Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Ben Franklin’s Glass Armonica

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Benjamin Franklin: Prolific writer. Founding Father. Inventor. Creator of a killer instrument? The Glass Armonica, more or less a series of singing water bowls with haunting melody, became a popular instrument for a very short amount of time. But by 1830,  it ceased being played entirely. Was it because its strange harmonics were making people ill? Or maybe it was just very fragile and hard to carry around? Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobo, it's a battle tour of this guy did medicine. I am your beloved co-host Justin McRoy

And I'm am I also beloved? Dolly. Yeah, you're beloved in a sense. Okay Sydney McRoy I feel weird calling myself beloved, but I guess that doesn't really I mean bother you You know, yeah, okay, well people love it or wow about this guy feel weird calling myself beloved, but I guess that doesn't really bother you. You know, yeah. Okay. Well, people love it. Or wow, about this guy.

They are. They're wild about them. I mean, I know I am better. I wish I had that confidence. How do you get that? Just be born a three-way dude and just comes with a territory. They hand it to you. It's a difficult with your baby booties.

Good. I'll remember that in my next go round. Justin, you're not enjoying hearing today. Oh, boy. That is putting it mildly. You're having some issues with your hearing. I didn't think this would get this real, but yeah, for sure, I've got some sort of, like, really painful tinnitus. Which tinnitus. Tinnitus. I mean, you can say tinnitus if you want. I know what you mean.

Okay. I mean, we can play fast and loose with those things as long as it's identifiable as the word that you're trying to, you know. But I don't want to get, I know that sometimes if you say a medical word different from how some people say it, even if the way you say it is right, you'll get emails from a bunch of well guys, guys telling you that you did it wrong.

So I just didn't want that to happen to me. This is true. As we've learned on this podcast, Candida and Candida are both fine when you're talking about the yeast. They're both fine. I was taught Candida. Some were taught Candida. They're acceptable.

Don't take up this corpse again. I'm just saying they're both fine. There's no judgment on either side here. There is. This is a safe space to pronounce scientific words in the way you see fit. This is a safe space for that. Because some of them are weird.

People mispronounce prescription drug names all the time. And as long as I can figure out what they mean, who cares, it's fine. You know, they're weird. They're tough. Anyway, it's because you're having some hearing difficulties, I thought it was a weird day to be talking about a musical instrument. Yeah. Sorry, I won't play it for you.

I couldn't. I don't have one. I'm glad our children, whatever you're talking about, I'm just glad our children will have one. Yeah, me too. I'm going to get into it. You can, at some point, you're gonna need to look at a picture of it, I bet.

You're gonna wanna Google up a picture of this thing. And if we had one in our house, it would be shattered and we would all have cuts. Really, that sounds terrible. It's been Franklin's glass armonica. Oh, like... Not harmonica, armonica. Although, like not harm on a car monica. There's some people do call it a harm on a car either way.

Harmony. That's what it means. So we can so why are we talking about that? Are you looking at a picture of it right now? Well, I pulled up a video in case we wanted to hear a sample of it. Yeah, I figure at some point you would want to do that. Thank you to Eli and Katie for recommending this topic. And then after I'd already put it all together and was ready to record our episode,

Rebecca also wrote in and suggested it. So technically I thought of it first, Rebecca, but I'm gonna thank you too, because you did write in. So thank you all for recommending this. I had not heard of this instrument, and it's deadly history. Deadly. Yes, it's been known as a killer musical instrument.

A killer. Really, that sounds... Deadly, it was banned. It has a whole history. This is why we're talking about it on a medical history show, in case you were wondering. You know the sound it makes when, let's say you have a glass full of water, or like, there's your glass full of ice coffee. I don't think that's going to work, but a glass full of water.

