Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Star Jelly

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Have you ever gone outside and found gelatinous goop on the ground? It’s jelly from the stars! But actually . . . what is it? As far back as the 14th century, people have noticed mucilaginous goo that has been associated with both the medicinal and the magical. Dr. Sydnee talks about the many instances of “star jelly” throughout history, what it could possibly be, and the effect it has on people – sometimes harmful, but mostly benign.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

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, talk is about books. One, two, one, of misguided medicine. for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

I'm your co-host, Justin. And I'm Sydney McElroy. What's going on, Sid? How are things going? Like, for me, for the world. We haven't talked a little bit. I mean, that will give our listeners a strange view of us. We do talk every day. We haven't seen each other since the last recording. I mean... that's, that will give our listeners a strange view of us.

We do talk every day. We haven't seen each other since the last recording. I mean, no, we, is this an illusion we're creating that we don't see each other? No, this is a different just this is like, oh, this is podcast. This is time to shine Justin. Time to shine. Time to shine Justin only shows up for podcasting. I like the idea that if you were like a series of like dolls,

there's like regular Justin, and then there's time to shine Justin. They do that with JoJo Siwa because the kids love the JoJo Siwa dolls, and they have different like, there's like pop star JoJo Siwa and like the regular like hanging out casual JoJo Siwa. There's different ones.

There's the Taekwondo Justin, the Zondobok and different colored belts. There's Justin's in the shop, which is like a woodworking one with has like protective gear and aprons and like your own glue comes in it and some wood for free is in there and it's like a whole line at all.

Does it come with my storage space that's now filled with a woodworking shop? Huh. And like me, like or like a little picture of me looking sad. Can I tell you something? That's actually not something you want to discuss with time to shine Justin.

That's really more like a regular Justin or a husband or a son. Kind of discussion. I'm just here to be effervescent and charismatic and shine. I mean, I don't know how I was to put it. And you're right now you're dulling my shadow a little bit, which many inspirational images on Facebook say

that I'm not allowed to let anybody do. Well, I just can't help but be me all the time. There's just the one me, what you see is what you get. A wizzy wig, that must be exhausting. Actually, that sounds exhausting. Well, what is the Sydney that I see? What am I getting from her today? Well, for me today, this sort of fits in

with Time to Shine Justin. Okay. Because perhaps Time to Shine Justin is made of Star Jelly. Oh boy, I love that. I love Star Jelly. I actually lathered up on my face before every time that I shine. So it actually is perfect.

Have you, let me ask you, have you actually heard of Star Jelly? Never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly.

I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star Jelly. I never heard of Star jelly because I had not heard of this and now I'm fascinated and know what we're going to do a show about it. There is a medical reason to talk about Star jelly, believe it or not. Justin. With all that is going on, are you surprised to learn that apparently there's been some sort of gelatinous ooze that's either coming from the earth or most likely people thought falling from the stars falling falling from the sky for centuries Oos has been falling from the sky for centuries and nobody noticed Nobody knew well some people know and that's why we're doing an episode about it But we didn't know I certainly didn't did you do you ever do ever when you're taking your

Yes, yeah, your morning stroll through the, through the dewy fields of Huntington, I don't know. Yeah, through the second. Yeah, do you, on the mors, when you're taking your strolls on the mors, I wish you had mors. Do you ever find like goo that you can't explain on the ground like jelly or goo, j-j-jatinous gooey? Yeah, but gooey. Yeah, but several summer camps have taught me to just leave that where it is. How do you ever seen that? No. Me neither.

Okay, so what are we talking about? It looks like I'm going to get into what people think this is, so don't worry, we will get there. But Star Jelly looks like a translucent pile of jelly. It's like sort of a, it's usually, it's not completely clear, like it's not see-through. Like I said, it's not transparent, it's translucent. And white and cloudy and jelly, okay?

Various sizes, like throughout time, throughout different encounters with this substance. And it's been found all over the world just sort of lying about the ground. Like I said, the stories of color and shape stuff, they vary sometimes. And the effects of it also vary, like what it does to you you if it does anything at all. Most agree that it just sort of dissolves into dust with time. Like if you leave it outside, it'll just kind of like dry crumble and fade away. The first mention of Star Jelly goes all the way back

to a book written between 1305 and 1307 by a medieval English doctor named John of Gattison. Sorry, say again. Gattison. Gattison. Gattison. He wrote a book that was called the Rosa Metacene, or also called the Rosa Anglica, which by the way, I need to tell you about this book before I tell you about what he wrote about it. He wrote this book and he first, he gathered up a ton of like, it's a medical text. He gathered up a ton of already known sort of medical writings from famous physicians and such throughout history.

