Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I
Speaker 1: have not told you this, but I'm using the podcast
Speaker 1: for personal therapy. Okay, here's the thing that I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've ever told you were not. Do you
Speaker 1: know how there are certain words you just don't like. Sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of those words for me, and all of its
Speaker 1: variations is kissing. Really, it grosses me out so bad,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why I've never known this about you.
Speaker 1: I will use any other synonym I could possibly come
Speaker 1: up with, however, silly. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's like the French word that denotes someone is going
Speaker 1: to marry you that starts with the NS. I also
Speaker 1: don't like that word at all, and I don't know why.
Speaker 1: It's very strange. I'm not anti romance at all, but
Speaker 1: I know clearly some very specific areas where I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it, and this is one. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's not a way to move in the world.
Speaker 1: So you have to break these issues. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about kissing all day to day. Um, it's
Speaker 1: very kissy kiss Kisserson. I read this thing in the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian magazine in May and I have been thinking about
Speaker 1: it ever since. And it was this article about a
Speaker 1: woman who tried to get people to stop kissing, and
Speaker 1: it's a great article, but I was like, there's more
Speaker 1: to this, and I know it, and that article referenced
Speaker 1: some of them more to this, but I just was like,
Speaker 1: this is the weirdest thing. And it also, uh, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion of communicable diseases and people being
Speaker 1: resistant and that seemed really really interesting to me in
Speaker 1: our world we live in. Sure, but that is also
Speaker 1: a difficult topic in the world we live in, and
Speaker 1: this seemed like a nice way to kind of mirror
Speaker 1: what we've all been living through for a while, right,
Speaker 1: it's timely. We've been watching arguments about people taking steps
Speaker 1: to ensure public health play out in terms of whether
Speaker 1: or not they want to do that, if it infringes
Speaker 1: on their desires, etcetera. Uh, here in the US and
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world. That's been going on.
Speaker 1: But this is an interesting way to kind of look
Speaker 1: at a similar model that it had much less immediate
Speaker 1: impact and it did not involve a pandemic. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about a woman named Imagine
Speaker 1: Reckton and her Kiss not campaign. So in nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: Emagene Reckton was at a lady's function and she had
Speaker 1: this moment of inspiration that was brought on by revulsion.
Speaker 1: Imagine was a mother of two teenage sons. Her husband,
Speaker 1: Lewis Reckton, was a successful businessman who ran a company
Speaker 1: that made woodworking machines. She was actually born Sultana Imagene
Speaker 1: Fraser in eighteen fifty six, and she and Lewis had
Speaker 1: met when they were both working for the Cordsman Machine company.
Speaker 1: She was a stenographer and he was a bookkeeper, and
Speaker 1: they got married in eighteen ninety. Yeah. She was actually
Speaker 1: ten years older than her husband, which for some reason
Speaker 1: I love. She was in her mid fifties when she
Speaker 1: was attending this lady's function in question. There were dozens
Speaker 1: of women at the event. We don't have an exact number,
Speaker 1: but she mentions at least thirty or forty that were
Speaker 1: in front of her as they were in a receiving
Speaker 1: line to be greeted by the hostess, who graced each
Speaker 1: attendee with a kiss on the cheek or even on
Speaker 1: the lips in some cases. Imaging is generally characterized in
Speaker 1: accounts of her in general and this event as someone
Speaker 1: who was a bit of a germophobe, and as having
Speaker 1: social anxiety. I don't know how much either of those
Speaker 1: is true, but I could see where people got there.
Speaker 1: This whole scene, though, made her livid. She did not
Speaker 1: want to be kissed, and she found herself wishing that
Speaker 1: there were some way out of such greetings that would
Speaker 1: avoid appearing rude. For wishing to sidestep a social custom
Speaker 1: Imageane set herself in an interview later that year, quote,
Speaker 1: I was taught by my mother that kissing breeds disease,
Speaker 1: and I always disliked it. I gotta say, I would
Speaker 1: not really want to be in a receiving line where
Speaker 1: either I was kissing everyone or I was being kissed
Speaker 1: after someone had kissed everyone. I would not be down
Speaker 1: with that anyway. So the idea came to her was
Speaker 1: that a button could be worn that simply read kiss
Speaker 1: not I've had some similar buttons on my body in
Speaker 1: the last few years. Even if such a button existed,
Speaker 1: those shouldn't know if people would understand it. So there
Speaker 1: needed to be a campaign that would educate the public
Speaker 1: on what this button meant, so that people could wear
Speaker 1: it and be understood as wishing to opt out of
Speaker 1: being hissed. We would recognize us today is a pretty
Speaker 1: normal process of bodily autonomy or consent. In the early though,
Speaker 1: this concept was met with some resistance. Any of the
Speaker 1: social stress of it. Aside, Wreckton's deepest motivations came, she
Speaker 1: would say, many many times, from the kiss being a
Speaker 1: disease vector, although she did not use those words. She
Speaker 1: saw though, that direct physical contact like that could easily
Speaker 1: spread germs, and she thought that continuing to do things
Speaker 1: like kiss as a casual social greeting it was just
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous. She was not wrong. Keep in mind that
Speaker 1: scientists like Louis Pastor and Robert Coke, who identified the
Speaker 1: bacteria responsible for tuberculosis, had been working on the concept
Speaker 1: of germ theory in the last part of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century and into the early twentieth century, So these matters
Speaker 1: were known about, but they were still kind of in
Speaker 1: the early years in terms of the public altering any
Speaker 1: of their behaviors about it. Anti spitting campaigns had been
Speaker 1: enacted in years before this, and there had been efforts
Speaker 1: to educate people about the importance of personal hygiene, but
Speaker 1: still in social gatherings, particularly in the middle and upper class,
Speaker 1: it was really common for people to greet one another
Speaker 1: with a kiss. Imagine Recton wanted to help spread the
Speaker 1: word that it needed to stop if people really wanted
Speaker 1: to stop the spread of disease. There is a whole
Speaker 1: secondary element to this where racism and classism come into play,
Speaker 1: where the priority to minimize physical contact was definitely a
Speaker 1: way that people isolated themselves from other people that they
Speaker 1: saw as other. A lot of the movement that already
Speaker 1: existed regarding home and personal hygiene advice was kind of
Speaker 1: aimed at keeping white, middle class and above households safe.