It works. And... I know you don't know. You take a you take a wet finger. Yeah, Justin's doing it. And I mean, I could describe that to you. You probably know what that looks like. Except for how excited he looks like the look of like like child like Glee, as he's rubbing his wet finger on the rim of this glass. It's an attempt to make it make it noise. That is not the noise. You know, that is not the beautiful, they're missing it. Not that, that is not the lovely, resonant tone that I was referencing. You know when some people do it, and it makes a nice sound. I've seen people do that before.

They have those like at a coast side. They have the balls, you know, the ones where you rub it. Yeah. So yes, and people have known this for a long time. Like people have glasses of water long enough for somebody to idly rub their finger around the edge and then go, oh, it's about to dry fart noise.

Oh, no, no, listen to this. Like back to Rina's on stage, people write about, like, did you know this worked? And anything that uses like glass like that is that class of instruments. This is a family of instruments. Crystal of phones. Crystal of phones.

That's a nice one. And there are a variety of glass instruments, not just this armonica that we're focusing on. It has the medical history, but there are a variety of glass instruments, not just this armonica that we're focusing on. It has the medical history, but I feel like you're already a person talking about harmonics. Like a cognac kind of thing. Oh, monica. Gov.

It's a nice armonica, gov. Yep, that's perfect. There's my British accent. You sound like you're born with a variety of accents. I can't get any accents of anything. All I can do is try to soften my West Virginia and then it comes back, it comes roaring right back. But that's it, that's the accent of my accents. The first person to play an instrument of glass was actually, it was a glass harp, which is different. That is like rubbing your fingers around the rims of glasses

and water and all that. That's the glass harp, which is different than what we're talking about. But that was an Irish musician. And I think that's the glass harp, which is different than what we're talking about. But that was an Irish musician, Richard Pokhrich, and he would perform in London back in the 1740s. But, and this is, I think the reason I mentioned that, this part of it, even though this isn't the Armonica, this was like a precursor. This is what it would eventually inspire the Armonica where these other instruments.

And he had a, his career could have been an illustrious glass harp career was cut short because there was a fire in his room that killed him and destroyed his glass harp. I mentioned that because there's like a city. No, there's like a sinister history behind this instrument. You will see why people have weird ideas about it. Okay. So anyway, Edward DeLauval, who was a friend of Ben Franklin, okay, Ben Franklin is going to be part of this story. All of the stuff that Popridge had done, he extended those kinds of like, I want to also build on this glass harp technology and make instruments like that. And he would make sets of glasses that were sort of tuned, better tuned already, right?

Because like the amount of water in the glass has to do with the sound it makes and all that. So like, it would take a while. That's a pretty time intensive labor intensive process. So like, it would take a while. That's a pretty time intensive labor intensive process. So like, slowly add and subtract. I'm imagining like, with like a dropper taking out a few drops of water and checking the tone and doing it again. And anyway, so he came up with a better instrument that was easier to play and better tuned. And that kind of thing built on, you know, built on what we already knew. And, and of course, do I need to remind everybody

who Ben Franklin was? Our greatest president. No, he was not a president. You know that, right? Yeah, I know. I just, if you say it sometimes, and nobody comments on it, you get a lot of fun tweets.

It's worth it. It's worth it. He was the kite and the key guy. Yes, the kite and the key guy. Bifocals, post office, the word news, electricity. There you go. There's a delete. He couldn't quite make the cut in the Hamilton Bay did get that.

He was almost in Hamilton. And then I bring the Simbrace cover. He was in 1776 though. Yes, indeed. We all remember his great song and that one. Let's go fly a kite. No, I don't think that I don't think that's connected to 1776. Does everybody know 1776 as well as we do? Like when we reference that musical, are we the only ones? Are there people out there going,

what? Do you mean the year 1776? Like yes, he was in the year 1776. That's a musical. They may be thinking like If maybe if someone would sing a few bars go for it. I'll just get that down. Oh, yeah, there we go That'll like that'll hear that through the ceiling and he'll come like he'll dig a hole through the ceiling wait Did you need me hear that through the ceiling and he'll come like, he'll dig a hole through the ceiling. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on, I know. Hold on, wait, wait, I got this. Did you need me? I heard you call, anyway. So Ben Franklin, not in Hamilton, did make the cup,

