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 Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We are
Speaker 1: going to talk about a weird old medical text today.
Speaker 1: In sixteen thirty nine, Edward May, doctor of Philosophy and
Speaker 1: physic and Professor elect of them in the College of
Speaker 1: the Academy of Noblemen called the Museum Minerva, physician also
Speaker 1: extraordinary unto her most Sacred Majesty, Queen of Great Brittany,
Speaker 1: et cetera, published a forty page treatise. This treatise was
Speaker 1: called A most Certain and True Relation of a Strange
Speaker 1: Monster or Serpent found in the left ventricle of the
Speaker 1: heart of John Pennant, Gentleman of the of twenty one years.
Speaker 1: If anything about the idea of a strange serpent or
Speaker 1: monster in the heart of a human being sounds just
Speaker 1: really unpleasant and awful to you, so we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about this whole time today. I hate when my
Speaker 1: ventrical monster acts up. As Tracy just said, Edward May
Speaker 1: was physician to the Queen, and that queen was Henrietta Maria,
Speaker 1: Queen consort of Charles the First. The Museum Minerva, where
Speaker 1: May was one of six professors, was an academy for
Speaker 1: young men from the nobility and gentry. It was established
Speaker 1: by Sir Francis Kinniston in sixty five and it was
Speaker 1: funded by Charles the First. This academy did not last
Speaker 1: very long, though many of England's existing educational institutions, including
Speaker 1: its universities and the Ends of Court, where people studied law,
Speaker 1: objected to the very existence of the Museum Mineral of
Speaker 1: it was probably already closed by the time May's treatise
Speaker 1: was published. Yeah, I don't have a lot of details
Speaker 1: about the specifics of their objections. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it went beyond just cantankerousness and that's not how we
Speaker 1: have been doing things for hundreds of years, but they
Speaker 1: didn't like it. It is possible that there is more
Speaker 1: information on Edward May in libraries and archives in the UK,
Speaker 1: but at this point what we mostly know here is
Speaker 1: that Edward and May were both really common names. There
Speaker 1: were multiple people named Edward May in Britain in the
Speaker 1: early mid seventeenth century, so Edward May, doctor of philosophy
Speaker 1: and physic possibly could have also been the Edward May
Speaker 1: gentleman who published Epigrams Divine and Moral in sixteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: He almost certainly was not the Edward May who was
Speaker 1: working as an actor during this period, but he might
Speaker 1: have been the person who published commentary Verse under the
Speaker 1: abbreviated name ed May. There were also various people around
Speaker 1: the same time who were publishing treatises under the initials
Speaker 1: E M, including medical treatises. So did E M stand
Speaker 1: for Edward May? And was it this Edward May? If so,
Speaker 1: who even knows mysteries abound? The Edward May who wrote
Speaker 1: this treatise does seem to have been regarded as knowledgeable
Speaker 1: and competent. One of its dedications is to the King's
Speaker 1: chief physician, Theodore de Mayerne, and in that dedication May
Speaker 1: notes that Mayerne consulted him unquote, matters concerning occult philosophy
Speaker 1: and most sacred medicines, and at this point a cult
Speaker 1: had multiple meetings, including secret, mysterious, and relating to things
Speaker 1: like magic and alchemy. Occult philosophy usually had more magical connotations,
Speaker 1: and at this point there was a lot of re
Speaker 1: lap among medicine, science, magic, and religion. May also wound
Speaker 1: up involved in the autopsy of the late John Pennant
Speaker 1: because he was already known to the family, they had
Speaker 1: asked for his help. Specifically, May had treated John's mother,
Speaker 1: Dorothy at various points for an ailment that he described
Speaker 1: as the stone. This was probably gall stones, bladder stones,
Speaker 1: or kidney stones. This autopsy was conducted on October seventh,
Speaker 1: sixty seven. That day, May was approached by Lady Elizabeth Harris,
Speaker 1: wife of Sir Francis Harris, who was John pennance aunt,
Speaker 1: and told him that John had died the evening before.