Like Galen's in there, Ibn Sinas in there, Discorities, a bunch of different. Here's their thoughts on something. He put that in the book. And then he wrote a lot of his own sort of like remedies, like there's tons of prescriptions basically, like recipes for stuff that he's made. And then there's a lot about him, just like a lot about who he is as a person, and like what he's into, and like his successes, like, here's a prescription for something.

And by the way, I sold this baby to the barber surgeons for like tons of cash and it's main ingredient is tree frogs, which is weird. But so this is this book that he wrote. He named it the Rose of Medicine A for the Rose, the Rose of Medicine. He named it this Rosa Metacene for the Rose, the Rose of Medicine. He named it this for two reasons. One, because it's got five parts, and Rose has five petals.

I will have to say the word for it on the other side. I don't know. That's what it's called. I'm not a flower guy. There's these are septal five sections. I don't know. This is not a flower podcast. This is not a flower podcast.

This is a bad flower podcast. Rose is not a flower, but this is a bad flower podcast. The Rose has like five sections or something about roses. Anyway, the other reason he named it this is because the Rose was thought to be the best flower and this is the best medical book ever written. A red rose just just have five petals. There you go. There you go. There you go.

And he felt like he had written the greatest medical book ever written. So it's the Rose of All Medical Books. It's the Rose of Anglaca. There you go. And he felt like he had written the greatest medical book ever written. So it's the roads of all medical books. It's the Rosa Anglaca. There you go. This is this guy. You know the Canterbury Tales. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By Chaucer. Chaucer. You know, there's a doctor is one of the one of the travelers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The physician and the Canterbury tales may be based on this guy, John of Gattison. He may have been inspired. Like his like in the prologue, they list like his personality traits, like he's smart, but he's very boastful. And his main motivation is cash. Like that's that's why he helps people really is not out of altruism, but like money.

It may have been based on this guy. I just thought that was kind of a cool aside. Yeah. Anyway, he was the first one to write about Star Jelly or Stella Terrey, star of the earth, what we would eventually call Star Jelly. He described it as a certain musilaginus substance lying upon the earth. That's a rough word. Oh, Musilaginus. That's tough. It is tough. That's a tough one. Yeah, and he suggested that it's good for abscesses.

I'm assuming that. Just moosh it on there. Just moosh it right on your abscess. It will be fine. Moosh it on your abscess and it'll go away. And you find... No, no, no, he didn't say it would go away. I just told you to move you down your abscess.

That's true. What happened to the nexus on you? He didn't guarantee it just that it may be helpful for abscesses. That's a pretty benign statement. Maybe. It may be. I don't know. It's definitely a fun doctor.

It's like, maybe. Maybe. You should ask him anything, maybe. It was help. Maybe. It was him anything. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. And similar from this initial description, you start to see like other descriptions of it pop up in various medical writings and dictionaries from like the 13 and 14 hundreds. But the names vary.

So there are lots of different. I'm calling it star jelly because that's kind of like the most common. And the funnest to say, I think. I like star jelly, but a lot of these things you may have heard are the same, we're talking about the same substance. So there's star fallen, star falling, star shot, star slime, star slough, star slubber, star spurt, star slutch.

Star slutch? Starspurt, star sludge. Star sludge? The Welsh powder sir, which means rock from the stars. There's a word, ligo, which is a certain fatty substance emitted from the earth. These are all different. A lot of rough words. Yeah, a lot of ways to describe.

Like the opposite of seller to river here with like the, the way it sounds star sludge star sludge star spurts that's it's terrible questionable. In addition to abscesses, there was another full recipe that popped up that was like, Hey, this might be good for peripheral fever or what we used to call child bed fever. It was we've talked about this before. It was an infection that after a person had given birth, they might get this infection

and we eventually learned it was because, we've not washing your hands when you have a baby. It's remember we talked about this. It's important. So, it would not help for that. Now, the common belief, like, why did we call it this? It was because people thought it was from stars. Yeah. People would see it on the ground and go,

it's a weird pic because the stars were in the sky and the jelly's on the ground, but yeah, it has come from somewhere, right? Well, but like, they knew of the existence of falling star. Like, they would look up and see a shooting star. Yeah. And then they'd look down, like, oh, dunk, there's jelly on the ground. The implication was that shooting stars eventually hit Earth And just get smushed and they and they break apart and this is what they're made of this is like This is if you could reach up into the sky and grasp a star it would be a big gooey And we advise it would be a gummy gooey It would be an ill-advised, it would be a gummy gooey, oozy thing, musillaginous even.

