Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Self-Experimentation

Episode Date: April 29, 2014

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 give ourselves cholera. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, Tommy 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 escalators, my cop, for the mouth. Wow! For the mouth Wow, everybody and welcome to saw bones a myrtle two of misguided medicine. I am your co-host Justin McElroy and I'm Sydney my Sydney. I've done it. Oh No, you've done what I've done it I after I've I've finally found the exact right amount of downy fresh on stopables to add to my laundry to get the perfect blend of scent longevity versus freshness impact. Now one quick question. What is this, the downy, downy fresh unstoppable?

What is that, are those, I don't even know which to use a plural or a singular noun. What is this product? For those of us who do laundry, Danny Freshman Stoppables is a, it's sort of like crystals that you can include with your laundry during the wash cycle to up the freshness. Just to clarify, this is not an ad, Justin's really just telling you about this. This is how the Danny Fresh on Stoppables work. Now, the problem with Danny Fresh on Stoppables

is in the directions they say you can add up to, they're just a little crystals, like they're little crystals, right? Okay, and do you put that in the washer or the dryer? No washer. So, the washer's the wet one with the, well, okay, I think, that you put put that in the washer or the dryer? No, washer. So, okay. The washer's the wet one with the, well, okay, I think. You put the clothes in first.

I don't think you have to do laundry to know that washing is wet, but this is an okay bet, I guess. Anyway, I really don't do laundry. It's not a bit. Ever. Justin does all the laundry. Thank you for acknowledging that. So, you add a, on the directions of the dining

freshness novel, so as you can add up to the fill line on the cap, you can add that much, or add as much as you want. Okay, dining freshness stoppables. So how have you been experimenting with this? I everything. I'm mainly experimenting on myself with my own garments, because I don't wanna put you at risk of too much freshness and over abundance of freshness.

So with my shirts, uh, with, with my shirts, my shorts, and my mentionables, uh, through rigorous tests varying in, uh, longevity of wear, uh, uh, amount of crystals, um, and a few other factors. I have finally calculated by, by experimenting on my own clothes, exactly the right amount of Donnie Fretchens toffable's to include. How did you figure out if you were fresh or not? Like, did you ask people like, how fresh do you think I smell?

No problem is you can't. Because you haven't been asking me. You can't ask them in the moment is the thing because everybody in the moment thinks things smell fresh. You got to ask them the next day, did you, do you remember yesterday, me, anybody being particular of fresh? Now, here's my question though, you don't leave the house much. Not much.

Most days you only see me and our cats. So who, who were you? The answer to the question you're building towards is the mailman. But yes, through experimentation, I have calculated. We're going to have to tip him while this Christmas. your building towards is the mailman. But yes, through experimentation, I have calculated. We're gonna have to tip him well, this Christmas. I have calculated the exact amount of Downey Freshestopples to include with my laundry.

I'm proud of you. Congratulations. If Downey wants to offer us any money for that. Yeah, that extended vlog. We'd welcome it. Did you know that you were following in like a proud scientific tradition with this self experimentation? I did not.

Well, that's the case. Would you like to hear about some other? Actual doctors, not just honorary doctors, like you, honor, laundry doctors, like myself, who may be engaged in some of a little bit of self research of their own? I can't imagine how their accomplishments will sort of compare to what I've done here. So I, I, yeah, I guess I would like to hear about that. Sure. Well, we're going to start with Walter Reed, so that may be, I mean. He sounds okay.

Yeah, you may have heard of him. And I just like to mention that the topic for this episode was actually inspired by one of our listeners, Ken suggested it. He is a doctor that does experiments on himself. I don't, I don't think, she's a Ken. I don't think Ken is. He, maybe, maybe he is, I don't know. But he suggested Walter Reed

and this gave birth to the rest of this topic. So thank you, Ken. Now a lot of people have heard of Walter Reed. Yeah, he's got that hospital. Exactly, because of the hospital. So Walter Reed was a person before he was a hospital. That's good. You don't want to reverse that. It can be very underwhelming. No, he was a name my kid after this hospital. The nation's first transformer. No, he's a hospital. I know he changed with their band side, not again. Oh, God, there's blood everywhere.

Our veterans. That would not make him a very good doctor. Like the worst doctor. So he got his MD from the University of Virginia when he was 18 years old. Wow, nice job, Walter. Yeah, he is still the youngest person ever to receive an MD from that school. Dugi. It could have been Dugi House, there job, Walter. Yeah, he is still the youngest person ever to receive an MD from that school.

Dugi. It could have been Dugi House or a hospital. When you look at it that way though, wasn't Dugi like 15 or 14? Yeah, Dugi is like way better than Walter Reed. Yeah, so still no comparison really there. Yeah, Dugi's legacy is safe. Where is that hospital? Dugi House or a hospital?

I don't know. I drive a distance. Um, so because he was so young when he graduated from medical school, he actually had a lot of trouble kind of getting a good job. A lot of people wouldn't take him seriously. So he knew he was a bright guy. He knew that he was destined for greatness, but nobody wanted to hire him to do anything great Because he was 18 and everybody was like, Hey, what is that young kid? No, I'm medicine Get out of here. No, that's a wonder kind right around making a feel old. No with his yo-yo and his bubblegum It's Archie comics

Forget that guy. So he decided I need some opportunity. I'm young. I need some adventure He joined the army and he went west, young man. And this was a good move for him because he traveled out west. He studied a lot of bacteriology and epidemiology as a result of some of the typhoid outbreaks that he worked with. So he became real quick, what's epidemiology?

Like the study of disease, like epidemics like the study of disease spread. So kind of not related to epidermis. No, no, the study of how like they always have epidemiologists at health departments or at the CDC to study where an outbreak started and how it spread and how we can stop at that kind of thing. Okay. So he did a lot of research with Typhoid and he made kind of a name for himself doing doing this kind of stuff, which is why the thing we know him best for is the Yellow Fever Commission, which he was asked to lead by the US government. Very prestigious. Yes, it was very prestigious because this was a big deal. There were a lot of US soldiers down in Cuba and they were dying in huge numbers

from yellow fever, which is a terrible hemorrhagic virus hemorrhagic fever that kills large numbers of people and makes you bleed and throw up black stuff and it's really terrible. That sounds terrible. So it was, yeah, it was pretty vicious. We didn't know how people were getting it. We just knew that all of them were. We didn't know how to cure it or fix it or fight it. So basically, the government said, hey, Walter Reed, you know about this stuff. Why don't you go down, head up a commission,

get some doctor buddies, and try to figure out what the heck's going on with this yellow fever thing. Gross, you gotta be really debated to go down where yellow fever's popping. Well, and he didn't exactly go down right away. He kind of solved. He kind of put together a team. Ooh, madman finale coming up.

Can't really get down there right now, but I will definitely, once that mid season, finale pops off. I think I've got a few months to get down there. I just like really get deep, but Donnie, Donnie D Roger, all the game, gotta see how that shakes out for all of them. So I cannot get down there right now. Do you apologize? You're really jones and to watch that episode of Mad Men We Have One DBR. It was top of mind all of the time. Sorry. So he, and the reason I mentioned that he wasn't down there initially is not to make him sound like a wimpie guy or you know Uh, it was purely because the first phase of the research and trials that they did

He really didn't have a big hand in which I think he would appreciate us mentioning when I tell you what they did Uh, so he thought this was his basis. He thought that The yellow fever virus was probably mosquito-born. Is that right? Yes, meaning that you got it from the bite of a mosquito. This was absolutely right. This was actually postulated by a Dr. Carlos Finley who had written about it and Walter Reed had and gave him credit for, you know, kind of taking this idea and said, I think this guy's got the right idea. He set up a group of researchers, a couple famous doctors from the time there was a Dr. Jesse Luzir, James Carroll, Aristides Aggrimante, which I only mentioned because that is his name. That is such a good name.

Right? Yeah, he doesn't feature largely in the rest of the story, but that's his name. I wanted to get in for that though, I really appreciate it. I added him to the list just for that reason. So they all took off and he kind of set him up and said, look, I really think that the mosquitoes are spreading it. Why don't you do some research, figure it out, come up with some trials. You guys are smart doctors, you can figure this stuff out. I'll be down there soon, just get started. Okay, so we got everything in place.

If any of you gets yellow fever, give me just a real quick call. Just see if I can't push that fly back a little bit. It's send me a telegram. So they set up the initial phase of experiments, and the thing is that most of them weren't on board with the whole mosquito theory. They really didn't buy it. They thought, you know what, this probably has something to do with water or maybe it spread through the air. We don't really know,

but this mosquito thing seems a little wacky. So let's just get it out of the way. Let's just do that part of the trial really fast. Prove it's not mosquitoes, and then we can move on with the real research. Okay. So the easiest thing to do is try it out on ourselves. Sorry. So they wanted to see if they could infect themselves with yellow fever using mosquitoes. That seems reckless. A little.

A tad reckless. Plus you have to get bitten by a mosquito, which like not fun. I bet it is annoyingly difficult to get bitten by a minute mosquito when you want to. You know, they're there when you don't, but I bet if you're like, come on, I'm delicious. I bet they are really annoying about it.

They were, they were later studies done on malaria that kind of are like you're describing where they would just like have guys sit outside and wait to get bitten by a mosquito. You're a rapid hunter and paprika. Come on. Just sit here and let's count and wait to get bitten by mosquitoes. You're a rapid hunter in Pepperyka. Come on. Just sit here and let's count how often you get bitten by a mosquito. Don't move, don't slap him.

Just let him try. Now that's not- That'd be the hard part. Yeah, go on, little buddy. Get in there. Just take your fill. Ugh. So that's not how they did this.

They rigged this. Hey, Darrell, you gotta get out of here. There's this jerk. He's just in a chair. You can just go and. We'll do anything. It just sits there. It just sits there. Sure. God. There's another guy with a clipboard who just checks a box every time. I'll never figure these guys out. Oh, come on. I'm stuffed. So they wanted to make sure they got that if they were going to be able to get infected by mosquito, they wanted to make sure that they did it right. So what they did is they would take a mosquito

in like a little test tube or glass vial and invert it on the arm of a sick person. So that basically the mosquito is trapped between the skin of the sick person and the glass vial. You get what I'm saying? Can you picture that? And then they would let the mosquito take a blood meal from the person. So at that point, if it can be transmitted through mosquito, the mosquito should have yellow

fever, right? Which should be carrying it, not have it, not like sick from yellow fever. Mosquito isn't puking, but it's got yellow fever. So then you take that same vial and you invert it on the arm of a healthy person and let it drink their blood. Okay, that makes sense. Because when a mosquito takes blood, it also injects some of its saliva into the person and so you're going to get the yellow fever from the mosquito.

So they just went ahead and got the mosquitoes to bite sick people and then bite them. And initially, nobody really got sick. They were excited. Finally, we can move on to water theory. Exactly. At first, they were like, hey, this is looking pretty good. We're not getting sick. So we think this is probably the theory's no good.

We're going to try a few more people. They were good scientists. They knew what they were doing. We're going to try a few more people before we say no. And then one of them got sick. James Carroll, one of the lead researchers, got really sick. So did one of the young privates that they worked with. They had a lot of volunteers from the army. And they both got pretty sick. It seems like it seems like kind of a reckless use of our fighting men. Hey, come on me.

Infect you with a, yeah. That's like one or one. One or two. That's like the duty they give you when you can't even peel potatoes, right? Yeah. We do have one job. Ugh, fine.

Gonna go work with Walter Reed. This again, this, I bring up Malaria again because later we would, and we probably did, not necessarily do experiments with our fighting men and women, mainly men during the time period with malaria, but we definitely experiment with all kinds of treatments for it on them. Can I ask this may be a stupid question, but is yellow fever treatable? Yes, it's treatable. It's not curable, but it's treatable. But it's supportive treatment.

So these guys were just giving themselves an uncurable disease? Yes. Nice. Yes. And that was the thing at the time is that one of the motivations why would people have done this is the perception was

that if you lived there or you were stationed there, you were gonna get yellow fever. So if you were going to get it, at least you're under the care of the United States military when you get it, you're not just out in the bush somewhere. You probably work a medal out of it. So well, and all of these men I should note are remembered mainly for their bravery in doing this experiment. I think they were just being a jerk. They just were trying to rub it in Walter Reed's face. Like, this is not the, these are not the acts of sane men. These are men that are trying to rub in the face of their nerdy friend Walter. Yeah, Walter, that those

stuff in a gym locker and then they make them watches. They put mosquitoes in their arm. Look at him. He's biting me. Oh, Walter, it's terrible. Save me, Walter. Look at him. His white coat doesn't fit. The sleeves are too long. And he's wearing those sneakers all the time. Sure. We tied his shoelaces together when the idiot, oh, God, yeah, I don't feel so good.

How do you guys feel? No, they didn't feel so good. So what once Carol got sick, one of Dr. Lisear was actually one of the lead researchers. And he who knows what he was thinking at this point. So he sees, he sees his sees his friend James Carroll get sick almost died didn't die, but got really sick. And then this young private also got sick. He had already attempted to infect himself once, right? He'd already put himself through this trial. Who knows why? I don't know if he felt guilty

because his friend got sick because he was crazy, stupid. Just care I was getting all the attention. Maybe. That's what it was. It was breaking him chicken soup. All the ladies were visiting him. Oh, Jimmy, I hope he's a little better soon. I think it's super dope.

I could get you a fear too. It's what I think too. So he decided to try it again. And depending on how you look at it, he succeeded. He got, he got yellow fever. Okay. He got super sick. And unfortunately, he died. So which, from what you read is listed as a successful trial. I mean, that is, I mean, that is a, oh man oh Man no it's such a bummer. It is a bummer and it should be noted Chucks. Why did you let me you wrote this? How could you let me make? He was remembering time of shillies this a guy all the time. I made him so I can jerk

How did you do this to me? How did you not see this coming? I they were giving themselves yellow fever I barely it's a hemorrhagic fever. Somebody was gonna die. I barely think like two moves ahead here. Sydney, I can't calculate all the possible endings. So at this point, Walter came back down from the US and was like, what are you people doing? I give you one task. Find out if the yellow fever is cute.

You all gave yourself a yellow fever. Now my buddy, Jessi's dead. James is still in bed. This is terrible. God, you all a fever. Now my buddy, Jess, he's dead. James is still in bed. This is terrible. God do all of myself. So he took over at that point with the second third phases of the trials, which mainly involved getting volunteers to do it instead.

And how could you persuade people to volunteer? Well, you could always, like I mentioned, they were using people in the military, and so you could call on a soldier's sense of duty and courage and honor and responsibility to his country. And again, the fact that you're probably going to get this anyway. So that was one angle. The other, I think, a little more straightforward

and applies to today, you just pay them. Okay. And those were largely not soldiers who were paid. They were just locals, members of the community. And so they would offer you a flat rate, depending on which source you look at, somewhere between 100 and 300 and gold to submit yourself to the experiment. And then you got extra if you actually got yellow fever. Oh nice.

So somewhere between two and 500, that doesn't sound like a lot to infect yourself with a potentially deadly virus, except that's like between $8,000 and $20,000 in today's money. And it's in gold. Yes, that's like a lot of money. Which is way cooler. So like 20,000 bucks if you get yellow fever, plus again, the thought at the time was that if you were new to the area, you were going to get yellow fever sooner or later, you didn't have access to a lot of medical care unless

you were part of this experiment. And then you had all of the army doctors who were, you know, taking care of you, measuring every fluid that went in and out of your body, doing research on you, but also trying to make you better. So how did all did I all shake out? I'll say there were 29 people who got sick from this experiment and five of them unfortunately died including the only woman who volunteered. So were I mean did they I mean did they solve it? I mean did they exactly they proved that it was mosquito

born and you know Walter Reed went on to have a hospital named after him. So I mean, do they get what they need out of it? Exactly. They proved that it was mosquito-borne. And Walter Reed went on to have a hospital named after him. So clearly he's remembered well. And I should say, again, do I think that there was courage and bravery in their actions? Sure, I think that's part of it. I think that was very honorable.

I think there was also a little bit of arrogance. And then I think they paid a lot of people, and you can pay people to do a lot of stuff. Yeah. So there's the truth behind the yellow fever commission. So who's next? So along this theme, I wanted to share a couple other pioneers in the field of self-experimentation.

Max Joseph von Pettincoffer, another great name. I don't know if it's all the way up there with Agramont Agramont. He smells like leaderhose into me. So he was Bavarian born. Yeah, say right there. He was an MD, he was born 1818. He was an MD and a chemist and his area of interest was hygiene. So he actually taught hygiene and he studied a great deal. What was the effect of the quality of water and food and air and how clean people's clothes were in their houses on their health? Which is an important area. Especially at that time. Yes, and very relevant to people's health than and now. So he lived in Munich, and this was important because there wasn't a cholera outbreak there in the 1880s and 1890s, and he was studying that. Now the commonly held theory because of Coke of postulate fame, Robert Coke.

Coke's postulate. Coke's postulate, okay. Okay. We're talking about germ theory of disease kind of stuff. I'm very, very excited postulate. Okay. Okay. We're talking about germ theory of disease kind of still. I'm very, very excited about Koch. Yeah. I like to say of postulate fame, which again, that's one of those things where there are like biology, major snickering, and you're just staring at each of your giving me that.

I just want to say that. So he had recently discovered the bacteria that caused cholera. So they knew it was from bacteria. We're not guessing where it came from at this point, except for Max. He didn't buy it. No, he thought, okay, that's fine. So you found the bacteria. It spreads cholera, but it's more than that because he saw cholera show

closely linked with people who kind of just were dirty. That was his perception. Dirty people got cholera. He thought there was more to it. Well, but you maybe you can get the bacteria, but you can only really get sick and get the disease if you're not clean. If you don't wash, if you live in a dirty house, if you don't take care of yourself basically. Which is interesting and kind of backwards from the way we understand things today. I mean that that is, those are contributing factors. But once you found the bacteria, that's usually the, that's usually it, right?

Exactly. Well, if you weren't, if you didn't have a clean water source because you did live in a, you know, an socioeconomically depressed area and you didn't have access to clean water, you were much more likely than to come in contact with the bacteria and get cholera. But it wasn't that, it wasn't the lack of cleanliness. And certainly you could be a rich clean person who got cholera. So how did he test this out? So to test out this theory, he thought, what cleaner person do I know?

Yeah. Then Max Joseph von Pettincoff. White gloves all the time. Freshness teeth four times a day. I bet it was a real stickler for it. He's a hygienist. That's the job. The cleanest dude ever. So he thought, you know what? I'm gonna take that bacteria. I'm gonna get it somehow. I'm gonna get that bacteria in me and I'm gonna prove that I'm not gonna get that bacteria in me and I'm going to prove that I'm not going to get cholera because it's not just the bacteria, it's being dirty. So how can you best make sure that you get the cholera bacteria? I don't know. We'll find somebody who had cholera.

Oh, just like hang out near them and like smooch them maybe or... Well, do you know this might help? Do you know what color it causes? No. How the disease manifests? I'm sorry. Massive diarrhea, that's the easiest way to explain it. Massive, massive watery diarrhea until you dehydrate to death.

Except now we can fix it and save your life. But back then we couldn't. It would, that book would not have sounded as good if it was called love in the time of pooping yourself to death. That would not as be as good of a kital. Color is not a romantic disease. Even though people like to make it one. No, you poop yourself to death.

Okay. Which is very sad, but. Ooh, wait a minute. Yeah, so where do you gonna get the color of? Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah, so he, he are you gonna get the color? Oh, no, no. Yeah, so he he wanted to make sure he did it right. He didn't just find somebody who had color. He found somebody who died of color. Uh-huh. Got a sample of their of their

diarrhea. Yeah. Mixed himself up a drink. No, no wait. So Max Joe. And he drank it. No. No. No. If it makes you feel better, nothing can make you feel better. By the end of the disease, by the end of the disease process, it actually has turned your stool into like what they describe as rice water. What has it turned into like a mojito? Has it turned into cherry cool? It's like water with flecks of intestine in it.

You know, it's not really, it doesn't look like poop anymore. Pat, Pat, thoughts so how could you, I can't, why Max show? Max, Joseph, please come back to me, please. Here's what's crazy. What's crazy? Say the one. I have some theories. Maybe drinking the poopful for the Edman.

Perhaps like my man Max Jo did. Perhaps drinking a dead man's poopful. That's not great. Go on, what are you two afterwards? Just ate a whole cheese cake. Just get nuts. What could he do that's gonna Crazy drinking a dead man's poop. He didn't really get that sick

Not as sick as I am right now in one of the great ironies He got he got sick. He got diarrhea. He did get he did become ill, but he got What was what that we later figured out was probably just a mild case of color? He probably didn't get a very high infectious He got he got some light color what he interpreted it as was I didn't get sick see I got a little sick, but not that sick because I'm clean Proven right I nailed it and he's remembered forever as a pioneer in the field of hygiene. He's on a stamp And he drank color a poop Congratulations, I lived to tell about it. Why would poop. Congratulations. I'd love to tell about it.

Why would you tell anybody about it? I'd never tell anybody about it. This was discovered two years ago. When his great-great-grandson broke the family's most dearly held secret. So who's next? OK, so our next. I want to give the taste out of my mouth.

If you know what I mean. We're going to hang out in Germany, though, for this next one. Oh, God. This is the place where he did that. I can't be here anymore. We're fast forwarding though. Okay. Poor Max Joe died in 1901. Warner, Forsman, our next candidate, was born in 1904. So see, we're way into the future and we're in Berlin now, where he studied and got an MD. He was focused on the idea that you could deliver medications, better image, and measure blood pressure of the heart from the heart if you could get a catheter directly there.

That was his interest. How can we get a catheter directly into the heart? He thought that, like I said, you get a better measurement of pressure that way, and maybe we could take pictures if we inject some dye there. So heart catheterization. That was his kind of area of interest. He thought that there was a way to safely do that by accessing a vein. Most people believe that if you tried to stick something in the heart, you'd kill the person. Yes. Which was a fair belief. Well, I mean, it's not true. We do heart catheter all the time now. But I can see how you would think it's sensitive in there.

Sure. And he didn't buy it. He said, no, no, there's a way to do this. He tried to work with the chief of his department to get him, you know, hey, I want to try this out on some people. Won't you let me do this procedure? Nobody would let him. So he said, OK, well, can I try it on myself?

Well, again, the chief of, of his medicine department said, no, you can't experiment on yourself. So he went and got the head O. R nurse who was in charge of supplies and said, hey, I really want to do this thing. Will you help me out? And she agreed. But strangely, only if she would, if he would try it out on her I Think they were in love. Do you think they're in love? Maybe she was heroic Maybe she was heroic. Well, oh you mean it like literally heroic Do you mean like heroic like heroic medicine or heroic like?

Just like just her maybe she the hero. Maybe she was like do it. Go ahead. Cat me doctor Use me for your research. Maybe she wasn't in love with her. Maybe she was in love with her. Maybe she wanted to make a name for herself. Maybe she wanted to be famous. I don't know why I feel like I have to ship everybody in medical.

You really do. Maybe she was just really cool and she was like, I want my name in the history books. Maybe she was trying to get her name in light. She saw the great success that Mac Joseph had with his thing that he did. And he saw the stamp. This didn't seem nearly as bad.

Like better, I would do this first and said, I'm sorry, go ahead. So he agreed to do it, but once they got to the OR and got set up, he strapped it to the table, he numbed up a wrist, and then he proceeded to go ahead and calf himself as he had planned on doing the work. He numbed her wrist so that she wouldn't know that he wasn't doing it.

Oh. He numbed up her arm and said, now you're not going to feel anything because you're all numb. I mean, the truth was she wasn't going to feel anything because he wasn't actually, you know, calfing her. Oh, nice. Instead, he then numbed up his own arm

and passed the catheter through what's the, called the anticubital vein. It's the vein right inside your elbow. Okay. So they draw blood. So he cathed himself pushed the catheter in a pretty good distance toward his heart, but he wasn't sure if it was really there or not. So they had to go check in radiology.

So at that point, he had to, you know, unstrap the nurse, admit to her, hey, I know your arms numb, but there's no catheter in it. But could you help escort me downstairs to radiology? So we could see where the heck this thing is that I think I've stuck in my heart. So they went down and they checked it out in radiology and he advanced it a little further and managed to stick the catheter right

into his right ventricle. Wow, what a hero. Wow! What a hero! No. No? Not a hero. I mean, this sounds really cool. He cast himself. He later went on, you know, that was kind of the pioneer of the procedure. A lot of people were not cool with this, the chief of medicine, the, you know, his eventual mentor would work with him.

A little bit of interest to the hero. People are always so jealous. They thought it was stupid. They thought it was reckless. They said, the chief of medicine, his eventual mentor would work with him. People are always so jealous. They thought it was stupid, they thought it was reckless, they said, forget this, this is not how medicine is done. So he tried to find a group of people who would kind of appreciate somebody with questionable ethics, and he found them. I don't know.

The Nazis. Warner. No, not a good guy. He joined the Nazi party. He worked as a medical officer with the Nazis. He spent some time in an American POW camp as a result. Yeah, we got him. But then what are you going to do to a man that jammed a needle in his own arm? And cat his own heart. I don't know. And I think what we decided to do with him eventually, strangely, was let him out of the POW camp, and then honor him in medical societies

across Germany, Sweden, and the US. He was actually a member of the American Academy of Chess Physicians. Listen, we all made chess Physicians. We all made mistakes. Look at Max Joseph von Pettincarfer. It's a, look at Max Joseph on Pet and Crawford. It's not, I wouldn't call this a cool guy. A lot of these people I'm talking about are like cool guys who just made up some bad choices.

Yeah, this guy made some bad choices fall by some super, super, deeper bad choices. So, but he is the first, first person to be heart-cathed. It's enough about him. Let's talk, let's go to London. It's stupid Nazis. Yeah. Let's go to London. Let's round it out with something that I promise you is not gross at all.

Okay. So John Hunter born in 1728. He was a London doctor. And at this time in London, when he was practicing medicine, it was booming. It was a city on the grow. And wherever you have industry and business and population explosions, what do you got to have?

A lot of restaurants, I guess a lot of infrastructure to keep up with that. Prostitutes, just in prostitutes. Well prostitutes. I was going to say prostitutes next. So there were lots and lots of prostitutes there. And as a result, there was lots and lots of venereal disease. At the time, it was believed that there were pretty much two main classes of venereal disease, syphilis and gonorrhea, thepox or the clap. And most doctors believed that you either had one the other or both, and they were two distinct illnesses. One was bad, gonorrhea, because it was terrible to

have, but wouldn't kill you, and was relatively brief, whereas syphilis was something that could kill you and was really bad. Now, John Hunter, he didn't buy this theory. He thought that it was the same disease. There's one venereal disease, syphilis and gonorrhea, the same thing, there's just two different stages of it. You got gonorrhea first from some sort of poison that you probably got from another person. We understood that it was kind of sex,

we kind of knew it was sexually transmitted. We had that idea. So you got some sort of poison from another person, it gave you the symptoms of gonorrhea, which was mainly local, mainly, you know, pus coming out of your privates. And then it spread to your whole system, and you got syphilis.

Oh, oh, oh, that's not right, right? That's right, it's not right. They are definitely two distinct diseases. And being neat, John Hunter, even I knew that. Jerk. But he really wanted to prove this theory. But how do you prove it? I don't know. Well, you have to find somebody who you know with with complete certainty has never had gonorrhea

or syphilis and give them gonorrhea. And then you wait and see if they only get gonorrhea, mother and their two distinct illnesses. If they get gonorrhea and then later get syphilis, okay, now that's the same illness, you've proven it, but you've got to find somebody that you are a hundred percent sure does not have either disease. So I picked himself. Of course. And how to give yourself gonorrhea? I'm not going to, no, I can't imagine Sydney. Well, so you get some pus from a guy who's got it. So you get some pus?

One of the more awkward conversations you can have with this stranger. Could you give, could, would you go take this cup? You have... Sconeria, I mean, I was just gonna get there. I was trying to come up with a QA to ask. And now he was a doctor, so he had access to people with gonorrhea.

So take some of the pus and give it to yourself. Now, how to inoculate yourself most, certainly to get the disease. Well, why don't you just make some superficial cuts into your own penis and then put the pus in them? You said. I them. You said. I lied. You said it would be gross.

And now you do this to me. Your husband is a father of your child. How could you make me think about a guy of me penis buzz on his own penis? We got to read it. Got to read a penis buzz. This is how he does. This show is supposed to be seen for children.

We got to read it. Show is it safe for anybody? I'm not using profanity Yeah, you are you're using emotional profanity Visual profanity that's what you're doing to me Predictively he got got a real yeah super connery. He got amazing supergaria. You know what, sad is that he later, I mean, he got got a rea, that's sad enough. But he later went on to develop a characteristic

syphilis shanker. Oh no, now you're throwing for a loop. So wait a minute. A shanker is the initial, it's the initial sore that you get with syphilis, it's kind of like an ulcer. That's, so he developed one. Why? They even named it, by the way.

Really? The Hunterian Shanker for John Hunter. So he briefly had a venereal disease named after himself. Oh, that Shanker, that's named after the original one on my weiner. That's the Hunterian Shanker. The Hunterian Shanker got right there.

So, okay, he's still wrong, though. Why do we know he's wrong? I don't know. Because weri and Shanky got there. So okay, he's still wrong though. Why do we know he's wrong? I don't know. Because we figured out that the patient had both. The patient he got the pus from had already gotten a reasival. Oh, the John. He managed to, he was wrong. He set medicine back like half a century with this result because it took us forever

to figure out what the heck happened and was he right or wrong and he gave himself both gonorrhea and civil. What a super great week for John Hunter. So oh man. I don't know if you call these guys brave, stupid. It's a little bit of a call a male, a little bit of call a bee I think, but I'm certainly happy to have made their acquaintance Except for half of them which are the worst people in history that have subject me to these things and I'll never sleep well again I think I think Walter Reed is the only one I'd want to sit down to dinner with personally. Yeah But that's gonna do it for us this week on Saabos we hope you've enjoyed yourself

and not throwing up in your mouth basically. Sorry about that. Yeah, super, super sorry about all that. Thanks everybody, tweeting about the show like Nicole in Wingget Steve Spalding, Mark Hayes, Pollock Patel, Rachel Taylor Bear, Zena, Jen Barnison. Barnison, yeah, there we go.

Bethany Packwood, our buddy, Carrie Poppy, blist for James Something, Tristan Morris, Josh Butler, Amy Chatton, so many others, super duper appreciate that. Please tell your followers about our show this week. You can link them to sawbombshow.com where they can find us. We're on Twitter at sawbombs. She's at Sydney, McElroy, S-Y-D-N-E-E-E-E-L-R-O-Y. And he's at Justin McElroy. That's me. There are a ton of great shows just waiting for you to

listen to them on the McSfun Network. There's Jordan Jesse Goat, just John Hodgman, stop podcasting yourself, the Goose Down, Lady Lady. My brother, my brother and me. Thank you so much. Oh no, Ross and Kerry, that's Kerry popular. And there's a lot of others. So you should totally listen to all of them and you'll like really enjoy it and you'll love them. And you'll have a great time. There's forums too, so you can go chat about it and Our episodes and all the other shows. I want to remind you go to boatparty dot biz to register for the Atlantic Ocean comedy and Music festival they have it is a cruise that is headed out this July and Cruz that is headed out this July and

You are going to be able to set sail with a boatload a literal boatload of great comedians since July 25th through the 28th They got W. Camel Bell Guy Brannum Tony came in Chris Fairbanks Most catcher Karen kill Garif Kyle Knaine on my'm a mouth is shutting down. Morgan Murphy, Natasha Liger, John Roderick, personal friend that I haven't met, but it seems like a nice guy. That's boatparty.biz, you can go reddish of that.

You will have the time of your life. I assure you and everyone's name on the boat is impossible to pronounce. So you can have fun with that. You gave it your best. You know what I gave it to the old college try. Anyway, that's gonna do it for us. We will be sure to join you next Tuesday

with another episode of Sobbing's, until then I'm Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And there's always dope, Drilla Holy, your hand. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone, Listener Supported. Artist-owned.

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