The Joe Rogan Experience - #1272 - Lindsey Fitzharris

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris is an author and medical historian. She is the creator of the popular blog, The Chirurgeon's Apprentice and the host of the YouTube video series Under the Knife. Her book "The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine" is available now via Amazon. https://www.youtube.com/user/UnderTheKnifeShow

Okay, here we go. Five, four, three, two. Yes, and we're live. Hello, Lindsay. What's happening? Not much. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to meet you. Yeah, yeah. Good to meet you. I'm the girl who tags you in all the disgusting medical history photos. And I'm really looking forward to grossing out your audience. I'm looking forward to you doing that as well. You have fascinated me with your Twitter page. First of all, you are a doctor, right?

Well, I'm a PhD. I can't save anybody's life. I can perform Victorian surgery amputation or something. I think anybody can, right? Yeah. Is that a real one? No, this is a prop. Anybody can, right?

Yeah. Is that a real one? No, this is a prop. So this was a real fun thing to get through customs when I was coming in from Britain. It's a Victorian amputation saw. It's called the Clockwork Saw. And for people who are just listening, it's a circular saw. And there would have been a crank that you wound it with. And then you'd release it and it would spin sort of automatically.

Oh, God. Yeah. And the release it and it would spin sort of automatically. Oh God. Yeah, and the idea was that it would make it faster, but the reason why I love this saw so much is that it was a massive failure. And I don't think we talk about failure enough in science and medicine. You know, all the things that work, there's a lot of things that don't work. And so this guy who invented this saw, when he tried it out, it was spinning so fast that he took off his assistant's fingers oh jesus christ it was a bit of an oops um it never got out of prototype phase so i had

to recreate it for my my youtube channel now when you in those old days when they didn't have antibiotics and antiseptic and right yeah when they saw someone's leg off or something like that, how many times do those people live? Well, you could pull through the operation. That was one part of it. But then, of course, you could die of post-operative infection. So my book, The Butchering Art, really focuses on this one guy named Joseph Lister, who applies germ theory and develops antisepsis, so germ fighting techniques. And most people don't know who he is, but they know the product Listerine. So Listerine was named after him. But I always tell people that. So basically, Lister was a British surgeon, and he came to America in 1876 to convince the medical community of germs. And there was a guy in the audience, and he decided to create this

product Listerine. But it wasn't even a mouthwash in the 19th century. It was used to treat gonorrhea. Whoa. So, but also, I don't endorse that. Don't throw a little Listerine on it. Yeah, go to a doctor, man. Yeah, I could just see all the comments already on the YouTube. You know, she told me to throw Listerine on it.

No, I don't endorse that. And I'm sure the Listerine company is not too pleased I'm talking about that either. So, Listerine now just is for breath right yeah yeah it's all it does yeah it's it's an antiseptic mouth wash and so even any good for you like is it good to kill all that

stuff inside your mouth like I'm not a real doctor right but you're a medical historian I'm a medical historian I would say that Dennis would say that that Listerine is still a good product do you use it Jamie? some form of it something like that i just use something i don't know if it's some mouthwash you got to switch to listerine now in honor of joseph lister so how did he know how did he know that there was germs that they were real so let me let me take you back to sort of before he walks on the scene so these operating theaters they were

filled to the rafters with ticketed spectators. People actually bought tickets to see someone get their leg hacked off. Oh, God. How much did it cost? You know what? No one's asked me that. I don't know how much a ticket would cost for that spectacle.

Now I really need to look into that. Oh, God. People would pay to watch that? But look what they pay to watch now, right? Yeah, I guess. And when I sent you my book i i signed it and i said i thought that being strapped to the victorian operating theater was the original fear factor because i can't imagine anything worse than being strapped to this table yeah and so we're talking about before anesthesia so you're fully awake um and one of my favorite surgeons is this guy named Robert Liston.

He's 6'2". He's really tall for the 19th century. And he could hold you down with his left arm and he could take your leg off in about 30 seconds. Oh, Jesus. Which is what you'd want. That's what you'd want. You would, but that's still a long time. It is, yeah.

I mean, if we just sat here for 30 seconds with dead air time and you could think about, you know, hacking through that leg. Or just scream for 30 seconds with dead air time and you could think about you know hacking through that life or just scream for 30 seconds i wonder how many people would be at the end of this podcast like five people would be still out there listening um so so he was incredibly fast he was known as the fastest knife in the west end he would walk in he was a showman so he'd walk in and he'd say time me gentlemen and you could just hear the ripple of pocket watches as they came out. There's a drawing of him. There is. Yep.

There he is. And he's using a knife in that photo. Yeah. So actually, the Liston knife that he invented was this long-bladed knife, which they think Jack the Ripper may have also used. Which is why those rumors are that Jack the Ripper may have been a medical practitioner. Yeah, that was a really common thought, right? Yeah. I mean, we're never going to know who he is.

It's unknowable. We're still kind of obsessed with this. I've heard so many different versions of that. Yeah. And recently there was some kind of bogus DNA test of a shawl that they said belonged to one of the victims, but it's impossible to prove the provenance of the object but that was that was listed so he's six two he's really tall um one of my favorite stories is he would go so fast as he was uh switching instruments he'd hold these bloody instruments in his mouth

just to like illustrate how different this was that's the face i wanted i wanted to just be just totally disgusted through this whole segment. And as he was switching instruments, he accidentally cut off his assistant's finger. And then as he was switching instruments, he slashed the coat of the spectator. And the assistant died of gangrene. The patient died of gangrene. And the spectator died of fright. So it's jokingly...

Died of fright? He died of fright. Just a little bit of blood? Well, he got slashed with the jacket. And I guess he had a heart attack from the stress. And so it's jokingly referred to as the only operation with a 300% mortality rate. He did a good job that day. He killed three people in one. When you say slashed, you mean he cut the spectator or just got blood on them?

No, he just cut their coat as he was kind of switching instruments. That's all it took to kill someone? I thought were tougher back then well not that guy now he lives forever in the butchering art is that guy he died he had a heart attack he must have had a heart attack it said he died of fright maybe that wasn't real maybe it was like horseshit doesn't it a little bit like the guy dying no not you no no no. The historical record. No, of course. These stories, you know, they get blown out in proportion. It just seems like you cut someone's jacket. They're not going to die. Well, you know, it's a stressful situation.

People are getting their limbs hacked off. You know, your blood pressure would be really high. I get it. And these theaters were, I mean, the floor of the operating theater was crowded as well. So they'd have to actually clear the floor sometimes. So you can imagine, you know, you're strapped to this. And the leg wasn't the worst thing. So one of the tweets that you shared of mine, which your platform seemed to enjoy quite a lot and sold me a lot of books, by the way.

Thank you. Awesome. Was this story about this guy who was suffering from a bladder stone and it got stuck in his urethra. And so out of desperation, he stuck a nail down his penis and he hammered it to break it up. Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah. And yeah, people went nuts on your platform for that story. So they obviously are ready for this interview. How did that work again? That didn't work, right?

It did not work. No, he died. Yeah, whoops. That guy definitely died. But it's it really illustrates how desperate people were back then and how few options yeah they had um there's the image of it i don't think you'll have to show this on youtube jamie you get banned oh that was the one i said definitely a medical yeah it is a medical image i don't think you could show that on youtube really that's clearly a penis there's there's penises and breasts on youtube a lot of penis photos i think they look at us more carefully all right well it's not on there i'm just okay good

i'll tweet it later for people there you go if people want to see it well tweet twitter is the most open of all platforms i let you get away with almost everything you can have porn on twitter yeah well i mean i don't have any problems with Instagram. I put that stuff up. Yeah. But maybe again. Some things get removed from Instagram. It's really kind of interesting.

It seems to be dependent upon how many people complain. Yeah, probably. There's always those people out there looking to be offended. I just think they just want to do something. They just want to press that button. Yeah. Oh, I'm mad. There we go.

Yeah. I know. think they just want to do something they just want to press that button yeah oh i'm mad there we go yeah i know i get uh you know at this point there's so many objects that that can cause offense of course with medical history and it's it's you know there's a lot of dark history body snatchers and things like that and i'm a firm believer that we should tell these stories openly because they happened and medicine and science grew as a result of it but but they're not easy subjects to discuss with an audience especially when you have so many characters on twitter and you're you're trying to get out a complex idea but right and also like you're not just there's a lot of twitter pages that i follow where people are just trying to gross people out but you're actually educating

people about the history and we also should be really thankful that these people went through all this stuff so that we don't have to yeah absolutely i always say to my audience so i i've been going around the world sort of demolishing romantic notions about people what you might think about what it's like to live in the past because it was pretty pretty bad and um i i have visuals as well and um i've had four men faint so far it's's always been men. It's just a commentary right now. It's always been men. Ancestors of that bitch that got his jacket cut and died.

It was that guy. Yeah, those weaklings coming to my lecture. And I think what it is though is people think I'm going to see something gross, so I'm not going to eat. And then their blood sugar plummets. So it's not really the grossness, but they're not really prepared.

That's interesting. Yeah, and they're standing sometimes um i i give lectures at this incredible museum called the old operating theater in london it's the second oldest in the world and so you have to stand because it's like a victorian operating theater and so people lock their knees or whatever oh wow so you give actual lectures in the real theaters where they used to cut yeah yeah i did my book launch there. And if people want to see it, I filmed sort of like a theatrical scene of a young lister attending an operation in that theater. And it's on my YouTube channel called Under the Knife.

And I really want to get this made into a movie. I'm trying to come into Hollywood and convince Hollywood that this Quaker surgeon from the Victorian period deserves the cinema feature, but it is an Epic story. He saved more lives than any other person to ever live. Look, it is an Epic story. And if anybody who's ever gone through operations and I've gone through

several of them, we owe those people a massive debt. You don't have to be awake strapped to the table or both my knees reconstructed yeah wake up and they're fixed yeah it's amazing and and in the past before anesthesia a lot of times patients were sat in chairs so they weren't laid down um and they were sat in these very high chairs so that their feet dangled so they couldn't brace against the knife if you think about like pushing off with your feet of Right, of course. There's a story about a guy named Robert Penman, and I know we have images, and I'm sure YouTube won't take those down.

He comes to Robert Liston, the fastest knife in the West End, in 1828, and he has this huge facial tumor growing. I mean, it's been growing for about eight years. It's taking up his whole face. He can't breathe now. And Liston looks at him and says, I can't do this operation, which is tantamount to a death sentence. But he goes up to Scotland and he goes, there he is. Wow.

Yeah, it's incredible when you see that painting. So Penman goes up to Scotland and he sees a guy named James Syme and Syme agrees to do this operation and Pemmon is sat for 24 minutes in a chair restrained while this thing is cut out of his face and dropped in a bucket and and um survive yeah well we have a picture of him later in life oh wow you know and he looks like he's going hmm yeah he looks kind of like an ugly Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln wasn't really known for his looks psyched that he doesn't have that thing on his face though yeah i mean you could see that the jaw is definitely slimmer um but he doesn't look too deformed considering what he went through

so it is incredible um you get such crazy stories like there's a woman who has a mastectomy in 1840 without any anesthetic. Now at this time, if you were wealthy or if you're middle class, you'd have this operation in your home. So you just have it on like your kitchen table. Oh, Jesus. Which would have been safer than going into the hospitals. Really? Yeah, because the hospitals were crawling with all kinds of infection.

