Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - George Washington's Beard of Beetles (with The Dollop)

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Cautionary Conversation: Just before Christmas 1799, President George Washington was riding around his country estate, Mount Vernon, when it began to snow. When he arrived home, guests were waiting for him. Known for his punctuality, he hurried to entertain them -  still clad in his damp clothes. The next morning, Washington had a sore throat and a chesty cough. His family decided to take a fateful step: they summoned a doctor. Tim Harford is joined by comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, hosts of the hugely popular history podcast The Dollop. They discuss the parade of doctors that tended to the ailing Washington, and the various remedies they prescribed - from lamb's blood to a collar of beetles. Tim, Dave and Gareth also look at what happened when cars first hit the streets in the early twentieth century: why did so many cars "turn turtle"? Who were the first jaywalkers? And which British inventor rode around in a giant white stiletto?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin Over the last few decades, we've adopted all kinds of new medical technologies. Ventilators, IVF, brain implants, and when bioethics consider these innovations, they return to the same questions. Just because we can do something, does it mean we should? And who gets to make these kinds of decisions? Playing God is a new podcast about the complex decisions made in medicine and public health

and the implications they have throughout everyday lives. Listen to Playing God. A couple of weeks before Christmas, 1799, George Washington, the first and perhaps the greatest president of the United States, was enjoying retirement at his country estate, Mount Vernon. He'd ridden around his farms and come home late, cold, and in wet clothes. But guests had come for dinner and he hurried to entertain them without changing into something dry. The next day, he had a sore throat and a chesty cough.

The day after that, his throat was so badly inflamed that he had trouble breathing. His family decided to take a fateful step. They summoned to doctor. I'm outnumbered. My guests are Dave Antony and Gareth Reynolds, the host of the hugely popular comedy history podcast The Dollar. Hello, gentlemen. How are you? Hello. Hello. Hello. Two Americans. No less. Yeah. So it's going to be what?

It's just going to be bad. It's going to be it's going to be different. It's going to be different for Gorshengshan's list. Yes. Anyway, so we are going to be talking about a couple of stories that you covered on The Dollar and one of those is the death of George Washington, and we'll talk about whatever else comes up. So thanks for joining me, and it's easy to see why the dollop is such a successful format, because what could be more hilarious than the painful and pointless death of the father of the nation? Agreed. You'd be shocked at... I think this is all the time about how'll like take a step back and be like,

we're laughing about a murder like on our show. And I'll just be like for the 45 minute straight, we've just been making jokes. But I'm like, two people are dead. But there are just so many absurd moments. And this one among them, nobody knows how he died. We're not taught it. And it really is the most American thing of all, that we... Like, why wouldn't you be taught this? We killed him. Like, if you were teaching this in class, I would not be like leaving school to go smoke cigarettes.

I'd be like, I'll do it at lunch. I want to see how this ends. This is exciting. I mean, it is extraordinary. I was listening to the episode 101, and I was just crying with laughter. I should have been crying because a great man is dying needlessly. But I was just crying because it was very funny.

So we should probably run through what happens when the doctors show up. So I think it's doctors crying, don't you think? Yeah, Dr. Dick, Dr. Brown, Dr. Craig. I mean, it's not great. I mean, Dr. Dick, Dr. Brown, Dr. Crack. I mean, it's not great. I mean, it's just, again, there are many times where I'm like,

this is low hanging fruit, don't do it, but it's like, come on. I feel like Dave made those up. I feel like if we look back, that's not the names of them. Of course, the first thing they do is they start taking blood from him. Quite a lot of blood, right? Yeah, every guy that came in, every doctor that came in, his first thing was, well, we got to get blood out of this guy. So each one trained over a pint. I was trying to figure out, did they, did they talk to each other about that?

Or is that they all had to have their fingerprints on it? Yeah, I don't think they were talking to each other. I think they were just like, okay, well, now I'm here. These other guys aren't doing a good job. I'm going to take care of this. And then they train his blood, which is also amazing to be like that three independent opinions of doctors when he was dying was we should get blood out of him. Like if your engine won't turn over and the mechanics like, let's get the oil out. In the Washington's lifetime, before he dies, there is, I think, a Dutch doctor, maybe a Belgian doctor, a Jan Baptist van Helmont. I think it's kind of a bet with another doctor.

He basically says, look, you will take 100 people with the plague or whatever it is. And you treat them your way, and I'll take another 100 people with the plague, and I'll treat them my way. And we'll see who has the most funerals, which is like, it's a pretty simple idea, but it turns out it doesn't catch on. He never does it. None of these guys do it. Otherwise, they would have figured out that maybe draining, I think it's half of his blood in the end, isn't it?

Yeah. Most of Washington's blood. Yeah, I also like that bet. I think that's fun for people to be like, why are you cutting this throat? Like, I'm trying to win a bet. I'm really, I'm behind. So I need to swing for the fences a little bit.

But yeah, simply, they didn't catch on. It sounds, it sounds like he just had a really bad sore throat. He, he, he, he, he went out of the rain. I thought that was cold. And he, yeah, he get, he get a sore throat. Like, he didn't take care of himself. Well, I mean, my aunt had Yeah, you get a sore throat. Like you didn't take care of yourself. My aunt had COVID, so we just drained her. She didn't make it. Later this other guy comes along and says, Oh, you idiots, he was too old. If he, if he, if he, if he, if he,

30, then yeah, sure, take six points of blood. But that's the old guy. No. That was your mistake. Yeah. That was your mistake. Yeah. Well, oops, what are we going to do? Well, that's the end of him. He had a good run. Well, then there's the beetle guy too, right? Tell me about the beetle guy.

Yeah, we're not talking about Brian Epstein. Go ahead, Dave. A guy came in. I think it was the third talker, and he was like, you know what? He needs, he needs a nice thick bed of beetles on his neck. And so. And then he, and of beetles on his neck. And so. And then he, and then he poops his pants. So he's got no blood, a beard of beetles and he's pooping his pants and everyone's like,

I think he's going to make it. We should probably drain a little more blood just to be safe. It's so undignified. I think he, I think they took blood four times, right? I think it was four, and they were taking like the third time, was like 32 ounces. Like they were really taking a lot of blood out of this guy. Oh, I'm sure, like, yeah, like Pee's coming out and they're like, why? I think he's had a blood.

Somebody proposed a tracheotomy, which it sounds like that might actually have worked. Like if the guy can't breathe. Yeah, that would work. Yeah, that would work. It's certainly the only procedure that made it to today. Yeah. So there's maybe something to it.

Yeah, true. So I was looking into these strange kind of lotions and vegetable compounds and so on that women used to take in the 19th and early 20th centuries for period pains and pre-menstrual stress and all this kind of stuff. And the doctors used to think that these things were completely ridiculous. And one of the things that the marketers of these compounds said was basically, at least we won't kill you. The doctors will kill you and we won't kill you. So the weird thing

is they did notice that the patients kept dying. And this was a selling point for the alternative therapies, like non-fatal. That's all I need. I just need to know, won't kill me and I'll take it. That's the only thing I worry about. Well, it was also one thing we've talked, we have a lot of fun with is the simplicity of becoming a doctor was also,

yeah. You know, it was like you just needed to have a sign and then you're like, open for business, you know, like a barber, but even they needed a license, you could just simply just say you were a doctor and then you could just get blood out of George Washington. You needed a license to be a barber, but not to be a doctor? Yeah. Like, you manifested in the moment like, I'm a doctor and that was that.

And then even when they made it, when they made licenses, they would set up a medical school and you'd go to the medical school and they'd just go, okay, you're a doctor, like there was no, no one was watching the medical school. So it was just for ages. It was just, you just said it and that's what you were. And presumably they needed to teach people how to drain a couple of fines of blood, though. Yeah. Yeah, that was probably like one of the things. Yeah. Yeah, that was probably one of the things.

They're like, look, in case of an emergency, drain the blood, get the blood, the blood is something the body doesn't want to want to sick. I mean, that was for a long time. That was very common. And each doctor had his own blood-letting device that he would bring with him to see a patient. I think they favored something called the heroic style of medicine. And I think part of the problem was that something called the heroic style of medicine. And I think part of the problem was that doctors charge you a lot of money.

So the idea is if you're going to show up and you're going to charge somebody a lot of money, you better do something, you know, go big home, right? Don't just, don't just be a little bit of medicine or an aspirin or take my temperature and say, call me in the morning, you got to do something big. Yeah. And it's bed rest was not, You didn't pay for bed rest. You're like, bullshit. Right.

And if the doctor comes to explode, you're like, oh, I feel different. I feel a little woozy. Something's happening. That was part of the attraction of the vegetable compound as well, because they had booze in. Some of them had opium, some had booze, some had chili, some had all of them. And so, you know, if it's basically as strong as Sherry, you know, you will feel different and maybe different is better.

