Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Sir Humphrey Davy
Speaker 1: all week. I would say, usually when we are talking
Speaker 1: about a poet whose poems are in the public domain,
Speaker 1: I will try to find a poem and we will
Speaker 1: have one in the episode. We have even done this
Speaker 1: with such people as Natalie Clifford Barney, who, in my
Speaker 1: personal opinion, I did not find her poetry to be great,
Speaker 1: but I did feel like it was. I mean, in
Speaker 1: French it's probably a lot better, but what she wrote
Speaker 1: in English I found to be like kind of it
Speaker 1: did not move me in the way that poetry generally does,
Speaker 1: but I felt like it was, you know, indicative of her,
Speaker 1: her life, and I still wanted to read some of it.
Speaker 1: We did not read any Humphrey Davy poems because while
Speaker 1: there are lots and lots of them that have been
Speaker 1: unearthed by this whole project to transcribe all of his journals,
Speaker 1: I did not go to confirm, like what the copyright
Speaker 1: status on any of that is generally stuff that is
Speaker 1: that old is not protected by copyright anymore. But when
Speaker 1: you get into something that is like somebody's journal that
Speaker 1: has been newly transcribed, sometimes the organization that is doing
Speaker 1: that transcription has some kind of rights over it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. But the other answer is the poems of
Speaker 1: his that I did find, they were all very long,
Speaker 1: even one that was printed as a fragment of a poem.
Speaker 1: That fragment still went on for pages. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: even find like a little snippet that I felt like
Speaker 1: could stand on its own and be fun to read
Speaker 1: and listen to. I personally just found it very ponderous,
Speaker 1: and I could not even make my mind focus on it.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying this as a person whose college degree
Speaker 1: was partially devoted to poetry. Well, I mean he wrote
Speaker 1: him while he was high, So like I, this is
Speaker 1: no surprise whatsoever to me. Yeah, some of them while
Speaker 1: he was high, and some of them while he was
Speaker 1: like in the lab stuck on whatever problem he was
Speaker 1: working on. So it was more like sort of trying
Speaker 1: to shift the brain gears a little bit. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why we don't have any Humphry Davy bombs. Oh, I
Speaker 1: borderline wonder if we were to exhum Humphrey Davy do
Speaker 1: a little testing how much B twelve depletion, we would
Speaker 1: find that had maybe caused some brain damage. That is
Speaker 1: one of the things that can happen with excessive nitrous oxide. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: brain and nerve damage from B twelve depletion. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: chronic use. And it sounds like he got pretty cavalier
Speaker 1: about his use of it if he was just strolling
Speaker 1: about with his bag of g and enormous amounts of it.
Speaker 1: And that's really like a lot of the places where
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide is like illegal for recreational use today, That's
Speaker 1: like one of the things that has been cited is
Speaker 1: that like when it's not illegal, a lot of times
Speaker 1: it is fairly easily available. I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into the ways that people can extract it from things
Speaker 1: that are not meant to be consumed. It's like a
Speaker 1: whole other thing. But because it is sometimes readily available
Speaker 1: in places that it is not regulated, it's possible for
Speaker 1: people to inhale large amounts of it and inhale large
Speaker 1: amounts of it for a long time, and that can't
Speaker 1: have some pretty serious risks. Yeah, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that, like in a medical use is the side
Speaker 1: effects tend to be things like a headache and maybe
Speaker 1: some nausea. But when somebody is using lots and lots
Speaker 1: of it, it is possible to nearly asphyxiate or asphyxiate
Speaker 1: yourself the way that Davy dearly did at some points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because if you read about nitrous oxide use,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's always mentioned is that it
Speaker 1: is not addictive. Oh and I'm like, uh, maybe not
Speaker 1: chemically addicted, right, like your body doesn't need it, but clearly,
Speaker 1: I mean he even talked about people who didn't want
Speaker 1: to stop sucking in air during his demonstrations. It's like,
Speaker 1: it may not be chemically addictive, but that doesn't account
Speaker 1: for like the psychological like just drive and desire. People
Speaker 1: would have to continue using it, which is always one
Speaker 1: of those tricky things when talking about any kind of
Speaker 1: substance that alters your brain, right, Like, no, it's not addicted.
