Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much, as
Speaker 1: always for tuning in. Shout out to our super producers
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, Max Williams, the one and only A how
Speaker 1: Andrew Howard before we get started today. No, we have
Speaker 1: this crazy announcement. This is massive, man, and I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but I've had a really hard time
Speaker 1: not talking about it on air. Right. Also, who am I?
Speaker 1: I'm Ben? Hey, Ben, it's me. No, I've had a
Speaker 1: hard time with it. Two, it's like having a secret.
Speaker 1: The secret secrets are no fun though, Ben. Secret secrets
Speaker 1: hurt someone, and we don't want to hurt you, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1: So it's time to let the badger out of the bag,
Speaker 1: is said, Okay, if I use a stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want to know coined and trademarked catchphrase. Oh of course,
Speaker 1: because this is a special occasion. People who know me
Speaker 1: on Twitter might have seen last week I did a
Speaker 1: vague post where I was like, oh, there's an announcement.
Speaker 1: Spoilers we can't tell you just yet. Stay tuned. This
Speaker 1: is the moment you were staying tuned for folks. While
Speaker 1: Noel and I at our team have been faithfully recording
Speaker 1: new episodes of Ridiculous History, we have also been working
Speaker 1: assiduously in the background on creating more shows in the
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Universe, and today we are super proud to announce
Speaker 1: our first new Ridiculous show is finally coming to the world.
Speaker 1: It's true, Ben, Uh, It's it really is kind of
Speaker 1: an m c U type situation. There's gonna be all
Speaker 1: kinds of easter eggs and shared character experiences and chronology.
Speaker 1: Maybe not quite that extreme, but it's definitely gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. And the first show in what
Speaker 1: we have dubbed the Ridiculous Universe is called Ridiculous Romance.
Speaker 1: Who can we get, uh, Max, can we get some
Speaker 1: like wild rockets? Applause? Yeah? Maybe hit him with an
Speaker 1: oo la law the same thing, or like a cat called?
Speaker 1: Maybe not cat called. We know the problematic and troubled
Speaker 1: history of cat calls, but yeah, Ben. A couple of
Speaker 1: pals that you introduced me two years ago, Eli and Diana,
Speaker 1: a lovely married couple who both come from improv background
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. You've done some work with and we've
Speaker 1: both been pals with for a while now are hosting
Speaker 1: this show, and it is charming, It is lovely everything
Speaker 1: about it. I'm just absolutely over the moon about yeah
Speaker 1: us Yeah, And we're gonna have Eli and Diana on
Speaker 1: a future episode of Ridiculous History to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more about their story and the things they explore.
Speaker 1: You can hear the trailer now, you'll probably hear it
Speaker 1: on our show. We're just we're over the moon about
Speaker 1: this one. We did have with transparency is important. As
Speaker 1: you said, secret secrets are no fun, Noel, You and
Speaker 1: I did have a little conversation after we had heard
Speaker 1: some of the first episodes where we thought, are they
Speaker 1: gonna be funnier than us? Not that that's hard. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we have our own specific trademark and copyright
Speaker 1: a brand of humor um. But but Eli and Diana
Speaker 1: bring their own delightful warmth and humor to conversations about
Speaker 1: love triangles, weird falling outs among royals, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: all the things that can happen when the heart is involved, Ben,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of stuff we touch on here in
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History from time to time, and this show is
Speaker 1: specifically voted to those types of stories, and um Diana
Speaker 1: and Eli also do these wonderful little kind of flashback
Speaker 1: re enactment situations. They've got songs. Gosh, what I'm saying
Speaker 1: it out loud? It really does sound like we have
Speaker 1: something to worry about. But maybe not. Uh, it's all
Speaker 1: in the family, right. But when does the first episode drop?
Speaker 1: I think we've got a trailer coming up, and then
Speaker 1: episode one the following week. Yeah, yeah, it may very
Speaker 1: well be out as you hear this episode today. So
Speaker 1: we do hope that you welcome them to the Ridiculous Universe.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear what you think about their
Speaker 1: explorations because they, again as a married couple, can assure
Speaker 1: you the course of true love never did run smooth.
Speaker 1: So this if you like ridiculous history, you're gonna love
Speaker 1: ridiculous romance. You might see Nolan I pop on there
Speaker 1: as well. But there is more on the way. No,
Speaker 1: all that MCU comparison is so astute. I love it.
Speaker 1: We're assembling some ridiculous Avengers and our own show continues today.
Speaker 1: We're diving into something that has I think, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you men, but stories about weird medical
Speaker 1: maladies throughout history. Always fascinated me because one of the
Speaker 1: things that we've done for fun, just like off air,
Speaker 1: just hanging out, is looking up these strange conditions of yesteryear.
Speaker 1: Like one of my favorites is brain fever, just because
Speaker 1: of the name. Oh totally. I'm also a huge fan
Speaker 1: of laundry lists of side effects and potential symptoms that
Speaker 1: go along with these, especially when they're super cartoonish and
Speaker 1: involved things like madness. You know, I always like make jokes.