Speaker 1: Those anti spitting campaigns that Tracy just mentioned, for example,
Speaker 1: were intended to keep working classmen from spitting in public. Yes,
Speaker 1: spitting in public is absolutely gross, but there was an
Speaker 1: undercurrent of singling out poorer classes as being responsible for
Speaker 1: dirt and disease and in separating themselves from minorities, immigrants,
Speaker 1: and people of lower incomes. Middle and upper class social
Speaker 1: circles kind of seemed to think they were not at
Speaker 1: risk of disease transmission. Additionally, a lot of the advice
Speaker 1: from health officials regarding what people needed to do to
Speaker 1: be clean and to stop the spread of disease, these
Speaker 1: are actions that were just not available to everyone's socioeconomically.
Speaker 1: For example, isolating when sick is great advice and good practice,
Speaker 1: but how was a person living in a tenement or
Speaker 1: a multi family home supposed to do that? It just
Speaker 1: wasn't possible. So the idea of lower classes being diseased
Speaker 1: persistent because in some ways it was kind of a
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy. If you were living in really close quarters,
Speaker 1: was really easy for diseases to spread. Yes, so it's
Speaker 1: stead of saying, hey, we should figure out a way
Speaker 1: to improve the quality of life of everyone, the idea was,
Speaker 1: let's just not talk to those people are going near
Speaker 1: them like uh. In night the Philadelphia Dispatch to the
Speaker 1: New York Harold syndicated a column about doctors who advocated
Speaker 1: against kissing titled declares kiss Must Go. That particular article
Speaker 1: was inspired by another article that when in the monthly
Speaker 1: Cyclopedia and Medical Bulletin, which was called Kissing Its Evils
Speaker 1: and Benefits That was written by Dr John V. Shoemaker.
Speaker 1: Dr Shoemaker had apparently stated in his work that because
Speaker 1: kissing involves the mouth, that makes it an easy path
Speaker 1: for germs to travel to the stomach and lungs. In
Speaker 1: the article from the New York Harold, another doctor weighed
Speaker 1: in this was Dr Clara Scott, who's described as a
Speaker 1: homeopathic physician. She states, quote, the number of diseases which
Speaker 1: kissing causes is unbelievable to one who has not studied
Speaker 1: the question. I firmly believe the day will come within
Speaker 1: a generation when a formidable anti kissing movement will be established,
Speaker 1: and when kissing practically will be confined to the lower classes,
Speaker 1: the educated people having been brought to see the evils
Speaker 1: of the habit. Next to the evil of kissing babies
Speaker 1: comes the sweethearts kiss. This is one of the most
Speaker 1: dangerous of all. Husband's kiss soon loses its fervency, but
Speaker 1: the kiss of two sweethearts is the paradise of the
Speaker 1: tuberculosis germ and the diph theory of germ and other
Speaker 1: germs too numerous to mention. During the long intervals, while
Speaker 1: the sweethearts kiss continues, one may imagine the various germs
Speaker 1: rushing backward and forward with unholy glee. This is the
Speaker 1: longest way to go. Don't don't have long makeout sessions,
Speaker 1: y'all um. The Washington Times ran a much longer version
Speaker 1: of that article, which included a quote from another and physician,
Speaker 1: this one Dr Rachel S. Skadilski, and she took a
Speaker 1: more moderate approach to this whole issue, stating, quote Dr
Speaker 1: Shoemaker is right, but let's be practical. It is my
Speaker 1: opinion that all unnecessary kissing, the kissing without real affection,
Speaker 1: should be abolished. This would reduce the germ evil to
Speaker 1: a minimum. So we'll talk more about this tug of
Speaker 1: war that played out in the press in November of
Speaker 1: night as anti kissing advocates and their detractors fought it
Speaker 1: out publicly. First, though, we will pause or a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: In response to that Washington Times article we mentioned. Right
Speaker 1: before the break, another brief article titled an assault on
Speaker 1: Kissing appeared in the Washington Post. That article starts by
Speaker 1: quoting Dr Clara Scott, almost in her entirety from the
Speaker 1: previous one, but it does not mention her by name.