but he did travel around Europe a bunch, so he did have that going for him. And he loved a lot of that stuff over there. He loved all the European stuff, the British stuff, he saw all of it, right? Well, real big fan of all. Love stuff. Everything that was going over there

outside of the budding United States. Gout. And Gout. Yep. And Gout. Anyway, there's the stuff we know about the Franklin. How many evictions, after how many evictions, do you think Ben Franklin did, where he was like,

certainly after this many evictions history, we'll forget my gout. Nope. Nope. You'll never forget your gout. So he saw one of these performances with the glasses in the water from Edward Delovel in Cambridge in 1761.

And he was just, he loved it. Fantastic. It seems in his area, right? Like it's cool, it's like science and music and it's weird and who in the world Ever thought of this and like it's it's very been friends. It's the exact same impulse that drives people just like Ben Franklin into the waiting arms of the Theraman some 200 odd years later It's the exact same impulse. So he thought he could do it better. He was like, I love all that you're doing, but I think we could make an instrument instead of just like a bunch

of glasses. I think we could make something better. So he sat to work inventing it. He invented lots of stuff. Why not this? So he invents his own instrument. He had to work with a glass blower because again, these are glass, glass-based instruments. I mean, you didn't play a lot of glass-based instruments. Who me? Yeah. I know you played other instruments that you made up. Never glass-based. Anyway, so you- You saw my skills with the iced coffee. Yeah, you need a lot of practice. So he worked with a glass blower named Charles James and he helped him create an instrument that he would, like I said, go on to call the Armonica. But basically, and I would really encourage you, like if you just Google Glass Armonica

or Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica, you will see pictures of this. I would encourage you to look at a picture of this thing because it's wild. So you use it with a trettle, like you, you know, with your foot, operate it, and it's got a bunch of glass bowls, all right, 37 of them, to be exact. And there's like an iron spindle in the middle. So you have this horizontal iron spindle, and then these glass bowls along iron spindle, and then these glass bowls along the spindle, sort of like kind of inside of one another a little bit, you know, stacked on their sides. Is that a good description? You're looking at one.

I think that that's fair. So you use the foot. It's hard to picture, but it's like a Christmas tree of glass bowls on its side kind of. Yes. Yes. Okay. Inside a wooden box of the big wheel on the side. Yeah. And you use a foot pedal to move it. The way that you make sound with this thing is that as it rotates as the bowl spin, you will moisten your fingers with some water and then rub them along the edge or just hold them along the edge as a ball, right? So instead of you having to move your finger or the ball moves and your fingers stay still, you got it. Got it. Same idea. And the rims were painted different colors,

so you knew what kind of a note, like it was going to produce, like A was dark blue, B was purple, so on and so forth. I don't need to tell you. No, I'm not going to tell it. That's boring, but you can look them up if you really want to know. And the cool thing about it is that you could play because they were so close together and you could get your fingers on multiple ones at the same time. You could play different chords and stuff a lot simpler than you could with the glass harp, right? What about sharps and flats? Yes, those are marked white.

Those are on there. The accidentalals. Yes, the accidentals. Those are marked white. So anyway, so you could play different chords and stuff and it was a more advanced sort of glass harp-esque instrument, right? And the sound was unique, I would say. I'm ready. So whenever you're ready. Now that we've sort of described the instrument, do you want to go ahead and play a sample of what this sounds like? Yes. Okay, so this is a clip of a guy named Thomas Block playing the glass of monica. Wow.