Speaker 1: I think probably I'm not alone in this. When you
Speaker 1: see big pharma advertisements on television where they are required
Speaker 1: by law to list potential side effects, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's rattle off things that includes like, you know, bloody
Speaker 1: diarrhea and uh, you know what you always say, like
Speaker 1: Walt Wally or whatever, and you know, and death. But
Speaker 1: this one that we're talking about today, the Devonshire Colic,
Speaker 1: absolutely has those laundry lists. Yeah. Yeah, the devon Shure
Speaker 1: Colic was a mystery for quite a long time. It's
Speaker 1: a mystery that we're going to solve today. But when
Speaker 1: we look back at people of the past, we think
Speaker 1: of we think of certain afflictions or conditions as somewhat archaic, right,
Speaker 1: Like maybe brain fever was something people didn't quite understand. Consumption,
Speaker 1: which we now recognized to be tuberculosis, was also not
Speaker 1: super well understood for a long time, And when you
Speaker 1: think of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, you might think
Speaker 1: of things like gout, which is often portrayed as a
Speaker 1: condition that primarily only the well to do might contract.
Speaker 1: That's the stage. Yeah, it is. And I think the
Speaker 1: reason and for that is because some of it had
Speaker 1: to do with eating very rich, processed foods. I can't
Speaker 1: not think of the episode of King of the Hill
Speaker 1: when Bobby becomes obsessed with this delicatessen and he constantly
Speaker 1: goes and he's eating like I think it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: liver worst sandwiches or something like that, and he develops gout. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it is there. It is sometimes associated. It is
Speaker 1: something that people can still get if they're eating foods
Speaker 1: that are really really rich and certain things that can
Speaker 1: like build up in your system. And I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: be so vague about that. I'm obviously not a gout scientist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say there are very few
Speaker 1: gout enthusiasts in the world here's something that we notice
Speaker 1: if you look back at history. The truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is, before the age of modern medicine, people had
Speaker 1: tons of afflictions or conditions real or perceived that they
Speaker 1: couldn't quite concretely explain. And with the benefit of modern
Speaker 1: science and retros fact, we can say that in many
Speaker 1: cases of folks were experiencing something that continues today that
Speaker 1: as dangerous side effects. It's mild lead poisoning. The most
Speaker 1: famous outbreak of this accidental lead poisoning was this thing
Speaker 1: called the Devon colic in this English county in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, this condition was affecting thousands of people. And
Speaker 1: here comes our laundry list. The victims primarily dudes, and
Speaker 1: they were experiencing stuff like paralysis, madness, blindness, death. It
Speaker 1: was It first got reported in seventeen o three and
Speaker 1: it just continued year over year to increase. And I
Speaker 1: think it was seventeen twenty four when there was a
Speaker 1: pretty big upsurge in the number of cases. And this
Speaker 1: was also a year there's where our mystery starts. This
Speaker 1: was also a year that was noted for a bumper
Speaker 1: apple crop. I love a good bumper apple crop. Ben.
Speaker 1: And it was the opinion of one John Huxon, who
Speaker 1: investigated this mysterious malady and published his findings in seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, that one of the primary causes was cider
Speaker 1: apple cider. And there's a great article on Flanders Health
Speaker 1: dot us that talks about the notion of taking the waters,
Speaker 1: which is something that I've never heard, but I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start using that. Uh you ever heard of
Speaker 1: a schwitz? Been taking a schwitz? Yes? Yeah, yeah. They
Speaker 1: talked about that on the Sopranos. A lot have a schwitz.
Speaker 1: That means you go and sweat it out in a sauna,
Speaker 1: and that was exactly they were talking about. In the
Speaker 1: town of Bath, England, in England's West Country, there were
Speaker 1: lots of these fashionable spas. This was basically considered a
Speaker 1: spa town, and it was suggested that folks who were
Speaker 1: afflicted with gout rheumatics. I don't know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: this ben a g u E says, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know that one lethargies or apoplexies for gretfulness, shakings
Speaker 1: and weakness of any member. I imagine that member referring
Speaker 1: to like limbs yes, yeah, you're you're correct. So they
Speaker 1: would go to places like Bath, England and taking and
Speaker 1: I agree, take the waters is an awesome phrase. We're
Speaker 1: officially bringing this from back. Here's what they would do.
Speaker 1: They would sit for up to three hours at a
Speaker 1: time up to their necks in this warm water. And
Speaker 1: they would do this several times a week for as
Speaker 1: long as six months. And while they were doing this,
Speaker 1: they were also ingesting a lot of the local spring water.
Speaker 1: And the idea of curative restorative springs is a very
Speaker 1: old one, and it's an idea that you know, is
Speaker 1: with us to a degree in the modern day. The
Speaker 1: weird thing about this, although it might sound like kind
Speaker 1: of a placebo, the bizarre thing that's somewhat mysterious here
Speaker 1: is that this treatment appeared to work in the majority
Speaker 1: of cases. In fact, a lot of people who experienced
Speaker 1: paralysis from severe or acute lead poisoning later found their
Speaker 1: condition mitigated by doing this process, by taking the waters
Speaker 1: in Bath. Why how well, we'll tell you in a
Speaker 1: little bit, but before we do, let's take a closer
Speaker 1: look at lead. You know, no, I always remembered growing
Speaker 1: up some of my relatives, my great, my great great
Speaker 1: some things. They were the kind of people had the
Speaker 1: really fancy flatwear and cups or glasses in one of
Speaker 1: those hutches, and you know, you would only ever take
Speaker 1: it out for special occasions. And my mom's got one
Speaker 1: of those. Yeah, it's weird. It's like that. There's so
Speaker 1: many things your parents have that you are not allowed
Speaker 1: to touch, which is so strange. Like the decorative soaps
Speaker 1: you can't use the fancy soap that's for company, fake fruit,
Speaker 1: fake fruit, specifically, monogrammed towels, hand towels. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to actually dry your hands on these towels
Speaker 1: that are in the bathroom. There's a separate stack of
Speaker 1: towels that you're supposed to use to dry. I've never
Speaker 1: understood that, but it's it's it's it was a different world.