And so that was, okay, these are stars that somewhere they fall to earth, and when they do, they bust open and hear the bits of them, scattered among the ground. But because of that, not only did some people describe medical properties to it, but it also, of course, took on this sort of mystical, magical, poetic,

you know, like there was this whole other side to Star Jelly. It wasn't just about the medicine or like what it might do for you, it was that it was this magical kind of thing. So you start to see throughout the 16 and 1700s this view of Star Jelly and it shows up in a ton of different poems, which like I I don't know that I would have realized, like there's one from 1656 by Henry Moore, he writes, that the stars eat, that those falling stars is some call them which are found on the earth

in the form of a trembling jelly. Mm. A trembling jelly. A trembling jacquivering. John Suckling in 1641, wrote. Okay, it's a break, does that work41 mode as he who's quicker I the trace a fall star shot to a marketplace do's run a pace and thinking it to catch a jelly up do snatch.

Lovely. Lovely. And there are lots more that you can find lots of examples of people say in like go if you see a falling star go run over to where you think it fell and you're going to find Sir Walter Scott writes some foul jelly. I imagine you think this is your new star like oh no, that jelly is headed for my house.

We're going to see some foul jelly. In modern times, you see this too, there is a lovecraft story, the color out of space that talks about some sort of jelly from space, some sort of like ooze, like same kind of thing. And in 1950, and I'm gonna go into some of the incidents where we have found Star Jelly throughout history. In 1950, there were four police officers in Philadelphia

who saw something fall from the sky. They thought went to the place where they thought they saw it fall. And according to them found a domed disc of quivering jelly, six feet in diameter, one foot thick at the center, and an inch or two near the edge. They tried to pick it up, and it dissolved into an odorless sticky scum. This story from 1950 Philadelphia is the inspiration for the blob.

Oh, really? Yeah, that's why we have... The blob is inspired by star jelly. Okay, the fuge. The blob is so much scarier than it should be, by the way. I've never seen that. You've never seen the blob? No. I find the blob truly horrifying and it's just, I mean, it's just a blob. I find it very upsetting. And there were other reports of similar goos and jellies like that through all over the

place, Lowville, New York, North, Redding, Massachusetts, Kimpton, Tasmania, Everett, Washington, throughout Ireland, Scotland, England, like you hear all of these stories all over the place. In one situation, instead of Madison, however, so in all of these other situations, it was either just, ooh, we found somewhere jelly or like, hey, it has this beautiful mystical connotation or maybe it could heal you in some way. Like, all of these different, I would say not,

not very negative properties are scribe to it. But in one situation, it actually seemed to cause harm. So I want to tell you about the Oakville Blobs, but before I do, one of my favorite minor league ball teams, the hands down. Let's go to the building department. Let's go Hi, I'm Jesse Thorne the founder of maximum fun and I have a special announcement I'm no longer embarrassed by my brother, my brother, and me.

You know, for years, each new episode of this supposed advice show was a fresh insult that depraved Jumbo of erection jokes ghost humor. And frankly, this is for the best, very little actionable advice. But now as they enter their twilight years, I'm as surprised as anyone to admit that it's gotten kind of good. Justin, Travis, and Griffin's witnesses

are more refined, like a humor column in a fancy magazine. And they hardly ever say Bazinga anymore. So, after you've completely finished listening to every single one of all of our other shows, why not join the McElroy Brothers every week for my brother, my brother and me? Are you ready to binge watch something? Old?

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a new Star Trek series with us. So subscribe to the greatest generation on MaximumFund.org or wherever you get your podcasts and become a friend of DeSoto today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're in Oakville, Washington, and it's raining. I would guess that this is not strange. I feel like, doesn't it rain a lot up there? In Washington, yeah. I mean, the times that I've been, it rains a lot. I, most of the episodes of Frazier were about that.

