Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Casual Friday.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. You heard us
Speaker 1: say it on this week's episode. But we're all recording
Speaker 1: from home, so Casual Friday really feels extra casual. I mean,
Speaker 1: I told Holly this story earlier. I have a whole
Speaker 1: routine because I've been working from home for a really
Speaker 1: long time, and like, I have a whole routine of
Speaker 1: things that I need to do to make sure that
Speaker 1: I stayed productive in this environment where I am by myself.
Speaker 1: And yesterday when we were testing are all remote set
Speaker 1: up number one, we were all at home all uh,
Speaker 1: you know, isolating ourselves and practicing our social distancing. It
Speaker 1: was also my first day back in the office from
Speaker 1: a vacation, which was an adventure. Um, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not even disguising the fact that I have obvia
Speaker 1: BedHead in this video. This is how it is today. Well,
Speaker 1: for what it's worth of sitting here in porg pajamas,
Speaker 1: everybody's casual sometimes, Uh, these are strange times we live
Speaker 1: in and we kind of uh ended up doing shows
Speaker 1: this week that kind of fit in with the strange
Speaker 1: times we're living in UM. I specifically chose mine because
Speaker 1: of it. As I mentioned at the top of that show,
Speaker 1: just about Maxivon Pettenkofer and his work as an anti contagionist.
Speaker 1: Thinking that people could not just transmit disease from one
Speaker 1: another or through like a water source or whatnot. He
Speaker 1: thought a whole lot of other stuff had to happen.
Speaker 1: That is a fascinating and strange and sort of marvelous
Speaker 1: story because he still led to a lot of really
Speaker 1: important developments in public health and hygiene. But what really
Speaker 1: got Tracy was that he drank boullion that he had
Speaker 1: mixed cholera into the microbe that caused this cholera, I
Speaker 1: should say, which is funny because for some reason that
Speaker 1: didn't gross me out so much. They gross me out
Speaker 1: a lot. I think it's really foolish. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I wanted to mention in this in
Speaker 1: this chat that I didn't talk about in the episode
Speaker 1: because it's largely hearsay and supposition, is that there are people,
Speaker 1: biographers or even scientists that have studied his work that
Speaker 1: actually think that was something of a death wish situation
Speaker 1: because he had lost his wife just a couple of
Speaker 1: years before that, he was kind of falling into a
Speaker 1: dark place in terms of his psyche. Um that he
Speaker 1: kind of expected that he might die because at that point,
Speaker 1: remember um Hoke had kind of proven the connection between
Speaker 1: this microbe and cholera, so uh it is And ultimately
Speaker 1: because he did take his own life, like he clearly
Speaker 1: was in a space where those kinds of thoughts were happening.
Speaker 1: But I just don't we don't know for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such risky behavior. Yeah. I think the reason that
Speaker 1: it grossed me out as much as it did, um
Speaker 1: was that he is not the only person to have
Speaker 1: done a similar kind of experiment. Like one of the
Speaker 1: ways that people tried to connect um h pylori with
Speaker 1: having ulcers was consuming it. And some of those self
Speaker 1: experiments have been way grosser. And it's like, my head
Speaker 1: just sort of became this tangle of gross experiments while
Speaker 1: I was eating, and I was like, this is not pleasant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your brain went down the chain of ick it real,
Speaker 1: did um. Yeah. But then of course we we owe
Speaker 1: so much to him in terms of just like how
Speaker 1: cities are built, particularly European cities, a lot of them
Speaker 1: that that had significant overhauls in in infrastructure or like
Speaker 1: the development of a really serious infrastructure in reaction to
Speaker 1: coll or outbreak. A lot of the work that they
Speaker 1: did was based on recommendations that he made about how
Speaker 1: to build a cleaner, more sanitary city, which is pretty, uh,
Speaker 1: fantastic and interesting. Yeah, I mean it's it's so weird
Speaker 1: because I guess it's not really weird. Like he he
Speaker 1: was on the wrong track in some ways. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, a lot of the things that he
Speaker 1: was saying, um, had to be present in order for
Speaker 1: the disease to be transmitted. Like, those are still things
Speaker 1: that are really important to have. It's still really important
Speaker 1: to have clean water and good sanitation and like all
Speaker 1: of that. So even though those were not required factors
Speaker 1: for a person to be sick, they're still really important. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not like because if your water is dirty,
Speaker 1: it could be carrying microbes. He was just like, Oh,
Speaker 1: if you're healthy, you're never gonna get them anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: and if your city is healthy, it's never going to
Speaker 1: promote the fermentation of these diseases. So I will say
Speaker 1: this in talking and will transition to your episode that
Speaker 1: you researched this week with it. When you read the
Speaker 1: listener mail about the urine tasting, I think I would
Speaker 1: rather drink colera. Okay, but that's just me. Everybody's got
Speaker 1: their own weights and measures on these matters. Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Um So, the episode on the development of the poison
Speaker 1: control system in the US UM is not something that
Speaker 1: was planned in any kind of conjunction with like the
Speaker 1: current public health and pandemic situation that we are in. Um.
Speaker 1: It was completely finished and emailed to Holly before I
Speaker 1: went on vacation, at which point the situation here in
Speaker 1: the US was dramatically different. Um So, it was just
Speaker 1: a total coincidence. Number one that we wound up with
Speaker 1: kind of a public health medical history week, and then
Speaker 1: number two that it like is coming out at this
Speaker 1: point when it is UM. I didn't realize until getting
Speaker 1: into the research that the there being a one centralized
Speaker 1: number for people to call is a pretty new thing
Speaker 1: because I was born in ninety five and I know
Speaker 1: for certain that my mother had to call poison control
Speaker 1: on me at least twice. And uh, in my head,
Speaker 1: that was the same number that anyone could call. Um,
Speaker 1: I think, because like I think, the way I got
Speaker 1: this in my head was that we lived, as I've
Speaker 1: said before, in a pretty rural area. We were not
Speaker 1: served by nine one one, So when you saw these
Speaker 1: like public service announcements about calling nine one one in
Speaker 1: an emergency, there was no nine one one where we were.