Speaker 1: But you're right. Then, those decorative cabinets where they're meant
Speaker 1: to be on display, like at the very best, I
Speaker 1: will try to serve guests with the non chipped flatwear.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well yeah, here's the thing I have I
Speaker 1: always wondered as a kid, you know, and see this,
Speaker 1: the fancy flatwear and glassware taken out, you know, on
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving or something like that when the whole family gets together.
Speaker 1: But there was one set of glasses I was never
Speaker 1: taken out, never really touched. I was forbidden from playing
Speaker 1: with them or drinking from them. And I always thought
Speaker 1: it was because my parents assumed I would break things,
Speaker 1: which I would. I was a klut sort of cartoonishly
Speaker 1: clumsy child. But later I learned that this glassware contained lead,
Speaker 1: and my parents and uncle's and aunts were aware of this,
Speaker 1: and so they didn't want to throw this stuff away.
Speaker 1: But they certainly didn't want their kids drinking lead, because
Speaker 1: they come from the modern era and are very well
Speaker 1: aware of the problems that lead can pose, especially when
Speaker 1: children are exposed to it. Because since the times of
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, lead has made its way into alcohol specifically,
Speaker 1: it could happen a couple of ways. We know now.
Speaker 1: It was either due to the makers of said booze
Speaker 1: wine or whatever using lead ascetate to sweeten the to
Speaker 1: sweeten the sauce, or story and stuff and containers that
Speaker 1: were glazed with lead. So weird. Yeah there. I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of books with very specific titles, as I
Speaker 1: think you are, and also a fan of anonymously published
Speaker 1: books that adds a certain mistique to it that I
Speaker 1: just can't get enough of. But there was one published
Speaker 1: in seventeen called Valuable Secrets concerning the Arts and Trades,
Speaker 1: and in it it contained a recipe for treating wine
Speaker 1: with lead. And the idea was that you would take
Speaker 1: wine vinegar and saturated with letharge, which so funny because
Speaker 1: it's also that's one of the conditions that leads, is
Speaker 1: that that comes from lead poisoning lethar gene, which maybe
Speaker 1: that's the etymology there, who knows, but letharge is lead
Speaker 1: ox side essentially. And then you would add about a
Speaker 1: half a leader of this concoction of of wine vinegar
Speaker 1: and this lead material to each hogs head of wine,
Speaker 1: a hogshead being a cask that would hold fifty imperial
Speaker 1: gallons in metric that's about two leaders. And then doing
Speaker 1: this would make sense to you at the time because
Speaker 1: you would know a lot about making and story wine,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't know much about the long term effects
Speaker 1: of lead exposure. So it's a win win from your
Speaker 1: perspective as a wine maker. The wine is going to
Speaker 1: be protected against going bad, and added bonus, it's gonna
Speaker 1: taste ever so much sweeter, just a little bit sweeter.
Speaker 1: And here's what was happening. The lead oxide was reacting
Speaker 1: with any ascetic acid in the vinegar to form a
Speaker 1: soluble lead acetate. And this concentration of lead in the
Speaker 1: wine may have in many cases exceeded fifty parts per million,
Speaker 1: which just the basic explanation for that is that it's
Speaker 1: very it's bad. So it wouldn't it would be enough
Speaker 1: for the metal to deactivate the enzymes of yeast that
Speaker 1: could threaten the alcoholic content of the wine, but the
Speaker 1: amount of lead acetate would still there. There wouldn't be
Speaker 1: enough there to interfere with the actual taste other than
Speaker 1: that sweetness. And so what we're looking at is an
Speaker 1: adulteration of booze with lead, either deliberately or by accident,
Speaker 1: you know, depending it might have just been in the
Speaker 1: containers glazed with lead. And this this had effects on
Speaker 1: multiple populations across centuries, from Roman times to the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the amount of lead would cause these community wide
Speaker 1: outbreaks of severe lead poisoning, and they are and it
Speaker 1: seemed like, uh, it seemed as though people just weren't
Speaker 1: making the connection for a long time, and they thought
Speaker 1: there were these regionally specific you know, we love the
Speaker 1: weird disease names, just regionally specific, strange names for things
Speaker 1: like the pied in colic. Right, that was one that
Speaker 1: was regional to France. And isn't colic like that condition
Speaker 1: that babies have or that's cough a lot? Ye like? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Colic the way we understand it today is a severe
Speaker 1: pain in the abdomen caused by gas or obstruction of
Speaker 1: the intestines. And we all associated with babies. I think, man,
Speaker 1: that college sure was a severe pain in my abdomen. Man,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what. Yeah, there it is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were saying that they were describing this umbrella of conditions,
Speaker 1: this umbrella group of conditions as colic because people were
Speaker 1: feeling generally unwell. My favorite name though, properly for this
Speaker 1: is uh, well, you know what it is, Oh, I
Speaker 1: know what it is. It's the dry gripes, the drag gripes.
Speaker 1: That was that was regional to Massachusetts. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: American colonies back in the early seventeen hundreds, and in
Speaker 1: the southwest of England they referred to it as the
Speaker 1: Devon colic or the Devonshure colic. That was a little later, actually,
Speaker 1: but that one involved. That's the thing. Then these all
Speaker 1: kind of had slightly varying symptoms. It would seem like
Speaker 1: I don't quite understand how they lumped them all together.