Speaker 1: John had been sick for about three years and the
Speaker 1: family didn't know what had caused this illness. May noted
Speaker 1: that Pennant had refused to button his doublet in the mornings,
Speaker 1: leaving it open no matter the weather, until after he
Speaker 1: had washed his hands and face. May brought in surgeon
Speaker 1: John Hayden to actually can ducked the autopsy, which he
Speaker 1: called a dissection, and so Hayden was doing this autopsy
Speaker 1: under May's direction. Lady Elizabeth Harris, John's mother, Dorothy, Richard Barry,
Speaker 1: and a man named George Gentleman and Gentleman's wife were
Speaker 1: all there for the autopsy. As well. Their names are
Speaker 1: all listed in the treatise as having seen what was
Speaker 1: taken out of John's heart. In the treatise, May describe
Speaker 1: the autopsy as focusing on two regions of the body,
Speaker 1: the natural region and the vital region. In the natural
Speaker 1: region were included the organs of digestion and excretion. There
Speaker 1: they quote found the bladder of the young man full
Speaker 1: of purulent and ulcerous matter, the upper parts of it
Speaker 1: broken and all of it rotten. The right kidney quite consumed,
Speaker 1: the left tumified, as big as any two kidneys, and
Speaker 1: full of seni as matter, all the inward and carnos
Speaker 1: parts eaten away, and nothing remaining but exterior skins. Penance
Speaker 1: spleen and liver both seemed mostly unaffected, although May described
Speaker 1: the liver as having grown into the costal membranes. That's
Speaker 1: something that May attributed to penance profession as a writer.
Speaker 1: May found no sign of stone or gravel in any
Speaker 1: of these organs, and that is something that penance mother
Speaker 1: had been wondering about. She was like, I have stoned
Speaker 1: did stone also kill my son? Then they moved to
Speaker 1: the vital region, home to the heart and lungs, penance
Speaker 1: lungs looked okay, but his heart was quote more globose
Speaker 1: and dilated than long. The right ventricle of an ash color,
Speaker 1: shriveled and wrinkled, like a leather purse without money, and
Speaker 1: not anything at all in it. The pericardium and nervous membrane,
Speaker 1: which containeth that illustrious liquor of the lungs in which
Speaker 1: the heart doth bathe itself, was quite dried also. But
Speaker 1: the strange part, of course, involved penance left ventricle. Quote.
Speaker 1: The left ventricle of the heart, being felt by the
Speaker 1: surgeon's hand, appeared to him to be as hard as stone,
Speaker 1: and much greater than the right, which upon the first
Speaker 1: site gave us some cause of wonder, seeing as you know,
Speaker 1: the right ventricle is much greater than the left. This
Speaker 1: is a little confusing because it sounds like he's saying
Speaker 1: that in a typical heart, the right ventricle is larger
Speaker 1: than the left. That is not usually the case. The
Speaker 1: ventricles themselves are about the same size, but the left
Speaker 1: ventricle has much thicker walls. The right ventricle pumps blood
Speaker 1: to the lungs, while the left ventricle pumps blood out
Speaker 1: to the entire body, Thus those thicker walls. May correctly
Speaker 1: describes the left ventricle as having thicker walls later on,
Speaker 1: so this description is kind of a huh moment, although
Speaker 1: he attributed those thick walls to the quote conservation of
Speaker 1: vital spirits, not the action of the heart. May asked
Speaker 1: Hayden to make an incision in the left ventricle. So
Speaker 1: he did, quote upon which issued out a very great
Speaker 1: quantity of blood, and to speak, the whole verity. All
Speaker 1: the blood that was in his body left and was
Speaker 1: gathered in the left ventricle and contained in it. Once
Speaker 1: the blood had all drained out of the ventricle, May
Speaker 1: was ready to move on, but Hayden didn't want to.
Speaker 1: He insisted that the left ventricle was unusually large and
Speaker 1: hard and needed a closer look. This is when May
Speaker 1: noted that the left ventricle was supposed to have thicker walls.
Speaker 1: After some back and forth, May finally gave in and
Speaker 1: instructed Hayden to enlarge the incision that he had made
Speaker 1: in the ventricle. That is when they found the monster. Quote.
Speaker 1: We presently perceived a carnas substance, as it seems to us,
Speaker 1: wreathed together in folds like a worm or serpent, the
Speaker 1: self same form expressed in the iconography at which we
Speaker 1: both much wondered, And I entreated him to separate it
Speaker 1: from the heart, which he did, and we carried it
Speaker 1: from the body to the window, and there laid it out.