So hospitals were places for the poor. And to give you an idea of how gross it was, the bug catcher who had rid the beds of lice, he was paid more than the doctors and surgeons in this time. Yeah, because, I mean, that's pretty important, right? There's maggots, all kinds of things crawling around in these hospitals. So if you were wealthy or middle class, you had your surgeon come and the surgeon determines that, yes, the breast has to come off and says, I'm going to return, but I'm not going to tell you the day, which would make me more anxious. He thought it was going to help her not focus on it. But all you would be thinking about, right, is when is this guy going to show up? That's a person without breasts.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. He was like, I'll just show up. It'll be easy. And so he shows up and he goes into her bedroom and he opens his hand and shows her the knife he's going to use. And he says to prepare her soul for death. Like this isn't very confidence inspiring. Any doctors listening, don't tell your patients to prepare their soul for death. And she does survive.

And she talks about how it's so vascular that the blood blinds him at one point. And so, like, just when you think it can't get worse, you can't see. And he's under, she is under his hand for an hour and a half when he cuts away. And she survives. She ends up living a long and somewhat happy life. I'm sure she had a lot of nightmares. Yeah, there we see. So, do they tie this woman down?

Like, how do they handle this? Oh, yeah. They would have definitely had to restrain her. I mean, people were probably a little bit stronger or more able to adapt to pain than we are. But nonetheless, there would have been some pretty heavy restraining. What year was this? That was in the 1840s. Do we know when cancer became common or was it always common in humans? That's a good question. The oldest archaeological record record i believe is

2 000 years old of metastatic cancer so it's older than you think they're um diagnosing it for for centuries and centuries i'm not really an expert in history of cancer but it is around and so with breast cancer you know probably by the time it got to the stage of mastectomy it probably would have spread if you think about like you know it being visible to it got to the stage of mastectomy it probably would have spread if you think about like you know it being visible to the naked eye but yet she survived she did survive and so then you have to question whether she had breast cancer or maybe it was some kind of cyst yeah maybe a cyst and she went through that for that but yeah and again before antiseptics before lister comes on um and comes up germ fighting techniques, this would have been so dangerous because you have this open cavity and wound.

And so Joseph Lister, when he comes up with his antiseptic techniques, he actually performs a mastectomy on his sister on his dining room table. Oh, Christ. And she survives. And that's in the book. See, this would be a great movie, don't you think? I do think it would be a great movie. It's like it would be a great movie for't you think yeah i do think it would be a great movie it's like it would be a great movie for the coen brothers yeah you know because it's so chaos filled i know and all that kind of grittiness and yeah um do good period pieces too yeah plus they could make

it more entertaining let's make this happen joe i have no pull i'm not a part of that world but this guy with the face where they cut that tumor out of his face. So for 24 minutes, that's all it took to cut that thing out of his face? In that case, yeah. And remember, of course, it depended on the skill of your surgeon. So he goes to a very good surgeon named James Syme. But there's a story. So going back to penises, lithotomy is the removal of the stone, which you saw kind of a demonstration there. And it was incredibly painful.

So they stuck a rod down the penis and they cut through the scrotum and they removed the stone. And of course, there was no pain medication and it was just awful. Did they drink? You know, it's kind of a myth because, of course, drinking would thin your blood. But someone asked me, they said, I heard that surgeons would punch the patient out. And I was like, wow, you'd have to be really good to knock someone out on a first punch. And of course you do more damage. You could do a lot of damage to the head. That's

definitely didn't happen. Unless someone can prove me wrong. Maybe there's like a weird example, but I've never come across that. So it was kind of, it was you and the surgeon. And with the lithotomy, it takes about, a good surgeon, it took about five minutes. Well, there's a guy named Stephen Pollard in 1828 who goes in to have this done. Now it's incredibly embarrassing. It's, you're, you know, you're naked from the waist down. It's an embarrassing operation. It's painful. He's brought into the theater and the surgeon ends up taking over an hour because he's so inept. And the patient is screaming, you know, please just stop, just stop. And the surgeon yells back at him for having abnormal anatomy, which how would you like

that? You're sitting there on the table and you're being blamed for this going wrong. And he pulls through the operation, but he does die of postoperative infection. Abnormal anatomy, how so? He just said, you have abnormal anatomy. And so on the autopsy report, it was revealed that there was nothing abnormal about his anatomy. The surgeon just was really inept. Oh, God. Yeah, it wasn't good.

Blaming the guy. Did you have lunch before this? Yeah, I did, but I'm all right. Good. Well, that's good because then you won't faint. Well, I hosted Fear Factor for six years. hosted fear factor for six years i've seen everything yeah almost nothing what's like the worst i mean was there ever a segment on fear factor that you thought i don't know if i can watch that no no i uh when they had a drink come that was rough oh

that was what got the show canceled yeah that was uh the second version of fear factor when it came back for a brief period of time and they were going way too hard they were trying to do themselves further yeah yeah they're like fear factor is back and it's crazier than ever and they just went way over the top that's what they do with tv right like always pushing the boundaries they didn't have to yeah they could have just gone with regular fear factor and we would have all been fine. We could do historical Fear Factor. We could recreate these sort of horrible things that people went through.

It was a blessing in disguise. But this surgery as we know it, when did it first start? What is the first historical recounting of an actual doctor oh or you mean um someone saying they're a licensed doctor when did it start like like asking really hard questions oh i'm sorry no no i know so little about history it's like 19th 18th century um it's it you know we have evidence again in the archaeological records of of surgical procedures going far back but who did them they would have been um you know sometimes why they call them wise women coming cunning women on barber surgeons so one of my yeah the barber i guess they're good razors right yes yeah actually

barber surgeons used to do things like pull your teeth they used to bloodlet and so the barber pole which is red and white is red and white because it was advertising their services as bloodletters so what they would do is they would tie these bloody rags around the pole and it would whip around the pole i know it's one of my favorite stories and um and the the ball at the top represented the bowl that would catch the blood and the stick would have been the stick that you held to kind of get your veins to stick out. And people were bloodlet for all kinds of reasons. Like you would do it like a purge or a diet or you would do it because you were ill. The idea being that you had produced too much blood and you needed the blood to be let to kind of restore balance in your body.

What do you think it would be like to go back in time and hear someone say something that stupid? Like, you're sick. We need to remove some of your blood. You have too much blood in your system, Lindsay. You're going to send all these crazy academic historians who are like, we can't. Barber, surgeon, tonsorial services. What does that mean? And you know what else? The barbershop quartet comes from the idea that the barber surgeons often had a musical lute in the office that you would play or the patient would play. It was like a musical therapy. So there's all kinds of hangovers from it. And you know the demon barber, Sweeney Todd?

So this is kind of one of these stories that pops up. And they think that it might be that medical practitioners were trying to undermine the legitimacy of the barbers so you kind of either get this story that the barber is this like sort of demon figure who's chopping you up and selling you and making you into pies or is that a legit one because that seems like nonsense it's well it seems like it's a recreation of an older one well it seems like parody like look recreation of an older one. Well, it seems like parody. Like, look, it says, listen to my troubles, no charge. Listen to your troubles, 50 cents. They might have had that on their barber thing. Yeah.

When they're cutting bullets out of you, it says bullets removed, two bucks. Maybe. I don't know. They're all drunk. Pomade, mustache wax. I don't know. Yeah, people thought that bullets were, that gunpowder was poisonous. So a surgeon would often amputate if you were shot.

Oh, God. Until they kind of realized that sometimes it was okay to just keep the bullet in depending on where it was. It could just be like a recreation of something that someone found maybe, and they're selling that as a piece. Oh, right. Probably, yeah.

Yeah, and we get the red, blue, and white barber poles now. So what happened was the barber surgeons and the surgeons split off professionally at some point in history. And so the surgeons start to use blue and white poles, and the barbers use red and white poles. And I think now the red, white, and blue is like the patriotic red, white, and blue. is like the patriotic red, white, and blue. But the traditional barber pole would have been red and white, and it would have signified that you could come in and get your blood letting because those bloody rags would have been out there on the pole. Before they had the pole,

they would advertise by putting just bowls of congealed blood in the window. Oh, Christ. And then in London, they decided, I think it was about the 14th century, they said no more of that. So the barbers started to throw the blood into the river, which was also equally gross. So the barber surgeons would have definitely been doing minor surgical procedures, and they would have been more affordable than the surgeons and the physicians themselves. But nobody could really do much for you in that period, according to our own sort of 21st century understanding. that period according to our own sort of 21st century understanding. But I always say to go back to your question about how would it feel to hear something so dumb, well, what do you think

today that in 100 years we're going to look back at? And there's definitely going to be stuff, right, that we're going to look back and go, I can't believe that we used to do that. In fact, I think that this is probably going to get people to go no that totally works you know that that um uh trend of cupping yeah now that you see so that was also 17th century so they would cut they would have these heated cups and they would create this blister and then they would cut it open with this really sharp instrument and that's how they would bleed you so it's kind of this weird thing that's coming back but for slightly different reasons i don't think there's any evidence that cupping is real no i don't think

so either and i and i like to point people to the past because if we're going to make fun of you know what they were doing in the past it's kind of making a reappearance so to speak um but people do all kinds of uh weird things now too like they eat the um placenta yeah there's there's no medical evidence that that has any kind of health benefit yeah but it's edible i think that's edible yeah you can eat it well it's funny because that actually segues into into this lovely object this half skull here um my friend zane wiley creates these these are actually cereal bowls but uh and the reason why i brought it was because it um opens up a conversation about something that i like to talk about, which is corpse medicine.

So people used to actually eat dead bodies for medicinal purposes. What parts? So if you had epilepsy in the early modern period, so we're like talking like 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, people would drink the blood of an executed criminal. So someone who lost their head. people would drink the blood of an executed criminal, someone who lost their head. Like the idea was that the life cut short, that the blood was very powerful force.

And so you get these sort of drawings of people gathered at the scaffold. You know, this poor bastard's going to lose his head. And these people are like holding cups up to catch the blood. And it didn't work. And epilepsy was so awful because it was so misunderstood. And you can imagine, you know imagine when someone goes into a seizure, it's scary. And if you don't understand what's happening, you could think that it's witchcraft or there's all kinds of things that people thought about that disease. So these people were quite desperate.

So they were drinking the blood of executed criminals. Good Lord. They ground up mummies, ancient mummies, and they would make it into pills and did all kinds of things, right? So I always point this out. We eat the placenta today. It's kind of like, you know, a form of ingesting bodily, yeah.

See, there you go. You got the gruesome history of eating. So people were just super, super desperate back then. Yeah. I mean, of course, there was not much that could be done, right? But we do some kind of form of corpse medicine and organ donation. So we're taking dead body parts. We're not eating them, but we're taking them into our body to cure ourselves.