So, it's raining in Oakville, Washington. That's not particularly interesting. However, the next morning, everybody wakes up and after the rain and they find a small gelatinous blobs Some people talk about them like the size of like half a grain of rice. So pretty small right little teeny teeny Okay, yeah balls of jelly Or bees basically or bees have fallen from the sky That is what people begin to assume they find them all all over the ground and they they think, well, these must have fallen from the sky because they're scattered all

over the ground. And this would continue to happen, by the way, for the next three weeks, about six different times over the next three weeks. That's bizarre. That would be very disconcerting. One police officer who was driving in his patrol car when this when this started falling, his name was David Lacey, he noted that the reason he figured out it wasn't just rank, because it was very small, and you may have thought it was hail or something like that, but he turned on his windshield wipers

and they smeared across his windshield the way you imagine petroleum jelly or something on your windshield, right? So they smeared across his windshield, and so he knew right away. Like, hmm, we got a jelly thing. This is a jelly situation. We got our hands.

What do you think the number for that is? You know, you got it like a number associated with different crimes. I don't know. I don't know if there's a number for a jelly. I can't believe funny numbers. There aren't enough funny numbers, except for the like ones that are funny because you're making sex jokes and that's a crime. There's a sex number to be number.

Nerds like the Hitchhacker number. There's the only fun. You're a nerd. Whoa. Whoa. I'm just saying. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, thanks.

There was another resident, Dottie Hurn, who reported that she went out into a yard, discovered these jelly things, and picked one up, thinking like, oh, hail fell. Classic human behavior. What's that? A mysterious substance. Let me grab that real quick.

Yep. Dottie picked one up, and Dottie was surprised at how goo-she it was. She was able to just goosh it right up, and she was like, this is weird. I thought it was hail, and it's not hail. Dottie was confused. Okay. I just don't understand how you know about that. This is because it's like I picked up lots of things.

And sometimes I think this is a good. And not once have I been like, Hey, history is Justin. I picked up something. Goosey, can you write that down? And not once have I been like, hey history is Justin. I picked up something Gucci. Can you write that down? So full disclosure, this particular party episode is from Unsolved Mystery. I love this show. I love this show.

I love mystery. I love the show, I love mystery. Ooh, anyway. So that's why we know Dottie picked it up and gooshed it. I guess that makes more sense than her calling history. I don't know. I mean, I love the way that unsolved mysteries gives color to these stories, right? Like giving people and stuff.

Like I always admired that. I think that probably inspired some of what I do on here is try to unsolve mystery the story. So maybe there wasn't a dottie. Maybe dottie is an amalgam of several different people that was created for the joy of television audiences. Thank you for admitting that because if you did not, and some internet sleuth was like, um, I don't want to

rename a lot of bells, but I'm pretty sure this part's amongst all mysteries. It is. It's for months, all of the mystery. The Oakville blobs are real. That happened. Now, all of these characters, I don't know exactly, but the, you're gonna get the sense. Those go blobs are real. It's really, this did happen. Did the police officer, is he unsolved mystery, so? But you're gonna get the sense. Those little blobs are real. It's really, this did happen. Did the police officer, is he unsolved mystery, too? The names have been changed to protect the other side. I don't know. So this is another footage of a reenactment

of David Lacey. It's her David Lacey. With his windshield wiper. It's his windshield wiper. It's his windshield wiper. Okay, after Dottie picked up the gooey ball, she started feeling bad. Because she did that. She had, what I knew that, it's gooey. She started to have difficulty breathing. Her vision got blurry.

She started becoming nauseous. She got vertigo. Oh my gosh, it's a lot of all at once. She got vertigo. Oh my gosh, it's a lot all at once. About an hour into her symptoms, her daughter, Sonny Barclift, found her, found her passed out on the bathroom floor, sweaty and pale. Why aren't you reacting to this? Because it's made up thing you saw

on self-mysteries one time. I don't know, the Oakville blobs are real. Okay. Okay, so she, so anyway. This is like, turn anyway, she took the chance to turn into your own crypto-synological extradition. The medical history. Oh, the Oakville Blobs thought, do you want me to like, I could give you the dry version. Some gooey stuff fell from the sky. Nobody knows why. No, no, no, no, no, I'm much prefer your ever to recap

some of the books. So she took to so she went to the hospital and she was there for three days she had a near infection but it wasn't just dotty uh... mystery sold david the cop got sick other residents got sick there was a local human Beverly Roberts i don't know what her job in the town is but

she said pretty much everybody got sick and several dogs and cats died. I mean, that's probably dear, regurg. Dogs and cats do to do that, but sure. Okay, let me say, let me say, I don't know if everybody in town got sick. I know that the truth, like the facts are people found weird gooey stuff on the ground and then some people did get sick around this time. Obviously, correlation does not equal causation. I am not implying that these blobs actually made people sick,

but I am saying that people in town think the blobs made them sick. Okay, got it. That is definitely people really did think that. Anyway, sunny went out and got some of these gooey things and took them to the hospital and was like, can you check these out in the lab? At that port, can you imagine that lab tech? I've got some balls of goo.