It's a cool instrument. Wait. What are you playing more? more. So it's like it's lovely. It's mystical. Yeah, it sounds like you're in a forest and there's various all around. They're like, what's up? Welcome to the forest. Kind of a serial. We got a pond over here you can check it out. Yeah, and it's beautiful. And so he makes this instrument, he's very proud of it. He plays it, by the way, Ben Franklin also played it. Like he created it and then also became like a... It would be patently wild

if he was like, looks good, put it in the closet. Well, I mean... That's just what I wanted to throw it down some stairs. And then it would break. Yeah, exactly. That's why, yeah. It's a cumbersome instrument. Like as soon as you make it, you know, like, well, isn't going anywhere. You're not going on tour with this with this. What ever room you put it in, that's the Armonica room from that from then on. Right. Like that's not. And also the kids can't go in the Armonica room.

Yeah, this is mommy daddy's armana correct. It's just for adults. Private armana cut adults. Like Indian food, it's for adults only. You recognize that like, kids like Indian food too. I'm also referencing something from the ads, which they will not have heard until later, even though we recorded them first. So when you hear that, you'll be like, whoa, big reveal.

No, and all kinds together. What is he talking about? We were just referencing the fact that we can't get our kids to eat so many foods, so many dishes. A lot of foods, yeah. We're working on it. Anyway, the point is, he makes it, he plays it, he other people are excited

want to learn this new instrument. And the first public performance is in 1762, so like the next year. So like he's on it. He hears this in 61 and he's like, I gotta get one. I've gotta make it better. And I'm gonna get this lady, Marianne Davies, to play it. Publicly, everybody loves it.

They're freaked out. It's weird. It's ghostly, beautiful. Should she place the glass bowl, the glass I'm on here? She must have been stoked in him. Finally. Wait, it was weird. Prior to that, when people were like, what do you do for a living? And she was like, I played the glass armana and they were like, the what hasn't been invented yet. Has it been invented yet? Actually, I have no idea what it is. I'm just pretty sure that's where I'm

going to act. I can do that. Somebody, Bill and Ted came back and told me. Exactly. Let's see what he says. And then they said, Cindy, Ms. High School, Voable Roles, and Left. I don't know what's happening. Anyway, and so like, initially the instrument becomes quite popular. Right?

Like everybody loves this thing. It sounds really cool and over a hundred different composers end up composing pieces of music, to specifically to be played on the glass armonica, Mozart, Beethoven. People are really excited about it. Remember Franz Mesmer from our Mesmerism? He's a Mesmerized cat. He becomes a big fan of it.

He plays it a lot and he incorporates it in his, like when he mesmerizes people, as part of what he does. He plays this instrument to sort of like prep them. Like, I mean, you could see like, if you're in this room and like, it's kind of spooky and this sort of spooky dude is about to like put you into a trance and then he starts playing that.

I believe, but for some people, yeah, it would set the mood. Right? So, and he actually, this is sort of just a weird side-fact. He gave lessons to Marie Antoinette. I'm a glass harmonica. Yeah. That's wild. So now you know that.

I, if you're a usual solbons listener, you probably think that city has truly lost the plot at this point. What does this have to do with our show? So this all sounds great. I've told you about this beautiful glass armanaca invented by Ben Franklin, creates these amazing otherworldly sounds

and everybody loves it. It's very cumbersome to move, cumbersome to move, but like this cool, cool brand new glass instrument. And that is great, except it's not. And I'm gonna tell you about the dark side of the glass harmonic. Oh no! After we go to the billing department.

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LAUGHTER Doctor Who? Yeah! So, we were about to say this has all been like a bunch of laughs and stuff but now you're going to tell me that there is actually a downside to this. This is so here's the weird thing. Obviously, you don't know a lot of people today who play the glass armanaca probably.

I'm sure some people do, but not not that many. Not not included in most orchestras, fair to say. How, so the popularity of it was pretty short lived. Actually, by 1830, nobody's playing the glass on a monochrome anymore. So that's a pretty quick period of time, 1762, first public performance by 1830, nobody gone. You know, most instruments kind of last longer than that. Yeah, is the short, short live, is it a FAD?