Yeah, I have a cadaver graft on my right knee. Oh, yeah. I have one in my jaw. Really? Your jaw? What happened? Well, I had a huge fist fight I had some gum disease up here

And then they had to graft a little piece of cadaver bone But they don't call it cadaver bone Did they call it cadaver bone to you? Don't they call it freeze dry bone or something? No, it wasn't bone They called it an allograft But it's a cadaver they use the achilles tendon for the acl because the achilles tendon is much larger than

an acl so it's stronger and if you don't are you familiar with the way it works it's really kind of interesting no the way it works it's not like it takes over it's not like an organ transplant so you don't you don't have to worry about your body rejecting it in the same way although some people sometimes people's bodies don't accept it or it doesn't work but um they take this graft they put this new tendon in place this new uh ligament in place rather and then your body re-proliferates that ligament with cells so it's even though it'll feel like it's healed up within like a month or two like your knee will feel a little bit weak from the surgery but people get a distorted

perception of how strong it actually is and fighters yeah in particular i know several fighters who have wound up re-injuring their knee because they thought it was okay real really it was very gummy and very weak so how long does it take to heal before you can really – Like six months. Yeah. Like six to nine months they recommend. But it's amazing what we can do now. Oh, incredible.

I mean, when you think about 150 years ago that I'm talking about and today. Yeah. It's just – and I always, because I'm a big Joseph Lister fan, I always say that if we hadn't understood germs, there would be no way to go deep into the body, would there? Sure. Yeah. And so he opens up this sort of huge field with medicine and a lot of advancements are made off the back of it. But it was a gritty time and you definitely could die very easily. Life was very cheap back then. Yeah. I mean, I can only imagine just the idea of that woman getting her breast removed on her kitchen table. Yeah.

There was another, there was a little boy. He was 12 years old. His name was Henry Pace. And he was told by the surgeon he had to have his leg removed. And he said, as little kids do, would it hurt? And the surgeon said no more than having a tooth pulled. Oh, God. So he was very unprepared. So they brought him to tooth pulled oh god so he was very unprepared so

they brought him to the operating theater and he was so awake and so aware he remembers counting six strokes of the saw before his little leg fell off why did they have to cut his leg off he broke it and um it was just a sprain and they just decided to take it off no i mean if there was a compound fracture the chances of it um becoming infected was quite high. So when Lister comes along and he's trying to figure out what's causing infection, he notices that if it's a clean break and there's no break in the skin, usually it heals okay. But if there's a break in the skin, it gets infected and usually it leads to some kind of gangrene or septicemia. And that's how he starts to wonder it must be something coming from outside and getting into this wound that is causing the infection but he reads Louis Pasteur's germ theory and this is how

he starts to put it together but when he first comes out with it you know there's a lot of pushback because medicine and science are essentially conservative in the sense that it's like puzzle solving if someone you know you you solve the puzzle within the rules that are already set out. If someone comes from sort of the fringe and has this wild idea, usually there's a lot of pushback. And so that's exactly what happens with Lister. And it's hard for us to imagine because germs, we understand them today. It seems obvious to us.

But back then, a surgeon didn't wash his hands or his instruments because why would he wash his hands or his instruments, because why would he wash his hands or his instruments if they were going to get dirty with the next patient? So you have to get into the mind, the logical mind of a Victorian surgeon. They wore aprons. I think, Jamie, I'd also sent a picture of like a surgeon with his apron on. Actually, it's a picture of a butcher. But it gives you that kind of idea of what your friendly Victorian surgeon would have been wearing. And that apron, the more blood it had on it, it was like a sign of pride almost because

that meant that your surgeon was very experienced and had a lot of blood on it. That's a butcher though, not a surgeon. That is a butcher, yeah. But similar tools of the trade. Yep, similar tools. And certainly that apron would have been on your surgeon. I don't know about the hat. Yeah, I know. It's kind of like gangs of New York, you know, you kind of picture they would

have worn those really tall top hats and those crazy plaid colors. And it's a very colorful time before Victoria, of course, plunges the nation into mourning later. So Lister's coming in along the 1840s. It's very sort of colorful and filthy and dirty victoria plunged the nation into mourning well when when her husband died um she went into sort of lifetime mourning so she's always wearing black for the rest of her life and everybody follows her example so we think of the victorians wearing sort of all that black but in gangs of new york a lot of people thought that that was sort of an imagined world, but actually that's what they would have looked like. They would have been wearing those plaids

and those bright colors and those top hats. But Lister was a Quaker. We think of like Quaker oats, which is kind of accurate. And he would have been wearing sort of black and white and very dull colors. So when I think about this movie, because I think about it a lot, I think about sort of this world

being very hedonistic and colorful. And there's a lot of drugs going on they're discovering ether and all kinds of things that they're experimenting with and then you have this somber quaker and as the movie sort of progresses the world catches up and gets a bit cleaner with Lister so they were experimenting with all these drugs on themselves oh yeah it was like it was just a crazy time. So my book begins with the first operation under anesthesia. And I wanted to start there because I think if anybody has ever thought about the history of surgery, which they might not have until they turned into this podcast, they tend to think of that moment. That's the big moment. But actually, surgery becomes much more dangerous because the surgeon still doesn't understand germs, but he doesn't have the patient fighting him anymore. So he's more willing to pick up the knife and go deeper in the body. And so post-operative infection rises.

under ether in 1846 in London. And he doesn't think it's going to work. It comes from America. He calls it the Yankee Dodge. And it's a miracle. It works. And the age of agony is over. When ether was discovered, everybody wanted to try it. This drug that made you insensible, what was that like? And so you get these kinds of stories of medical students sniffing it and drinking it. In fact believe there's still a place in london you can get an ether cocktail um again i don't i don't endorse it it's highly flammable so people also smoked a lot in operating theaters so you can imagine that there were a lot of oh yeah there were a lot of accidents um but but you drop it on a basically because it evaporates really quickly you drop it on a strawberry and then you dunk it into champagne and it's supposed to get you really high very quickly and then it wears off equally quickly i try to convince my publisher to have ether cocktails at the book

launch but they were like just have a bunch of ubers ready yeah exactly just yeah or carriages like in the victorian um so so people were yeah definitely trying and then of course have you tried it i've not tried it i haven't found that bar yet but yet you were willing to experiment on the people that came to your book lunch oh yeah why not that'd be the best thing great story you know i would feel like you probably dip your toe in first yeah maybe maybe try it out yeah um maybe for the next book yeah um but uh yeah and so so you have ether in sort of the mid 19th century. And then of course, later you have cocaine, you have opium, which is, well, actually cocaine

comes along and is presented as sort of a cure to the opiate, the morphine addiction. So like take cocaine instead. And I had brought, it's in my Mary Poppins bag. I'll show it to you later after the show. I brought a postcard that shows a dentist and he's pulling a tooth and the person wrote underneath just had a tooth pulled with cocaine. So they were using it for all kinds of things. And doctors were becoming addicted themselves to these drugs. Then heroin comes along.

Bayer invents heroin. Heroin is given to your children. It's put in all kinds of things. Again, it's positioned as, you know, break your cocaine addiction now with heroin. So it was just a crazy period. And it was really sort of in the early 20th century when a lot of this stuff started to be regulated finally. Wow. I didn't bring any of that with me i believe there was a mummy that was found in ancient egypt that tested positive for cocaine oh but they think that it might be a false positive because apparently there's something else that they would consume back then that would make you test positive for cocaine i don't know yeah jamie will find it but there was it was some it was some evidence. I think what they were trying to connect this to, now I remember,

they were trying to connect this to the idea that people from Egypt had the ability to travel to the Americas. And that someone from, here it goes, American drugs and ancient Egyptian mummies. Can you make that a little larger, please? It says, it seems safe to say that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In says, So what's going on? Let's start by looking at the evidence. Colombian contact between America and Africa, something thought to be impossible based on the rest of the archaeological record. So what's going on? Let's start by looking at the evidence.

1992, performed by Svelta Balabanova. Well done. That's a serious woman. And two of her colleagues at the Institute for Anthropology and, well, this is in Munich. They're using German words for anthropology, probably in humanities of the university in Munich. Tests were carried out by nine mummies, on nine mummies, Munich Museum, dating from 1070 to 395 BC. The study focused on hair samples, which were often used to assess drug

concentrations in the body. Do-do-do-do-do. The results... What does it say here? Well, they discovered all the mummies tested positive for cocaine and hashish, which makes sense. The results caused an immediate stir. What the... Come on, let's cut to the chase here, folks. First thing to say,

archaeologists are not just being stubborn about this. There are many reasons not to think the traces of drugs and nine mummies means what is it what is the conclusion cut to the chase you folks this is a real academic article yeah nicotine cocaine okay back up back up cocaine stop okay cocaine most of the thing of today was first discovered in early civilizations the uh indian region of south america they chew in the coca leaves exactly instead the cocaine and possibly the nicotine too were actually being introduced to the mummies as part of an embalming process that's interesting whoa more likely the obtained cocaine from america okay i don't know i give up there's no way we'll have to read this. You did a good, yeah. I tried.

It seems like it's going to take a long time. Many resins and spices, hold on a second, were certainly used this day. We aren't entirely sure what they all were. Rare or exotic materials were almost certainly used and it is far less of a stretch to suggest this included imports from the Middle East and potentially as far

afield as India. I don't know. I think they, they're very skeptical about the idea that people from Egypt were able to travel all the way to the Americas where the cocaine was. But I think, I think part of the conclusion was that there were some other things that would make that you test positive for cocaine. Oh,

it's interesting. It was sort of like poppy seeds make you test positive for heroin. Right, right. Yeah. If you have to go for a drug test for work, they say, don't eat poppy seed. Don't eat that pop. It was sort of like poppy seeds make you test positive for heroin. Right, right, yeah. If you have to go for a drug test for work, they say don't eat poppy seed bagels.

Don't eat that poppy, yeah, wasn't there like a Seinfeld episode? I'm looking at the Wikipedia for it too. It might have been part of a thriving tourist scam in Egypt in the

Victorian era. So they might have like said it was there and some people would come look and then, you know. Wait a minute, said what was there?

The cocaine. It says, since passing this corpse is off, recently deceased as ancient mummies was a thriving tourist scam in Egypt during the Victorian era. Like it could have. That doesn't make sense because the tests were done in 1992.

After the experiments, even assuming the cocaine was actually found on the mummies, it's possible this could have been a contamination that occurred after the discovery. Okay. So a bunch of cokeheads were fond on mummies. Well, they wanted those mummies because they wanted to eat them, as I said. Oh, yeah.

You know, they ground them up and did all kinds of things. They used that in ancient Egyptian mummies? They used that too? Yeah. Think about how much was destroyed because people had to eat it. Well, I think about it all the time. There's a fantastic exhibit. There you go.

Cure-all mummy. Oh, cure-all mummy powder. Wow. Look at that. That is nuts. Mummy extract. It's cure-all. Whatever you got. Yeah. Fix it. You know it's a. Mummy extract. It's a cure-all. Whatever you got.

Yeah. Fix it. You know it's a quack remedy when it's a cure-all. We still have quack remedies. You know, take a pill, lose a lot of weight. It's like modern day quack. Well, those late night things that are causing people to lose weight and those late night infomercials.

Yep. Take a bunch of pills. Yep. That's our modern day quackery. There's a fantastic exhibit that's right now. There's an IMAax exhibit in los angeles at one of the museums i saw it about a year ago but they have a king tut exhibit and then um on top of that they have this gigantic imax theater which is fantastic and they show like all these

different uh tombs that they had discovered and how they discovered them. But it makes you really, when they've discovered King Tut's tomb, we have no idea how many similar tombs there were that were looted over the, you know, many, many hundreds and thousands of years. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we have, you know, in the museums is just sort of a fraction of what we know. And still stuff is coming to light. It's just incredible. of what we know and and still stuff is coming to light it's just incredible um but yeah they they the victorians are responsible for destroying a lot for taking those mummies and just grounding

them up and all kinds of things yeah it's what what gets me is what was the mode like where was the theory like where'd the theory come from like when you want to take a mummy and make it a powder some of it would have been sort of folk medicine influence. There's this idea of sympathetic magic. So, for instance, if I stabbed you with a sword, it gets very violent, you could be healed if I put this sort of special sympathetic powder on the sword. It would heal you. So it was sort of this healing by distance. So all kinds of strange ideas existed.