Speaker 1: I mean there was for a long time. Having being
Speaker 1: a person of a certain age, I remember a long
Speaker 1: period where there was a lot of discussion about how
Speaker 1: cocaine was not addictive, and it's like, but people are
Speaker 1: addicted to it so like you're not factoring in something here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It also makes me think about Kubla Khan. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, was Coleridge Hitten nitriss when he was
Speaker 1: because the whole thing is right about like there's this
Speaker 1: amazing thing I saw when I was asleep, but I
Speaker 1: could never describe it, although he describes it in the poem,
Speaker 1: So he's a lying liar who lies. But sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love my romantic poets, but I also recognize them
Speaker 1: as like project men. Yeah, and I'll just also like
Speaker 1: various romantic poets also were using other substances, yeah, to
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide, so yeah, but specifically that idea of seeing
Speaker 1: things in a sleeping state. I mean, it could I
Speaker 1: can also be attributed certainly to other things. But it
Speaker 1: did make me think about Kubla Khan in a different way,
Speaker 1: knowing that he too was playing in the nitrous oxide pond. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm free, David. Yeah. My thing with Roget's reaction, m right,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have heard the thing. It comes up
Speaker 1: a lot in relation to like everything that can alter
Speaker 1: your mental space, from like you know, alcohol to cannabis
Speaker 1: to much harder drugs like whatever you walk into that
Speaker 1: experience with is just gonna get amplified. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: was Roget just a super anxious dude and so this
Speaker 1: whole thing just made him feel like I am out
Speaker 1: of control and he was just white knuckling through it.
Speaker 1: Totally possible, which is I mean, he kind of even
Speaker 1: a loose like I could get used to this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but my initial reaction is that I don't like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like somebody who has had their anxiety highly
Speaker 1: triggered by being in this altered mental state. Mm hmm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's keep doing more experiments. Guys. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: walk around town, hang out back. Yeah. My other thing
Speaker 1: is about Frankenstein, okay, which is not even it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with every dating, okay, but it is
Speaker 1: that I love every time we mentioned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Speaker 1: because to me, more than I won't say all other
Speaker 1: but many other works of literature and history, that is
Speaker 1: clearly one of the most important, not just because of
Speaker 1: its like reputation as like a you know, a key
Speaker 1: pillar of Gothic literature or whatever, but because we can't
Speaker 1: stop engaging with it as a culture. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, there is another Frankenstein movie coming
Speaker 1: out next year, ye, with Oscar Isaac as Doctor Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: Can't wait, can't wait wait? Okay yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks very good. But like we love that story
Speaker 1: as humans as a piece of entertainment, and so it
Speaker 1: just makes me think about how sort of seminal it
Speaker 1: is in terms of like hitting a chord with everyone
Speaker 1: subconscious that the idea of creating a living being from
Speaker 1: dead things and what that'sicology is. We're fixated on whether
Speaker 1: we know that or not. Yeah, I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have an embarrassing story about Frankenstein relating to my
Speaker 1: years of college. Okay, great. There was one year when
Speaker 1: I was in college where I had two different courses
Speaker 1: that each involved reading Frankenstein, and I think one of
Speaker 1: them was maybe humanities and the other was a literature course.
Speaker 1: And I wrote a paper for my literature course in
Speaker 1: which I don't remember exactly what my argument was, but
Speaker 1: I was entirely focused on that frame story in Frankenstein. Oh,
Speaker 1: I never actually read Frankenstein. There is a frame story.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah right. I'm saying that to listeners who
Speaker 1: may not I'm sure you know it well now I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of Elsa Lanchester, so you know, keep going. So
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what my argument was, but I
Speaker 1: had a whole argument about just the frame story part
Speaker 1: I turned in for my literature class, and I got
Speaker 1: a B on it, in which my professor, as his note,
Speaker 1: said that my paper was very well argued and very
Speaker 1: well substantiated, but he just disagreed with my conclusion. And
Speaker 1: I was so livid about this that I went to
Speaker 1: the department head, Oh my goodness, in part because it was,
Speaker 1: I think this was my junior year, and so I
Speaker 1: had stuff that I was like attempting to get on
Speaker 1: the path of going to grad school, and like this
Speaker 1: be on this paper was going to mess up my grade,
Speaker 1: and it was going to mess up my GPA, and
Speaker 1: it was going to mess up everything with my ambitions
Speaker 1: toward getting an advanced degree, which I never did. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I look back on
Speaker 1: now and I just kind of think about what an arrogant,
Speaker 1: pretentious person I was when I was twenty. I mean,
Speaker 1: who wasn't who was? We all were? We all were
Speaker 1: one thing. Another sort of side note that jumped out
Speaker 1: at me in this episode is when we were talking
Speaker 1: about the pneumatic Institute or institution, I don't remember which
Speaker 1: it was called. We might have called it both in
Speaker 1: the episode, and how it was in hot wells, and
Speaker 1: how in hot wells there were baths that people went to,
Speaker 1: but there you also drank the waters, which I think
Speaker 1: that like not everyone because when you think of a
Speaker 1: place called bath, you're thinking of bathing, probably, but a
Speaker 1: lot of times these places that had baths also taking
Speaker 1: the waters involved drinking the waters, right, not just having
Speaker 1: the various bathing type spa stuff that also happened a
Speaker 1: lot of the time. And it reminded me of how
Speaker 1: when we were in Italy a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: and we stayed at a little town called Monticatini Cheremi
Speaker 1: and Patrick and I stayed there after every the trip
Speaker 1: had concluded, most people had gone home, and he and
Speaker 1: I stayed there an extra day to just sort of
Speaker 1: have a decompression day before we went on to have
Speaker 1: a little trip to Venice before we went back home.
