Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Great Stink of 1858

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

The Great Stink of 1858 has highlights from some of the Sawbones Greatest Hits: the controversy of hand washing, the miasma theory of disease. and cholera. Which is all to say: it took humanity a long time to figure out that we shouldn't be drinking poop.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Sawbones 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, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miss guided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Sometimes I do that voice unintentionally and it's like almost like a parody of how radio people sound. Like, and I worry that you just might turn the episode on and think like, well, that's

how this guy sounds. That's this guy, I guess. He's one of these radio guys. That's true. But do you think, like, if people here and think you're one of those radio guys, that's bad? I don't know. Are you worried they're going to turn it off?

They want the professionalism. You know? Sometimes when we listen to a podcast, you and I, if it's like casual, it's like good. And sometimes it's too slick and that's not good. That's true, too slick. Well, I think that is our bias because we are not slick. But no, I would say we don't necessarily use a traditional podcast voice either.

So I don't know. If you want to support non-traditional podcast like ours, there is no better way to do it. We're still in the game, even though we're elderly people in their in their twilight years. We slick. We're not slick. We, uh, this is the max fund drive. This is our second max fund driver. So at our final max fund drive episode of 2023, we are in a network

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There's more stuff we'll talk to you about again in the middle of the show, but until then, let's get on with it. Now, I'm excited to do this episode sitting because we originally had a chance to, how would you say, dry run to a dry run of this episode at herd con? With her so I think it's the word you Yes, yes, rehearse this episode at herd con in front of an audience of our, you know,

Marshall Marshall friends So we really appreciate them having this having it what our Marshall friends? Marshall friends friends from Marshall University Marshall family even Marshall family. It is a family. We think we both went to went to Marshall We've friends from Marshall University. Marshall family even. Marshall family it is a family thing. We both went to went to Marshall. We've graduated from Marshall. So if you're ever around town when heard cons going on it's really fun little pop culture kind of con where you can learn stuff and have fun and hang out with other cool folks. And sometimes we're there. And sometimes we're there at the air. I just and I was inspired. I always like when there's something that is happening either. Well, I don't like when it's a current event in the media necessarily that we're commenting on because then sometimes it's scary and bad.

But if there's something that people talk about on a popular show or a movie or something that relates to medical history, it's fun because then you get to talk about something that might be like in the zeitgeist. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes I can feel you like prickling up a bit like careful now. This is my territory. I don't want somebody else to do this like as well as I do or find some cool thing. I didn't know about. Are you saying that someone could do it as well as I do? No, that's what makes it so ridiculous. Because no one could. What is she worried about? I'm not naive. I know I'm not the only one who talks about medical history. I'm just best at it.

You're just best at it. I'm just best at it. I'm just best at it. No, we were watching Ted Lasso. Yes. Yes, which many people, we are not alone in that. I'd say many people were also watching Ted Lasso. Yeah.

And it was mentioned in a event in London's history, the great stink of 1858. And this was, it's funny in London's history, the Great Stink of 1858. And this was, it's funny, because it's one of those things where I had never heard that term. Yes, the Great Stink. No. Would you would remember if you had heard it?

But I know enough about that period of history and specifically what diseases they were concerned about, and all of that, like I understood the context, but I had never heard that term. Yes. So that feels, that always, it's a little exciting because it feels like, oh, there is a hole in that historical record for me, not in all,

but for me personally, in Sydney's understanding of that historical record. There's a little hole with a cool story or an interesting story or maybe a sad story. Some sort of story that I don't know and I can share with you. And so this is a, it's a story about sanitation. It's a story about measmetheria of disease. It's a story about cholera, but primarily it's a story about a great stake.

Yes. Um, so a lot of the times doctors get credit for saving people's lives. And as well they should. Maybe I don't know. We do the best we can. But this is not the story of a heroic doctor. Oh, okay. Is that a story of a heroic podcaster?

Because I could do with a few of those. No, it is a story of a heroic engineer. Oh, okay. So London is an old city. You may know that. It is way older than Huntington. There's no other way of saying that. There's no doubt. There's no doubt.

We have to admit that. I know a lot of people were questioning what's Huntington, West Virginia, or London, England, which one was here first. It's the first. It is. It has that great joke. I come from England where we make the history.

That's where history comes from. So London, of course, like any city, you start out small and you get bigger. You start with like one person. It starts off, here's how cities work. It starts off with one person in a house and they say, I'm the mayor and there's no one around. And then they go around the area and they look and see

if there's any other people around. And then they say, Hey, I got a new town. We already have a mayor. It's me. It's me, but I would love, we knew we need a treasure or whatever, a secretary, whatever. And then we can move you house. I'll start like a club.