And that's why it's important when you're studying the history of medicine to really get into the mindset because it's so wildly different to the way we think. And actually, do you know what this is that I brought? If people are just listening, it's a long beaked mask. Like a bird mask. Yeah. I do not know what that is. Okay.

So this, a lot of people think this is a Venetian mask. This is actually particularly a particular example from Venice. It is what people would have, doctors would have worn during the bubonic plague. So it's called the plague doctor mask. doctors would have worn during the bubonic plague. So it's called the Plague Doctor Mask. And so it was invented in the 17th century by a French doctor. And the idea behind it was, so people thought that disease was spread by this thing called miasma, which are like little particles in the air.

They're sort of associated with bad smells. So if something smells bad, it's probably not good for you, is what they thought. And it kind of makes sense because if you're in a slummy area of the victorian period it's probably has a lot of disease it probably doesn't smell good so that was sort of the thinking behind it so what you would do is you would put sweet smelling herbs into the beak and so you would be smelling this and it would protect you from those evil miasma whoa yeah it's and you know is that a real one? No, we don't actually have,

I don't believe there's an example of a real one from the 17th century, but there's a lot of illustrations of the plague doctor and he would have been wearing a hat. He would have been wearing a cape, leather gloves, like sort of just protecting himself. Oh, there you go.

That's a real one. Authentic 16th century plague doctor mask preserved and on display at the, well, there you go that's a real one authentic 16th century plague dr mask preserved and on display at the well there you go another one duchten made a german museum of medical history but i question that because it was invented in the 17th century so if it's real it's going to be a little bit later um interesting but we don't know how much they were worn because they would have been expensive a lot of doctors weren't very noble so the plague broke out they got the hell out of there there was sort of a phrase go far and go long you know get out and don't come back for a while there wasn't much

they could do for you they had a stick as well that they would sort of poke the patient with so they wouldn't have to touch the patient and kind of have them turn over and they can you know yes you have the plague there wasn't much they could do for you um we can cure the place this is they did not know what what what germs were so they really didn't understand what the plague was they they had sort of a concept of of contagion so if you broke out with the plague they would probably quarantine you in your house. And they put a big cross on the door. And so people would bring food and you'd put a basket outside of your window with a rope and you'd take. And so they'd do that until everybody was dead in the house or that the plague had passed and they felt that you were safe to come out into the general population.

So there was an idea that these things were contagious. But not, again again in the way that we kind of understand disease diseases being spread today god it's so strange that they would you would not know what was going on like people just start dying and you'd be like what is this you would think it was yeah it could be god's curse um uh and and people say you know oh the plague mask is so terrifying um it is pretty creepy can i put it on it's super creepy but i always say that it's good luck this is why i brought this across the atlantic so joe rogan could wear the plague doctor mask yeah how many people would know what that is

like if you went you know if you go to venice they they say plague doctor mask it's funny because i was just in venice recently and they were saying, you know, the big carnival that they have every year, it's becoming harder to do because of security reasons. So you have like a huge population of a city wearing masks and covering their identities. Oh. So they have to cut back, which kind of sucks because, you know, that's like the fun of the carnival. So now they're cutting back where you can wear them in public places and things like that but um world we live in yeah it is it's unfortunate you can wear a plague mask can't wear a plague mask i'm gonna bring it back though i'm just gonna be walking around in downtown la

how would that attach to your face those are like straps or something yeah there would have been straps or um in that other example he was showing it looked like it was sort of a full on. Oh, there it goes. I mean, that looks so creepy. It's so creepy, but. Deaf. Today we have the modern plague doctor. What do you think that would be? Yeah.

The hazmat. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so you think about the hazmat going into hot zones. That would be pretty scary if you didn't know what was going on. And certainly sort of ominous you know when you see the hazmat so it it's a weird thing that exists because in a strange kind of way it probably did protect the plague doctor because he was covering himself up but it protected him for

the wrong reasons he still didn't understand how disease was spread are you aware of the theory of alien abduction being a distant memory of childbirth no yeah there's a there's a theory that is actually being um tossed about that these people that have this ancient well they have this memory of childbirth right so all of a sudden you're being born there's bright lights above you there's a man or a woman who's the surgeon with a mask that covers their face so all you see is their eyes okay and everything looks bright and and it's terrifying and clinical and you're on this table and everything's cold most of these alien abduction experiences that people recount they take place in some sort of a medical facility yeah yeah and everything is bright and

strange and cold and they think that what this is is they're they're saying that we had this idea that children don't have memories that babies don't have memories and so they're saying well why wouldn't they have memories that's ridiculous of course they have memories they have brains they they grab your finger they look you in the eye. They would have a memory of every second that they were born. And it's probably one of the most profound and disturbing memories because before that, everything is incredibly peaceful. You're inside the mother's womb.

And then you're just like taken out. And then you're pulled out. And then there's this bright light above you. You never experience any light. And your visual perception, your field of view is all distorted, right? This is the first time you're using your eyes. That's why people have the same. So it's like tapping into this memory.

Yes. This early memory. That's interesting. This is a theory. It makes sense to me because if you think about. It makes more sense than the abduction. So, well, it does because people don't really go anywhere. See, the thing about the abduction thing is they put because people don't really go anywhere see the thing about

the abduction thing is they put like cameras in people's rooms and uh and they say they have these alien abduction experiences but they don't go anywhere so what they're doing is they're dreaming yeah i mean which is the mind is amazing and it's so powerful and we know so little still yeah so also like these all these i mean it's kind of duh because they all happen while you're sleeping. Yeah. 90 plus percent. They tend to be medical.

Yeah. It's very medical in nature, right? You're being examined. And then there's also going back to childbirth. There's also a lot of people that have these experiences that they are being told that either they're taking their baby away from them or they're studying their baby or that they had a baby inside of them that they didn't know about and that the aliens have put it there and they're taking it out. virgin birth right i mean it's all it's all very weird but this uh this memory that people have from childhood is uh most likely uh you know probably a pretty intense powerful memory that's always there yeah and your first memory yeah and some people can tap into it and some people can't yeah sure yeah yeah that's what it's also a theory while natural childbirth is supposed to be less traumatic, like women having natural childbirth in a bathtub, you know, that that is actually kind of like moving back to, you know, it's men start to get involved in childbirth around the 17th century, 18th century. so women in the village would come. And actually the term gossip comes from the idea

the women who would spread the word in the village that someone was going into labor, they were called the gossips. So they spread the word. It became sort of a negative thing later. So the gossips would spread the word, the women would come in. This was a female-only chamber

and men were not really allowed in. A man might be brought in if the mother was dying or if the child was dying or if the child was dying and then in that case instruments were brought into the birth the birthing chambers so the doctor might come in and he might um take these sort of forceps and pick the baby apart and take the baby out the baby would die but in those cases it was like really extreme like this was going to happen like either the mother was going to die, the baby was going to die. Both of them were going to die.

Or if the baby was coming out feet first. Yeah. I mean, a capable midwife could handle that. But this, you know, the Caesarian section, people think that it comes from the term, the idea that Julius Caesar was ripped from the womb of his mother. But it's unlikely that that story is true because his mother lives into old age. So probably the term cesarean comes from the Latin term meaning to cut. And the first sort of record we have of this happening, I think, is in the 16th century. And it's a farmer.

And he takes the instruments that he uses to castrate his pigs to cut this baby out of his wife. Yeah. And we don't have any records of whether this, this probably didn't work again. No idea of germs, all this kind of stuff. We don't know if she lived? Yeah. I don't have, there's no sort of, it doesn't follow, the records don't follow the story. But she probably died and the baby probably died as well.

And for people who don't know, they castrate pigs to make them more edible they uh they oftentimes uh castrate them and then let them loose because then they they concentrate on grass and not ass that is a actual farmer's term i i have you know talking about cesarean sections and castrating pigs who knew those two things would well that's what they do with steers as well the difference between a steer and a bull is a steer is castrated they castrate them because uh they make better steaks things i learn on this yeah you don't want a muscular jacked bull no probably not be very chewy yeah exactly you want yeah that that buffalo above my friend adam Greentree Shot that in Australia And they My friend Cam Was chewing on a piece of his

For one piece For half an hour Oh my gosh It was that muscular Oh yeah Yeah I mean I guess that makes sense 2,000 pound sack of steel

So it was not good No Not the thing you want to sit down And have a meal No I mean They say they vary Like sometimes

Some of them you can eat. Yeah. You know, I mean, you can eat them. Depending on how they're raised. It's all buffalo meat. Yeah. But they're just insanely dense. It's crazy how big, I mean, when you see the skull, it's just, the size of it is incredible.

Yeah. It's also an invasive species. So they have no natural predators. There's just thousands and thousands of them destroying the countryside and so people travel up to the northern lands um ardeland i forget the the name of the place where they go and they hunt these things wow yeah they're huge yeah they australia is a trip i mean it is really a wildlife experiment because they brought in so many animals and right that's right as well yeah and they're not indigenous and they're just doing a lot of damage yeah um so when you think about the history of surgery and that you you concentrate on this one very particular time in this book yeah in this book yeah but as a medical

historian like when what first of all what led you to that like why you seem so normal thing oh yeah i'm super normal. Look at all these skulls and stuff in front of me. I'm like that kid who never grew out of the obsession with Tales from the Crypt. Oh, me too. Yeah, Ripley's Believe It or Not, The Shrunken Heads. I actually did a segment for a documentary on The Shrunken Heads, and I had to go out to Poland. I actually got to hold these things that I was always fascinated with growing up well people don't know that they think the skull's in there

that's why they don't understand how do you shrink your head yeah and it's it's amazing because um what they do is they obviously they take the skull out and it's a process and this documentary was looking at they were dna testing them because um the tribe that makes these skulls they were done for a specific purpose to trap the soul of the warrior that they killed so that there was a spiritual reason behind it. But what they were finding was that some of these shrunken heads were female, which probably means that

as Westerners came into these areas, they wanted to collect these shrunken heads as curiosities, of course. And so they traded guns for heads. And so it kind of drove up the demand for these shrunken heads as curiosities of course and so they traded guns for heads and so it kind of drove up the uh the demand for these these shrunken heads so they started killing women well it wasn't just just anybody and it might not have been um killing them it might have just been taking bodies of people who had already died but they definitely aren't all authentic in the sense that

they were um yeah killed in battle and so it's just kind of interesting, but I got to interact and see the shrunken head. So I was that weird, creepy kid that no one really wanted to talk to. I joke that I also looked like Barb from Stranger Things for a long time. And my brother pointed this out and we were watching Stranger Things and then Barb dies and nobody gives a shit.

And I'm like- Spoiler alert. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, everybody. And I was just devastated. I'm like, nobody noticed for a whole season. Yeah, they barely cared. They're like, well, she's missing.