And certainly it's better than having losing a pint of blood. Yeah. But he could have done himself a lot of favors by changing his clothes, obviously. But have they just simply let him be? He had a much higher chance of survival. Yeah. Let him be he had a much higher chance of survival. Yeah, but he was dead. Two days after You know going out and getting his clothes wet and then having dinner and white clothes. I mean

That's pretty quick to die of a cold, right? Yeah, I do yeah, definitely. I mean, let's let's just flat out say he didn't die of a cold He died because he got a cold. What do you think got him? And then a bunch of guys came in and took the stuff that was supposed to be inside of his body, out of his body. And then that pretty much killed them. Yeah, you know you're a bad doctor when you're the beetle beard guy and you history smiles upon you greatest. And remember, these are the guys treating Washington.

So these are the top doctors. The best of the best of the best. These guys are... There was one doctor they did turn away, right? Like the one guy who I did, I actually have an idea that and they went, oh no, you've gone too far. The guy who thought maybe we'll resurrect him? Yeah.

That was a thing. There's a guy who thought maybe we could do George Washington thriller. Yeah. Of course. Of course, there's three guys that kill him. And then there's a guy that came in and was like, let's do it. Let's have a do over. Let's bring him back.

Yeah. Yeah, you get a little fire in that guy. He'll come right back. And his first words are gonna be, what were you doing? That was crazy when those guys got rid of all my blood. I couldn't believe the guy who wanted to bring him back from the dead actually made more sense

than the first three. Because he's like, well, add some blood. We've got a lamb. Addicid lamb's blood. Pump up his lungs, you know, given the kiss of life, warm him up. And you stick to it, you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'm sure warmer and they're like, get out of here, you loon. Yeah. I'm gonna have to hear you, loon. Yeah. Well, I wonder what they did with his blood because it would have been really helpful if like

the blood was nearby, but if that guy's pitching lamb blood, they must have just been like, all right, pour that in the garden. I imagine at that time, it just went on the floor, I would think. And just tell me they didn't cook with it. That's all I want to know. And then they made a blow. How's everyone liking the Raviole? We're really channeling the spirit of the dollop here. I've got no idea what cautioning tales listen as I'm making of all this. But the simple imposition of modern standards on the 1700s

is just very funny. We have learned so much over that time that I mean, the thoughts in their head are just absolutely bananas. So from our perspective, it's just everything they do is completely insane. Like you cannot believe what's happening. Most of what they think is just crazy and wrong. But then we do that with things that happen today too. I mean, we, we always are going like,

you know, this is, we are living in a dollop with this or that. Yeah, look, we had a precedent. He told people to drink bleach when they got COVID. So that's not pardon me, inject it. Injected. Injected. Inject it. Yeah. First of all, I will not have you mock the greatest president since George Washington. Who mind you should go the same way in my opinion? And not a lot of people know if you drain Trump, Nacho Cheese comes out of his veins. I was going to ask, what was the moment in history when people stopped being completely ridiculous, but I... yeah.

It hasn't stopped. We can't wait to find it. We can't wait to find it. Won't be in our lifetimes. Corsion entails is going to be back in a moment, and when we get back, we will answer the question, if you get run over and killed by a car, can the driver sue you. Over the last few decades we've adopted all kinds of new medical technologies, ventilators, IVF, brain implants, and when bioethics consider these innovations they return to the same

questions. Just because we can do something, does it mean we should? And who gets to make these kinds of decisions? Playing God is a new podcast about the complex decisions made in medicine and public health and the implications they have throughout everyday lives. Listen to Playing God. We're back. I'm talking to the creators of the dollop, namely the Historic Medians, Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. We've talked about dollop 101, which is an episode not a freshman course. Now let's talk about dollop 193, which is all about what happened when people had the temerity to use the streets for driving cars, which was kind of a radical

move, right? The idea that either these streets, we could just drive cars on them. This was, I mean, it was a bullsie move at first. The streets were for horses and carriages and mostly hanging out and for kids to play. And kids, yeah, pigs. And for kids to play. And that was what streets were for. So, all of a sudden, there's things on them and people are like, no, that's not what goes here. Like in New York, you couldn't have the kids play in Central Park, right? Because Central Park is for people of quality. You can't have the neighborhood kids coming and playing in the park. So they play on the street. Obviously, they play on the street. That's what you do with kids. I mean, the early cars, it didn't really matter because they do about four miles an hour,

but then along comes the Model T, and that does 45, and that's kind of sting if it just plows through your game of baseball or whatever. Yeah, that's not great. This episode, I think, more than most really did blow my mind because you are just, when you live in the world today, you just automatically go, yeah, well, you walk here and you, you know, you wait for the car and all that. And but it would be like if we were to just like have to incorporate UFOs into our society,

there would be a tremendous amount of growing pains and killing. And that's what there was. I mean, it is chaos. Two thirds of the deaths in major cities would just cause just running over kids. Yeah. And for like, it was like 15 years, no one was like, slow down. It just went, like you just drove as fast as you could, wherever you could. Your car's rolled over all the time, it was called turtling. Yeah, I mean, people just didn't know what to do about cars. They didn't know how to drive cars.