It's like a club. No, you know, we were taught in West Virginia history that the first person to start West Virginia was Morgan Morgan. Yes. That was not the first human to live in the land that we now call West Virginia. No, but we were definitely taught that in West Virginia history. You heard about Morgan Town? That's, I mean, I feel like that's kind of proof positive of my of my theory, right? My name is Morgan Morgan. This is Morgan Tal. And it's a real smorgasborgan Morgan's.

Somebody got a golden horseshoe. Yeah. Anyway, so the population of London really started to explode. It was obviously like any city. Oh, he's always on the grow. But between 1800 and 1850, the population doubles. That's a 50 years, twice as many people, crammed into one place. And when you have that many people, you have a lot of people waste. Yes.

You know. Yes, you know what we mean. You know what I mean. Dookie. There was of course a sewage system in London prior to this point. And people had already thought about that. Like the poopy has to go somewhere.

That poopy gotta go somewhere. Yeah, like I imagine one of the first thoughts a person had when they pooped was, well, this has gotta go somewhere. Yeah. But it was pretty old. There was a brick sewer system that had been constructed in the 17th century.

And since then, like a ton of like sewers and cess pits and places to put waste had been constructed all over London. And as the city grew, these would fill and often overfill. And like you'd have methane gases being released from all these like cess pits and stuff, things would catch on fire sometimes. So it was not necessarily like a great system that had been put in place. And a lot of it, all of it, in essence, emptied into the River Tams, which by the way is spelled like its themes, but don't you get it twisted? It's temps. Don't get it messed up.

No. Where did we sit? Oh my gosh, what was, oh, in cats. Yes. When he tries to rant. We're talking about James Corden. James Corden. Yes. Yes. I've done talk about James Corden. Sorry. Okay. Now, maybe this was working out for a while that everybody dumped their poop into the River Thames. I mean, it seems workable to me. But changes in the 1800s greatly increased the amount of human waste that was flowing into what had previously been called by British writer John Aubrey, the Silver Thames.

It was no longer so. John Aubrey also a friend to the fourth doctor. Oh, really? Yeah, he notes that. Tom Baker. The fourth doctor. Yes. Tom Baker. Yeah. He talks about being

friends with him. That's cool. Yeah. Just a little doctor who referenced. Yeah. Yeah. The silver tams could not maintain its color because the old wooden pipes in London, at this point, a lot of the, a lot of the suits that some had been wooden. Like I said, they were brick and brick and wood were being replaced by more efficient iron pipes, which is good, but there were also like more efficient and there were more of them, which channeled more waste into the temps. Hey, listen, get it in there. And, and also there was a new, a new hot trend that was sweeping the city, flushing toilets. Oh boy, that really blasts it through.

Yeah, so now a lot more effluence. Ooh, look, look at it. So the result of all this is that the temps had started to look less silver and more brown, sort of a pale brown. From the... Waste. Effluence. brown, sort of a pale brown. From the waste. Ethelis. And the condition was obvious, both from a visible and an olfactory.

olfactory. No, see, I knew the fancy word you were going to use that time. So in fact, in 1855, this is as things are really starting to get to a tipping point. Like everybody is starting to get worried by now. Michael Farrede, like the scientist. The Ferrede cage guy. Yes. The Ferrede cage guy. Exactly. You know about him because of lost time assuming.

Yeah, correct. He went to the banks of the river and he decided to do an experiment to see how bad, how bad, just how bad is the river Tim's. And the experiment he did is he dropped pieces of white paper into the river to see like how far can they drop before you can't see them? I had a moment where I was like, well, the littering's not cool. And I was like, well, we're already putting a lot of stuff in this river. Yeah, I wouldn't worry about these pieces of white paper

because after they had dropped less than an inch, you couldn't see them anymore. And in case you were in doubt, like, well, because after they had dropped less than an inch, you couldn't see them anymore. And in case you were in doubt, well, but are you sure that it's human waste? Maybe it's something else, you know, murky waters, who knows why? Michael Faraday stated that near the bridges, the feculents rolled up in clouds so dense

that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind The smell was very bad and common to the whole of the water It was the same as that which now comes up from the gully holes in the streets The whole river was for the time a real sewer So it was it was poop it was poop. Yeah, sorry folks and In in this time period like the city was aware, like Michael Faraday was not the first guy to walk over to the banks of the Thames and go, I think it smells bad. Guys.