Yeah, I guess she's missing. No one cared about Barb. Last time we saw her by the pool. I was really awkward. I was 5'7 by the age of 10 and I was just like that weird kid with tails from the crypt. And so I went on to study history in college,

and then I went to Oxford, and I did a master's and PhD in it. But academia doesn't allow me to be as creative and weird as I'd like to be. So now I'm just a storyteller. I'm a freelance writer, and I do this YouTube channel, and I'm sure Oxford's going to be like, give us the PhD back at some point. Can they do that? No. Well, there's a real value in that in terms of education because what you do is very interesting and entertaining I mean that's why I started following you and retweeting your stuff it's

really I appreciate that you know it's funny because there is this sort of tension between what they call popular history and academic history and I will get like academic historians will come at me on Twitter and stuff and this one guy said to me well you're just an entertainer and i was like well that's not an insult to me like that's why is that an insult that's not true you have a phd like yeah hey stupid yeah i should have just said that you know yeah like what does that mean you're just an entertainer yeah just it's like it's like i'm bastardizing the subject in some kind of you know way that they don't like well it's because of people like me but I'm like ew gross and then I retweet it I know exactly and then it makes it and then they want it you know like I did this thread on Twitter called your Victorian

doctor's trying to kill you and every tweet was like um coca rats cocaine laced cigarettes which you had also um shared at one point and just all the kinds of crazy things and then at the end of the thread I I said, but what is it about today that people will look back? But you know, this one academic was like, this is really, um,

you know, bad history and you're, you're making it fun. How dare you? You know, it's like that kind of offense of that, but for the most part, people enjoy it.

And, and that's nice. Well, that is like the, the big complaint that people have about academia is that it's so stuffy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to get like so many weird academic trolls.

I know. It's just it's one of those things like I've had to make peace with because I am a storyteller. And if you look at my profile, I call myself a storyteller first rather than historian. Well, they're great stories, though. They're great stories. For us in 2019, we're so incredibly fortunate to have actual real doctors with real modern medicine to fix us. Real credentials. Talking to a guy who's had probably five surgeries. Yeah.

God, it's so. I know. I had an appendectomy and it was amazing. They use little tiny robotic instruments now and they barely make, you know, i think the incision's like an inch long or something it's just a body of mine had shoulder surgery and the the the actual cuts are like millimeters tiny little cuts you barely can see the scars it's amazing and you know with your knee surgery it was a an injury from um activity right know, and you think about people in the past, they weren't necessarily, well, I mean,

there were sports and competitions, but mostly people were getting injuries from repetitive, strenuous labor that they were doing. There's a story of a cab driver in the 18th century, and he got this aneurysm behind his knee. So the cab drivers in the 18th century wore these high boots, like riding boots, and it would rub at the back of the knee

and it created this huge aneurysm. And there was a surgeon named John Hunter in London who said, well, normally what you do is you would hack the leg off because if it pops, right? If it pops, you're going to bleed out. But he said, I have an idea. I want to cut into the leg

and I want to tie off the blood supply to the aneurysm. I want to see if that works. And it did. And he saved this guy's leg. And that's really important because remember, these people had no options if they couldn't work. A lot of these people did. When you say aneurysm, people think of aneurysm and think of a brain. Right.

It's like a – what's the term? It's a specific kind of aneurysm and think of a brain. Right. It's like a, what's the term? It's a specific kind of aneurysm. It's almost like a balloon that appears on the outside. So it's just a big sack of blood. Big sack of blood. Why didn't they think they could just drain it? That's what I would think. Like a hematoma.

If you severed it, yeah, I don't know. I'd be like, slow down, doc. Yeah. Don't hack that leg off i'm gonna drive this taxi bitch yeah and if he had lost his leg it would have been and what's incredible about that story actually is that he that hunter saves the leg and then when the man dies right before he dies he he knows he's going to die this is many years later he writes a letter and he wills his body to hunter so this is one of the first early examples to take the leg and to open it up and dissect it and to see what happened and so

that leg is on display at the surgeons uh um sorry at the royal college of surgeons in london so they embalmed it uh yeah well he would have preserved it probably with um wax injections almost like plastination oh like they did with that body, what is that body exhibit? Yeah, that weird guy, Body Worlds. What do you think about that? I was very torn when I was walking around this. Because a part of me was saying, this is really fascinating. It is, yeah.

And the other part of me was saying, what is the difference between this and like fucking Ed Gaines' house, where he made lampshades out of people? Well, yeah. I mean, one would hope the difference is consent. One would hope though. Yeah. Well, there has been controversies with certain exhibitions, maybe not body worlds, but there's been some spinoffs where there's been a question of where they got those bodies.

Yes. And of course, if you're also going into sort of poor areas and asking people to hand over their bodies, is it really consent? Because sometimes these families don't have money for funerals and yes so there's other incentives but i i think my view is what you know it's it's given under the guise of science that we can only view dead bodies through the lens of science today that's the only acceptable way but it really is art um and i wish that it would just be more openly recognized as just art, whether it's your kind of thing or not, because some of it is posed in really shocking ways that are unnecessary to teach anatomy.

Right, right, right. So, you know, if you're going to say it's an anatomical lesson, why does the person have to be posed in this sort of dramatic way so i think that you know it would be better if we just called it for what it was it's art and it's supposed to be provocative and shocking and that's why people come to see it and we're morbidly curious it is absolutely interesting yeah i mean and and people say oh my gosh uh the victorians bought tickets to the operating theater well people come to my instagram account you know i mean we're still morbidly curious oh for sure it's really interesting that it's called a theater

as well did you ever see that movie with benicio del toro uh i think it was just the wolf man it was one of the more recent werewolf movies but he becomes a werewolf in the operating theater so the doctor is convinced the doctor's convinced that he's a madman there's something wrong with him so they give him electric shock therapy and all these different things and what's the period that it's supposed to be in this period oh in the 19th century okay yeah yeah it's in london so yeah see if you can find it it's kind of a crazy scene you know the doctors were experimenting with um uh electricity a lot and galvanism and things like kind of reanimating the corpses, which is a little weird to the story. Oh, boy.

Frankenstein. And they were also interested in how long do you live or your conscience after you're beheaded. Right. So there's these experiments during the French Revolution where they're like shouting at the heads to see if the heads will blink. Oh, God. So I'm sure we can't uh air this on youtube so this will only be us watching this because if we air it on youtube they'll they'll do it see that's exactly what the theaters yeah he's like saying he's going to kill all of them like you need to get out of here and uh they

this doctor is uh very arrogant and they're dealing with him and the moon turns full and he starts freaking out. And it's really interesting because if this was actually how they had patients strapped in, is that accurate? Like the way that chair is set up? Yeah, they would have. I mean, so his feet, it looked like his feet were on the ground. So the chair would have been higher. So his feet would have sort of dangled. It's one of the best ever.

I'm a giant werewolf fan i am this is one of the best ever um because this was actually done by rick baker who's the same guy who did an american werewolf in london which is the werewolf that's out in the hall okay oh yeah i took pictures of that yeah i met him earlier but this is uh the modern version of it that they decided to make and you know the thing is that these guys are watching this and the doctor is arrogant. He has his back to the patient while he's discussing. And that's exactly what those theaters would have looked like as well. Yeah.

But they would have been just so crowded. That is so strange, though, that this was like, this was entertainment. This was something that people wanted to see. Well, you know, it wasn't just sort of the morbid curiosity. It was also that the Victororians were obsessed with uh scientific progress so they wanted to come in and see right i see that they want to see what they're all getting the hell out of there now and they're trying for people are listening yeah this is a it's not a good movie but it's a it's a great scene there's a bunch of great scenes in this movie i enjoy it just

because i love werewolf movies yeah yeah it would have been fun to shoot yeah well it's um it's also they decided in this movie to make it with a minimal use of cgi that's and yeah yeah what they decided to do is do it all with um actual yeah yeah rubber masks and things like that yeah pretty ridiculous movie honestly it actually it's funny because um it sort of reminds me of of again liston the the six two giant he got a patient on the table who had to have a bladder stone removed remember how awful that was and this guy was like fuck it i'm not gonna do it he jumps off the table he runs across the room locks himself in a closet and liston liston all six two of them chases this guy rips the door off and just drags him back oh my god so you know and that really happened again be a great movie anybody listening yeah you're really pushing this movie hard are you you're trying to sell that while you're out here? No, I mean, I guarantee you someone is

listening. I, you know, I could sell the rights to the book, but I've held on to them and I'm developing them with my producing partner because this book was born out of a lot of trauma. So a couple years ago, I went through a really bad divorce and I was facing deportation as a result from the UK. And so I had no money. They took my passport, everything. I couldn't do anything. So I wrote this book. And so I always say that Joseph Lister saved a lot of lives, not least my own, because it's kind of lifted me and it's been a rebirth. So I really want to be involved in the process. I've always been fascinated with movies. I want to kind of see how the sausage is made, so to speak. If you're a writer and you just saw off the rights you're not you don't really have much creative

input at all right um but yeah i just think that you know it's it's a great story because it's it sort of crosses with the with people who are interested in the horror genre right because you get the the surgery the victorian surgery but it's an uplifting story about something that changed the world in the way we fundamentally understand it. Who do you envision playing Lister? I see Bradley Cooper. Oh. What do you think? Like it?

There you go. Jamie's like, whatever. Perfect movie star. I'm trying to think of someone else, but yeah. He could basically do every movie. Yeah, yeah. He's like a quintessential movie star, right? He is, he is, yeah.

I was thinking Eddie Redmayne, the British actor who's like, he's so sweet and Lister's a very sort of likable. Who's that guy? He's in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them the Harry Potter. He's really big in Britain or Benedict Cumberbatch. That guy's awesome. Yeah. Doctor Strange. I think Benedict Cumberbatch would like to play Liston the 6'2 guy because it's a real theatrical role. Well Cumberbatch would like to play Liston, the 6'2 guy, because it's a real theatrical role. Well, Cumberbatch, he's another guy who's awesome and everything. Amazing, yeah. Yeah.

So if you're listening, Benedict. He's killer. And Doctor Strange is another movie that's not the best movie in the world, but he's killer in it. Yeah. And he's tall. He could play Liston. We could balk him out a bit. Aha!

There we go. Does he have to get bulked out? Would you like a role in this? No, I'm not into it. As maybe the patient? No, I'm good. Thanks. The guy who jumps off.

The guy who jumps off. Yeah, I'll be the guy who gets his dick hammered with a nail. Thank you. You don't want to be the guy that dies when his coat is slashed. Yikes. Yeah, I'll be that guy. I'll be the guy who faints. Oh, good heavens!

And just falls down and passes out from fright. Yeah, yeah. That's a good role. Yeah. So this book, you were in quite a bit of personal anguish yourself when you created this book. So you have this deep attachment to it. I can completely understand that. It's my first book.

And I'm working on a new book on the history of plastic surgery. Aha. I'm fascinated with that as well. Yeah. It's interesting. So I'm looking at a guy named Harold Gillies who was rebuilding soldiers' faces during World War I. And if you've ever seen these guys' photos, I mean, we have no problems.