Speaker 1: I went down a little rabbit hole trying to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly what iconography he was talking about here, And
Speaker 1: like the most well known books that were called by
Speaker 1: that name, like, didn't really have an illustration that to
Speaker 1: me syncd up with what he was talking about. So
Speaker 1: if you're wondering, I don't know either. So May went
Speaker 1: on to describe their discovery this way quote. The body
Speaker 1: was white, of the very color of the whitest skin
Speaker 1: of man's body. But the skin was bright and shining,
Speaker 1: as if it had been varnished. Over the head all
Speaker 1: bloody and so like the head of a serpent, that
Speaker 1: the lady Harris then shivered to see it, and since
Speaker 1: hath often spoken it that she was inwardly troubled at it,
Speaker 1: because the head was so truly like the head of
Speaker 1: a snake. This serpent was bifurcated. It split into two
Speaker 1: parts that May described as flesh colored thighs, and then
Speaker 1: those ended in branching filaments that he couldn't identify. He
Speaker 1: called them quote, fibers, strings, nerves, or whatsoever else they were.
Speaker 1: The people who had gathered for this autopsy discussed what
Speaker 1: this thing could be, as May kept examining it Quote,
Speaker 1: and thereupon I searched all parts of it to find
Speaker 1: whether it were a pituitous and bloody collection or the like,
Speaker 1: or a true organical body and conception. I first searched
Speaker 1: the head and found it of a thick substance, bloody
Speaker 1: and glandulous about the neck, somewhat broken, as I conceived,
Speaker 1: by a sudden or violent separation of it from the heart,
Speaker 1: which yet seemed to me to come from it easily enough.
Speaker 1: They used a bodkin to probe between the parts that
Speaker 1: May described his legs. Bodkin is like a thick, blunt needle,
Speaker 1: and around this time it was used to describe both
Speaker 1: hairpins and tools that were meant to make holes in
Speaker 1: cloth or leather. Prodding it with this bodkin, May found
Speaker 1: that parts of it were solid and parts of it
Speaker 1: were hollow. The other spectators prodded this thing with the
Speaker 1: bodkin as well, quote and as not crediting me. Some
Speaker 1: of them took the bodkin after me, made trial themselves,
Speaker 1: and remained satisfied that there was a gut, vain or artery,
Speaker 1: or some such analogical thing that was to serve that
Speaker 1: monster for uses natural. At this point May had to leave,
Speaker 1: and he left the body in the care of the surgeon.
Speaker 1: Hayden wanted to preserve what they had removed from John
Speaker 1: Pennant's heart, but his mother would not allow it, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: as it came with him, so it shall go with him.
Speaker 1: She remained in the room to watch while Hayden sewed
Speaker 1: her son's body back up. Yeah. Props to Pennant's mother
Speaker 1: for staying in the room to make sure they did
Speaker 1: not take this thing without her consent. When May learned
Speaker 1: that Hayden had not been able to keep the serpent,
Speaker 1: he wrote down everything he could recall about the autopsy,
Speaker 1: and he drew diagrams of the heart and what they'd
Speaker 1: found in it in as much detail as he could remember.
Speaker 1: All of this later went into the treatise, which he
Speaker 1: published about two years later. Uh you know when explaining
Speaker 1: this two year delay, he apparently just did not get
Speaker 1: around to doing it. He had also wanted to publish
Speaker 1: this treatise alongside other treatises he was working on, but
Speaker 1: he had not finished those yet either. Theodore de Mayerne
Speaker 1: asked him to go ahead and get this report into print,
Speaker 1: so he did, and we're going to talk more about
Speaker 1: all of this after we first paused for a little
Speaker 1: sponsor break. Edward May called what they had pulled out
Speaker 1: of John Pennant's heart a quote strange and monstrous embryon,
Speaker 1: And the word monster has come up a few times
Speaker 1: during this episode and in his descriptions elsewhere in the treatise.
Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century, people used the word monster in
Speaker 1: the sense that we might use it today to mean
Speaker 1: a scary or ferocious creature, although most of the things
Speaker 1: that we would call a monster today are way too
Speaker 1: big to fit inside the ventricle of a heart. Monsters
Speaker 1: are not usually tiny. They could be, but not usually.
Speaker 1: In the late medieval and early modern period, though the
Speaker 1: word monster had some other meetings as well, a monster
Speaker 1: could also be something that was considered amazing or extraordinary.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, medical texts used the word monster
Speaker 1: to describe plants that were misshapen or we're growing in
Speaker 1: a bizarre way, as well as people or other animals
Speaker 1: that had some kind of congenital disability or limb difference,
Speaker 1: or other trait that made them seem particularly unusual, like
Speaker 1: a calf born with extra legs might be described as
Speaker 1: a monster, or a stillborn baby who had physically developed
Speaker 1: in a way that was incompatible with life. Conjoined twins
Speaker 1: were described as monsters as well. Past podcast subject and
Speaker 1: was Parrey included a chapter titled on Monsters and Marvels
Speaker 1: in his fifty complete Works, in which he listed out
Speaker 1: a series of possible causes for these so called monsters.