I think it, I think like this is stinky. He was not the first one to notice this. Like, people were already complaining about that. Yeah. And the city had taken the approach of like, you know, if you think like, maybe I can get away with not like bathing or showering for a while, if I just put on like a whole bunch of ax body spray. They were sort of taking like that approach. Yeah. I assume you use ax, I wouldn't,

I wouldn't use ax body spray. I'm not an ax body spray person, I'm joking. I know, you don't use ax body spray. I'm about a great stink. Ax body spray. Whoa. Whoa. That's fire.

That's fire. Yeah. So they would pour lime and carbonic acid into the water to try to just sort of cover it. What was happening there? Yeah, it's a good, like, for breeze. Yeah. Although for breeze, that's not exactly fair, to get like for breeze. Yeah, a little for breeze is not exactly fair, because it like bonds to the molecules or something.

It's not just covering the set. Right. That's what the commercials tell me. Yeah, the little image, that's what it looks like. It looks like the little stink particles are bonding with the for breeze particles. And, but then where do they go, honey? Where do they fall?

Where do they go? Where do they go? Where do they go? So anyway, they would do this to try to fix it, but obviously that's not like going to fix the problem. Even if you are hiding the smell momentarily, the waste is still in the river, and more and more of it is flowing into the river. And so this was bad for a couple of reasons. One is the obvious, is grody. It's great. You don't wanna smell that. But the other is that in this point of history,

many people, and this includes not just lay people, but scientists and doctors and people who would tell you, people who you would trust to tell you, like how does disease work, would tell you that like a bad smell is dangerous to you in that it can give you illness. Right. You can get sick from smelling something bad. The measmathery.

Precisely. So that at this point in history, a lot of people believe that, you know, if that is how disease is spread. So when you would see something like what we would know now to be an infectious disease, so an outbreak of something that would be spreading among the population, what you would assume is like all these people got sick because they all inhaled the same thing as opposed to they passed something or they were all, you know, eating and drinking

from a contaminated source, whatever, right? So like it's interesting because you're bumping up against a truth, which is if your water source has poop in it, that will make you sick. But not because it smells bad, right? But like you're bumping up against something this true. You could also see though how you would make that mistake if you've ever been in a sort of cute trigger situation,

which is common in elementary school. I feel like I saw this happen where you would someone would throw up and then you'd smell the throw up and it would make you throw up. If I was an old-timey person, I would probably think like, case, case, case, case, case, case, case, well, and I mean, you can't smell this stuff.

It makes you sick, which, yes, but. And again, like people were getting all these illness and they would blame all this stuff on the stench of the, of the Tim's diphtherian, scroffula and cholera and all these different things. They would blame on the river. The stench of the thames. And it was, you know, like in the case of color,

this is true in a sense, just not because of the smell, it's because like if you had a heavy rain, then the water from the thames could wash back into the city or into, and would in fact wash into water supplies, the sewers would contaminate places where you were getting your drinking water. And then you would drink the waste and you would get really sick. Which is exactly what was also happening in this 50 year period, leading up to the great

stink is London had a series of terrible color outbreaks. in this 50 year period leading up to the great stink is London had a series of terrible color outbreaks. Oh, okay. Almost certainly related to this exact problem. Yes. And I wanna tell you about that, but first we have to go where? Well, not to the billing department.

No, to me talking about the max fun drive. If you like our show and you want to say, Hey, I want to keep this going. You know, every year we have a bunch of people whose contributions lapse because of it could be anything, financial situation chains, credit card detail, whatever. So a lot of this drive is honestly just trying to get back to where we were a year ago. So if you, so you should know that if you like what you are hearing now, the only reason it exists is because other folks, or you, maybe if you've already been kind of to donate, have stepped up and said, hey, I want this to keep happening. It is the only way that we have been able to make sobhones as consistently as we have to the work that Sydney does

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You choose the shows that you listen to, the ones that you like. And your donation goes to those shows. A small portion goes max fund, which is hugely helpful because they are the ones that get you these gifts and help with your membership details and help produce all the shows and all that stuff. So, um, but the rest of it goes directly to the shows shows you like shows you love the shows that you're saying, Hey, I want the world to be more of stuff like this. I want everyone to know about the great stink. The great stink deserves to be smelled or heard of and that's remembered. Remembered. Thank you.