You think we have no problems in the 21st century and you look at these guys because they've been shot through the face and their jaws are missing. And Harold Gillies really designs or starts plastic surgery as we know it. And it was a time when losing a limb made you a hero,

but losing your face made you a monster. So these guys are really isolated. And so what Gillies does is he gives them their identity back. So it starts on the battlefields

of World War I and it's going to kind of follow Gillies throughout. I like to do character-driven stories. Even though they're 100% true, I like to sort of follow medical history through the eyes of one particular person. Yeah. The history of plastic surgery is fascinating to me, and I'm hooked on that show Botched. Oh, yeah.

People always mention that. That show is so crazy. This is me watching Botched. This is me all the time like, Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. What are you doing, man? Stop doing that.

And what people put themselves through, right? I started following some plastic surgeons on Instagram just to kind of know what they're doing today and thinking about the ethics of how they target people on social media and how do we feel about that. And I'm telling you, I'm 37. I'm feeling bad about my body. I can't imagine if you're like 14 and awkward and you're barb, you know, and you have access to these accounts and the effect it has on young people on Instagram and everything.

Well, I had Jonathan Haidt on the podcast who wrote this book, The Cobbling of the American Mind. And one of the big things that he discusses is people comparing themselves to others through social media and children, particularly girls. Yeah. This higher instances of suicide, cutting, depression, much higher instances of depression. I believe it. Yeah, I believe it too. It's crazy.

And then you see someone like Kylie Jenner who transforms herself literally from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. Yeah, yeah. And it's all done through the knife. And it's crazy. And that's the whole thing. Like that kind of beauty is unattainable really. These are these gentlemen who. This is Harold Gillies, one of his patients.

Wow, that's the end? Yeah. And what he did was he invented this thing called the tubed pedicle where he would take skin and he would basically create a tube and he could place it somewhere on the face where the defect was and the blood supply would make it attach. That guy did an incredible job on that guy's nose. That's probably 1917 right there. That's like better than a lot of the people on Botched.

It really is. I'm not joking. Particularly the final product. And that's Gillies down there. Yeah, that's another. Man. No, he was incredible. And really when you think about what these guys went through too.

Yeah. So my book is starting with this guy named Percy Clare who shot through both cheeks and his face is just blowing off. who shot through both cheeks and his face is just blown off. And to get off the battlefield was half the struggle because if your face is blown off, most of the time the stretcher bearers will just pass you up because they think you're going to die. But it was a survivable wound. And so just getting off the battlefield, you know,

so you sit there for 12 hours, maybe you die in the process. And you have no food and you can't eat. No food. And that was the other thing. So a lot of these guys died because well-intending nurses would lay them down. And you have no food and you can't eat. facial um and jaw unit in britain during the war just to get there was a battle um and then you have to go through all these painful operations and so i want to look at that and then of course like how does that become what we do today but equally i always tell people that botched is one form of plastic surgery but of course there's a lot of important surgeons doing reconstructive work

yes um you know and now we have face transplants, which are incredible. I don't know, Jamie, if you can find someone who's had a face transplant. Yeah, there's been quite a few. Yeah, there's, you know, I think the hardest part is finding the donor. It's hard to get people to donate their organs as it is, but think about a face is so personal. Yeah. And the last one, National Geographic did a spread on it.

It was 18, I think it was an 18-year-old girl who shot herself in the face. And in a moment of rage and anyway, she ended up having this face transplant about three years later. And the donor face, I think, was someone who was in their 30s. This person had died, I think, of an overdose. And then the family decided to give this face over. So it's actually incredible what we can do when you think about, you know, from the battlefields of World War I

to what Gilly's doing to where we are today with facial reconstruction. And it's just going to get better and better. Yeah, I'm sure it is going to get better and better. And for people with disfiguring injuries and things, it's fantastic yeah what what freaks me out about botched is the psychological aspect of people constantly tinkering with their looks it's just yeah and now they have apps where you can upload

your face and you can change things about your face and it's just we're we're all becoming more and more insecure i think with social media um and and yeah it's part of this world where nothing is real. Well, that's the other part of it. A lot of these pictures aren't real. No. People are doctoring their photos to make themselves look different than they actually do look.

I know. Someone walks into the studio and you're like, wait, that's not what I thought that person was going to look like. This woman who's friends with my wife, her neighbor is a model and she takes all

of her photos with no makeup on and then they put the makeup on her oh my gosh yeah i didn't know they could do that yeah that's how they do it they do it all through photoshop so she wait jamie can you do that can you edit this video you can do whatever you can turn you into an avatar lady do anything but it's kind of crazy that they they take photos with no makeup and then yeah i had no idea eyeshadow and all that's wild yeah we nothing's real nothing's real anymore we kind of just well i think we're i mean i don't want to go down this road in this conversation but i think we're preparing ourselves for a time where nothing is real i mean i think we're preparing ourselves for a time where we live inside some sort of a simulation. Yeah. And I think it's interesting

because celebrities like yourself have to really think about how your image is used after you're gone as well now, like something that you didn't have to think about. So there was a commercial with Audrey Hepburn in Britain, and it's a galaxy chocolate commercial. And she's there, and it looks like she's eating a chocolate bar. And so the ways that they can manipulate images. And and I think for the first time, a lot of celebrities need to really think carefully about whether they're OK with their images being used in certain kinds of ways after their death. Like who owns your image? It's just like when you look at medical history in the past, you don't own your body.

And so a lot of these surgeons get hold of these bodies to dissect. And they're digging them up from graveyards. There were body snatchers. They called themselves resurrection men. And they would go into these cemeteries and they would dig up these bodies. And they would oftentimes strip the body naked because it was illegal to steal possessions from the corpse but not the body itself. Because there was no concept of the body being sort of property. So they would throw the clothes back into the grave.

And they were really clever in the ways they did it. They usually sent a woman in the daytime to masquerade as a mourner. And she would kind of go through the graveyard. And she would see where the fresh graves were. Because, of course, you'd want the body to be as fresh as possible and then at nighttime they would go in there and they would dig up these bodies and they could take as many as 12 bodies in a night it was like hard labor and it was very lucrative um because the only legal bodies to dissect in britain um in the early 19th century were bodies of executed criminals of people who had murdered other

people. So if you went to the like to say goodbye to your Nana and drop some flowers on a grave, and there's just a big hole in the ground, well, they would cover it up. But you do get these stories of people finding out that a body so for instance, I think it was in 1785. This person goes to this graveyard and discovers that a body is missing, that a body has been snatched. And everybody in the village goes to this graveyard and digs up their relatives and drags these coffins back to their home until they could make the cemetery safer. Oh, my God. Which is insane, because people were really feared this. And so yesterday on Twitter,

I put up a picture of something called the cemetery gun. So they had these devices that they would put at the foot of the grave, and it had like a trip wire. And so you could set up the gun to shoot anybody you would. Oh, my God. And there's actually a really awful story of a grieving father who this was set up at the grave, and he accidentally trips it and he gets shot. So, you know, it wasn't exactly a safe way to protect the bodies. But they also had watchmen. Look at that. There it is.

That's from your Instagram or your Twitter feed. That's Twitter. Yeah. Everybody went nuts on that yesterday. Cemetery gun. 19th century used to protect against body snatchers. That is so crazy. It's a musket.

Yeah. It was hardcore. I mean, you'd have to be quite wealthy as well to set something like that up at the foot of your relative's grave. They also used coffin collars. I mean, you'd have to be quite wealthy as well to set something like that up at the foot of your relative's grave. They also used coffin collars. So that was sort of like an iron. Well, it was a collar, and they would nail it to the bottom of the coffin. So that way, so what a body snatcher would typically do is just open the foot of the grave.

He wouldn't dig up the whole grave. He'd smash open the lid, and he'd have instruments to kind of drag the body out well if the corpse is nailed to the bottom of the coffin you're gonna have a lot of trouble dragging that body out so people you know they did all kinds of things they put these cages over the over the graves um to protect them so people the internet god bless it uh will say to protect against vampire or to to keep vampires from coming out it had nothing to do with that or zombies it was to um prevent body snatchers from getting a hold of those corpses but you know those bodies look at this yeah there they are mort safes they were called oh my god

and you'll see them a lot in britain um and they're they were people were very paranoid about this i mean you can find a lot of examples of this. And bodies were stolen a lot and thank God they were on some level, right? Because think about how much we learned from these bodies. Bodies were needed to be dissected to teach medical students. And one of the scenes in the book,

I talk about the dead house. They called it the dead house. And everybody had a different experience in the dead house. There's probably people listening who've been in a dissection room and you have a really vivid memory of that. It's probably bright and white and clinical. Well, these places, the bodies would have been bloated and partly decomposed. Dissecting bodies was dangerous because you could cut yourself and you could infect yourself with bacteria. They weren't wearing gloves.

And so you get examples of people cutting themselves and dying within 48 hours so going into medicine was dangerous and um there's a story in this book about a guy who goes into the the dead house for the first time and he freaks out and he sees all these like mice and rats and things like that eating the bodies. And so he jumps out the window and he runs off. But later he becomes accustomed to it as we all become accustomed to horrible things at some point. And he actually starts taking pieces of the corpse and throwing it to the poor little starving creatures that are in the dead house. Oh, Jesus. starving creatures that are in the dead house.

And yeah, so it's kind of like, you know, that, that horror that we all experienced possibly when we, when we're confronted with death to accepting it as you have to, as a medical student, if you want to go on. So the dead houses is particularly,

it would have smelled dissection would have, would have been a winter sport because the bodies wouldn't decompose as quickly. You course wouldn't want to be dissecting in the heat of the summer. Right. So did they literally have seasons for dissecting? Yeah, they would tend to teach students in the winter. And did they wear winter jackets and do it in the cold?

Yeah, well, they had a fireplace at the end of the room as well. It would make it really stuffy and smelly. Right. And you couldn't really predict what a person had died from as well. So remember, people are dying from things like smallpox, which is awful. And this is before mass vaccinations. This is certainly before antibiotics. And so a lot of doctors or medical students die as a result of going into the profession.

Oh, wow. So are they getting it from these corpses, people that died? They can get bacterial infections, certainly. And just being with patients, if a patient comes in with smallpox um and in smallpox a lot of people i don't know if i did i send you a picture of smallpox jamie um a lot of people think oh it's it's like chickenpox like it's not like chickenpox it's it's a really awful disease um and it's the only disease that we have eradicated ever in human history yeah um which is incredible so it's it's one of those ones yeah they're yeah it's it's unbelievably bad it makes me itch when i look at

it it's horrific um very disfiguring children with it it's just and it was so common it was very common it was it was very feared as well because it was so disfiguring and so if you were for instance a wealthy woman and you got smallpox and you were scarred, your family might worry that they couldn't marry you off. So, you know, it was one of those diseases that left its mark on you literally. And it also had a high mortality rate as well. But it wasn't like chickenpox. No. There's my PSA.

It's not like chickenpox. Well, it's, you know, it's one of those things that we're so thankful that people have figured out how to get rid of something. Yeah. And smallpox vaccine was invented in the 18th century. Most people don't know it's that old. That's incredible. Yeah. Edward Jenner invented it. And actually, the biggest anti-vaxxer movement or protest happened in the 19th century. Vaxxer movement or protest happened in the 19th century. 100,000 people turned out to march in Britain against Jenner. People thought that their children would turn into cows because he used cowpox, the virus cowpox, to bestow immunity onto people. And so there was this huge fear that, you know, it was dirty to kind of insert this animal virus into people. And so there was this

big protest, 100,000 people to protest the fact that six parents had been jailed for not vaccinating their children. And so the story is much older than we think. And the fears that we have about vaccines are not that dissimilar to what people worried about in the past as well. But Jenner is an incredible figure. That is incredible when you stop and think about the fact that this is still going on today with the internet. Yeah. Yeah.