Speaker 1: Those causes included the wrath of God, the glory of God,
Speaker 1: too much and too little sperm, the size of the womb, heredity,
Speaker 1: accident quote, the artifice of wicked beggars, and demons and devils.
Speaker 1: These other definitions of the word monster are obsolete as
Speaker 1: at this point, but that last sense persisted for centuries
Speaker 1: well in the development of teratology, or the study of
Speaker 1: congenital malformations as a medical field. The Oxford English Dictionary,
Speaker 1: how an example of the word monster being used in
Speaker 1: a medical journal to describe a baby that was born
Speaker 1: without a heart or a brain, in which is horrifyingly recent. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was the year I got married. Uh May's use
Speaker 1: of the word monster here may have drawn from all
Speaker 1: of these meanings, and he wrote this treatise during a
Speaker 1: period in which people were really fascinated with that last
Speaker 1: sense of the word monster. In particular, this was a
Speaker 1: trend that had started to develop in the late fifteenth
Speaker 1: century and was sort of a precursor to freak shows.
Speaker 1: People in Europe became enamored with things like illustrated medical
Speaker 1: texts and preserved specimens showing these kinds of traits. Some
Speaker 1: of this fixation was just rooted in morbid curiosity, but
Speaker 1: it was also connected to layers of religious thought, fears
Speaker 1: about illness and disability and the many many risks that
Speaker 1: surrounded pregnancy and birth, as well as just a general
Speaker 1: lack of understanding of fetal development. Baby is born with
Speaker 1: These kinds of developmental issues could be seen as portents
Speaker 1: or omens, and sometimes books on this subject included illustrations
Speaker 1: of real children and animals, as well as illustrations of
Speaker 1: things that were clearly mythical or imaginary, like there would
Speaker 1: be a baby whose limb development sort of resembled a
Speaker 1: mermaid alongside like actual mermaids. Something else that we haven't
Speaker 1: gotten into yet is that Edward May wrote this treatise
Speaker 1: as European medical science was developing a more thorough understanding
Speaker 1: of blood circulation. In our recent episode on hypertension, we
Speaker 1: talked about William Harvey's descriptions of blood circulation through the body,
Speaker 1: including circulating through the lungs and out to the body
Speaker 1: in a closed loop. Harvey also described the heart as
Speaker 1: a pump, pushing blood with each beat. Harvey's on the
Speaker 1: Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, which detailed
Speaker 1: all of this, was published in Latin in six so
Speaker 1: Harvey was building on the work of earlier physicians. He
Speaker 1: wasn't the first person to ever suggest that blood followed
Speaker 1: different paths through the lungs and out to the rest
Speaker 1: of the body, but this was still a major revision
Speaker 1: to European understanding of circulation and of the heart, and
Speaker 1: it was really controversial and Harvey's critics included Edward May
Speaker 1: May's discussion of John Pennant's left ventricle being full of
Speaker 1: blood includes a footnote in which he goes on at length,
Speaker 1: although without naming Harvey specifically about these ideas. This footnote
Speaker 1: set in part quote Here those men may be handsomely
Speaker 1: questioned who say that the pulse is nothing else but
Speaker 1: the impulse of the blood into the arteries or the
Speaker 1: sisterly of the heart. What has become of the pulse
Speaker 1: in this man, all the while that the whole blood
Speaker 1: betwok itself into the heart. Here was either a living
Speaker 1: man without pulse, or pulse without the sistily of the heart.
Speaker 1: For what could the arteries receive when nothing was to
Speaker 1: be received? Or how could there be pulse when there
Speaker 1: was no impulse into the arteries. The pulse, then, doubtless,
Speaker 1: is from another cause. And this is a far other
Speaker 1: matter than most men conceive. So May seems to have
Speaker 1: thought that this discovery of a serpent in a man's
Speaker 1: heart in a ventricle that was filled with blood proved
Speaker 1: his assertion that Harvey was wrong. Hey it did not.
Speaker 1: May was also totally off base about Penance left ventricle
Speaker 1: containing all the blood in his body. That would be
Speaker 1: more than a gallon of blood, which is far too
Speaker 1: much to fit inside a chamber of the human heart.