Speaker 1: It just calls her a female position and because her
Speaker 1: quote opens the article. It kind of seems initially like
Speaker 1: the write up is going to be in favor of
Speaker 1: the anti kissing cause, but the rest of it essentially
Speaker 1: tears down Scott's statement and says that quote, these pestiferous
Speaker 1: discoveries of modern scientists male and female become more and
Speaker 1: more intolerable. It goes on with the rather cringe e
Speaker 1: proclamation that quote kissing is all right in proper circumstances,
Speaker 1: and enjoyable even if the circumstances aren't quite as they
Speaker 1: might be. I don't know what the intention or meaning
Speaker 1: of that is, but it just sounded real ikey to me. Um.
Speaker 1: The article then includes quotations of poetry by Lord Byron
Speaker 1: and Tennyson to show how very culturally important kissing is,
Speaker 1: and then concludes by saying, quote, scientists real and spurious
Speaker 1: have run the germ theory into the ground. They make
Speaker 1: themselves preposterous and arouse just resentment in the breast of
Speaker 1: every right minded man and sweet lipped woman. The holiest,
Speaker 1: sweetest memories of mankind cluster about kisses. The abolition of
Speaker 1: kissing would mean the blotting out of happiness, And for
Speaker 1: what to avoid? The imaginary onslaught of a puny imaginary germ.
Speaker 1: Bah let kissing, thrive and let the germs look out
Speaker 1: for themselves. I like the implication here that everyone wants
Speaker 1: to kiss people. Uh, there are clearly people who feel
Speaker 1: very much that that is there entire reason for living.
Speaker 1: So yet another take on this was written by Ethel
Speaker 1: Lloyd Patterson, who was an opinion journalist from New York,
Speaker 1: noting in her article Kisses under Ban of Brains and
Speaker 1: Quaker City that Dr Clara Scott was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: She claimed quote, so now we know what is the
Speaker 1: matter with Philadelphia. For a long while, all of course,
Speaker 1: we have all been aware that an indefinite gloom hung
Speaker 1: over the Pennsylvania city, but we had scarcely attributed it
Speaker 1: to a rush of brain to the head. But if
Speaker 1: this is be true, and intelligence is really incompatible with osculation,
Speaker 1: well then tis better to have lost your brains than
Speaker 1: never to have kissed at all. Yet another physician, this one,
Speaker 1: doctor Enrico Castelli, of New York City, was consulted for
Speaker 1: his opinion on the matter for Patterson's article. His take
Speaker 1: was quote, we physicians cannot expect to divert the course
Speaker 1: of human nature. Our place is to fortify it as
Speaker 1: far as we can against mishap. That is all we
Speaker 1: can do. To say that we could, even if we wish,
Speaker 1: to stop people who love each other from caressing one
Speaker 1: another is utterly absurd. But from a purely scientific standpoint,
Speaker 1: let me explain to you how little disease would actually
Speaker 1: be prevented even if it were possible to place an
Speaker 1: embargo upon osculation. I have made a special study of
Speaker 1: acteria for over five years, and I have found that
Speaker 1: practically every known germ is present in a dormant condition,
Speaker 1: as one might say, in every human mouth. They are
Speaker 1: taken into the lungs with every breath. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: they do not develop is because the person is not
Speaker 1: in the necessarily run down condition that affords them foothold.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say Dr Castelli maybe needed some help
Speaker 1: from a bacteriologist. That's just my personal opinion on that one. Um.
Speaker 1: He basically summed up his stance in additional comments as
Speaker 1: being the world is covered in germs and you're ingesting
Speaker 1: them all the time, So go ahead and kiss because quote,
Speaker 1: science will never advance, can never advance to the point
Speaker 1: where contact with bacteria can be avoided. This is kind
Speaker 1: of one of the phases of the germ theory of disease,
Speaker 1: where there are people who are like, yes, germs exist,
Speaker 1: but they only make you sick if with a lot
Speaker 1: of spurious qualifiers. Well, it's also that thing where there's
Speaker 1: not really a distinction between like bacteria and vir Yeah,
Speaker 1: you carry all the stuff all the time, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: my dude, no way, not exactly. So, Imaging Recton was
Speaker 1: starting her social reform effort about kissing at a time
Speaker 1: when there was already all this arguing about it. In
Speaker 1: her living room in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mrs Recton launched an
Speaker 1: umbrella organization for efforts, which was called the World's Health Organization.
Speaker 1: This is not to be confused with the World Health Organization,
Speaker 1: which was not founded until the World's Health Organization's pledge,
Speaker 1: written by Imaging was quote. In order to encourage good
Speaker 1: health and lessen the spread of consumption, I desire to
Speaker 1: join the World's Health Organization, and hereby pledge myself to
Speaker 1: discourage the custom of kissing on the lips whenever it
Speaker 1: is in my power. It's interesting that this isn't a
Speaker 1: pledge not to kiss. It was certainly implied, but this
Speaker 1: pledge is a promise to discourage as from kissing. Once
Speaker 1: the pledge was signed and sent back to Imagine's organization,
Speaker 1: along with a nickel, person who sent it received their
Speaker 1: kiss not button in return. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that Imogene did to spread the word was to write
Speaker 1: articles up and send them out to newspapers, and she
Speaker 1: also gave interviews, and she got a lot of press.
Speaker 1: Some of that press was fairly straightforward reporting on what
Speaker 1: she was doing, but some of it definitely has a
Speaker 1: mocking tone. But for a brief time, regardless of which
Speaker 1: flavor you were getting, her message was being spread wide
Speaker 1: and far. In June of nineteen ten, the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Sunday Call covered the formation of the organization in a
Speaker 1: picture heavy article titled to Kiss or Not to Kiss.
Speaker 1: That article opens by saying, quote, after years of sporadic crusading,
Speaker 1: a non kissing organization has been started in Cincinnati, Ohio
Speaker 1: that is meeting with surprising success. This article states that,
Speaker 1: acording to the society's president, there are more than a
Speaker 1: thousand members and that the numbers are steadily growing, expecting
Speaker 1: to have members in every US city within two years.
Speaker 1: As an asside on that number, there were articles circulating
Speaker 1: at the same time that said that there were five
Speaker 1: thousand members already. Some of this might have been due
Speaker 1: to papers picking up the story at different times, but
Speaker 1: there were papers running in June and July of with
Speaker 1: each of these numbers. That makes it all a little
Speaker 1: bit confusing. The number is also just what imaging provided.
Speaker 1: It does not seem like it was sourced from anything
Speaker 1: other than what she said. We're going to run into
Speaker 1: a lot of that as we go for it. Just
Speaker 1: heads up this right up also described imagine stating quote.
Speaker 1: Her name is Mrs John Recton. She is a rather
Speaker 1: attractive looking, dark haired, brown eyed little woman of about
Speaker 1: thirty five years who, long before marriage, was diametrically opposed
Speaker 1: to promiscuous kissing. She began to preach her doctrine to
Speaker 1: her husband, one him to her way of thinking, and
Speaker 1: then started on her friends, with such success that the
Speaker 1: World's Health Organization was founded and she was enthusiastically elected
Speaker 1: its first president. As a note here, if you have
Speaker 1: been listening and doing math, her husband's name does not
Speaker 1: appeared to have been John at all. It was Lewis.
Speaker 1: But she was also in her fifties, so uh not
Speaker 1: thirty five. This article clearly pretty light on fact checking.
Speaker 1: So now to address a question you may have. At
Speaker 1: this point, it is not clear if Imagine and her
Speaker 1: husband kissed. That may sounds unusual, probably because it's such
Speaker 1: an intimate thing to ask a married couple. It seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of reporters just came to their own
Speaker 1: conclusions about this and then went to print with them.
Speaker 1: Some rite ups during Imagine's relatively brief crusade state that
Speaker 1: she did not kiss even her husband, and others like
Speaker 1: the one we just read, are more careful to frame
Speaker 1: her position as being against promiscuous kissing, which makes it
Speaker 1: sound like she would not have been opposed to a
Speaker 1: smooch with her husband, just not maybe a whole lot
Speaker 1: of other people. Holly never came across a definitive statement
Speaker 1: from Imaging wrecked in herself on this matter, so we
Speaker 1: don't really know she did state that quote. It is
Speaker 1: impossible to get lovers and sweethearts to realize that they
Speaker 1: must not kiss each other on the lips. Kind of
Speaker 1: makes it sound like she was against kissing on the
Speaker 1: lips in all contexts, but I mean those romantic scenarios
Speaker 1: she just described there that shouldn't list marriage as one
Speaker 1: of them. Your guess is really as good as ours
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons that,
Speaker 1: um her the story did get so much coverage, is
Speaker 1: that people like to speculate on whether or not she
Speaker 1: had like a marriage with no affection. Um it's sold
Speaker 1: papers just the bottom line. On that same note, we
Speaker 1: should point out not all of the will in the
Speaker 1: anti kissing movement were against romantic kissing, even like by
Speaker 1: couching it as saying listen, that's not gonna happen. Uh,
Speaker 1: presumably they intended that to be with consenting parties involved.
Speaker 1: Some of these people were exclusively focused on the kissing
Speaker 1: of babies and children. Babies, of course, do not have
Speaker 1: fully developed immune system, so there is legitimate danger in
Speaker 1: having random people kissed them, particularly on the lips, which
Speaker 1: was apparently pretty common practice in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: This is gross to me for so many reasons, like
Speaker 1: strangers would kiss babies yuck. No, but also babies are
Speaker 1: druly messes and I wouldn't want to kiss them anyway,
Speaker 1: No shade to your baby. They're all like that. I
Speaker 1: was like, that as a baby, just the whole thing
Speaker 1: seems very gross to me. Um kissing of young children,
Speaker 1: of course, was also problematic, both because it's spread disease
Speaker 1: and also because a child simply may not want it.
Speaker 1: So there were people both within and without Imagings World's
Speaker 1: Health Organization who really were only advocating for refraining from
Speaker 1: kissing kids. Next up, we will discuss Emmagene Reckton's month
Speaker 1: by month plan to eradicate kissing and thus she thought
Speaker 1: disease first. That we will pause for another sponsor break
Speaker 1: in that to Kiss or Not Kiss article that we
Speaker 1: were talking about, Wreckton shared her month by month plan
Speaker 1: for the organization to try to expand the group's numbers
Speaker 1: and reduce the spread of germs through kissing. Because this
Speaker 1: went to press in June, her first targeted group was
Speaker 1: young brides who were having summer weddings. Reckton stated, quote,
Speaker 1: the custom of kissing a bride on her wedding day
Speaker 1: is a most dangerous one. To stamp out this evil
Speaker 1: at once would be to accomplish the impossible. But we
Speaker 1: have made the start and are much encouraged. She reported
Speaker 1: that seventy five brides had joined her group and agreed
Speaker 1: to wear their kiss buttons on their wedding days, and
Speaker 1: when Imogene was pressed about whether she was suggesting that
Speaker 1: the newly weds not kiss, she specified, quote, I mean
Speaker 1: the relatives and wedding guests should not kiss the bride
Speaker 1: and subject her to risk of getting consumption. Following the
Speaker 1: summer brides, Redkins August goal was to get parents on board,
Speaker 1: including not kissing their own babies. We're not parents. We
Speaker 1: can imagine this would have been a hard sell for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I will say in more recent
Speaker 1: eras there's like a whole conversation about like parents kissing
Speaker 1: their babies being a part of their babies developing their
Speaker 1: immune system, etcetera. Just as a note that September target shifted,
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly to teachers, with the hope that they would not
Speaker 1: only pledge not to kiss the children in their care,
Speaker 1: but they would also explain the need to abstain for
Speaker 1: i'm kissing in their classes as well. In October, the
Speaker 1: organization planned to reach out to street cleaners and laundresses.
Speaker 1: The logic there was that these were occupations that often
Speaker 1: came in contact with a lot of people's potential germs,
Speaker 1: so they would be inherently invested in spreading this anti
Speaker 1: kissing message. November would be all about women's groups, including
Speaker 1: church clubs, literary clubs, and game groups, and the hope
Speaker 1: there was that they would all start to wear their
Speaker 1: buttons to gatherings as a way to normalize social events
Speaker 1: without kissing. Is a greeting for December. You might be
Speaker 1: thinking that family gatherings might have been Imogen's game plan,
Speaker 1: but nope, weddings again, since winter weddings meant big gatherings,
Speaker 1: it was essentially a repeat of her July plan. Erect
Speaker 1: and is also quoted in this article is saying quote,
Speaker 1: my life for just one kiss sounds thrilling in romance
Speaker 1: and poetry, but disillusion is found in the hospitals whence
Speaker 1: lovers follow each other to the grave in a few
Speaker 1: short months. There are quite some other women on the matter,
Speaker 1: which so that most of them are really only concerned
Speaker 1: about children and babies. Mrs Philip M. Walkenberg said that quote,
Speaker 1: I don't think life would be worth living without kisses.
Speaker 1: Of course, I don't believe in Promiskey was kissing, which
Speaker 1: sheepens the value of the kiss. But it is silly
Speaker 1: to talk about discouraging all kissing. Miss Albert Hill, quoted
Speaker 1: in the article, made the case that telling people not
Speaker 1: to do something just made it more alluring, but she
Speaker 1: also mentions that she was raised in Japan, where people
Speaker 1: simply quote don't do such things. Mrs bel de Rivera
Speaker 1: of New York thought organizing anti kissing drives was simply silly.
Speaker 1: Mrs William Cumming story admitted she hadn't really thought about
Speaker 1: it much, and Mrs Harriet J. Wood thought, quote, the
Speaker 1: practice of kissing is altogether too extensive. She qualified that
Speaker 1: by adding that parents should absolutely be able to kiss
Speaker 1: their children, and that young men and young women quote
Speaker 1: are old enough to look after themselves. Although my favorite
Speaker 1: response from this gathering of quotes from women was from
Speaker 1: a Mrs Ida Husted Harper, who told the inquiring reporter quote,
Speaker 1: if women could vote, they wouldn't be worrying their heads
Speaker 1: about being kissed. This is like the get off the internet.
Speaker 1: We have bigger fish to ryan. Get out of my face.
Speaker 1: So this full page article also includes images of couples
Speaker 1: kissing with captions that definitely seem intended to mock the
Speaker 1: anti kissing cause. So things like this may mean tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and my, what a chance for those awful germs. These
Speaker 1: are editorial choices that are worth examining, because though just
Speaker 1: about all of these women that were quoted, we're not
Speaker 1: really worried about romantic kissing, that was what the paper
Speaker 1: chose to focus on. For all the visuals, there's just
Speaker 1: not a single image of a baby or a child
Speaker 1: other than kind of a menacing looking cupid. That cupid
Speaker 1: scares me. It's not cute. Sorry to throw that illustrator
Speaker 1: into the bus, but that cute it is frightening. Um.
Speaker 1: The same month that that huge spread was published, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post consulted a physician named Dr Harvey W. Wiley,
Speaker 1: chief of the Bureau of Chemistry at the Department of Agriculture,
Speaker 1: to get his thoughts on kissing and germ spread. His
Speaker 1: answers are kind of salty, and they're dismissive of Recton's
Speaker 1: group and its efforts. He told the Post that he
Speaker 1: had never seen a single instance of kissing being the
Speaker 1: cause of transmission of a deadly disease. He stated, quote,
Speaker 1: a society for the prevention of kissing is nothing less
Speaker 1: than a society for the prevention of pleasure. Just imagine
Speaker 1: yourself in a kissless courtship. Can you contemplate a more
Speaker 1: uninteresting predicament. I have feelings about Dr Wiley, and they're
Speaker 1: not kind. Yeah, I want to introduce him to be
Speaker 1: like the married a sexual people. I know I'm not
Speaker 1: saying no a sexual people ever kiss, but you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily a prerequisite in every relationship. Well, he's also
Speaker 1: if you read more of that, it sounds a most
Speaker 1: a little predatory and yucky, of like men should just
Speaker 1: be able to kiss women, and it's like, oh, Dr
Speaker 1: whiley yuck. I don't. I don't stick to the Department
Speaker 1: of Agriculture, please thank you. Yeah. Anyway, During the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen eleven, Immagene pushed hard for teachers to pledge
Speaker 1: that they would not kiss their students when school returned
Speaker 1: in the fall. This is not salacious. She was talking
Speaker 1: specifically about teachers of really young children, like kindergarteners, and
Speaker 1: when she spoke to the press on this matter, Mrs
Speaker 1: Rerecton was quoted as saying, quote, teachers and pupils will
Speaker 1: both benefit by it. A sweet faced kindergarten teacher kissed
Speaker 1: her pupils goodbye, saying I'll take a good rest this summer.
Speaker 1: In the fall, I'll give you more games. They tire
Speaker 1: me now. She died of consumption in the middle of August.
Speaker 1: Were the children exposed to consumption? Had the disease been
Speaker 1: dip theory or smallpox, would they have been exposed to it.
Speaker 1: Since you cannot quarantine a consumption or vaccinate against consumption,
Speaker 1: how will we control it? It takes whole families to
Speaker 1: the grave, teach the little ones to quarantine their mouths. Okay,
Speaker 1: So imaging, as we've been saying, was not wrong that
Speaker 1: a teacher kissing children could be a disease vector. But
Speaker 1: she also seemed to really like to tell these stories
Speaker 1: and no verifiable sources, which could not have helped her campaign.
Speaker 1: In the case of that example of the teacher who
Speaker 1: died of consumption, she doesn't even give a vague location,
Speaker 1: and one would think if there were a known potential outbreak,
Speaker 1: she might want to use her platform as an advocate
Speaker 1: being interviewed by a newspaper to alert the community involved.
Speaker 1: She also, in that same article quotes a prominent physician,
Speaker 1: but she gives no name, and according to this anonymous
Speaker 1: physician quote, if one of these buttons could be put
Speaker 1: upon the bib of every newborn baby and worn till
Speaker 1: the child is eighty years old. There would be more
Speaker 1: old people than there are today. That particular right up
Speaker 1: also includes a favorite quote of Emergy, who was quoting
Speaker 1: someone else. She says that the group's health officers motto
Speaker 1: is quote, kiss only your enemies. I want that on
Speaker 1: a shirt, kiss over enemies. It sounds uh wonderfully evil. Uh.
Speaker 1: Imaging always had this steady stream of information to share
Speaker 1: that had legitimate scientific merit, But again she also always
Speaker 1: went to extremes to make her point. Take this story
Speaker 1: that she told in nineteen quote, I know of one
Speaker 1: instance in a suburb of this city where a young
Speaker 1: woman was a sufferer from tuberculosis. The young man who
Speaker 1: called on her was well and strong. He became infected
Speaker 1: during the courtship, and our investigation shows that the infection
Speaker 1: was caused by kissing. They both died before the dates
Speaker 1: set for the wedding. Again, no specifics, no other records
Speaker 1: seems to appear of these people, and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: the press really started to skewer Imaging with these outlandish
Speaker 1: cartoons that sometimes went along with these stories that featured
Speaker 1: things like all manner of contraptions to cover young women's
Speaker 1: faces and make sure that they could not be kissed.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eleven, she gave this statement quote in the
Speaker 1: case of smallpox, the disease shows quickly after infection has
Speaker 1: taken place, but in consumption it does not. Therefore, do
Speaker 1: not kiss anyone. You are not sure by looking at
Speaker 1: a person whether he has consumption or not. He may
Speaker 1: not know it himself. Sometimes he is able to attend
Speaker 1: to his regular duties till the last. If with the
Speaker 1: expenditure of thirty million dollars as was spent last year
Speaker 1: to conquer consumption, to say nothing of the heartaches for
Speaker 1: the left ones gone forever, we could say we are
Speaker 1: now rid of the disease, then the crusade against it
Speaker 1: would die a natural death. But with all this expenditure,
Speaker 1: we are still in the midst of it. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: thirty million dollar number. I don't know where she got it.
Speaker 1: I could not find a single source for it. One
Speaker 1: outlet actually seemed to doubt her printed it as thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars um. All of the others that I saw,
Speaker 1: and there were quite a few, had the thirty million
Speaker 1: dollar number but again I don't know where she pulled
Speaker 1: that from. And if you look at national mortality statistics
Speaker 1: for the US for the years from nineteen o six
Speaker 1: to nineteen ten, yes, the number of tuberculosis deaths went
Speaker 1: up from seventy five thousand, six hundred forty eight reported
Speaker 1: in nineteen o six to eighty six thousand, three hundred
Speaker 1: nine reported in nineteen ten, And numbers like that may
Speaker 1: have certainly helped Recton's case, But that rise is actually
Speaker 1: reflective of a much larger reporting pool rather than a
Speaker 1: true rising cases. So if you look at the death
Speaker 1: rates from tuberculosis per one hundred thousand people, there's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty significant drop in that period. In nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred sixty seven point five people per
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand died of tuberculosis, and in nineteen ten
Speaker 1: that number had dropped to one thousand, four hundred ninety
Speaker 1: five point eight. Obviously, they are not point five and
Speaker 1: point eight of people, but it's the numbers game. So
Speaker 1: that rate was actually dropping already, presumably from greater efforts
Speaker 1: that had been made through public health initiatives. One thing
Speaker 1: that merits considering is the ways in which Imogene Recton's
Speaker 1: efforts were treated by the public and the press and
Speaker 1: even medical professionals. She's kind of relegated to the role
Speaker 1: of kind of a nervous kuk. Historian Peter C. Baldwin
Speaker 1: wrote a paper that was published earlier this year in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Social History, and he makes the case
Speaker 1: that Reckton was also advocating for women to be able
Speaker 1: to deny unwanted romantic attention from men by wearing the
Speaker 1: kiss not button, So the served as kind of a safeguard.
Speaker 1: Could it stop a man from overpowering a woman, of
Speaker 1: course not, but it also sent a clear signal at
Speaker 1: a time when women didn't really have a lot of
Speaker 1: options to do so that we're socially acceptable. The other
Speaker 1: thing about all of this is that least when it
Speaker 1: came to romantic couples, uh imagine, was probably not really
Speaker 1: just talking about kissing. This was a time when talking
Speaker 1: openly about sexually transmitted infections was a not a thing.
Speaker 1: So even in some of her writing, she seems like
Speaker 1: she is actually talking around kind of a bigger issue,
Speaker 1: but she will never actually reference like, Oh, I'm actually
Speaker 1: writing an article that's about syphilis, but I'm talking only
Speaker 1: about kissing, but that definitely does seem to be the case.
Speaker 1: Bummer of Imagine's story is that it kind of sputters
Speaker 1: out at this point without any resolution. After the autumn
Speaker 1: of nineteen eleven, there were no more articles about her
Speaker 1: anti kissing efforts. There were some people who carried on
Speaker 1: the cause, but they weren't Mrs Recton. She worked with
Speaker 1: her local suffrage groups and other women's groups in Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: but nothing that ever gained her the kind of attention
Speaker 1: or scorn that the kiss not message had. We don't
Speaker 1: really know what she thought of the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic,
Speaker 1: although surely she had strong feelings on the matter when
Speaker 1: she died in nine. Yeah, an interesting one. Um, I
Speaker 1: have much more. Look, I got through that whole episode
Speaker 1: and I didn't go back. Once I'm cured, I could
Speaker 1: say kissing all I want now. Um Um, I have
Speaker 1: uh listener mail. It does not involve smooching of any kind. Okay,
Speaker 1: we got so many wonderful emails about our monarch episodes
Speaker 1: that um, I actually have two to read. So the
Speaker 1: first one is from our listener Alex, who writes, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I love the Monarch episode. I love science history,
Speaker 1: and your science history episodes are among my favorite, especially
Speaker 1: since they shine light on people's overlooked contributions, especially Catalina's.
Speaker 1: And thank you for mentioning that people should plant native
Speaker 1: milkweed if they want to support monarch butterflies in North America,
Speaker 1: since research does suggest that it is indeed better for them.
Speaker 1: There are non migratory populations of monarchs in the US
Speaker 1: that have been linked to the planting of tropical milkweeds
Speaker 1: that grow year round compared to native milkweed species that
Speaker 1: are seasonal or dormant in the winter. We mentioned this
Speaker 1: briefly in our episode, but this is a kind of
Speaker 1: a deeper explainer on it. The non migratory populations have
Speaker 1: been associated with a deadly monarch parasite called O E.
Speaker 1: This is ophree Cistus electro syra. I may have pronounced
Speaker 1: that wrong, so planting tropical milkweeds may be facilitating the
Speaker 1: spread of the parasite within the non migratory monarchs, which
Speaker 1: can then spread to migratory ones. Well, I am not
Speaker 1: a monarch expert. I ended up reading several monarch papers
Speaker 1: when I was a grad student. Uh Alex went to
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia because I knew the wonderful people
Speaker 1: in Dr Sonja alt Dezer's lab who were studying this
Speaker 1: very issue. Talk about milkweeds and monarch disease from the
Speaker 1: alt Dezer lab can be found at the Monarch joint
Speaker 1: Venture website that was mentioned on the podcast that was
Speaker 1: again Monarch joint Venture dot org and this one. If
Speaker 1: you probably do a search there for assessment of exotic milkweed,
Speaker 1: you will come up with that. At that lecture, the
Speaker 1: episode and behind the scenes disc Shion has reminded me
Speaker 1: how I've wanted to plant milkweed for a long time,
Speaker 1: and so I planned to get some native milkweed seeds
Speaker 1: and have them planted by spring. Thank you, Thank you, Alex.
Speaker 1: I hope other people maybe remember that they meant to
Speaker 1: plant milkweed because it's good for the monarchs um and
Speaker 1: and as we said, plant your local variety so that
Speaker 1: you don't mess up with any any of their migratory instinks.
Speaker 1: I saw a monarchy yesterday when I was on my walk.
Speaker 1: I was two days ago when I was on my walk,
Speaker 1: and I also walked past what a stand of what
Speaker 1: I realized was milkweed because I had never seen it
Speaker 1: like as a full grown plant before. I had just
Speaker 1: seen kind of like illustrations of what the leaves look
Speaker 1: like with a little caterpillar on there. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. Um. My other listener mail that is
Speaker 1: also about monarchs is from our listener Caitlin and I
Speaker 1: wanted to include this. We did as I had put
Speaker 1: out a call to ask people like our kids still
Speaker 1: getting in person, is it's We got a lot of
Speaker 1: people saying yes, absolutely, no. Um. This one is the
Speaker 1: cutest of them all in my opinion, So Caitlin, thank
Speaker 1: you up front, because I might start giggling while I
Speaker 1: say this. Um. Hi, Holly and Tracy, I was already
Speaker 1: planning to share a cute story about butterflies in the classroom,
Speaker 1: and then you asked about it in the Friday Behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. I teach preschool and I'm pleased to report
Speaker 1: we are still raising butterflies in the classroom. Terrariums that
Speaker 1: Tracy described, for reasons unknown to me, are caterpillars. This year,
Speaker 1: we're painted ladies instead of monarchs. We prepped the kids
Speaker 1: with lots of books and videos about the caterpillar to
Speaker 1: butterfly process and when our caterpillars cocoon, we announced to
Speaker 1: the kids will check every day to see if the
Speaker 1: cocoons are hatching. One of my kiddos added check the
Speaker 1: terrarium to his morning routine. After his belongings were stowed
Speaker 1: in his cubby, he would march over and inspect the
Speaker 1: terrarium from every angle. After a few days, I noticed
Speaker 1: him getting more and more dejected when nothing had changed,
Speaker 1: which led to this conversation me, Hey, buddy, you seem
Speaker 1: sad waiting and be hard. Huh, kid, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to see them. Me. Well, the butterflies will hatch soon. Kid,
Speaker 1: visibly distressed, But when will the raccoons come? The entire
Speaker 1: two weeks that we had been discussing caterpillars, cocoons, and butterflies,
Speaker 1: he had been hearing raccoons instead. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: how he expected them to fit into the process, but
Speaker 1: boy was he disappointed to learn that raccoons are rarely
Speaker 1: involved in butterfly transformations. As always, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for all the work you put into the podcast. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the week. Caitlin, that
Speaker 1: is hilarious. Yeah, I read that, and I had a
Speaker 1: good chuckle. When did the raccoons go? Listen? I understand
Speaker 1: wanting to see raccoons. They're real cute. I also just
Speaker 1: going to give thanks to Chad for sending us not
Speaker 1: really an email of information, but just pictures of the
Speaker 1: adorable Heidi and Max brother and sister kitties who looked
Speaker 1: like trouble uh and apparently love attention, as well as
Speaker 1: the kitty Syreen, who just is like, I don't know magic.
Speaker 1: To me, Syreen looks like a dilute Tortych's mostly gray,
Speaker 1: but I see some little pale buff color patches, which
Speaker 1: means uh. And Chad mentions she has grown up to
Speaker 1: be absolutely unstoppable. She goes where she wants when she wants.
Speaker 1: She was a tiny kitten that they rescued, and that
Speaker 1: sounds right for a dilute torty. So um. Thank you
Speaker 1: for taking care of beautiful kitties and giving them attention
Speaker 1: and rescuing them and for sharing them with us. Thank
Speaker 1: you to our listeners that have written in about monarchs. Uh.
Speaker 1: As I said during that that's a subject that is
Speaker 1: near and dear to my heart. So it makes me
Speaker 1: happy that one kids are still getting that education about them,
Speaker 1: even if sometimes raccoons get involved accidentally. And too that
Speaker 1: other people respond so much to that important cause. And
Speaker 1: I hope everybody is investigating their local milk weed. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us so, you
Speaker 1: can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media as a
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Speaker 1: get on that easy peasy. It is super simple to
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