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Thank you for indulging us with these pledge breaks here and thank you for being there for us for all these years. Thank you. Thank you. Now, Sid, where were we? So I was about to refresh your memory about cholera because we have talked about cholera on the ship before, but I do not expect, although I was gonna say there is no quiz, but we do, in fact,

do a quiz sometimes. Yeah, there is, of course. cholera as a little refresher for those who don't remember or if you're new. It's an old disease. It has been a scourge of humanity for many centuries. It is a bacteria, a bacterial illness, vibrio, cholerae, gram negative, if that's the kind of thing you want to know. It is.

But you get it through my favorite route of transmission. Which is the fecal oral. That's right, the fecal oral route. So basically, it can live in like salt water or brackish water of some kind. Like brackish water? Like not. Good. Like bad water. Like gross sort of.

No, it's not clean water. It's not fresh water. Ah, yeah, I got you. It's a. Water that is saltier than fresh water, but not as salty as sea water. Wow, okay. There it is. It's not fresh water.

Not fresh water. Anyway. Not sea water. Wow, okay. There it is. It's not fresh water. Not fresh water. Anyway. Not salt water. So you can ingest it somehow. You get it in your body, and then it makes you really sick with diarrhea. And the way that someone else gets it is that either they are helping care for you, cleaning you, and they get it that way because they're touching you, or like you don't, you wipe

your butt and you don't wash your hands and then you touch about it. That's not true. Who tells you that? No, I mean like not you, the royal you. Okay. And it causes a kind of diarrhea that we classically called rice water stool

because eventually it just looks like. Oh, oh, I don't like it. It's like water with little flex in it. That could look like, they're not rice. It's actually like pieces of lining of your intestine just like flexing this. Anyway, and you know, back then, like we didn't wash, hand washing was not widely accepted.

Although at this point in history, like we had, we have started to like think, like maybe we should wash our hands. But for a long time, we didn't wash our hands. And actually the guy who like said, some of us who said like, hey, I think we should all wash our hands. Like he lost his career in his sanity because of it, because he was so persecuted for saying like, wash your hands.

There was also another guy who proved how we, how anybody could get cholera by drinking some diurea water. You remember that guy? Anybody, listen, this could happen to anybody that drinks diarrhea water. There's no need for stigma. So that's cholera. The problem back then is that we didn't have antibiotics

to treat it and we didn't have an easy way to keep you hydrated because the thing is if you could maintain hydration, you could beat cholera. But we didn't, you didn't have access to like IV fluids. So you would get super sick. You weren't able to hold down stuff by mouth, fluids by mouth. Your body would become completely depleted of any fluids. You'd go into organ failure, you'd die. And a lot of people did die, unfortunately. London's first major cholera epidemic was in 1831 and over 6,000 people died. There was a following one in 1848 where like 14,000 people died in another 10,000 in 1854.

So major events were happening. And this was all related to the poor sewer system and the dirty, dirty tins. The dirty, dirty tins. And again, through this period, most people still thought that all these people were getting cholera because they were smelling the river, which would make it hard for you to prevent getting cholera if all you thought you needed to do was avoid the smell. Yes.

Because you might still be drinking the water. There was a guy who was figuring it out, which we've again talked about extensively on the show before. There was a guy named John Snow. He was a British doctor. He noted during the second color outbreak that there was a pattern like the people who got it

seemed to be drinking from a similar water source. He noticed this pattern and talked about it during the second outbreak. Nobody listened to him. During the third outbreak, he did the thing with the Broad Street pump. It seemed like everybody who was getting sick was getting their water from this one water pump, so he took the handle off the pump, so nobody could get water from it. Which seems like a, like a jerk thing to do, but it saved everybody's life. Because they couldn't access this contaminated water source.

I would go to God and I'm like, hey, hey, what are you doing? We need that. People still didn't buy it though. You know, that didn't, I mean, there were definitely some people whose minds were changed, but this was not enough to shift everyone. Well, hopefully we didn't try to sell it. That would have been rude if he had broken it off and been like, here, who wants to buy it?

I really, you now you have the power. Now you're in control. I really like, by the way, this is, I don't think we said this at the time, part of his argument as he like, published his paper on like, listen, it's the water, guys, not the stink. Part of his argument was, I talk to these 70 guys who work at a local brewery,

who didn't get cholera, and they only drink beer. So the people who only drink beer are healthy, but you guys who drank water are sick. You do the math. You do the math. Now I am assuming by our healthy, he meant don't have cholera. Yeah, comparatively, you're healthy.

So whether they knew that the river, how it was making people sick, they knew it was making people sick. Government officials started to say like, we've got to do something about it because now it's June of 1858 and it is hot. London is hot this summer, not this summer. It's 1858.