Speaker 1: But this and involve stomach pains, constipation, and mental disturbances.
Speaker 1: The last one spooky. And I shouldn't laugh about the
Speaker 1: dry gripes because you know it affected real people. But
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to call out of work one day
Speaker 1: by saying I'm sorry, I can't make this meeting. I've
Speaker 1: got the dry gripes and I need to take the waters.
Speaker 1: I am become weird. I have the dry grips and
Speaker 1: I must take the waters. Post taste, we're making. We're
Speaker 1: slowly building the best get out of work letter ever. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: you're right. They had the variation in the symptoms most
Speaker 1: likely dependent upon the amount of lead to which people
Speaker 1: were exposed. There was something else that was happening. There
Speaker 1: was a thing called painters colic because there was a
Speaker 1: lot of lead in paint and this would cause chronic
Speaker 1: constipation of the painters and for people who manufactured paint.
Speaker 1: Everybody was looking for a reason to explain this, but
Speaker 1: they were usually looking for a reason to explain this
Speaker 1: ccific regional outbreak they were witnessing. That's where John Huckson
Speaker 1: comes in Seour. He's an English doctor. He notices there
Speaker 1: there's a ton of people coming to him saying they've
Speaker 1: got the cold sweats, they've got stomach pain. Perhaps most distressingly,
Speaker 1: they're vomiting a lot of bile with blood in it,
Speaker 1: and then they're becoming paralyzed. So he says, this is
Speaker 1: an outbreak of Devonshire colic. And it's so weird because
Speaker 1: they knew that there was. This seemed to be some
Speaker 1: sort of correlation right between the apple harvest, cider drinking
Speaker 1: and the sickness. As far back as three a doctor
Speaker 1: named William Musgrave said that the cause of Devonshire colic
Speaker 1: was roof and acid sida drunk in two great quantities.
Speaker 1: T O O. Yeah, yeah, so you know, drinking too much,
Speaker 1: but specifically the cider. And you know in Devon even
Speaker 1: to this day, or Devonshire is it people call it Devon.
Speaker 1: They definitely still call it that. But I guess maybe
Speaker 1: the shire is just sort of like means Devon town,
Speaker 1: you know, a shire, right like in the Hobbit. But
Speaker 1: it is very much still prime cider country. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and from what we understand, the terms are often used
Speaker 1: interchangeably Devon or Devonshire. Uh So they understand that there's
Speaker 1: this correlation, right, And the weird thing is three Musgrave
Speaker 1: is right in a way, Devin cider is the source
Speaker 1: of this condition. But the cider itself, the roughness, the acidity,
Speaker 1: the amount consumed, didn't really have much to do with
Speaker 1: what was happening. Everything he described right read urine, pale skin,
Speaker 1: frequent vomiting, incredibly painful stomach aches. These are all textbook
Speaker 1: definitions of lead poisoning, especially at severe paralysis. Wait, when
Speaker 1: you say bright red urine, does that mean there's blood
Speaker 1: in the urine or is it just like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like when you're dehydrated your urine becomes very orange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a good question. We know people
Speaker 1: are definitely vomiting up some blood, but as far as
Speaker 1: bright red urine, um, it may have just been discoloration,
Speaker 1: because otherwise they he probably would have noticed a blood
Speaker 1: content of some sort. That's true because blood in the
Speaker 1: not to be too gross, but like if you ever,
Speaker 1: you know, had any kind of blood go into water.
Speaker 1: You know that it proliferates in the water much differently
Speaker 1: than urine, Like it has sort of a cloud equality too.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's a good point. So later there's a
Speaker 1: medical historian who comes along. His name is H. A. Waldron,
Speaker 1: and he knows that the cider makers of Devon tended
Speaker 1: to process their apple harvest in these leadlined pounding mechanisms
Speaker 1: and presses. This is coming from Great Atlas Obscure article
Speaker 1: the History of back And so there's another important piece here.
Speaker 1: The poor members of the community lived almost entirely off
Speaker 1: cider and apples and everything they're touching, all the cider
Speaker 1: they're touching has spent some time absorbing lead. And these
Speaker 1: doctors are in this race to figure out, like how
Speaker 1: do we treat this? How do we We can't tell
Speaker 1: people not to eat, it's their main source of food.
Speaker 1: We need to know what's going on, or we need
Speaker 1: to at least sort of mitigate these symptoms. And so
Speaker 1: many members of the medical establishment of the day ended
Speaker 1: up sending their patients, like we said, to Bath and
Speaker 1: the town's name, like you said earlier, Nor refers to
Speaker 1: those local springs. They've got a nice temperature about a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit or so, and people loved
Speaker 1: hanging out in these and there was a long standing
Speaker 1: belief that the waters were curative or restorative due to
Speaker 1: their mineral content. But healing spring waters right, Um, there
Speaker 1: is a town I want to say it's in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Hot It's called literally called hot Springs. I believe it's
Speaker 1: North Carolina. But um, these natural hot springs just come
Speaker 1: right out of the ground and they build these kind
Speaker 1: of structures around them that you can, you know, have
Speaker 1: a nice slush fits in. But as it turns out, well,
Speaker 1: these situations are indeed super relaxing and a nice way
Speaker 1: to unwind unless you put some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: uh like epsom salts, say, for example, which can bring
Speaker 1: down swelling. It's a good way to treat doubt, even
Speaker 1: I believe, again not medical advice, but I think I've
Speaker 1: read that, um, it can reduce inflammation for example. The
Speaker 1: waters themselves don't really do much other than you know,
Speaker 1: mellow you out, uh. And that was addressed in a
Speaker 1: nine edition of the Medical History Journal by Audrey Haywood,
Speaker 1: who discusses literally is his medical history and kind of
Speaker 1: debunk certain myths, of which there are many. As we know,
Speaker 1: practicing medicine oftentimes is just what it's sounds like, especially historically.