I've got this driver training bulletin, sportsman-like driving, which is a great title for how to drive sportsman-like driving, which aims to explain to drivers why if they go round the corner, it really fast, they're going to flip and it may not be a good idea. And they just didn't know. Yeah. Yeah.

I think we even get into it in the episode of like, well, how did they not know that too fast was and turning? Like they had other things, like, but they couldn't process that connection. Surely they'd seen a carriage overturn or other things flip, or even a person. But to them, they were like, no, no, that should be fine. But you can't, you really can't put yourself in their headspace before turning was something you had to really pay attention. I guess you don't have, you don't have this whole infrastructure like driving licenses and driving

instructors and you just bought a car in your rich because you must be because you've got a car and you go for it. You find out the hard way. Or more likely just like 11 street urchins find out the hard way Whether you just drive through yeah, yeah, that's right. You go home at the end of your driving You just you hose off the children's blood and put your car in the garage It always comes down to blood

It's all about blood with our shell. Yeah, well, I mean there's quite a lot of that in cautionary tales as well. I have to say, but this turn though, this moment where society is trying to wrestle with this, and it's partly just an argument over, well, who deserves to be in the streets? Like who do the streets belong to? And whose fault is it if a car drives into a kid or into any pedestrian? For a while, it's obviously the driver's fault. And then there's this kind of amazing piece of public relations jiu-jitsu that the auto lobby managed to achieve and managed to make it seem like, oh no, no, it's

actually, you get hit by a car that's your fault, the car's not to blame. Yeah. Yeah, well, it turns out there's no profit in having children play in the street. But there is profit in selling cars and tires and gas. And so they did it really fast. They like this battle. This battle. I mean, this battle was going on for years, years.

I mean, like 20 years or something or more. I can't remember exactly how many, but it's like 20 years of kids getting killed and people getting killed in the streets. And they're having parades of like, you know, women with a little star on their shirt walking on the street that signified their child that died and they're in the street, in the street might. Yes. And they're they're they're they're towing cars. They've been car accidents. So they're just showing all this stuff. It's going on for years, it's publicity.

And then the car companies and the tire companies, gas companies get together and they merely just flip the narrative. And I believe I'm correct. The biggest thing that flipped it was J-walking. They came up with the term J-walking because J-Ment, like you country bumpkin, you dumb hick. And so they started calling people who walked in the street, J-walkers, and it was highly offensive, and they started basically shaming people who were in the street. It's an incredible move. So it's like only somebody who'd never seen a car before.

Would only sell me a room from a really rural area, only used to horses. Only an idiot like that would get themselves killed by a car. And if you get killed by a car, you should just be embarrassed. Yeah, all those little kitty bumpkins. It's five-year-old, it's five year old haisied. It's amazing, it is amazing. Also, there's that phase where J walkers, then the people just went with like J drivers,

and they were trying to call people J drivers for a while. And that was just sort of like, yeah, it wasn't as good. You know, people like, come on, come up with something better. J driver. Come on, everybody. He's a J driver. Get out of here. My family's been killed. To me, this is the greatest example of any doll we've done about how stubborn we are. Kids getting mowed down for 20 years in the street. Like after two years, you should have been like, okay, let's just get off the street. It's not working, but I need to do something about the thing. But they demand it. But no, yeah. They're just demanded to be on the street. And you

know, at some point you go, this is a, we're losing this battle because they're, those are cars and we're people. So we should get off the street, but they just hung in there for years getting killed. I was really struck by a recent episode of the podcast 99% Invisible about traffic in Japan. You're not allowed to drive your children to school. And I mean, I think this may be just is in Tokyo, but you can't drive your children to school. And it's like, well, why can't you drive your children

to school and the answer is, well, because lots of children are walking to school. And if you drive your children to school. And it's like, well, why can't you drive your children to school? And the answer is, well, because lots of children are walking to school. And if you drive your children to school, that's a hazard. And it's just a, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But it's just a totally different way of looking at things. When you, when you look back at the United States in the early 1900s, you realize, oh, it could have gone this way, but it didn't. Yeah. I mean, we built our entire society around cars, essentially starting at that