All the, I mean, you can find out, I mean, I had Dr. Peter Hotez on recently to talk about vaccines and, and the misconceptions that people have. And he explained that they've isolated a bunch of different environmental

factors that, and genes that contribute to autism, but that it all takes place in the womb. Right. But people don't want to hear that. No, I mean, and that is the danger of the way information is now spread, of course. Echo chambers. It is.

Confirmation bias is the real danger. In the past, it was actually harder to get that message out. But a lot of, you know, you get famous sort of cartoons of people sort of turning into cows. So the cartoonists, my new husband is a cartoonist. And so it's like this powerful way of kind of conveying images and fears and stuff. And so yeah, people had that fear of vaccines for a long time. But Edwardenner coming up with his vaccine undoubtedly saved millions of people's lives undoubtedly yeah it's just so it's so amazing that that's the problem is still around today even with all the information that we have available yeah i think you know there was um a fox

news uh uh newscaster who recently said that he doesn't wash his hands because he can't see germs i don't know who it was he was joking hopefully he said the next he doesn't wash his hands because he can't see germs i don't know who it was he was joking hopefully he said the next day he actually washes his hands i hope so so people were sending that to me because again like lister right and um and i i always tell people you know it is that idea of what you can't see it's hard to convince people and with lister you know if you think about it here's this young guy and he's coming along and he's saying there's these invisible little creatures and they're killing your patients. And trust me, I have this really weird instrument called a microscope and I can see them. And it was a leap of faith. He was also accusing the older surgeons of inadvertently killing their

patients because if they weren't washing their hands, they were leading to higher mortality rates. So they probably fought against it as well. Yeah. So there was huge pushback. So what Lister ultimately does is he turns to the younger generation and he changes their minds. And so it's a slow burn. It's not like, you know, the movie moment, unfortunately, where it just happens all at once. And it takes quite a long time. And it's weird that it takes so long because if you think about him coming in 1876 to America, it's after the

Civil War, people were dying, soldiers were dying of high infection rates. They were packing wounds with mud. I mean, they couldn't get worse than that, right? And so people were dying of all these kinds of infections. He comes to Philadelphia to convince the medical community and speaker after speaker just denounces him on the first day. And then he gets up and he does his demonstrations. And he starts to slowly change people's minds. But it takes a long time. The cover of the American book is the American version, I should say, is a famous painting by, I don't know if people can see that, by Samuel Gross. It's called The Gross Clinic.

The guy in the middle, it is gross as well, but the guy in the middle is Samuel Gross. It's called the Gross Clinic. The guy in the middle, it is gross as well, but the guy in the middle is Samuel Gross. And he so didn't believe in Lister that he would walk into the room and he'd slam the door and he'd say, there, Mr. Lister's germs

can't get in anymore. And you can see in this that he's wearing his street clothes. He's sticking his dirty fingers into this wound. And there's a woman in the background and she's covering her face

and she's the mother of the patient. And she's wearing black because she expects her son to die. So this is the U.S. cover. And for the U.K. cover, I think I sent that to you, Jamie. I sent you a picture of both covers side by side. It's another painting by Eakins, and it was done within 10 years, and it's called the Agnew Clinic. And it's totally different because the doctors are wearing white, there's a sense that they understand germs, there's a sense that antisepsis is being used there. So that kind of before and after shot in such a short period,

that Lister is able to change the world. What made you choose different covers for the UK and the US version? Well, so that's actually writers don't Oh, there you go. So you can see so Penguin published it in the UK. So they've stylized the original painting, but you kind of get a sense of what it would have looked like. And actually, you have women appearing in the operating theater professionally as nurses. So this is after the Florence Nightingale revolution as well. So it still looks different to the way we operate, but you can definitely see a difference between those two paintings. Can you refresh my memory in the Florence Nightingale revolution? So Florence Nightingale is in this book a little bit. People always wonder why I didn't speak about her as much. But actually, she didn't believe in germs at first. She thought Lister was quite hysterical with his idea of germs.

But she was working towards sanitation in hospitals. So they're working towards the same goal, but just with different, slightly different tactics. So she revolutionizes nursing to make it a more respectable profession. Before then, nurses, you wouldn't want your daughter becoming a nurse if you were from a well-respected family, because it was, she would be privy to the male body. So you wouldn't want her interacting with male patients. So really kind of lowly, poor women went into nursing. And it wasn't really a respected profession until Florence Nightingale comes along and there's this sort of revolution. So the revolution is not just about the profession, though, but it's about the sanitation reforms that she brings about in the hospitals.

So you see that on the cover as well. But there's also another guy, I'm sure there's like, I can, I always like sort of predict comments. I shouldn't think about, you know, what people are going to say. But people tend to get mad, like when I give lectures, because I don't talk about this guy. There's groupies out there that love this physician named Semmelweis. And I do talk about him in the book a little bit. So Semmelweis was this- Groupies? I call them groupies, Semmelweis groupies, because every time I give a talk, there's always one

person who asks this question. And I have to spell myself and I'm like, here it is. And they say, why, I think you'll find you haven't talked about Semmelweis. Semmelweis was practicing in Austria and he was putting this idea together that if you wash your hands and you go onto the hospital wards, infection rates went down. And he was ridiculed heavily. They called him the hand washer. And he ends up being put in an insane asylum. And it's this really kind of sad, weird death that he has. And he's really sort of persecuted for these ideas of hand washing and infection rates.

He's doing it a little bit before Lister comes onto the scene. Lister's not aware of Semmelweis's work. But equally, I always tell people that Semmelweis doesn't really do it first, if we're going to play that game. Because, again, there's a difference between the basic sanitation and then understanding why you're implementing it. So until you understand that germs exist, it doesn't make sense. You can't really convince people. And that's where Lister comes in. He takes Louis Pasteur's germ theory and he's able to convince people in the medical community that germs exist. So until we understand, again, why wash your hands if they're just going to get dirty? That's amazing. So again, why did you have two different covers oh yes um so the publisher

just picks whatever covers they want basically um so my u.s publisher had come up with this my uk publisher came up with a a cover i didn't like that much and so i said well why don't we use the second eakins painting so that they're um in conversation with one another so i like that they kind of complement one another. I like the font better on the U.S. cover. I know. I love this Victorian font. And I think the image of that guy wearing street clothes is just more emblematic.

It's so evocative. I know. It's just this book, this cover actually, so it's been translated, I think, into about 15 languages now. So most of them kind of take this image. I was wondering if you knew what this might be this is so it's a circular metal metal contraption um with teeth on the inside for people just no idea what is that so this is called the jugum penis this is an a victorian anti-masturbation device what so yay there's the real one this is this is a prop that

i use for under the knife um that's the real one so what would happen is if the person got an erection it would clamp down and obviously kill the erection pretty quickly can i see that yeah that's one we made for the show oh okay yeah but it's basically similar it's similar if you see like the one on the screen it has um thank god it a spring device so these they were trying why were they trying to get people to stop masturbating so the victorians were obsessed with with masturbation um and there's probably a lot of people out there who know that kellogg's cornflakes came out of this sort of obsession with masturbation please tell people that story we heard it from dr chris ryan oh it's so funny well it's funny in a ha-ha kind of horrifying way.

Kellogg was obsessed with masturbation. He thought that a lot of his patients were suffering from all kinds of mental ailments and physical ailments because they were masturbating too much. And he thought that a diet bland and high in fiber would kind of kill the fire in the belly. And so he invented what became Kellogg's cornflakes but his brother was the one who commercialized and his brother's like we should add sugar and Dr. Kellogg was like no people we masturbating all the time we can't add sugar you know and they had this like split and Kellogg's cornflakes became the commercial version with the delicious sugar added in so that was the brother's idea it was the brother's idea to add the sugar and make

it sort of delicious oh yeah oh yeah that's that was uh um's idea. It was the brother's idea to add the sugar and make it sort of delicious. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was illustrated by my husband. We do all kinds of. He did that? Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. For the YouTube. Oh, so that's not original.

No, no. Worried your son and heir is becoming a dirty little self-abuser. Stop all contemptible. Is this an actual text from? Yeah. You know, I have. I doubt it. I don't know if he based that up. 13 Cock Lane.

I doubt it. There is a Cock Lane in London, though. I bet there is. Stop all contemptible onanism. What is onanism? Masturbating and. Onanism? Have you ever heard that?

With the infallible and modestly priced jugum penis so was that a common thing during the victorian era so um yeah you get i mean the idea that masturbating is bad for your health goes to the 18th century we kind of tend to think about it as a victorian obsession because it becomes um more and and more accepted idea in medical terms. But it's bad for you. That it's bad for you. And you get these like sort of drawings of men like languishing on the couch because they masturbated too much or whatever.

There's a lot of dudes out there right now that can relate. Yeah. Probably in the throes of it. So out of energy, you know. They just need the jugum penis. Yes. And also there's another one I sent you, Jamie. I think the sort of like looks like a flaccid penis. There's another one i sent you jamie i think the the sort of like looks like

a flaccid penis there's another one this is really high yeah they came in all shapes and sizes and oh boy yeah like now it would probably just be yeah there you're supposed to pee out of that yeah maybe you could seems like there's holes at the end of it like you have to just oh my god imagine what that thing smelled like. Oh Christ. And look at that ball at the bottom with the hook. That seems super uncomfortable. Where does that, that thing sits in between your legs? I don't know.

So it must be like a hook where you could strap it in. Strap it in, yeah. That's like a tie steel cup. I don't know who's coming on the show afterwards, but they got a lot of- Ron Funches. Okay. The good news is Ron is a hilarious comedian, so we're all good. We might have to redo the entire show just with Ron and get his take on all this stuff.

Yeah, just show him the... I'll just leave these objects behind and, you know... God, the cup is so... It's so gross. It is gross. And the fact that you had to pee out of those It looked like a spaghetti strainer at the end of it I knew

I thought you know when I was going on the show I'm like what can I bring Joe Rogan That's gonna you know stimulate the conversation And anti-masturbation device It's always a crowd pleaser Well with men It's always an issue A fascination yeah

They thought that it was causing all these ailments They thought it was causing all these different problems. Yeah. And graham crackers as well come out of that. So Reverend Graham was also obsessed with masturbation, just like Kellogg. And so he created this sort of dry, tasteless biscuit. So everybody, you know, crumbling them into their. Meanwhile, little did he know that someone would invent s'mores.

Yeah, exactly. And make it pretty fucking awesome. You know, you add marshmallows and chocolate. them into their meanwhile little did he know that someone would invent s'mores yeah exactly you know you add marshmallows or the graham cracker pie crust right so we're just like now you know i don't know if it works if people feel like that that's helping them with their masturbation problems but hey leave a comment what's just crazy that people didn't most people have no idea that that was the origin of this i know that's what's so funny you know there's there's so many like listerine graham crackers crackers, Kellogg, cornflakes, all this kind of stuff that has sort of a medical background. And wasn't there a medical background in the term hysterical? That hysterical was related to women.