Speaker 1: Um and she has had this to say about the
Speaker 1: efficacy of hot springs quote. It is commonly assumed that
Speaker 1: spa therapy has only a placebo effect, that the pleasurable
Speaker 1: activity of immersion and warm mineral water has social and
Speaker 1: psychological effects but no physiological value. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: why bath is extraordinary in this situation. As Heywood goes
Speaker 1: on to describe, there did seem to be measurable, significant
Speaker 1: benefits for people, especially they were suffering from processes. If
Speaker 1: they went into these scuritive waters, they would indeed find
Speaker 1: their conditions mitigated or cured. So let's talk about how
Speaker 1: it actually works. The explanation is surprisingly simple. After you
Speaker 1: have consumed lad, if you're human being, your body mistakes
Speaker 1: it for or calcium and uses it to build bone,
Speaker 1: and over time that poison that is accumulated in your
Speaker 1: system causes all these violent symptoms. And here's something that
Speaker 1: is a hazard for the astronauts in the audience. When
Speaker 1: you are weightless for a period of time, you increase
Speaker 1: calcium loss from your bones. So if you're floating in
Speaker 1: these springs for you know, hours at a time, several
Speaker 1: days out of the week, for up to six months,
Speaker 1: your body is gradually stripped of both calcium and lead
Speaker 1: from your skeleton, and then you are able to avoid it,
Speaker 1: you urinate it away. And we know that research in
Speaker 1: the nineties confirmed this. Audrey Hayward, the author you know
Speaker 1: just mentioned, they found that doing this regiment, even in
Speaker 1: the modern day, would increase your flow of urine and
Speaker 1: provably remove significant amounts lead from your system. So in
Speaker 1: at least one case, you really could just take a
Speaker 1: bath to cure yourself of something. Well, that's the thing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if if it works one time for one set, then
Speaker 1: that can easily via word of mouth or via doctor's
Speaker 1: kind of like relying on a very small sample size
Speaker 1: spread that as like the gospel for treating this condition overall,
Speaker 1: which isn't always going to pan out in fact, you
Speaker 1: know doesn't. Yeah, And this the Bath General Hospital. Around
Speaker 1: the same time, they were conducting what they called the
Speaker 1: Trial of the Waters, which sounds like a fantasy novel
Speaker 1: this way. Hayway considers one of the very first long
Speaker 1: term medical therapy trials in history, and it's this same thing.
Speaker 1: The doctors were giving victims of paralysis what they consider
Speaker 1: healthy fresh food daily soaks in these waters, and they
Speaker 1: found that drinking this water actually had a medicinal effect
Speaker 1: as well. We said that bath spa water was pretty
Speaker 1: mineral rich. It was specifically rich in calcium and iron.
Speaker 1: So while floating is getting rid of calcium and lead
Speaker 1: from your skeleton, ingesting this water is kind of replacing
Speaker 1: that calcium you might have been losing. Just for the record,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all you know, trumpets and rainbows and angel farts.
Speaker 1: The water tasted pretty nasty from what we understand, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like the water that you would drink from
Speaker 1: your faucet or your water filter today. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: a was described in Anatlas Obscure article as a sulfuric
Speaker 1: eggy flavor, which I guess makes sense because of the calcium.
Speaker 1: It will sulfur. You know, rotten eggs, you know, have
Speaker 1: a smell of sulfur, And I guess there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Isn't there a lot of calcium? And like egg shells, Yeah,
Speaker 1: eggshells are like ballpark calcium. I think, got it. Well,
Speaker 1: that makes sense then, but people were drinking this stuff
Speaker 1: on purpose, Ben, Yes, because they wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to move one of the walk They wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to use their limbs. Wait, so they were drinking
Speaker 1: it out of the liquid that they themselves were stewing in. Uh,
Speaker 1: probably not at the same time. It was just like
Speaker 1: bottled and sold after. I'm sorry, I've just so many questions.
Speaker 1: You're like, I mean, like this is like human stew
Speaker 1: I imagine the Uh maybe maybe maybe not. Maybe it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was like the material was bottled separately. But
Speaker 1: I'm also picturing it as like the stuff that people
Speaker 1: were actually soaking in, which is really gross. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: that feels like maybe a level of laziness that even
Speaker 1: I have yet to attain life goals. So watch how devonsure.
Speaker 1: I'm on the way to you. Maybe maybe maybe to
Speaker 1: streamline things, they would just give you a ladle. It
Speaker 1: would come with your with your with your soak experience.
Speaker 1: You get your ladle, and then you just, you know,
Speaker 1: why not kill two birds with one stone. You soak
Speaker 1: it and you drink it all the same time. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, but you're sitting there with other people you
Speaker 1: don't know where they've been, and it's like the thing
Speaker 1: with public pools, you know, it's a trustful for real
Speaker 1: who's gonna be in there? Right? That's always my question.
