch of ticks.

Mix it with carbolic acid again. With still there. Mix it with that. And then, with still there. Mix it with that. And then inject it and see what happens. What? What? Which is exactly what they did. And they started off with rodents,

but then usually at that point, they would want to move on to non-human primates, but they didn't have any. They only had the human ones. So Dr. Roscoe Spencer on May 19th, 1924 rolled up his sleeve and injected himself with mashed up tics and Carpoholc acid, and it worked. This is the crazy thing.

The vaccine was actually kind of effective. It prevented it in some cases, and even if you did get the infection it wasn't nearly as bad in most cases. So, I mean, not the best vaccine in the world. Certainly not what we do today before the time. You told me that like he had turned into the tick. Created by Ben Allen, you would turn into that superhero. I would have been equally surprised. I would have been equally surprised. So now that they had a vaccine and a way of preventing it, this really, this was a big boon to like the scientists and the doctors who were working in the community like,

okay, well maybe these guys actually knew what they're doing. And I think the fact that like, Dr. Spencer actually tested it on himself, that let me, you know, that provides you some reassurance, right? Like they're outsiders, but I mean, he injected the ticks in his own arm. So, so he can't be all bad. And so that they're, initially they were doing this research, by the way, in like, tents, like all these research labs that they started were like

tents and then they graduated to like a cabin, finally, like a farmhouse. And then eventually, like, because of this vaccine, they got to move on to like an abandoned schoolhouse So they have like an actual building and They actually just caught the schoolhouse lab and they started making more vaccines and sending those out and The board of entomology those entomologists again finally said look look at all this progress. We're making We've got this vaccine and we're we're figuring out how to fight this thing So they asked the state to provide them funds for like an actual lab, which they got.

And in 1927, they got to build this big lab so that they could start actually making more vaccine, making it maybe in like a better way than just mashing up ticks. And finding a treatment as well, if you already got it, what can we do? So this was great. They had the money, they're gonna build the lab, everything's wonderful except there were still a lot of local people who were terrified of this. Especially when you started reading

reports that in this effort some researchers and laboratory workers had gotten sick and died of Rocky Mountain's Bot of Viva while they were trying to find these cures and prevention treatment and all this. So locals started forming a coalition to say, no, we don't want your lab, we don't want your bugs, we don't want any of this here, take your weird ideas somewhere else. I don't know, take your weird big city ideas out of here. We don't like it. And so they had this huge, there was a lawsuit in the locals' fought and the counter-enters' fought and the entomologist's fought.

And what eventually the judge decided from all this was, OK, this place probably is kind of dangerous, which he wasn't wrong. I mean, it did deserve like a biohazard level, the lab. And I mean, it was originally just like a cabin. So that wasn't like wrong. But they said, you know, we do need it though, because this is a really bad fever and people are dying.

So you can build it, but you have to build a moat around it as well. Man kind. 3, 4, 3. Sure they did. They built the lab, they built the moat. This was by the way. A science moat. This was based on the theory that ticks couldn't swim.

Get, get, get, get, get. So this lab, by the way, became Rocky Mountain Labs, which still exists. This is a big deal. It's part of, it eventually was absorbed into the National Institute of Health. And then I think now it's part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

During World War II, it was like instrumental in pumping out all kinds of vaccines and everything. So it became this big giant lab. I don't know. My one question is, does it still have big giant lab. I don't know. My one question is, does it still have a mode? I don't know. Probably. I would have to help.

That's inspiration. So we fixed it. Yes. We actually, we did fix it eventually. Not with a vaccine. There were multiple attempts through the years to make like a better vaccine that didn't involve mashing up ticks.

And they came up with some different ones. There were good that some of them worked. Some of them didn't, some were more effective. But then the big breakthrough is antibiotics. We found that the tetracycline class of antibiotics, and specifically nowadays, doxycycline, was very effective in treating rock amounts water fever. So we just, if you get it, we get it. Hey, you're all right. Yeah, so that is an impressive victory for science. We used to be a terrifying thing, and now it's...

Yeah, we dropped the mortality rate from, like I said, back in the day, it would be like 30% to around 0.3%. So it's still a serious infection. So I mean, you guys don't have to worry. We're in Colorado. But we still treat you very seriously, but now we're way better at treating it. In fact, this is extremely inspirational.

We actually have a very brave young boy who survived Rocky Mountain's Spotify fever. This is true. This is true. This is true. A brave boy. Brave boy, could you come out, please? This point, my little brother, Griffin McRoy, joins us on stage.

He did have Rocky Mountain's spotter fever, and he does all sorts of flips and tricks to demonstrate his health. He couldn't do that. He had seen him just a few short years ago. Thanks, brave boy. Thank you. What a story.

What an inspiration that young boy is. He lost a little bit of his peripheral vision, but that's funny. Wow. I'm going to tell you last. When Justin first told me that, I thought that can funny. Wow. I'm going to tell you last. We just, if we were to be that, I thought, that can't be right. Actually, we went to Climbs for confirmation. Like, is this, is this right?

Yeah. So now we're like 1550, whether or not it's true. Ah, Griffin says this true. Thank you so much for having us here in your beautiful city, don't you hurt? Yeah. We, uh, we wrote a, if you've never listened our show before and you're here, as it may never listen before, it's okay to apply.

Cool. I hope you all subscribed to this show and listened to it. It's basically like this and there's hundreds of episodes. But we've also got a book. If you'd like to check out a book, it's the Saw B saw bones book cleverly enough and it's the bookstores everywhere and on Amazon and Everywhere find books are sold so go buy yourself a copy and or three or four or five and put food on our child's table Thank you so much for having us thanks to Paul. Thanks for for coming I guess and Sid do you have anybody want to thank thanks to Paul. Thanks for coming, I guess. And Sid, do you have anybody you want to thank? Thanks to Max from Fundatwork for having us as part

of their extended podcasting family. Thanks to the taxpayers for using those long medicines as the intro and outro of our program, Sidney. Anything else to add? No, thank you to all of our family backstage who is taking care of our children. For watching our mini children. But that is going to do it for this time, folks.

So until next week, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And it's always dope. Draw a hole in your hand. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported