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

Episode Date: July 22, 2016

We're throwing a Boston Tea Party of our own as we explore the strange history of medical tea live from Boston's historic Wilbur Theater. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Hey everybody, I'm, uh, hi, uh, if you didn't know, I am Riley Smirral. Uh, I am one of the co-hosts of Still Buffering, a sister's guy, Deteens Through the Ages, which is a podcast I do with Taylor Smirl, my other sister and Sydney of Sobhones. I really hope you all appreciate me being here tonight because I was just made aware today that Jane the version season two is out on Netflix. So I... So I stopped watching that backstage and I paused it in my batteries real low. So I'm just gonna rush through all this business stuff. Justin told me to say, no recording audio or video.

You can take pictures, but no flash photography. There will be posters on sale during intermission that are already signed in the lobby. And I think that's it. There is a limited number, that's what Travis just told me to say. So there's only a limited number of sign posters. So thank you all for coming, and here is Sabones. Soabones 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. Alright, some is about to boost. One, two, one, to the table. We came across a pharmacy, but the wind has busted out. Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones, a metal tour of Miscite Admedicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McEloy. It's every time. And I wish I could say it doesn't hurt.

Because that would make me a bigger man, but it pains me deeply. Hey, Sid. Hi. Hi. What's it going on? I'm trying to grow. Okay, yeah, it's a little low here. Okay, set up straight posture. Bus fall.aw, back up straight feet on the floor, bus-faw.

Learn that from choir. We're on my bus-faw, heads up. So this is Salbunz. We try to do each of our shows sort of, or live shows, or geographically themed when we can. Yeah, we draw from the deep pool of knowledge we have about the places we go and try to, you know, make it something you can connect to. Yeah, like when we did a show in Milwaukee, all we did was repeat the Wayne's World bit,

the housecoup guys. We tied it directly. That's what we knew. So what do we know about Boston? Number one, beans. Yeah. Love it, you guys love them. You're crazy about them.

You make a bad candy about them. You love beans. That's one. Careful. Careful. What? No, I'm just spending, anybody. OK, your candy's's fun what else do you

know about Boston okay the other one is red socks as a gimme though nothing medical about that and the other one we knew was you guys hate tea. You guys have fans of tea. Yeah, you guys are fans of tea. You threw it all in the river. So I hate this tea or a lake. I think it was a harbor. A harbor. You heard somebody out there saying. No, I knew need that 1773 That's impossible because that's before America was born There was nothing here before then

Merch all from panacea, okay, so But you guys hate you so since you tea, we're gonna talk about it. Yeah. Tea. The medical history of tea. And I know that seems weird. I mentioned that several times. I'm gonna do tea and people are like,

that's not medicine. But I promise it is. I mean, it isn't. No, it isn't. It's not medicine. But there's a long history. And I think everybody has this idea, like, tea is good for you. Tea is healthy for you.

Well, why? So do you want to hear about that? Absolutely, I do. So as far as where tea came from, there are a couple of interesting myths that I found as to the origin, the first person to find tea. The most popular mythological, possibly partially true origin of tea is from 2737 BCE when Emperor Shenong was, he only liked to drink water that had been boiled, which was really

smart at the time. He didn't know he was killing germs, but he was. And so he was on this journey with his whole court to visit another royal somewhere else. And they stopped so that he could have his break in his water and they sat down and boiled his water next to a bush. And a leaf from the bush fell in his water. And it was from the tea plant, Camelia Sinensis. And then some sugar from a sugar plant, fell in, and it fell into a cup plant.

And he was like, this is great. I wish there was. And then the spoon plant was like, allow me. And then cows. I mean, cows are the other thing with milk, but there's not a milk plant. I'm not an idiot. No.

So this is the most popular origin of tea that you find, and then he really liked it, and so everybody was like, let's try that, let's do that too. There's this other myth that's a little more gruesome, but I like it that comes from India, where the Buddha was making a pilgrimage to China, and he wanted to meditate for nine solid years. Now, when you meditate, you're not supposed to sleep. I guess, I do, but you're not supposed to.

So he was going to stay awake for nine solid years. Well, that's really hard, and he couldn't. He fell asleep, which I think I would forgive him for. Yeah. That's a long time. Well, a story of it was not a great idea, Buddha. That a lot of good ones don't give me wrong. Love that guy.

But he was so ashamed that he couldn't meditate for nine solid years and that he fell asleep, that he cut his eyelids off, so that he wouldn't be able to sleep anymore, and he threw them upon the ground, and there, from there, sprang this plant with leaves that were sort of shaped like eyelids, which I guess the leaves from the tea plant are.

And there you go. And it keeps you awake. To compare the two possible things, either the Buddha cut his eyelids off and grew a magical caffeine plant, or some leaves fill in the dude's water. I know his story, but I know what you think I'm leaning towards. This is probably why the first one's more popular. I've been a little more popular.

So there are mentions of tea dating back thousands of years. And initially, it was really viewed as a health beverage or a stimulant, definitely. I mean, people understood pretty quickly like, I don't know what this is, but I'm awake. This is great. People use it as a food more than they did a recreational drink. They would take the leaves and actually kind of cook them with garlic and onions, eat tea leaves, or pickle the tea leaves. That was a popular way.

We see mentions, even in ancient literature, this is great for you to take, not because it's good, not because we enjoy it, because it's good for things like tumors or abscesses, just in general, all tumors are abscesses, especially about the head, anything around the head, it's good for that. Any ailments of the bladder, it's good for, if you have too much flim.

We've talked about humors before. If your flim is all out of balance, you got too much heated up flim. That's not a real thing. But it was good for that. It was something for that. It wasn't real, right? No, it wasn't real for that. It's a made up problem. It's made up treatment. Hey, it's simpatico, yeah. Lesson the desire for sleep. We knew that. Quinched your thirst.

OK, all right, guys. We're getting a little lazy to do with our medical treatments. And it gladens and cheers the heart. Oh, sure. OK. Why not? And you see that T becomes so popular and so valuable that by the sweet dynasty, it's actually traded

its currency. You can actually pay for things with cakes of T. That makes sense. It could become a commodity, right? Like the Romans you sold for that. Hey. Hey. Look at you.

Watch me go. Look at you with your history. You've been taking it slow over there. Yeah, that's right. And... Minastic drinking levels tonight. And in 800 AD, that's when you really see like tea, the tea breaks through, it becomes, you know, a breakaway pop hit. Lou you wrote a book called the T script,

which the name for it was Cha-ching. And everybody got... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, that's fine, but like don't act like you're just gonna blaze past You know I'm gonna pump the brakes on that one okay in this two birds and garbage driving I was trying to just no just do one pass Everybody read this and got really into tea afterwards Whether we what was in a name? I forgot the name. That's a chain. OK.

And it became like an essential part of your diet. It was even thought that if you were especially like the nomadic people who weren't necessarily able to get all the fresh fruits and vegetables that they needed in their diet, oh, it's cool. Just drink tea. We think that probably does the same thing. Sure.

I don't know why they thought that, but it was like, yeah, just drink some tea that'll be fine. And you can carry that with you a lot easier than you could a bunch of fresh things that obviously would go bad. And then people started adding other things to it. Well, if it's good for you with just the tea, why not throw in some ginger, write in how about some orange or peppermint or onions?

Okay. Which was a popular tea onion beverage. Like a savory tea. Like a dinner tea. It's like that one person on British Bake Off is like, oh you're doing cupcakes, love those. I put ham in mine. It's always that one dude. It's always that one dude.

It's always that one idiot. And they want to stand out that way. And that's not the way you want to stand out. I put sage and ham. It's like, stop it. It's a cupcake, you idiot. You British idiot. And you know they never roll at time now.

So it's just like sloppy floppy ham in there. Good cupcake, stupid. Don't eat this Mary. Don't eat this Mary. Mary don't eat this. Sorry. That was a deep cut British makeup. It's the inner part of British makeup.

We get so excited because he said it like twice and every time there's a bad bake we're like he's about to drop don't eat this Mary he's gonna say it and never does anyway T. Now most of this T that I'm talking about it's all British and all connects baby. It's really green tea the first tea that people were drinking is probably what we would think of as green tea. And I had to look into this, because I didn't know much about what is green, white, black tea, what differentiates, what does that mean? And it's really just the time,

they say the time of fermentation, really what they're talking about is oxidation of the leaves, because it's not like alcoholic. We've already talked about that, that's kombucha. But so there's even a thought that maybe the first black tea was when green tea was being shipped to the West And it just oxidized too long and then like British people got it and we're like, oh, this is what tea is I guess I don't know They're really they're really crazy about it over in the east. I guess this is a little drink and They don't made it. It's kind of in person who closed the factory. They're like this is great

This is popular right? And there are lots of other herbal infusions that then came from this that really are technically teased. If you're not using the the tea plant the tea leaves, it's not tea. Okay, so when you talk about something that's just like a Jinsing tea or you know just ginger tea or some other kind of tea lavender that isn't, that doesn't have tea in it, it's not really, you can't call it tea. I mean, you can't, we all do, but it's not tea. But all these were thought to be health beverages too. So like, in traditional Chinese medicine, you saw these like, drink some ginseng tea for

your adrenal glands or some liceum tea for your blood glucose or how about some licorice tea because it'll make you poop less, you know. Okay. That kind of thing. Sure. And many of these tasted really bad, which was part of why they were used so frequently, because this was one of the principles of,

especially in like traditional Chinese medicine, was good medicine is bitter, but good for treating disease, so the more bitter the better. So there you go. So the worst it tastes, the healthier you are. That works with kale, I know. Or anything green really. It's cool, we figured out how to fry that. Oh yeah, sure. Kale chips, thanks. We made it taste good. European's got wind of tea in the late 1500s. It made it to the woodbee U.S. and the 1600s with

the Dutch. it became very expensive by the 1700s. Everybody wanted tea. It was all over the place. Like I said, it was being traded as currency. And so there was this huge fake tea market that opened up, where people were shipping things that weren't really tea, and they were usually colored with either some sort of copper that was really dangerous for you to be drinking, or the less dangerous, more gross sheep poop was a really common way for you to make something look like tea. Listen, I know you love tea. You're always talking about it.

Now that I tried, you know what I can say? I don't get it. What's the appeal? You know what it's heist like. Tastes like sheep poop arrow. I'm sorry, I gotta be honest. I'm Mary Berry senior senior senior. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God before the mouth.

And you see in the 1700s, all of these reports on the health benefits of tea start coming out as it becomes more popular and everybody's drinking it. They're like, look, it cures scurvy. It's good for indigestion. It's good for chronic fear. So that's good. So that's good. When it's first sold and marketed in London, in the 1800s by Thomas Gareway, who was the owner of Gareway's coffee house, it was purely as a health drink. It was a medicine.

You were not buying tea so that you could just like sit and have a nice cup of tea and relax. You were drinking tea so that you could make your body active and lusty. Remove obstructions from your spleen. It was very good against the stone and the gravel in your kidneys and uritors. And literally anything else. He talked about clearing up your site. It would cleanse it and purineth your adult humors and your hot liver.

Your hot liver. Hot liver. It was good against, this is crudities. I thought it said crudities, which just really I enjoyed. I was saying crudities or something different. What's all, what's the degree it probably means agree. It probably means farts. Probably means farts. I think they do because then it goes on to talk about how good it is for your stomach.

It's good for your appetite, your digestion. So I think it means it's good against farts. It's particularly good. Sorry, that wasn't funny as you said farts. Go on. Yeah, it's my fault. I'm married, dear. I don't know what I knew.

I was in for it. You said farts. Sydney. It's particularly good. He writes for men of a corpulant body, because they are great eaters of flesh. And so they need tea. Again, he writes that we get this theme. We know it's got caffeine, we know that it keeps

your weight and it overcomes superfluous sleep. Okay, that one is as accurate. All that excess sleep you have laying around, don't worry. Don't worry, he's going to fix you right out. We'll get you through that. He recommends mixing it with milk and water. So we start to see that you can prepare it with milk, which was totally a new thing, by the way,

that the British were the ones that added sugar and milk and stuff like that to tea. I mean, because you think about it with green tea that wasn't usually happening. But then with black tea, all of a sudden, you see sugar. And why I read about that why, I don't know. They just liked it. They just like sugar. See, yeah. It's not a medical thing folks. They just liked it.

They just liked it. And again, it's good for everything. It's good for pains of the guts, looseness of the bowels, purging the blood by sweat and urine. It expel its infection and it safely perjeth the gall. So anything, this is how he opened his shop and said, T, and then just unveiled this huge scroll. And he was like, you can make the argument that it is a cure all. And what do we know about cure all is everybody? They cure nothing.

That's right. Now, of course, when anything becomes really popular, you get people who are for and people who are against, and especially in the medical community. We just like to fight about things. So you have doctors who are immediately endorsing this. There's a Dutch doctor, Cornelia's Decker, who was like, yes, you need to drink at least eight

to 10 cups a day, and he claimed to drink 50 to 100. A day? Of tea a day. That's alive, though. We have a name for those today. It's live. I'm drinking a 50 cups of tea. Little Willy Wonka candy cups, like a joke symbol. 50 cups of tea.

I found a lot of mentions that Samuel Johnson, the writer, was a big fan of T as well. And I kept finding this reference like at one party. He was even witness to have 16 cups of tea. And I just kept thinking about what a boring party. And everybody was just like, oh man, that's 14. That's 14 for sure. How much farther is he gonna go?

Hey, you think, no way, he's gonna, no, no, it's 15. Hey, everybody everybody Dolores Check hold on wait he went to pee again. He'll be back. He'll be back. He'll be out It's 15 no seriously Now of course there was a counter movement to this in England there were a lot of wealthy people who who were the ones about access to tea and then they started worrying about everybody else who were the ones who had access to tea and then they started worrying about everybody else

drinking their tea because they thought, oh, it might make our working class as weak and melancholy. I guess they weren't worried about themselves, but they were worried about everybody else. And then a French doctor was like, I think you're gonna get hot all the time if you drink tea. And a lot of people thought that the stimulant effect might make you nervous.

They started saying that it would make women ugly. Mm-hmm. There were saying that it would make women ugly. Mm-hmm. There were concerns that people would drink tea instead of eating food, or instead of drinking the much more nutritionally-sound beer. And they also started to rumor that it would turn all women into prostitutes. The thing that saved tea was temperance.

Because they wanted to get... Don't you cheer for temperance in front of me. How dare you. Front of us? Temp. Wah. Hey, by the way, quick time out before we talk about this. Can you show everybody the beer from Columbia Brewing?

Real quick, they ain't no use. Look at this. Plenty MD. There's our cool doctor, Plenty. And it's so bonk, right on the back. And it's delicious. It's delicious, and it's 8.5% ABV. No, that's 8%.

Should be a fun night for everybody. Taking it slow. So, temperance. Temperance? Now it's here a nice move for temperance. But temperance did save tea because they started telling people, hey, we don't want you to drink alcohol anymore and everybody got mad and was like, you're taking away our booze too and they were like, we'll give you back the tea. And I guess everybody went, OK.

And they find alcohol like tea? No, no, no, the regular. Just the plain tea. And so then you started seeing like tea houses and tea rooms replacing pubs and bars. And there you get tea rooms from there. Yeah. To encourage people to drink tea instead of alcohol.

And that actually, by the way, helped the women's suffrage movement, because that was the first place that was ever created a tea room where women could go gather and it was cool, like they didn't have to be escorted. Yeah. So thank you, too.

Thanks, T. In the 1840s, is when I wondered about this afternoon tea, like why is that a thing? Because every time we've traveled to the UK, we've really enjoyed that. And we always know what it's like. It's like it was cookies. It's like the weight loss pledge you do in years.

Every time we leave, or we've only been a couple of times. When we leave, we're like, you know what? We got to do this at home. Every afternoon, let's stop and have tea. We make it like two weeks. Because you get cookies with it. You do get cookies with it. That's sweet.

Make some scones. That started in the 1840s. The seventh Duchess of Bedford got really hungry one afternoon and said, hey, servants, why don't you bring me some tea and some treats to my room. So I can just sit here and chill with tea and some cookies and stuff. And this led, I just thought this was not medical.

I just thought this was fascinating. It led to the tea gown, which was a special gown that women would have made for them, especially like wealthy ladies, that you would wear at this specific time of the day when you sat in your room and had your afternoon tea. And it was very loose and easy to wear, like a lot of their garments wouldn't have been at the time. And so it was very easy to remove.

So the teagown became this like fetish item, this erotic piece of clothing that you would wear like to drink tea if you know what I mean. And it became like synonymous with this time of day, which is called the Sink Offset, or 5-7, which is the time of day when you're supposed to have affairs. I love the French. This is the affair time. This is your affair time where you have tea and cookies and you wear a special gown that you take off for your lover. There you go.

Can you imagine how like what a sweet time it would have been to be alive when everything was so boring and nothing that one day you could decide to have tea in your room and everybody's like pfft, start a trend. Everybody, did you hear the new thing? Like, what? I just had tea in my room was, yeah, we're all crazy for it. That was such a good idea. Because nobody does anything yet.

So like, you just invented a whole whole meal by like doing that. That went high. That's awesome. It would have been in all the magazines. everybody would have been gossiping about it. Did you hear the news? Well, the Duchess of Bedford did? Not 14 cups, you know. Henry David, for a little while. She had cakes too.

Cakes too, in addition. Printed somewhere. Do we print yet? Does anybody know of printing somewhere? Yeah, we're printing. We're printing. Printed. In a magazine, in Pnews,

paint broadsheet, broadsheet. Printed in a broadsheet. In 1904, we see the creation of Ice Tea. It was actually at the world. Whoa, he is older than I thought. That's a lot of great. Some jazz becomes herself going on there, huh? Do you feel good about that? So good.

The rapper. So at the World's Fair in 1904, a really clever entrepreneur thought it's really hot. Nobody wants to drink tea right now. Why don't I throw some ice in there? Pwala. Ice tea. Tea bags were created in 1908 when a New York tea importer named Thomas Sullivan started sending clients these little bags, these little silk bags of his tea to like,

hey, check out this delicious tea, do you want to buy some more of this? And people just got them and we're like, oh, I just put this in water, just the whole thing. Okay, and just start steeping them, and there you go, there's tea bags. I'm just like an accident. Oh, wow.

Again, I was just thinking about how, again, how like, I wish I'd been born, like, they had nothing. This guy with a tea in how, again, how like, I wish I had been born, like, they had nothing. This guy with T in a bag is like, you're the CEO of this invention. And today, you know, as we're kind of moving into the now, I still think we get this idea that especially certain kinds of tea can help you with different things. If you look at the tea types, green tea is often touted as being like an antioxidant, and that because of that, it'll help you fight.

Specifically cancer, you see that a lot. It will help prevent cancer out of immune disease. Black tea is, in theory, supposed to fight strokes, so it's supposed to prevent strokes. And also be really good for oral health, just for your mouth in general. White tea is supposed to be good for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, good for osteoporosis,

and then ulong tea is supposed to be good for diabetes, and weight loss. And then there's also, I found uses for tea currently that aren't necessarily like drinking it. You could use it as a mouthwash for a strep throat. I found that. And then you could put it in your foot bath if you feed or smelly. I mean, they smell like tea. Can you do the, is that a thing to put

tea bags in your eyes? Is that saying? Yeah, I'm yeah, I mean it was it a thing. Do people do it? Yes. Yes. People do everything. Now, why do we all think tea is healthy? Because I mean that's still, I mean I don't think that that's weird to say, like I drink T for my health. Because it has a lot of polyphenols, which are these bioactive substances that can do a lot of different things, we know in a lab, we know they do a lot of different things.

They can antioxidize things, they can be antivirals, they can fight inflammation. We've seen evidence that they have certain factors that play a role in the immune system to help boost the immune system more active. And then you get like these non-specific things, like they also detoxify, which I always hate that. Your liver does that, guys.

Thank goodness. Thank goodness. That's what your liver does. So what it's doing for me, it's thank your liver does. So what it's doing for me, it's, thank your liver. And that they can also stop platelets from clumping. Now, if that were all true, if T could do that in your bodies and all of our bodies, that would be great, because then it would help to prevent cancer

and to prevent cardiovascular disease, to prevent strokes and heart attacks, any kind of chronic inflammation, any autoimmune diseases, all those things. Yes, if that were all true, the problem. The problem is that a lot of the studies... Wait, I guess. It's not? A lot of...

And again, a lot of people say this, like, well, we don't do big studies on tea, because Big Pharma doesn't get money off of Big T. I don't know why everything's big now. But the fact is there have been, there have been a normally large number of studies done on T. And a lot of this is done in a lab. So like we take these polyphenols and we look at them

in test tubes and stuff and go, oh, look at all that stuff it did. But then when we put it in humans, we don't see the same effect. Unfortunately. Yeah, it would be great. It would be great. Let's do that.

But if green tea could cure cancer, which is out there on the internet, all over the place, we probably would have figured that out by now. And we've done studies to look into just that, and it doesn't. And you find all kinds of, in addition to all these crazy claims about tea, which we find with a lot of curals, there are some really weird facts. One in particular that I like the best about green tea is that if you're an office worker

and you stare at a computer all day, and this was in the same sentence where it was like green tea has polyphenols that are good for antioxidizing. Also, it protects you from computer radiation That you're absorbing every day. So drink your green tea to create a shield between you and your computer to block the radiation. Excuse me? Kind of an author reservation there. Well, exactly. Yeah. Which you came with tea very easily. Yeah, it gets crazy. It's not stopping the world from drinking it. I thought I assumed that British people were the biggest consumers of tea

Ireland Irish people are the biggest consumers of tea actually like per capita Yes, but but tea accounts for 40% of the daily fluid intake of the British people You're a lover. It's a crazy amount of tea. That's a lot of tea. Yeah That's a lot of tea. No. That's a lot of tea. No, I want some tea, just to get better and heal myself. I will stick with my maladies. I will stick with the more nutritionally sound beer. Beer.

Hey folks, that's going to do it for us. We're going to take a quick break. Be sure to buy some postures. My brother and brother are going to be out in a few minutes. But until then, my name is Justin McRoy. And Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Yeah!

Yeah! I was in time, I was not mad at it. To the time this case, I just stayed with my fucking brother. I was in trouble. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The three of you into a cave of a big red dragon and is standing over a horde of precious golden rubies. And he says, what do you do, adventures? I'm a dragon man. I cast fire on him, it's very good. I address the red dragon to say, us, we're the hosts of the Adventure Zone, a podcast about family playing Dungeons and Dragons. Very good synergy, commit to the bit.

I, I, I roll to charm new listeners. It is very effective against all odds. Everybody wear the macros, we host the Adventure Zone to podcast where we play Dungeons and Dragons together. It's a comedy podcast. We don't take the rules too seriously, because there's a lot of them and we did not take the time to learn them.

Maybe listen to us, we come out every other Thursday on the Maximum Fund Network, you can find us on iTunes or on Maximumfund.org. I think this promos a critical hit. you