Speaker 1: In a pamphlet called The Rise of Physiology in England,
Speaker 1: the Harvey and Oration delivered before the Royal College of
Speaker 1: Physicians are or eight. Physician William Selby Church relegated Edward
Speaker 1: May to his own footnote, describing people who disparaged Harvey's
Speaker 1: work in this way as quote too ignorant and too
Speaker 1: bigoted to appreciate him. At the same time, even though
Speaker 1: he was being very cantankerous about the latest developments and
Speaker 1: and British medical thought. May thought whatever had affected John
Speaker 1: Pennant's heart might have been affecting other people's hearts as well,
Speaker 1: so it was important to figure out exactly what it
Speaker 1: was and what it meant, and how this might be
Speaker 1: treated or prevented. Quote. It is most requisite that something
Speaker 1: be said of this or any such like matters generated
Speaker 1: in man's heart, both for the manner of their generation
Speaker 1: and the way of their cure, and by what means
Speaker 1: such rare and incredible causes of death may be found
Speaker 1: out in time and taken away. So while the first
Speaker 1: three sections of May's treatise covered up preface, including dedications
Speaker 1: to Diador Den Mayern and to Edward Earl of Dorset
Speaker 1: who was the Queen's Lord Chamberlain, and details on John
Speaker 1: Pennant's case in the autopsy itself. The remaining seven sections
Speaker 1: put this autopsy into context, and he draws a lot
Speaker 1: of conclusions about what this might mean for medicine. First,
Speaker 1: he quoted both Hippocrates and even Sina Hippocrates as saying
Speaker 1: that quote the heart laborers of no disease, and even
Speaker 1: Sina that quote the heart is far remote from dangers.
Speaker 1: From there, May noted that many physicians, since those two
Speaker 1: great figures from ancient medicine, had documented all kinds of
Speaker 1: diseases and dangers that could affect the heart, including syncope,
Speaker 1: cardiac passion, tremors, palpitations, etcetera. And now he had found
Speaker 1: what he thought was a worm or serpent in the
Speaker 1: left ventricle. Because Pennant had been ill for three years,
Speaker 1: including complaints of palpitations, May thought that the serpent had
Speaker 1: been growing in his heart that whole time. Next, May
Speaker 1: speculated on how that serpent might have gotten in their quote.
Speaker 1: But this then begets a greater question, how this monster
Speaker 1: or such as this should be begotten or bread in
Speaker 1: the heart. So defended as hath been said more than
Speaker 1: all the body, and in the most defended part of
Speaker 1: the heart, the left ventricle three times thicker of flesh
Speaker 1: and substance than the right, and also of what matter,
Speaker 1: seeing that cell is possessed and replenished with the best,
Speaker 1: purest and most illustrious liquor in the body, the blood arterial,
Speaker 1: and the vital spirits. And he offered some ideas that
Speaker 1: there were passages that could allow very small worms to
Speaker 1: enter the heart, or that it had come from quote
Speaker 1: ill distributions and transmissions, or that worms had been living
Speaker 1: in the pair cardium. He also referenced a work called
Speaker 1: Heaven Stripes Book of the Plague, which included the story
Speaker 1: of a prince who had a white worm cleaving to
Speaker 1: his heart with a sharp nose like a horn. May
Speaker 1: also mentioned heartworm and horses, which have been described in
Speaker 1: Stow's Chronicle at an um In, but May ultimately concluded
Speaker 1: that the cause of the serpent and John Pennance's heart
Speaker 1: was more metaphysical. We will get to that after a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. In the end, Edward May blamed John pennance
Speaker 1: temperament for the appearance of a serpent in his heart. Quote.
Speaker 1: But that which I have to say is this, that
Speaker 1: these strange and extraordinary generations are caused from the temperament individual.
Speaker 1: For you well know that there is a double temperament,
Speaker 1: the one specifical the other individual. The one is fixed
Speaker 1: them and unalterable, and the other is temperamentum fluxum and
Speaker 1: accidental shore clears to absolutely. He also drew in a
Speaker 1: little bit of astrology. Quote. We also see every day
Speaker 1: that such men are more hot and vivacious who are
Speaker 1: born either in the stars of Leo or the sun oriental.
Speaker 1: They also to be of more succulent habit who are
Speaker 1: born within the second quadrate of the moon, and such
Speaker 1: to be least vital who are born in the silence
Speaker 1: of the moon. Herbs also gathered moon decreasing have less force,
Speaker 1: and the very soil often doth either so augment or
Speaker 1: dwarf plants and herbs, and give them such strange conditions
Speaker 1: that they are found degenerate and scarcely the same herbs.