Speaker 1: And there was a place that you could go and
Speaker 1: pay a couple of euro to walk around that had
Speaker 1: been a spa and the buildings. A lot of them
Speaker 1: were like these neoclassical buildings, and it just seemed like
Speaker 1: an interesting place to walk around. And it also had
Speaker 1: been a place where people drank the waters from these
Speaker 1: hot springs, and you still could. They had little cups
Speaker 1: and they had little spigots that you could turn on
Speaker 1: and drink the water. And I was like, no, thanks,
Speaker 1: because what I am not interested in doing is accidentally
Speaker 1: giving myself some kind of gi situation right on this
Speaker 1: last three days in Europe, planning to go have a
Speaker 1: nice couple of days in Venice, and now I'm kind
Speaker 1: of like, should I have tried the water? Well? I
Speaker 1: mean to be clear, so no one thinks Tracy was being,
Speaker 1: you know, overly cautious. We had two people in our
Speaker 1: group who had gotten horrible they got stomach issues. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think we were all on kind of
Speaker 1: high alert about what we consumed after that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it was also during the era of COVID where
Speaker 1: you had to pass a COVID test, yeah, to get
Speaker 1: back into the United States. I am not in any
Speaker 1: way suggesting you can get COVID from drinking water. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, like we were all hyper conscious of everything,
Speaker 1: everything health related. Yes, so yeah. By the way, before
Speaker 1: we go any further, I feel like I have done
Speaker 1: a disservice in talking about next year's Frank and Stein movie, okay,
Speaker 1: because I did not mention, okay, that it is adapted
Speaker 1: and directed by Geirma del Toro. Okay, this is exciting.
Speaker 1: I'm I mean, I will buy all the tickets. I
Speaker 1: will go every day. That's like going. It's made of
Speaker 1: all your favorite things, like more, yes, please, I'm on
Speaker 1: board with this whole thing. So yeah, I really did
Speaker 1: think that we were going to have a one part
Speaker 1: episode that was going to be primarily about Humphrey Davy
Speaker 1: and his nitrous oxide self experimentation. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: but this whole thing with the miners lamp and the
Speaker 1: fighting about I was like, we need to talk about
Speaker 1: that too. And he had all these notable things later
Speaker 1: in his career and then oh, kind of ending on
Speaker 1: a downer note of having several like non successes after
Speaker 1: you know, the first half of the first half of
Speaker 1: his life being like, man, this person is a chemistry
Speaker 1: genius well, and he is involved in embroiled in so
Speaker 1: much drama at the end of his life, and I
Speaker 1: find myself wondering because you did the research on this
Speaker 1: and I did not, and most of the research, it
Speaker 1: seems like, suggested that he could be a pill. But
Speaker 1: I'm also like, was everybody kind of a pill at
Speaker 1: this point because they all thought like they were doing
Speaker 1: the most at a time when, like they're everything was new,
Speaker 1: I mean not everything, but a lot of things were
Speaker 1: very new and so science drama. Yeah, yeah, So I
Speaker 1: think tomorrow is the day that the Horace Wells Gas
Speaker 1: War classic episode will be out about how people did
Speaker 1: start using nitrous oxide for like anesthesia purposes for dental procedures,
Speaker 1: and then we'll have a brand new episode on Monday.
Speaker 1: What that's about, I don't know. I haven't looked at
Speaker 1: the calendar. We'll be back though. Drop us a note
Speaker 1: if you'd like history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and
Speaker 1: otherwise we will talk to you again, Soude. Stuff you
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