Speaker 1: But the poison control number that we were served by
Speaker 1: was the same as it was for people in the
Speaker 1: city who did have nine one one coverage, Which is
Speaker 1: the whole weird thing, like a weird conclusion that my
Speaker 1: brain drew from that whole experience. Yeah, I UM. When
Speaker 1: I read your outline, initially the story about how chewable
Speaker 1: children's aspirin was a real problem resonated very personally because
Speaker 1: someone me may have eaten the whole bottle's worth. It's
Speaker 1: a kid. Well here's what happened. So, um, I think
Speaker 1: I had like a I don't know, a headache or
Speaker 1: a fever or something, and I have siblings that are
Speaker 1: a pretty fair margin older than me, and so one
Speaker 1: of my siblings had opened the bottle to give me
Speaker 1: the appropriate dose, and when they did the bottle, I
Speaker 1: think the bottle cracked or something happened where they couldn't
Speaker 1: close it again, and so they dumped the pills into
Speaker 1: a little dish that was on the kitchen counter, thinking
Speaker 1: I will put these somewhere safe later, And then they
Speaker 1: got left on the kitchen counter, and I was like,
Speaker 1: these are delicious. Um. But that was after the shift
Speaker 1: had been made where the amount that were sold in
Speaker 1: anyone bottle was small enough that a healthy and robust
Speaker 1: child like myself was fine. Yeah, I just had no
Speaker 1: aches and pains. I probably felt bulletproof. It could have
Speaker 1: run through the neighborhood, like crashing into things and be
Speaker 1: like I finally kept going, yeah, I, um, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't recall personally any of the times um that
Speaker 1: my mom had to call poison control. So it's like
Speaker 1: I've heard them told you me, my my mom, um.
Speaker 1: And one was I had found um fingernail polish and
Speaker 1: painted my face with it nice and she wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if any of it had gotten into my mouth. Um,
Speaker 1: I ate easter grass out of my Easter basket. Well,
Speaker 1: now they make edible grass just for children like you. Um.
Speaker 1: And that like that was not that was non toxic.
Speaker 1: And then I think I don't think she called poison control.
Speaker 1: This time, I think she called the pediatri shian Um.
Speaker 1: When I was still very young and did not really
Speaker 1: understand the difference between real and make believe, I told
Speaker 1: her I had swallowed a pin off the ironing board. Um,
Speaker 1: she called, I think, my pediatrician, and not poison control.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Uh, so you were a liar as a child,
Speaker 1: that's what you're telling. I did become a liar a
Speaker 1: little later when I did know what the difference between
Speaker 1: truth and falsehood was. Um. This was more like I
Speaker 1: didn't quite get the grasp between things I imagined and
Speaker 1: things that were real quite yet. I had some other
Speaker 1: things at some other point that I wanted to make
Speaker 1: that poison control that I forgot. I think it was
Speaker 1: mostly related to the whole advent of uh safety packaging
Speaker 1: for all of these things, and how um like simultaneously,
Speaker 1: so many of these packaging types have made it much
Speaker 1: safer to have these kinds of some substances in homes
Speaker 1: where they are also small children or pets or whatever.
Speaker 1: But then the counterbalance to all of that is that
Speaker 1: a lot of times it makes it hard for people
Speaker 1: to get into their own medications if they are disabled
Speaker 1: or just getting older, uh, and not not quite able
Speaker 1: to manipulate things as well, and like that had led
Speaker 1: to this the whole uh trying to get people accessible
Speaker 1: packaging while also making sure that's not gonna lead to
Speaker 1: poisoning down the roll and it's a whole it's a
Speaker 1: whole tangle. Yeah, I will say, Uh. To my mind,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest blessings of modern pharmacies are the
Speaker 1: caps that can either be child proof or regular people
Speaker 1: that's fancy where they flip one way or the other.
Speaker 1: I just a prescription for an anti inflammatory that has
Speaker 1: like it screws on normally and it's easy peasy, uh.
Speaker 1: For if they literally said are there any children in
Speaker 1: your household? And I said nope, And they said, do
Speaker 1: you want the easy side of the cap to be
Speaker 1: screwed on? And I said up and so, but you
Speaker 1: can flip it the other way and it does that
Speaker 1: locking push down to open mechanism, but the other way
Speaker 1: it's it's super simple and just a quick twist. That's
Speaker 1: very cool. It's such a simple yet brilliant invention. Praise
Speaker 1: whoever came up with it. Yeah. So that's our episodes
Speaker 1: for this week. We hope everyone is taking care of themselves.
Speaker 1: I know that not all of our listeners are in
Speaker 1: the United States, and the United States is not the
Speaker 1: only place that is having widespread pandemic precautions happening right now.
Speaker 1: So regardless of where you are, I I hope that
Speaker 1: you are able to keep yourself well and are spending
Speaker 1: your isolation time UM as pleasantly as is possible for you. Uh.
Speaker 1: I know we are still kind of working things out here.
Speaker 1: It is a new, whole new thing for all of us, UM.
Speaker 1: And you can write to us, and you're gonna write
Speaker 1: us an email if you would like history podcast I
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com and we will see you again soon.
Speaker 1: M h. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.