Speaker 1: He toss in a bit of humoral medicine as well. Quote,
Speaker 1: and from this diatheses and ill dispositions may many a
Speaker 1: strange sickness in after ages spring as time diet and
Speaker 1: other accidents do alter or intend the heat, cold, or
Speaker 1: acrimony of the humor and blood, or some other quality.
Speaker 1: And he made reference to the doctrine of signatures. That's
Speaker 1: the idea that plants can be used to make a
Speaker 1: medicine to treat a particular part of the body that
Speaker 1: looked like that part of the body. He connected this
Speaker 1: to Muslim philosopher al Kindi's work on optics, quoting him
Speaker 1: in Latin as saying, quote, the elementary world is an
Speaker 1: example of the world, so that everything contained in it
Speaker 1: contains its species. It is evidence that everything in this world,
Speaker 1: whether it be a substance or an accident, produces rays
Speaker 1: in its own way, in the likeness of the stars.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it would not have the full form of a
Speaker 1: starry world. May concluded that these rays allowed a penance
Speaker 1: body to give outward evidence of the serpent that was
Speaker 1: troubling his heart in the manner of the doctrine of signatures,
Speaker 1: because over the last few years his eye had become
Speaker 1: increasingly like that of a serpent. Something may have noticed
Speaker 1: and commented on more than once. One of the big
Speaker 1: examples that comes up a lot of the doctrine of signatures.
Speaker 1: Is the idea that a walnut looks like a brain,
Speaker 1: so you can make brain medicine out of walnuts. Sure
Speaker 1: very popular in medical and herbology texts. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a geometry angle to this, where you're doing proofs
Speaker 1: of things that look like Yeah, I find it really
Speaker 1: interesting that he can find he combined this idea with
Speaker 1: optics and made it into like a unified claris discipline theory.
Speaker 1: There So, May concluded his treatise with a note that
Speaker 1: medical science could make many more new and important discoveries
Speaker 1: if more people's bodies could be dissected after their deaths.
Speaker 1: I'd say this was a fair point, But then he
Speaker 1: went on to blame grieving families for not providing those opportunities,
Speaker 1: saying that that would be more possible quote if it
Speaker 1: were not for a babyish or a kind of cockney
Speaker 1: disposition in our common people who think that their children
Speaker 1: or friends murdered after they are dead, if a surgeon
Speaker 1: should but pierce any part of their skins with a knife.
Speaker 1: I mean there are lots of cultures who have thought that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it. Yeah. He seems particularly uh, not compassionate in
Speaker 1: this moment. Of being like, we could learn so much
Speaker 1: more if people's grieving families were not you know, big
Speaker 1: silly babies about everything right. I think he was still
Speaker 1: feeling salty about not getting to keep the servant. The
Speaker 1: servants maze treatis stayed in print until at least the
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties as part of an anthology called a Collection
Speaker 1: of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, and other people commented on
Speaker 1: it during those centuries where it was in print. In
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty two, Scottish writer Alexander Ross published Arcana Microcosmi,
Speaker 1: or the hid Secrets of Man's Body Discovered in Anatomical
Speaker 1: Duel between Aristotle and Galen, with a refutation of Thomas
Speaker 1: Brown's vulgar error from Bacon's Natural History and Hervey's book Degeneration.
Speaker 1: Shan Ross wrote, quote, nor is it incredible what is
Speaker 1: recorded by diverse of worms found in the heart, which
Speaker 1: caused consumptions and strange distempers in our bodies, which often
Speaker 1: deceived physicians. For the heart is no more privileged from
Speaker 1: worms than other members, save only that its substance is
Speaker 1: hard and solid, and by reason of its spirits and heat,
Speaker 1: it is not so much subject to putrefaction as parts
Speaker 1: more soft and loose, and consequently not so infested with
Speaker 1: worms and impostumes as other members are. Yet it is
Speaker 1: not altogether exempted, for I have read of one whose
Speaker 1: heart being opened, there was found in it a white
Speaker 1: worm with a sharp beak, which, being placed on a table,
Speaker 1: and a circle of the juice of garlic made about it, died,
Speaker 1: being overcome with that strong smell, by which it is
Speaker 1: plain that the use of garlic is wholesome and needful,
Speaker 1: for such as are subject to worms as being their
Speaker 1: just drawyer. So they didn't say anything about surrounding the
Speaker 1: worm with garlic, but this has been cited as a
Speaker 1: reference to his treatise about John Pennett. Ross's work also
Speaker 1: includes various other accounts of worms being found in the
Speaker 1: brain and in the digestive system, and in general knowledge
Speaker 1: of parasites like tape worm and roundworm that goes back
Speaker 1: to the ancient world. This was not new knowledge at
Speaker 1: this point. Puritan clergyman Cotton Mother also referenced May's tract
Speaker 1: in his Magnalia Christie Americana, and it's possible that Mather's
Speaker 1: work went on to inspire Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story Egotism
Speaker 1: or the Bosom Serpent, which he published in eighteen forty three.