Speaker 1: They didn't chordinate this stuff. Spoiler alert, it's gonna be me,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be you. You're one of them. I'm a peer. No,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. No, I'm not a monster. I would never,
Speaker 1: I would never, but you know, but the chlorine does
Speaker 1: knock knock that out. Do you ever hear those myths
Speaker 1: about like certain pool treatments that will like show who
Speaker 1: the peer is that if you pee, it's gonna all
Speaker 1: of a sudden like have some sort of like ink
Speaker 1: stain that's gonna like track you through the pool so
Speaker 1: everyone knows it was you. I don't think that's actually
Speaker 1: a real thing, but I remember hearing tell of that,
Speaker 1: and it was I think a a myth that was
Speaker 1: meant to discourage people from being in pools. I heard
Speaker 1: about that, and I filed it under that's awesome if true.
Speaker 1: I like that instant karma. Anyway, our possibly extremist views
Speaker 1: of public pools aside. Decades later, a guy named Dr
Speaker 1: George Baker finally understands that it's not the apples themselves,
Speaker 1: so the cider itself, it's on people's drinking habits. It's
Speaker 1: the lead that exists between the process of taking an
Speaker 1: apple from an orchard and turning it into a delicious,
Speaker 1: boozy beverage. Baker is the Queen's physician at the time,
Speaker 1: and he is doing something that finally helps crack the case.
Speaker 1: He is corresponding with other experts. Oddly enough, he's talking
Speaker 1: with Benjamin Franklin, and old Benny f is like, you know,
Speaker 1: here's what happened, George. I don't know what's going on
Speaker 1: with you guys over on your side of the ponds.
Speaker 1: But in Boston, when I was just a weed teenager,
Speaker 1: we had an outbreak of what we recognized as lead poisoning.
Speaker 1: And then we realized there were lead stills that we
Speaker 1: were using in the process of creating rum. And we
Speaker 1: know of this because there's there's still a letter and
Speaker 1: extant letter of Benjamin Franklin's where he talks about lead poisoning.
Speaker 1: And in this letter you can see that they've clearly
Speaker 1: traced lead as as the culprit. And so Franklin is
Speaker 1: saying to George Baker, well, you know this might be
Speaker 1: a similar case. Very reasonable. Now Baker has to prove
Speaker 1: his hypothesis. Yeah, so Baker um in seventeen sixty seven
Speaker 1: he noted the similarities between lead poisoning and this Devon
Speaker 1: colic and he began to become highly suspicious of this
Speaker 1: acidity argument, right, that that was what was causing at
Speaker 1: the acidity and the cider uh. And after talking to
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin, well, by the way, it was always popping
Speaker 1: up in interesting helpful ways throughout history. I know. He's
Speaker 1: a problematic dude and definitely had some weird bodies buried
Speaker 1: under his house, and it was a bit of a
Speaker 1: womanizer and not maybe always the most stand up guy.
Speaker 1: But he definitely knew how to solve a good history mystery,
Speaker 1: didn't he He did, He did, And everything you just
Speaker 1: said about him is true. Noal but he including the
Speaker 1: part where he pops up at the weirdest moments to
Speaker 1: do a cameo in some other historical tale. So that's right.
Speaker 1: They he had to test this, and so he takes
Speaker 1: cider from Devonshire, which has high lead content, and cider
Speaker 1: from another area which has zero lead content. He takes
Speaker 1: UH about fourteen leaders of Devon cider, and from that
Speaker 1: he extracts a grain of lead sixty milligrams, and then
Speaker 1: from that we can calculate today the cider contained about
Speaker 1: five parts per million of lead, and that's more than
Speaker 1: enough to create the symptoms of mild lead poisoning, even
Speaker 1: if you only drink about a pint a day. If
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, guys, I like cider, but I'm not
Speaker 1: a you know, cider hollic or whatever. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: have my one pint today five pm after a long
Speaker 1: day at work or whatever. So the problem is that
Speaker 1: some people, especially farm hands, would drink like a gallon
Speaker 1: of cidered a day four leaders, and this would eventually
Speaker 1: cause severe lead poisoning. Now Baker's discovered this, he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's the lead. How is the lead getting in there?
Speaker 1: It's a good question, and we're gonna hop to that
Speaker 1: in just a second. But I wanted to drop a
Speaker 1: little bit of cider trivia on you, Ben and and
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians. I recently took a much needed trip to
Speaker 1: Seattle with my daughter and my girlfriend, and during the
Speaker 1: trip visited with a listener of movie Crash. It's another
Speaker 1: show that I'm on, and his name is David Gooch.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he listens to the show or not,
Speaker 1: but if he does, High Gooch. But he works at
Speaker 1: a cidery in Seattle called the Seattle Cider Company, And
Speaker 1: I kind of remarked that, you know, you don't you
Speaker 1: don't really think of cider as being like a particularly
Speaker 1: popular beverage in the United States, Like there's like, what
Speaker 1: can you think of been like on I could probably
Speaker 1: count on one hand how many cider varieties are available
Speaker 1: at most of our neighborhood bars. It is like Strongbow
Speaker 1: and like and Woodchuck, I guess. And then I know
Speaker 1: that Stella makes one too, but it's not super popular.
Speaker 1: And he pointed out that since Prohibition like ended, nobody
Speaker 1: made cider like for many many, many many years, like
Speaker 1: a long long time, and I'm not quite firm on
Speaker 1: the amount of time. But his company, Seattle Cider Company,
Speaker 1: was one of the very first since Prohibition to start
Speaker 1: manufacturing cider on a large scale, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: And he gave us a tour of the facilities and
Speaker 1: all of the fermentation giant vats and the canning operation.
Speaker 1: It was really really cool. To see that. But I
Speaker 1: just thought that was interesting because he he said since prohibition,
Speaker 1: and I thought he was referring to like, wait, it
Speaker 1: was cider prohibited like further than like regular prohibition, and no,
Speaker 1: I meant like since prohibition prohibition. So that was pretty interesting. Yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: And get know, I like cider. Well, the sider they
Speaker 1: had at Seattle Cider Company was much less of a
Speaker 1: sweet kind of saccharin cider than and it would probably
Speaker 1: be more similar to the types of cider they would
Speaker 1: have made back in the these days where it's like
Speaker 1: got an apple equality to it, but it's not sugary sweet.
Speaker 1: It really is almost more like an ale that has
Speaker 1: you know, an apple ness to it. And I quite
Speaker 1: like the ones that I tried there. Yeah, I'd love
Speaker 1: to try out some of that local cide or if
Speaker 1: anybody feels like sending some or has recommendations cider that
Speaker 1: I should try or get into. Yeah, help me, help
Speaker 1: me evolve my palette. Please, God knows I need the help.
Speaker 1: So so here's the thing. He has proven the culprit.
Speaker 1: Now he's asking himself, how does this lead get into
Speaker 1: the process. He says, it's either an apple press that
Speaker 1: has lead lined in it, or one of the vessels
Speaker 1: used for fermentation, or maybe there's lead in the pipes
Speaker 1: that convey the apple juice to the fermentation. That and
Speaker 1: it's a local village industry, which means this explains how
Speaker 1: the levels of poison can vary from one place to
Speaker 1: the next, and eventually, especially in places where people were
Speaker 1: eye Baker was able to find particular like lead lined vessel.
Speaker 1: So at this point we might reasonably assume that people
Speaker 1: would be happy about knowing this, that they would say,
Speaker 1: oh good, it's lead poisoning. We like not being paralyzed,
Speaker 1: we like not having these terrible symptoms, Thank you, Dr Baker.
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened now, because a lot of
Speaker 1: these people thought you are going to ruin our main industry.
Speaker 1: They were like, bro, we know you work with the
Speaker 1: queen and that's cool for you, but we're poor. We
Speaker 1: have to do this. And in fact, many of us
Speaker 1: rely on apples, not just for business, but it's the
Speaker 1: main thing we eat. Well. It also reminds me of
Speaker 1: it's a little more modern example, but that botula is
Speaker 1: um scare with the pizza the frozen pizza maker. Um that.
Speaker 1: And then he ended up doing like a publicity stunt
Speaker 1: to to do like a funeral for all the potentially
Speaker 1: in affected pizzas. And even though we know in that
Speaker 1: story the canned mushrooms that were suspects didn't end up
Speaker 1: even testing positive fribatualism, and he had to destroy this
Speaker 1: massive amount of product and then that got out and
Speaker 1: then it kind of it just it sort of tanks
Speaker 1: you even if it people remember the bad news, even
Speaker 1: if it doesn't end up being true. So I could
Speaker 1: see how that would be something that would be scary,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't directly cider related, uh specifically to
Speaker 1: to the man. It was, you know, connected to the cider,
Speaker 1: but it was something that could be mitigated and then
Speaker 1: you know, dealt with and and and move forward. I
Speaker 1: could see how it could put a taint on the
Speaker 1: whole industry, you know, with people thinking, oh god, cider
Speaker 1: was to blame. Yeah, And it's weird because historians knew
Speaker 1: that Baker was very well aware of some cider manufacturers
Speaker 1: not being big fans of this idea. They had also
Speaker 1: recently campaigned to repeal attacks on cider. They were sort
Speaker 1: of in a punchy fighting mood, and locals argued that
Speaker 1: Devin's cider didn't contain that much lead, and they said, actually,
Speaker 1: the problem really is the earlier point about acidity, and
Speaker 1: the lead that you found in the cider was probably
Speaker 1: caused by farmers shooting at birds in the orchards, and
Speaker 1: that left some bullets behind inside the apples, so they're
Speaker 1: grasping at straws. And and he was, he was vilified.
Speaker 1: Baker was just like Samuel Weiss and washing your hands.
Speaker 1: Baker was vilified by authority figures in the area as
Speaker 1: a quote faithless son of Devon. And and people were,
Speaker 1: you know, they felt to some degree betrayed, like their
Speaker 1: livelihood was in danger. But his thesis remained relatively unscathed.
Speaker 1: And it's happening while technology is evolving, so more modern
Speaker 1: machines are replaced seen these old lead lined machines. And
Speaker 1: as much due to that as due to Baker's breakthrough,
Speaker 1: Devonshire colic becomes increasingly rare. And then cider makers, whatever
Speaker 1: they may have said publicly or at the local oh, publicly,
Speaker 1: is in at the local pub. And uh no, let's
Speaker 1: leave it in. Let'son's it's it's it's part of the record. Thanks,
Speaker 1: So Uh, No, matter what they said in public, a
Speaker 1: lot of cider makers went back to their to their
Speaker 1: operations and quietly removed lead from their process on their own.
Speaker 1: And then this would have been This is in like
Speaker 1: the early eight hundreds, right, Yeah, by that by that point,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because obviously even still today, we still have
Speaker 1: problems with lead contamination and water supplies like in Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and even in Detroit, um because of aged infrastructure and
Speaker 1: pipes and stuff like that that there isn't the money
Speaker 1: to replace or just you know, I guess irresponsible governance
Speaker 1: or I think it largely comes back to lack of
Speaker 1: money to improve infrastructure. We have these fates of lead
Speaker 1: poisoning among children and lead levels that are way beyond
Speaker 1: acceptable levels. Yeah, and this is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. As as we're wrapping up the episode,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought this up. There's a thing
Speaker 1: that we've talked about maybe in the past on error off.
Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated by it's called the lead crime hypothesis.
Speaker 1: You heard of this, I have not been. So we
Speaker 1: know that lead is very toxic to multiple organs of
Speaker 1: the body, the brain in particular, the lead crime hypothesis
Speaker 1: argues that there is an association between elevated levels of
Speaker 1: lead in the blood of children, right, so they're exposed
Speaker 1: in childhood, in their formative years, and later increased rates
Speaker 1: of crime and delinquency. Oh my god. So the idea
Speaker 1: of this hypothesis is that exposure to lead when you're
Speaker 1: a kid, when your brain is developing, may have effects
Speaker 1: that make you more likely to commit crimes as an adult,
Speaker 1: you know, or as a as a you know, as
Speaker 1: you go through your teens. This remains hypothesis, hasn't been
Speaker 1: conclusively proven, but I would love to see information about
Speaker 1: Devon and Devonshire and maybe, you know, if there was
Speaker 1: some correlation between crime in that time and exposure to
Speaker 1: lead in the cider industry. We don't have that information now,
Speaker 1: and we also, uh, we also have to just emphasize
Speaker 1: yet again, that is a hypothesis. It is not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not conclusively proven. Well, and I mean, surely this
Speaker 1: isn't something that happens like, uh, you know, what's that
Speaker 1: like genetic memory or something like that. I forget the
Speaker 1: exact genetics epigenetics, but I did just look up crime
Speaker 1: stats for Devon and in one or between April mar
Speaker 1: Devon has an eighteent crime rate. So what does what
Speaker 1: does that mean exactly? I don't know. The total number
Speaker 1: of violent crimes uh is twenty nine point five thousand,
Speaker 1: So violent crimes does makes up thirty two percent of
Speaker 1: all crimes reported in the country, um and the number
Speaker 1: is up four point six percent compared year over year
Speaker 1: compared to the previous sample. Uh So, IMMA must have
Speaker 1: to do with the population because Devin, you know, the
Speaker 1: UK in general isn't a massive land area. So I
Speaker 1: mean for a small shire like Devon to have a
Speaker 1: crime rate that seems pretty nuts. Yeah. No, that's a
Speaker 1: very good point. But again I couldn't possibly correlate that
Speaker 1: to the lead poisoning epidemic of the eighteen hundreds, but
Speaker 1: maybe you could. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: we would love to see the science on that. Let
Speaker 1: us know. If you are an expert, let's know what
Speaker 1: your take on the lead prime hypothesis is. And most importantly,
Speaker 1: I know the question that's been on everybody's mind. You
Speaker 1: heard about the waters of Bath and you thought, well,
Speaker 1: I want to take the waters. Guys, can I still
Speaker 1: take the waters. The answer is yes, Uh, these waters
Speaker 1: aren't proven to be hazardous or healing nowadays. But if
Speaker 1: the mood so strikes you find yourself in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you can soak in those waters. You can take a
Speaker 1: sip of that water. You can even we should have
Speaker 1: mentioned like back in the heyday of bath people are
Speaker 1: just literally laying in water for hours and hours, right,
Speaker 1: They needed entertainment, So there would be these musicians that
Speaker 1: would come and like play to people in a bathtub,
Speaker 1: which sounds like it could be a fun time. You
Speaker 1: can do that today. You can do it the same
Speaker 1: way that people did it hundreds of years ago, but
Speaker 1: hopefully you'll be doing it for fun and recreation instead
Speaker 1: of an attempt to no longer be paralyzed. And just
Speaker 1: I'm at the best statistician. I'm not gonna lie, but
Speaker 1: the stats that I have on Devon and violent crimes
Speaker 1: is that of the national crime rate is from Devon.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Um, you know what, just glaze over
Speaker 1: all of the stats stuff. I think I might be overthinking,
Speaker 1: but um, it's very interesting that you can still hang
Speaker 1: out in bath and tour those uh those bath houses
Speaker 1: that you know have probably not changed much at all
Speaker 1: since the times of the story they were telling today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we would love to hear your take on this.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks of course to
Speaker 1: our awesome producers Casey Pegram, andrew A. How Howard and
Speaker 1: of course Max Williams. I think we're still working on
Speaker 1: a nickname for Max. We might even drag Max on
Speaker 1: the air. You know it's important and a little behind
Speaker 1: the scenes inside baseball. Also thanks to Alex Williams compose
Speaker 1: our theme brother to Max, no joke, Yes this is true.
Speaker 1: And also big big thanks of course to Eli and
Speaker 1: Diana a ridiculous romance. Uh can't wait for you to
Speaker 1: check out their show. Big thanks of course to Eve's
Speaker 1: jeffco who just made an appearance on Ridiculous History. And uh,
Speaker 1: well you know we're required to say it. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to Jonathan Strickland. Noel, I'm thinking that maybe we can
Speaker 1: like redirect the quistions pedantic rage towards Eli and Diana.
Speaker 1: What do you think I think they've got it coming.
Speaker 1: It's a hazing kind of situation, right, maybe it is? Uh,
Speaker 1: most importantly, man, thanks to you, and here's to us
Speaker 1: not getting lead boys needs same Ben same, We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.