Can you put these to the lab? And then and check them out and reported that there was like a white blood cell from a human, but like that was all that they saw. They didn't know what it was. So then it was sent to the Washington State Department of Health and a microbiologist there, Mike McDowell, analyzed it and he found two bacteria that are usually found in the human digestive tract. This is normally when I call you in it and get the doctor in here to check the stuff out. This is a slow invasion.

So anyway, what was it? I don't know. Nobody knew. There was a theory, like some people tried to propose the idea that perhaps an airplane flying overhead had dropped. What I have learned is called blue ice. Oh, the, from the toilets. Yes. But two reasons that doesn't really work is that one, they're not really supposed to drop

it mid-air That would be wild. That would be wild if that's how that worked We're not we need to make better time quick drop the pick you guys That's what it is. Yeah, it's bathroom waste. That's what I was trying to say a polite way But um and also it has to be dyed blue like it's an FAA rule like you're supposed to dye it blue To make so you know what it is. Oh, okay, like you're supposed to dye it blue. To make. So you know what it is. Oh, okay.

And this wasn't blue. In case someone else found stinky clear ice in there, like, what could this be on the plane? There was also a really great theory that, okay, during this time, and it was confirmed that the Air Force was practicing like bombing out over the Pacific during the same period of time. Maybe they like nuked a whale and all this giblets flew up on the shore.

Well, you're close, jellyfish. There was a thought that what if they're, what if they're exploding jellyfish? So hard that jellyfish are raining down on Oakville. People do not, that is not, yeah, I think they're multiple. And also like they didn't find jellyfish DNA. So, I don't think it was that. That seems like one seems case close on that. Unsolved to this day.

Some residents still believe it was a biological weapon that was accidentally tested on them. Pretty easy to avoid biological. Star jelly telling story once takes us to Oakville, Washington, and there's this weird thing, and you can watch it on unsolved mysteries if you're really feeling climbed. I'm sure with the reenactments, it's even better. What other theories, though, other than these that we've talked about, what other theories have cropped up from some of these things? Well, there are a couple cases where we think we know what it was. So there was one time in August of 1979. There was a person's civil Christian who lived in Frisco, Texas, who one morning came out to a front yard and found some purple blobs on her yard, like little purple blobs.

And she connected it to the night before the per seed meteor shower had occurred. So the thought was like, oh my gosh, the meat... All this new again, this is definitely from stars again. Uh-huh, meteors are made of purple goo, and we didn't know. However, what they eventually discovered is that there was a battery reprocessing plant which used caustic soda to clean impurities from lead in the batteries and the resulting

stuff like the stuff that's made as a byproduct is purple. So the thought was that maybe it had gotten, which isn't great. That's disturbing in a different way. Yeah, right cuz like it's fun disturbing. No, it's like Well, this isn't from space, but also why is it in my front yard? Yeah, that seems troublesome so That was one instance of star jelly. They thought they solved there was another one endorse it where They thought it was star jelly. They went and analyzed it and it was where they thought it was star jelly, they went and analyzed it,

and it was sodium polyacrylate, which I guess is a kind of like super absorbent polymer that you can use in agriculture. So like, and so like if you put it out on your yard and then it rains, it will swell. So it would look exactly like the stuff in diapers. You wouldn't know it was there, maybe if conditions were dry, and so then if it rained overnight, you would come out and it would look like it had rained

goo when really it was just all of these things absorbed water overnight and became really large. So again, like orbees or the stuff that's in diapers, which there are a lot of science kids these days, kids these days that kids play with and that's what they come with. They come with orbees and the stuff that's in diapers. Yeah, they love that stuff. There were some substances that have been found to be certain kinds of like molds or fungi. There's one called you guys don't want the scientific games here. I have the scientific names here but like you guys don't even.

We don't. Anyway, there are certain kinds of molds, but like you guys don't even. We don't. Anyway, there are certain kinds of molds that look like slime that look like goo. I mean, you can find these things. And that's just how that they naturally occur out in the world. Like you would find them and it would look like a pile of goo and it's a fungus, it's a mold.