Speaker 1: As that name suggests, this story is about a man
Speaker 1: with a snake living in his chest. Hawthorne was also
Speaker 1: probably familiar with various news reports that were circulating in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century about people who believe they had snakes
Speaker 1: growing in their bodies, most of them thinking they had
Speaker 1: swam allowed a small snake or snake egg while drinking
Speaker 1: from a brook or other body of water, which had
Speaker 1: then grown inside of them. There was also Puritan religious
Speaker 1: writing that made allegorical use of a snake in a
Speaker 1: person's chest as a representation of sin. So it's totally
Speaker 1: possible that Hawthorne was inspired by something else, or that
Speaker 1: he just made this up out of his own imagination.
Speaker 1: So what was this thing? And John Pennon's heart may
Speaker 1: clearly thought it was an actual worm or serpent, and
Speaker 1: earlier commentators generally agreed. Some of them concluded that it
Speaker 1: was an example of a human infected with the kind
Speaker 1: of heartworm that was already known to infect other animals
Speaker 1: like horses. Heartworms don't really have the kind of bifurcated
Speaker 1: structure separating out into filaments that may described, but a
Speaker 1: mass of entangled heartworms might kind of look like that.
Speaker 1: Heartworms are spread by mosquitoes, and while they can infect people,
Speaker 1: that is really rare, and it's incredibly unlikely that this
Speaker 1: could have happened to someone living in England in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century. The first reports of animals contracting heartworm in
Speaker 1: England didn't happen until ninety five, and it's still relatively
Speaker 1: uncommon there because in most years the climate is just
Speaker 1: not hot enough for the parasite to breed in the
Speaker 1: mosquitoes that carry them. That may be shifting though, due
Speaker 1: to global warming. While it's possible that Pennant could have
Speaker 1: traveled abroad and contracted heartworms somewhere else, still very unlikely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he would have had to go somewhere where there was
Speaker 1: a lot of heartworm and then also contracted it there
Speaker 1: when it doesn't usually infect humans. People who have examined
Speaker 1: this question in one centuries have come to a more
Speaker 1: mundane conclusion than monsters or even rare infections of heartworm
Speaker 1: and humans. All the various findings in John Pennant's autopsy
Speaker 1: suggests that he did have some kind of a serious
Speaker 1: infection other disease process going on that involved most of
Speaker 1: his urinary tract. He might have had some kind of
Speaker 1: a heart disease as well, and if his left ventricle
Speaker 1: really was a lot harder and bigger than his right,
Speaker 1: which is a little unclear to me from the actual
Speaker 1: text of the treatise, he might have had left ventricular hypertrophy,
Speaker 1: which can be caused by things like uncontrolled high blood
Speaker 1: pressure and aortic valves stenosis and other issues. In terms
Speaker 1: of the serpent specifically, D. A. Denham published a letter
Speaker 1: in Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and then Ruth Richardson published a short
Speaker 1: piece in The Lancet in two thousand and one, and
Speaker 1: both of those conclude that this was just clotted plasma,
Speaker 1: and that it may have been a clock that formed
Speaker 1: after he died and had nothing to do with his
Speaker 1: illness or cause of death. I will confess that was
Speaker 1: kind of my first thought when I was first licking
Speaker 1: this over, that oh, this is just stuff that formed
Speaker 1: in the shape of all of the little blood vessels
Speaker 1: of his body and then congealed in some way because
Speaker 1: we don't know how he died the night before, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he had been dead less than twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: or maybe slightly more than twenty. It was like the
Speaker 1: day before that he had died. And for the way
Speaker 1: the way it's described in the treatise, Pennett had died
Speaker 1: the night before, and he makes it sound like he
Speaker 1: came to the house with a surgeon the day he
Speaker 1: was informed of that writing happened, so not immediate, um.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like it's sat there for a long
Speaker 1: time congealing or hardening. Um. So As a side note,
Speaker 1: Tracy stumbled over another kind of horrifying medical curiosity while
Speaker 1: she was doing the research on this, and Harvey described
Speaker 1: that in his uh the Anatomical Exercises of Dr William Harvey,
Speaker 1: Professor of Physic and Physician to the King's Majesty concerning
Speaker 1: the Motion of the Heart and Blood, and that was
Speaker 1: written in sixteen fifty three. Hugh Montgomery, son of Hugh Montgomery,
Speaker 1: second Viscount Montgomery, had an injury on the left side
Speaker 1: of his chest that had left him with a hole
Speaker 1: through which the heart could be palpated, which he protected
Speaker 1: with a metal plate. The Court of Charles the First
Speaker 1: became aware of this in sixteen forty, and it was
Speaker 1: consequently investigated by William Harvey, who realized that it pulsed
Speaker 1: at the same rate as a pulse elsewhere in his body.