Would you say it's a FAD? Well, part of it was because there was no mechanism to make it louder and it's naturally not a very loud instrument, so it became difficult to incorporate into like an orchestra. I mean, imagine that. Like how do you amplify it? How do you, you know, it's just a very...

They could use a microphone. Well, no, it's... Doug. It's the late it's... Doh. It's the late 1700s that couldn't. But they didn't have a great way to make it louder. And it was a fairly quiet instrument. And so it was harder to incorporate into things, or to fill large auditoriums,

like in a big auditorium, you wouldn't hear this, right? You'd have to be sitting fairly close to hear the performance. So it was kind of, and it was very hard, as we've talked about, to move, like, to try to take this from place to place on a tour would have been almost impossible. It was very work-intensive to build. Certainly there were, like, I think all in all,

like, 4,000 or so of these things made. So there definitely were ones out there, but like it would not be easy to reproduce. But it was also because it developed, and this is probably why it went away, it developed this really strange and deadly reputation. Why? At first, it was just sort of like, as to why,

I mean, there are a couple different actual occurrences, documented occurrences that I'm going to tell you about. But even before things started happening, there was this sort of sense that it was doing something to you. People would listen to it and feel unsettled by it. Okay. Yes. I think that that's very had that reaction when I heard it.

They begin to think that like, if it's making me feel anxious, nervous, you know, a little, I don't even know how to say it. Like unsettled. Uncettled, I guess that's the best way to say it. I don't wanna say disturbed, that feels too intense. That maybe it's having some sort of effect on my health. Okay.

That concern began to be voiced, even before we had like instances of anything wrong. And many concern began to be voiced, even before we had instances of anything wrong. And many people began to believe that it could cause melancholy, which is what would have been a diagnosis at the time, probably depression, is usually what you mean by melancholy, or just this general what people would say it would cause madness, meaning that it could actually cause some sort of mental illness of some kind. But around, so there was this sort of sense that something was wrong with it, and then what came of that were some actual incidents that people began to connect to the glass armata.

I get in a superstitious sense. I mean, they happened, well, let me tell you. Okay. Okay. So the first woman that I mentioned to perform on it, Mary Ann Davies, she would go on tour with this, which I can't even imagine how that was possible. But she would tour with this with her sister, was a great vocalist, so her sister would sing alongside her playing the glass harmonica.

And Mary Ann Davies eventually had to stop because she developed severe melancholia later in life. Now, that could have happened to anyone. It may have had nothing to do with the instrument. It could have been bumped out by having to carry that heavy thing all over the nation. And every time something broke and then you got to find a glass blower and they've got to make it just right and that's a whole thing. There was another player who, see, and this was, so that's a direct connection, right?

Oh, she played it and then she became depressed. I think the instrument depressed her. Causing correlation, Yada Yada, but still. There was another player who died at a young age from what was known to be pneumonia, but a lot of people felt like it wasn't really pneumonia. It was the armonica. And they thought they were suspicious of that because she was young. Now I would argue that at the time we're talking the pre antibiotic era, dying of pneumonia is not strange, sad, tragic, yes, not unusual. But they began to, again, that built on this sort of feeling of like, uh-oh,

something's up. Look, these two women who are famous armonica players both die. Well, the other one doesn't die. She develops severe malncali, has some pain, and then this woman dies. People who played it began to, you had these anecdotal reports coming out of, you know, I played it for a while, and I felt really dizzy afterwards. of, you know, I played it for a while and I felt really dizzy afterwards. Or, you know, I played it and I got really bad cramps. I played it for a while and I felt extremely nervous afterwards. Or even, I played it for a while and I began to hallucinate. So you began to see these sort of reports like,

yeah, I played the glass of mon harmonica and it makes me feel weird. And this continues to build on these beliefs. They start to develop some like, when I say rules, I don't mean like these were hard and fast rules, but some general like advice as to when you should play the glass harmonica and when it should be avoided, like contraindications, so to speak. So basically, if you already have some sort of what they would have called at the time, like a nervous disorder, probably meaning anxiety or depression, something like that. If you have an operating heavy machinery.