There's one specifically, it's a kind of blue green algae called Nostoc that shows up after rainfalls. And so that one was, that has been a lot of cases of star jelly has probably also been nostoc. And it has kind of this own like mythology around it and like medical applications. And like that specific algae has its own kind of folklore outside of star jelly. But it is often included in the list of things that we have accused of being star jelly. Gotcha.

There is a theory that seems to have been borne out by some evidence. Like this may be all the times where we didn't know where it wasn't one of these things I've already mentioned, it may have been this. So there was a theory that it was a substance that was regurgitated by an animal that were seen something that was inside of a creature and now has been puked back up. Like a bird or something has puked up whatever this gooey stuff is.

Have to be a lot to cover a whole sea. So as you can imagine, over time, we have looked at the stuff under a microscope in different occasions to try to figure this out. And at one point, they found like, what looked like amphibian DNA in one of these things, like a frog. Okay, and then in one, they found that

and something like a predator DNA, like some sort of predatory bird, okay? So then they started theorizing, maybe this is the innards of like a frog or something that's been pukeed back up by a predator and then in one sample of star jelly that was collected from Dartmoor in

1926 they found Ova ducks and ovaries and some eggs along with some other bits of a frog Okay along with some other bits of a frog. Okay. So the thought is that what we are seeing is a collection of mainly this gooey jelly stuff that's in like the ovidux of frogs that have been eaten by a predator

and then the predator pukes back up this part of it because it's not easily digested or whatever. Especially if you find it in the autumn, this would be the time of year where the adult, the adult female frog carries a batch of eggs that they're ready to lay. Okay. As the eggs pass down the oved eggs that they're ready to lay. As the eggs pass down the oveduct, they're surrounded by some jelly that like the oveduct walls squirt out this jelly and surround the eggs in this jelly. It's not a lot like it's a teen, you can imagine.

We're talking a teeny teeny amount of jelly so you might wonder like, but that seems like it'd be almost microscopic. How would we be seeing this with the naked eye? Because when it comes into contact with water, it expands. It gets really, really big. So if a predator eats the frog and digest bits of it, it will release this jelly. And then if they puke it back up, it will absorb water from the soil or if it rains or whatever and you'll see this big mass of gooey jelly stuff that's actually

frog innards. Such a gross episode and there's no human bodies love in it. So that's probably what a lot of the cases where they can't describe it to like a mold or a fungi or an algae or or something that you use in your garden or if you unfortunately have a a battery reprocessing plant that doesn't seem to be regulated very well. But why did it make people sick? Why did it make people sick? I don't know. What I would say is this. It's an unsolved mystery, I suppose.

Did it make people sick? No. My guess is that it did not. Not to deny the residents of Oakville, their story. Certainly, I don't know what happened. But my guess is that people just got sick around the same time this happened. Because it was scary and unknown and different, you connected the two events.

And that is, that's what we humans do, right? We do that constantly and connect events that actually maybe weren't related, we connect them because temporally they were related and so that makes sense to us. It probably didn't make people sick, it probably doesn't help with abscesses or fevers. Most of the time, it's probably

not an exploded jellyfish. It's just some frog innards. And I mean, I wouldn't want to pick them up, but I guess. Oh, Patty, Patty sure did. That's the mystery of star jelly. Still unsolved. Don't don't know if it if it, my guess is it didn't actually make people say. If you see jelly, you're gonna touch it. I mean, you know, I think it's a good rule of thumb. Sure. And I do this, like as a doctor, I have this habit where somebody will be like, look at this rash or bump or something.

And my immediate instinct is to touch it. Yeah. Like bare hands, like, oh, let me touch that. That's me. And I always have to, I have this voice in my head that goes, put on gloves. And then I go put on gloves. And then I examine whatever I'm going to examine. So put on gloves.

If you want to pick up star jelly, put on gloves. There you go, then you'll be safe. Or just don't. Take a picture. Graham that. Graham it. Hey, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Thanks to the taxpayers for using

to their salt medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to Max Fun Network for having us as a part of their extended podcasting family. And thanks to you for listening. We sure appreciate it. Hey, we got a book. Okay. So you want a book of us. It's called the Salmons book. It's in paperback with stuff about pandemic and things like that. There's also a hardback version if you want. And lighter stuff. And lighter stuff. There's an audio book version two of the Eagolists, too, which is eerily like this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to join us again next week for Saul Bones. Till then, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. It's always, don't, Joe, hold in your head. Alright! Orc. Comedy and culture. Artists don't.

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