The temperature in the shade was in like the mid to high 90s. Oh my gosh. Yes, in the sun, it was well over 100 degrees. It was hot. The water level in the t, it was well over 100 degrees. It was hot. The water level in the temps was lower, so some of the waste was just sort of sitting on the banks visible. And the smell was so bad that parliament had to soak the curtains on the windows in lime to try to mask the smell.

And it was still so intense that they actually considered like maybe we just need to move parliament to another city. We can't be in London anymore. They could not carry on with the business of government because of this overwhelming. And then Morgan is over there like, oh, look who comes crawling back.

I see you guys in a city. Bad news, I'm already the mayor. You can move your city around, if you want. It's it's it's said that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert actually were like they attempted like one of their little river outings to like sail down the Tim's and enjoy it. And they like immediately returned and were like, never mind,

never mind. Forget us. It's very smelly. Every news headline, you can look at so many people commenting like reporters and journalists and writers and poets and artists talking about how bad London smelled in the summer of 1858.

There are news headlines that talk about the stink in the fear of disease. Charles Dickens wrote about it at the time. He said the Tim's was a deadly sewer. And he said, I can certify that the offensive smells even in that short whiff have been of a most head and stomach-dustending nature. There was Sydney Smith, was a humorist who said, he who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more animated beans than there are men, women, and children on the face of the globe. There were cartoons in the paper. They used to refer to the river as father

tims. So there are these like, you know, depictions of the river as this old guy. And it's like a picture of him with his three children, diptheria, cholera, and scrofula. And need and want something exactly. There were pictures of what they called monster soup, which is the tims. And they would have like close-ups like this is what the water looks like close-up. And it would be like just a bunch of little mythical beasts and creatures and monsters that were in the river. There was a poem I found that dirty father tims filthy filthy river foul from London to the North. What art thou but one vast gutter, one tremendous common sure? Everyone had some fanciful way. This is so British. They all had some beautiful artistic way of depicting how bad it stunk except the city press who just

wrote, gentility of speech is at an end. It stinks. And who so once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it. So the House of Commons is like, we gotta do something. Something. Listen, y'all, we gotta do something. In the opening of the debate, the the leader of the House of Commons, Desirelli said, the Tim's is a Stigian pool wreaking with ineffable and intolerable horrors. Ineffable. Ineffable.

Ineffable. Ineffable. Ineffable. And so basically what they said is we need to pay engineers to fix it. The city needs to put money into fixing the sewer system. So they do. they hire an engineer, the guy is Joseph Basilgett.

And he is the hero of our story. It's English. And he had already been working for the government. There's this note where like he was like the second engineer in command guy, he was not the boss, he was like second to the boss. And the guy who was his boss, reportedly died from the stress of the job.

Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of pressure. It was just a wild thing to just sort of note. Like, we gave the job of head of sewers to this one guy and it was such a terrible stressful job. I mean, I don't want to quibble with you and with history and everything, but we also knew about four different ways people could die. It's like, get hit by trolley, stress of job.

Bad smell. Bad smell old age. So it had to be one of those fours or sat by Jack the Ripper. So it had to be one of those five ways you could die. So maybe he also had like something else going on perhaps. We also thought Scroffula could be cured by the King touching you at the time. No, one of the few things that can't be cured by the king touch. So this project that they undertook to rework the London sewer system, which would take

many years and many millions of dollars, created these new drainage systems. Oh, many pounds. Thank you. Sorry, excuse me, many millions of pounds would create these new drainage systems that would run parallel to the Thames. This is, they built these pumping stations to move waste in embankments. There was this whole system like you can read, if this is your thing, you can read these descriptions of how they were going to move waste like at some points carrying it up out

of lower line areas, then allowing gravity to carry it out out of the city. Other pathways for flow of waste, they built embankments. If you've ever wondered why you stop, if you're on the London Underground and you stop at something called embankment, that's what they're talking about. They built these Victorian embankment. Do you remember this? They built these embankments, these big hill kind of things, to like house parts of this system.

These were when these were built. These embankments and these beautiful pumping stations. There's one at Crossness and at Abbey Mills that are actually like preserved English heritage buildings because if you look in their pictures, you can look, they're gorgeous inside. So they weren't just like functional. They were these like works of art inside these pumping stations to move human waste. And they like, I think it's interesting. Like it was such a celebrated thing. They named the embankments like Victoria and Albert. They named the engines in the Crossness pumping station after royalty, which is like an honor. And it's all part of a sewer system.