Speaker 1: So this was known by Harvey by sixteen forty or
Speaker 1: sixteen forty one, although not published until later. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just such a weird There are lots of people
Speaker 1: living in the world today who have like some kind
Speaker 1: of whole or stoma in their body that serves some
Speaker 1: kind of medical purpose or not. But the idea that
Speaker 1: this person in the seventeenth century had managed to like
Speaker 1: have this serious injury and recover from it, Like there's
Speaker 1: a whole gross description of their being like an abscess
Speaker 1: in all of this, but like with a place that
Speaker 1: people could just palpate his heart through a membrane and
Speaker 1: that he had to wear a metal plate to cover
Speaker 1: it up, Like it's just a whole. That is a
Speaker 1: different When I think of like just disease vectors, my
Speaker 1: brain goes like, yeah, So anyway, I I could not
Speaker 1: find a great place for that to actually fit inside
Speaker 1: the body of the the story we were telling itself.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to just not talk about it
Speaker 1: because that's such a secondary, weird medical story happening at
Speaker 1: the exact same time that had like a little overlap,
Speaker 1: but wasn't directly about this heart serpent. Anyway, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some more stuff uh on Friday in the behind scenes.
Speaker 1: So okay, I have listener mail. It's from Elizabeth Um.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth wrote after our two parter on Eugene Jacques Bullard,
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy, I'm a longtime
Speaker 1: fan of the show, and I always loved getting the
Speaker 1: two of you to teach me about yet another event
Speaker 1: or historical figure that I definitely didn't learn about in
Speaker 1: history class. Most of the time their stories I've never
Speaker 1: even heard of before. But when you started the Eugene
Speaker 1: Bullard episodes, my ears perked up immediately. While I certainly
Speaker 1: didn't learn about him in history class, I was already
Speaker 1: familiar with at least part of his story. I'm a
Speaker 1: freelance editor, and one of the projects I had earlier
Speaker 1: this year was a proof read on a graphic biography
Speaker 1: about Eugene Bullard titled Now Let Me Fly by Ronald Wimberley.
Speaker 1: Illustrations by Bram Revell McMillan is publishing it in January.
Speaker 1: While the book mostly just covers his life through World
Speaker 1: War One, it was fascinating to learn about this utterly
Speaker 1: unsung hero. The Texas deeply moving, and the art is
Speaker 1: striking and very beautiful. I thought your reader might like
Speaker 1: to know that this is coming soon, and I will
Speaker 1: include the warning. The text is frank about the racism
Speaker 1: he faced, including showing the scene where the men come
Speaker 1: to lynch his father, so it might need some parental
Speaker 1: screening before being shared with really young readers. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for filling in the rest of the story for me.
Speaker 1: The World War two stuff is fascinating, and of course
Speaker 1: thanks for all your great work keeping all of us
Speaker 1: educated and engaged. The show is one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Best wishes, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for this email. Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: I did not stumble across this forthcoming book while doing research,
Speaker 1: which honestly is kind of surprising because you know there's
Speaker 1: advanced publicity and stuff already going on for it. Um
Speaker 1: So again, that's titled Now Let Me Fly, and it's
Speaker 1: due out in January three. I will absolutely take a
Speaker 1: look at it once it's available, because I I really
Speaker 1: like historical graphic novels, a lot of them that I
Speaker 1: have encounter. It has been really, really good, So thank
Speaker 1: you again for that note. If you would like to
Speaker 1: send us an email or at history podcast that I
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com and we're all over social media
Speaker 1: and missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: the iHeart radio app or wherever else you'd like to
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.