Don't play the glass armonica. If you are well, if you do not have a nervous or any other disorder, if you're fine, if you're healthy, as far as you know, still be careful. Because if you play it too much, you'll get one was the thought. And then if you are playing it and like as a, you know, this is sort of a caution. If you start to feel melancholy while playing the glass, harmonica, either stop immediately or switch to a song that's happier. A fun one.

Take me after the ballgame perhaps. On the glass armonica, that would be a cheery tune on the glass armonica. That would sound nice. And there were people who wrote about it at the time. There was the treaty on the effects of music on the human body by J. M. Roger, which was published in 1803. And he wrote, it's melancholy tone plunges you into dejection to the point the strongest man could not hear it for an hour without fainting. This is like a medical commentary.

Yeah. Like if you listen to this music for an hour, you'll pass out. Yeah. That seems like easy to prove or disprove. And because it was so much like, because it was so trendy and new and popular, and so many people wanted to hear these performances

because they'd never heard it before. All of these stories spread a lot faster, right? So like the stories from the people who played it, doctors started writing about it, they started blaming all kinds of other things on it, like other than nervous disorders, it can cause domestic squabbles. It can cause a premature birth.

It can cause an animal to go into convulsions. It can kill you. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe we're not sure, but it's possible. It can burn down your room to me. You inside, maybe. And destroy itself.

Perhaps. We're not sure. Just a free that goes to live inside maybe. And all of these stories begin to like build up and and create all this buzz around it. And in that context, there was a performance in Germany. Someone was playing the glass armana. And during that performance and the accounts of it, I've performance and the accounts of it, I've read some different accounts of it and it's all sort of unclear. Someone died in the audience during the performance. Exactly what happened is not, I mean, somebody was like, they just stood up suddenly in the middle

of the performance, stared at the glass armanaica and killed over dead. I don't know. I don't know exactly what happened, but somebody died. And the result of that is that it was actually banned in that town. Like, okay, we are banning the glass armanaica in this German town. Nobody can play it here. I remember that Kevin Bacon maybe. And now we got to rub balls.

Rub balls. Put your finger in those holes. Please treat you. Play one by the Beatles. Wait, who's that? It's a pants thought around yet. Everybody run everybody run everybody run everybody run everybody run. I was gonna let you keep going. I. You had that look on your face. You were just threading me enough for rope. That's exactly what I was doing. So and then people were going to ask, like, why is it causing problems? Like, what are our theories?

Why do we think an instrument is causing people to die or develop illnesses? Or, yeah, what is what's the deal behind it? And the thought at the time was just that the sound was so complex that the brain becomes overstimulated and then can lead to all of these different things. There were some other like more like reading James Joyce. Some other like, well, it's the way I feel when I listen to jazz. My brain feels like it's going to explode. All those nerves.

No, I've said this before. All the neurons start firing at once. And I feel like I'm going gonna, I don't know, explode or something. I can't turn it off. You don't believe my dream of opening a real jazz club. I get it. I just can't, I can't listen to jazz, it makes me anxious,

it does, it makes me anxious. So there you go, I guess I understand this. Anyway, others thought that maybe these strange tones are summoning the dead. So that was the other flip side of it was this sort of like a cult belief that it's not something that's happening on a physiologic level or like a psychological level. It is actually summoning like legit spirits, ghosts, demons, dead people, whatever, whatever your belief of, spin on it was, and they are coming back and then they're, you know, giving us illness and murdering us and whatnot, because

that's what the sound is capable of doing. There were more claims of people getting sick while playing, while listening, they just be in a mount, there was a rumor that maybe somebody, you know, had died of suicide after one of these, after playing it for too long. So all of these rumors mount, all of this. And finally, it just falls out of favor. Everybody's like, forget it. We don't wanna play it any more.