Yeah, but I really, I really hope for one, hopefully. The, I thought, I like this, the ironwork inside is described as important. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So the project would end up costing more than double what they thought. And it would take a long time. It wasn't complete until 1875, but was it worth it? Well, during construction in 1866, there's another color outbreak, which is going to take over 5,000 lives. However, the area of London that was struck by this color outbreak was part of the city that had not yet been connected to the new system. It was very clear that the people who were being impacted by cholera were people who were not yet benefiting

from this new sewer system, which really drove home for a lot of people. We are getting sick because of this water. It is not the smell. We didn't get smell when it was really stinky and eight, and we didn't get sick when it was really stinky in 1858. We're getting sick now because of this water. And there's actually another report published

in the Lancet by Dr. William Farh who actually initially had never believed Jon Snow. And now was like, you know nothing, you know nothing of color, Jon Snow. Okay. Is this a reference to Game of Thrones that I'm not understanding? Okay.

I guess you understood a little bit because you didn't say it was for Game of Thrones, I said maybe not as high a mighty as you may see. Because of this, seeing this difference between people who were on the new sewer system people who weren't and William Farr's paper, everybody went, I guess it was drinking the water after all. Or, we shouldn't drink poop.

It took us a while to figure that out. It's the moral. This is humanity. It takes us a while to figure out. We need to wash our hands. It takes us a while to figure out that we shouldn't drink poop. We still haven't figured out that we should stay home when we're sick.

We still can't get that one right. Can we, folks? Well, no. I mean, capitalism. Well, if I may. I know. Obviously, everything's more complex than nuance than that. But you know what I'm saying.

We're humans. We are so fallible. It was lauded, it was supported. The project was, I mean, it was really, it was one of those times when like, the government is doing this big, giant, expensive, time-consuming thing, and everyone is in support of it.

Everybody is celebrating it. They like toyd with the idea of like, let's just give Basil get like, 4,000 pounds. Just give him a bunch of money. Give him 6,000 pounds. Just hand him money. Like they actually didn't do that. But they were like, wanted to give him these like giant like three-year salary bonuses because everybody was so excited about this. And so proud of it as like just this amazing achievement of, you know, not just humanity, but of like London and the British empire. We can do the same thing.

We can do the same thing. So anyway, thousands, millions, who knows how many lives were saved by Joseph Basilgett and this sewer system that he built. And he went on, he was knighted and then he went on to like build bridges or fix bridges around London. And just went on with build bridges or fix bridges around London. He just went on with his career doing his engineer stuff after he created this incredible thing. Well, unfortunately, the sewer system that he constructed was made to accommodate probably like four and a half million people was what he estimated it could do, which was way more than

they had at the time. But now London is a city of more than 8 million. So there's a lot more people and the Thames is once again overwhelmed. I do not live there, but from my reading, the sewer system is once again overwhelmed. They need to reconstruct. So they are building the super sewer, which will accommodate.

It's gonna replace the super crackers that was there. And now they've got the super sewer. Yeah, I was reading about it. Like you can find the website where they talk about London's super sewer and all the things they're doing. And they're very excited. I mean, it looks great. And I talked about like London has had issues with fat burgs,

clogging up their sewers and things. So they needed a new, but you know what? That's what growth demands. Growth demands new sewers. If there's one thing you take away from this podcast, let it be this. Let it be this.

Growth demands new sewers and the sanitary disposal of our human waste is, I mean, really one of the most important things we can do for our health. If you take away two things from this podcast, however, let it be this. This is our very last chance for you to get in on the Max Fund drive to get these great gifts and more importantly to support the shows that you love. If you can right now, take a second, please, please, please, please.

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Yes, Cindy and I did a fast and furious review podcast and you can be a party to that. That's a whole, it's like a secret podcast. We're not a secret. We told you, but like you get it. We are going to do another, we're do on Wednesday at 9 p.m. over on YouTube on the McElroy Family channel. Sydney and I are going to be watching for reasons that you won't understand until you've experienced it. We're gonna be watching, I believe in Santa on Netflix just because it's outrageous. I don't even know how to tell you about this, man. You all are gonna freeing flip. We're gonna watch it together. You're gonna watch it with us. It's gonna be a lot of fun and be chill.

And that'll become a max fun drive event too. But don't wait. Go right now to MaximumFund.org for its ice joint and help us do this stuff we do. Thanks to the taxpayers for these song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. We appreciate you very much. That's going to do it for us until next time. My name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. Don't drill a hole in your head. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

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