point, which I don't know how many other countries have done to the extent that we have, the urban sprawl in the highway system and all that. So we definitely did that. The other thing that I think goes to your point of how much things could have gone differently is Ford was building electric cars. Yeah. But he was in business with Edison. Edison was kind of bad at inventions. And he was cranking out really crappy batteries. So all the batteries he sent to Ford were terrible and didn't work. And so Ford instead of trying to find new battery companies, he was, he was in business Edison. He said, okay, we won't do the electric cars. And was this because he battery was bad then? Or it was specifically Edison's batteries were

bad. Specifically Edison's batteries were bad. And so that's why he called them batteries. The fact that there could have been electric cars... Well, there were electric cars 120 years ago. And maybe that whole thing could have taken a different turn is, I think, mind-blowing. Yeah. One of our most popular episodes of Corsany Tales was called The Folls-Dorn of the Electric Car.

And it was about this guy called Clive Sinclair, who was a British very successful inventor, slightly odd guy, having made a load of money in calculators, and then a load of money in personal computers in the 1980s. He then lost most of his money, trying to make this electric car, but his vision for the electric car is, I won't start with a car. I'll start with something smaller.

So you made this thing, it was kind of like, it was riding around in a giant white stiletto. That's the kind of vibe it had. And it did about 50 or so. I like to shop to parties like that. He later became a professional poker player and married a stripper. So I mean, always in a pole dance, another stripper. I don't want to get and married a stripper. So, I mean,

always hold on to another stripper. I don't want to get it wrong, but he was a, you know, he was an interesting guy. He was not a conventional geek. When I looked at this, I couldn't help but think, did he just get the timing wrong? Because Elon Musk tweeted after he died about how much he loved Clive Sinclair's first computer and how like Elon Musk had grown up using this computer that Clive Sinclair had created. And you think well Elon Musk is like one of the richest guys on the planet because of his investment in Tesla, the electric car company. Clive Sinclair lost all his money trying to make this electric car. Did he just get the timing wrong? Or was it something else? Could it have worked if only he had kind of made something that didn't look like a goofy

shoe? I don't know. Well, I think the biggest problem for the electric car in Edison's and Ford's time and probably St. Clair's time is the infrastructure of not being able to plug in everywhere and charge your car. That's always the biggest thing holding it back. I think if Ford had wanted to, if Ford had gone into the electric car and kept going with it, even moving away from Edison's batteries, he would have been the guy because of his

power and wealth who would have created a system of stations to plug in your car? Because that's what Musk did immediately. He knew immediately, well, there needs to be infrastructure out there to plug in your car. That always seemed to me to be the big thing holding it back. And you still think Edison was particularly about it in mentions?

I mean, you know, if you put Tesla against Edison, yeah, Edison was a real bad dude. He was, yeah, he was more about, you know, crushing other people and, you know, taking what they had than anything else. He'd have thrived today. Send your Tesla Edison. Found boy, maybe.

Two. Two daily downloads. He'd have thrived today. Send your Tesla Edison fanboy mail to David Darrant. No, no, just Dave, I didn't say anything. Guys, it's been an absolute pleasure having you be part of Corsion Tales. Thank you so much. Where can people find the dollar, as if they haven't already found the dollar? Yeah, you can listen to the dollar. We're on all things comedy, network, or really, like we always say, wherever you listen to podcasts.

So in the dollop feed, we have started a new podcast, which you were on called The Past Times, which is similar to the dollop in which we, I pick a newspaper and we just read through it with a guess. For many time, from like the 1600s up to now. So we'll see. Equally insane. Old newspapers of material and subject matter.

I discovered it's super weird every time somehow. Yeah, they're very weird. Garret Dave, thank you very much. Thank you Tim, a pleasure. And Viva George Washington. If only. If only. Corshnery Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Finds with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music is the work

of Pascal Wies. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Mel Negutridge, Stella Harford, Jammissandas and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohn, Vitale Moulade, John Schnarrs, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan. Corsinary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardaw Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. Tell your friends.

And if you want to hear the show add free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. Over the last few decades, we've adopted all kinds of new medical technologies, ventilators, IVF, brain implants, and when bioethicists consider these innovations, they return to the same questions. Just because we can do something, does it mean we should, and who gets to make these kinds of decisions. Playing God is a new podcast about the complex decisions made in medicine and public health and the implications they have throughout everyday lives. Listen to Playing God.