Yeah, the idea that the womb wanders. Like some people thought that the female womb was like an animal of it in and of itself which i don't you know um and it would move around the body and so they would even do things like they would smoke it back into place they'd put like smoke they would put like incense and all kinds of things to kind of like get it like coax it back into place i can't even imagine the people are going to start following me after this based off of these don't worry about it stories they're coming to my platform i have tons of different stories like this but there was um there was a time where women would go to the doctor to get stimulated as well right is that true or is that so this is like a little bit out of my expertise i think that's been proven to be false, actually.

But there was, I believe, and I could be wrong on this, that there was a Victorian idea that a woman had to orgasm in order to become pregnant. Yes. So that was an important part of it. That wasn't just a Victorian thing. I'm pretty sure they taught me that in high school. What? Are you serious? Yes. What high school is this?

Exactly. If you want to get a woman pregnant, make sure she orgasms. taught me that in high school what are you serious what high school is this or like exactly if you want to get a woman pregnant it was part of the idea was that part of the male orgasming inside the woman was what led to her having an orgasm which would led to her getting pregnant that is weird well there was there was i think i might have completely remembered this incorrectly again i was probably 15 at the time oh well there you go um but there was there was someone um i think it was like a senator or congress i live in the uk now so i'm not as um up to date with with all the crazy stuff going on over here um but i think there was like a senator who said this again this idea that a woman had to like orgasm it meaning undermining

the idea that you couldn't be raped right unless you had an orgasm which was a victorian i remember that yeah i think that was really recently yeah i think it was like in the last year i hate to say it like i really do remember i mean i should just be like in the background popping up and like i could have like a sign that says 18th century or 19th you know like let's where did that idea come from originally and that's i do have this weird weird vague memory that that was the way that that you were taught yeah i don't know right it's it's too weird because i don't remember i don't it's it's too vague you know it does sound too weird like i now i picture you went to like a really victorian school i went to a place called newton south and it's suburb of boston really nice school

nothing wrong with it other other than yeah i don't remember your sex ed i'm not sure if that was it's too weird and penis no they didn't they did smack our hands though they caught us masturbating so but why were people so obsessed with that Why were they so self-pleasuring? Yeah, and I think that, again, you look at that sort of buttoned-up Victorian mentality. Didn't they put dresses over the legs of pianos and chairs and stuff like that? Oh, I don't know about that. I think they did. Because it would have been provocative?

Yes. Or it would make you think of— There might be more bullshit than I remember. But I really do remember something i think we fact-checked this before i just did it's horseshit right it says it's not real okay but it is some oh okay you know what i remember where i heard it from i heard it from terence mckenna it was one of the things he talked about during one of his uh his speeches that's right we did we did fact check that i mean we like to think that that the past is really

different from us which it is in some ways but you know again like we still share some similar fears and the masturbation thing actually the last thing I want to show you that I brought is this so this is a urine wheel that would have

date to the medieval period and so the idea was that the doctor could diagnose you according to the color of your urine. Spoiler alert, if your urine's black, you're probably in big trouble. Yeah, robbed of. Yeah. And they didn't just look at the color.

They tasted the urine as well. Hilarious. Hilarious. So, and they could diagnose diabetes because someone with diabetes, their urine tastes sweet. So, they were actually diagnosing diabetes. Oh, Christ. Yeah, there you go. That's the one we based it off.

Oh, my God. But my favorite part of the urine in the medieval period and doctors with urine, some practitioners would take the urine and put it into a divination bowl and they could tell your future. And I think they should bring that back. Like, you know, at the end of your checkup, you know, not to be covered by insurance, but, you know, out of pocket. If they test your urine and you're totally dehydrated and there's blood in there, like, yeah, bro, you ain't going to make it. You don't even have to do the divination bowl. You don't have to do that. Well, it's weird that image in the Whole circle the center circle

That this a guy Is the doctor holding the flask Is that the doctor Yep that would be the doctor holding the flask It's like a wine taster He is like a wine taster I did a whole again a YouTube video on this Which is why I have this stupid prop

And we cut through images And that image of the doctor holding the flask was sort of the predominant image of a physician up into a certain period. Now it's sort of like the stethoscope is the object now that we associate with doctors. But for- The flask used to be-

The urine flask used to be it. That was it? Yeah, they were called peace prophets. The urine flask and a doctor's pole or barber pole? Yeah, they were called piss prophets. The urine flask and a doctor's pole. Yeah. A barber pole. Yeah. And the plague mask.

Oh, my God. But they used to call them piss prophets because they'd tell your fortune using your urine. Oh, my God. I think that is something we should bring back. I think you have the power to bring that back. Well, you know what? If there's tarot card readers, why not piss prophets? Yeah.

At least piss prophets are basing it on something. you know your urine into that divination bowl i know there's so many images of the doctor holding the flask and you know obviously like the color of your urine could be an indicator of health it still is oh yeah and look at the guy he's like what do you think doc how am i doing i know he looks like he's very very worried yeah profits in got to be some piss profits in LA. Probably. Most of these. They're going to open up a store right now. Look at the bandaid around the guy's head. Yeah. Like he's hurting. The guy's got a head injury and the doctor's checking his piss.

Nothing good. What's the next image? What's going on there? I think he's pulling a tooth. Yeah. Oh, Christ. Yeah. Actually, the barbers, when they pulled teeth, sometimes they would have a drum in the shop

and it would get louder as they got closer to pulling the tooth which would make me more anxious oh my god um and the barber shop was was a male domain because you'd also get advice on sexual diseases because of course everybody had like syphilis oh right so this is uh a fake nose so everybody sort of lost their noses what how'd they lose their nose okay so something you probably don't something you probably don't know about syphilis i don't know if we have that image of um of syphilis that i i sent um poor jamie i told um your bookie manager matt staggs i said send these images to jamie and don't tell him any context you know what the hell is this podcast gonna be on um but lost their noses to the syphilis?

Yeah, they lost their noses. So syphilis attacks sort of the soft tissue. And the image that I sent through, which he'll show in a minute, the guy has holes in his scalp as well. Oh, wow. So that's a photograph. That is a photograph from the 19th century.

Oh my God, it ate right through his head. He held onto his nose though, so you could just cover that with a hat oh i guess but but it was it was incredibly painful and you al capone had syphilis and so you lost your mind it attacked um the soft tissues the brain it was really so people today you know i'll show these images on my instagram or twitter and people will be like wow i didn't know syphilis was so bad it's like people died from it all the time well syphilis is also responsible for powdered wigs you know that story right no oh you don't no oh i got something for you yeah yeah you got something when it was uh i forget

some noble person got syphilis and started wearing a wig yeah and when they started wearing wigs other people started emulating them because they were the celebrities of the kingdom. I feel like this is a drunk history. No, this is real. This is legitimate. And the more wealthy you were, because syphilis makes your hair fall out as well. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, your teeth fall out. Yeah. And so the more wealthy you were, the bigger and taller your wig would be. That is where the term big wigs comes from. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, I knew that in the 18th century that the wigs were getting bigger, like the fashions. In fact, my husband illustrated a book called The Gin Link Gazette, and it's sort of like an 18th century newspaper, and as the newspaper moves on, the women would have to sit at the bottom of the carriage because their wigs were so high in some cases.

I wonder if the women had syphilis. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Because it would be passed on or – So that's probably why they had wigs as well. Yeah. And with syphilis, you know, your nose fell off and it was so prevalent in the 19th century that they had no nose clubs.

So people would get together. Yeah. And they would – in London, they would cheer the fact that, you know, we lost our nose. Yeah, we lost our nose. We have syphilis. So they couldn't smell anything either. No, I mean, it was awful.

And actually, one of the ways that they treated syphilis was through mercury, which is very poisonous. Oh, terrific. And so when you talk about the loss of... Listen, no-nose club? Writers in London... I don't know if that's the no-nose club, but... Yeah, they might have STDs, though.

Yeah, they all just stand there with top hats and underwearnose club. Yeah, they might have STDs. Yeah. They'll just stand there with top hats and underwear. Pull up the thing though about bigwigs so I can show her. Do you see that one right up there? Oh yeah, that's for mine. If you go up, wait, up Jamie. Yes, so that man didn't lose his nose to syphilis, but that's an early

form of rhinoplasty that dates back to the renaissance and you'd have to stay in that position for weeks while that grafted um i believe this man was injured this guy had a cut of his for people just listening there's a slice off of his arm that's connected to his nose and they have taped and strapped his arm to the top of his head. So he's to stay in this position while the chunk of his arm grows into his face. And then they're going to cut it and remove it when it develops its own blood supply. It's like the Nick. If people have watched that show, the Nick, they have a scene with this.

So, yeah, it was so uncomfortable. You might be better off with no nose. Yeah, you might be better off. And mercury, of course, you would lose your teeth and it just really awful kinds of things they did with mercury. Well, it just didn't work. No. How long did that last for, the mercury thing?

All the way into the 19th century. Jesus. And so there's a phrase. After a bunch of people died when they go, hey, guys, this mercury. People are still cupping, you know? What are we basing this on? Yeah. Okay.

Syphilis, hidden between powder waste. Syphilis epidemic in the late 1500s europe left people with patchy hair loss um go go to the actual um the who who's it was what yeah so these noblemen they were all gross disgusting people with stds what but what is the name of the guy hold on don't scroll go back up here yeah okay there it is oh louis the guy? Hold on. Don't scroll. Go back up. Here it. Yeah, okay. There it is. Oh, Louis XIV. Louis XIV, only 17.

His mom started thinking worried baldness might hurt his reputation. Louis hired 48 wig makers to save his image. Five years later, King of... So, but if you scroll down... Both men likely had

syphilis. Yes. Both men likely had syphilis. So this is what started it all out. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. They were hideous

too like well there's sort of modern sensibilities like that just looks so bizarre well not only yeah i mean everything's gross right no one's washing themselves yeah they don't know what germs are people think it was great they watch a hollywood movie they're like oh it'd be so beautiful to live in the pen no it would have such assholes with that that drives me crazy when people want to pretend romanticize that it was so lovely there are terrible things about life today there absolutely are but this is the best time to be alive ever by far yeah people say um is this the best time medically and it's like well hopefully that's always true right hopefully tomorrow is the is better than you know hopefully we're we're advancing and learning more and everything i

mean i think that you know we we shouldn't look at science and medicine as totally linear, like that we're progressing towards something, but that, you know, obviously we're learning from what doesn't work. And like, that's why I said, failure is a huge part of what I love to talk about on YouTube and stuff,

because we just don't talk about it enough in life and science and medicine and all the things that fail and help us get to where we are today. Well, Lindsay, thank you. just don't talk about it enough in life and science and medicine and all the things that fail and help us get to where we are today. Well, Lindsay, thank you. Thank you for writing this awesome book. And thank you for your amazing Twitter feed. I've been spending many, many, many moments freaking the fuck out reading your stuff. Thank you so much. I'm really happy you could come down here and share all this stuff with us. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Tell people how to get a hold of you on Instagram, how they can check out your feed. Okay. I'm Dr. Lindsay Fitzharris on Instagram and Dr. Lindsay Fitz on Twitter and Under the Knife on YouTube and the book is The Butchering Art. You can get it on Amazon.

I'd really love it if you bought it. They're going to buy it. I guarantee you. Joe Rogan said buy it. It's really good. It's really good. It'll freak you out. Thank you so much, Lindsay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Joe Rogan said buy it. It's really good. It's really good. It'll freak you out. Excellent. Thank you so much, Lindsay.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.