It's not worth it. It's just, yeah, it's too dangerous. It's not worth it. The sound creeps me out. Let's just forget it. And it's also like real, I mean, the bowls keep breaking. The bowls just keep on making bowls. So, it falls out of favor.

Now Franklin, for him, by the way, if you're interested, what was his take on this, right? He invented it. He invented this instrument. He's playing it. He is like probably talking about how cool it is. That seems like what Franklin would have done. Like if people asked him, he'd be super proud of it.

And humble brag about it and all this. But he never bought into the hype. He insisted till the day he died. He played the Armonica and said, there's nothing wrong with this thing. You all are ridiculous. You guys are just sad. You're just sad.

You're just sad. Calm down. We don't have TV yet and you're sad. That's all it is. Some day we'll have TV. Some day we'll have TV. Some day we'll have TV, don't worry. Just chill out, watch some friends. It'll be invented soon.

I'll say. Bill and Ted told me. No Ted told me that I play glass harmonic and I chill out with some friends. Anyway, so Franklin Blader to his whole life never had any problems. In case you're in a one. So for the gal.

Well, now there you go. He didn't have Gout. Was it the glass or monarchy? You tell me. So like I said, there's actually about 5,000 more bills. I said 4,000. It was actually about 5,000. If you there's still a few that exist today, as you can imagine,

many were broken over time because they were fragile instruments. And you can go look at them in different museums. There was like the Franklin family like donated one after a while to a museum because they were like, listen, our kids keep trying to break the bulls with spoons and it's too dangerous to keep it in the house. So like, could you take it and keep it safe?

So everybody can see this great thing that Uncle Ben or great Uncle Ben or grandpa Ben or whatever he was to them did. I don't know which members of the Franklin family it was. But anyway, so like you can go look at them still, the original ones made by Franklin. And you can, and like, interests has cropped up through the years.

Like you've seen renaissance of this, like in like the 1930s, it came to brief popularity again. We're some people were trying to play it and build new ones and that kind of thing and like make the instrument a little easier to transport and all that kind of stuff and There was a another in the 80s in the 80s it came back again like there were some pieces written on glass or monica There was some interest in bringing it back and it's certainly still around like there's still people playing it

There's some music that incorporates it not in a huge extent, but it's still out there for sure It was used in Star Trek 2 the wrath of Con For a Spock's theme. Yeah along with the Pam flute classic James Hordle school Yeah, I didn't know that song, but I knew you would yeah, so it's certainly been used Some have theorized like what was happening? What was the deal with this thing? They've thought about like was it led in the glass? That's a popular theory like well, it was because they would use leaded glass back in Franklin's day. And so people were getting lead poisoning from rubbing their fingers along these glass bowls.

And that's why the people who played the glass armonica were typically the ones who became sick. Now, two problems with that theory. One, what about the people in the audience? Well, they weren't rubbing the bowls. One, what about the people in the audience? Well, they weren't rubbing the balls. Oh, I So like why were they getting sick? Why was it affecting people in the audience if that was the case if it was led in the glass? and the other thing is not so certainly I would not advise like Tell you what go find some lead a glass and rub your hands on it as much as possible and let's see how much lead you get in your system But you're not going to transfer a ton of lead into like you know some leaded glass and rub your hands on it as much as possible and let's see how much lead you get in your system.

But you're not going to transfer a ton of lead into like, you know, transdermally through the skin by rubbing glass bowls. Like you're not going to get a huge dose of lead that way. It's hard to imagine that somebody could have actually been poisoned by lead in this manner. On top of the fact that at this time period, like in the late 1700s, led was everywhere. People were constantly getting exposed to led. Like lots of people had low level led

of poisoning going on anyway. And if you weren't accidentally being exposed to led in your day to day, led was in a lot of medicines at the time. So your doctor might be prescribing you something that contained led. So the idea that these bowls would have been enough exposure when everybody was already getting, you know what I mean? Like this wasn't enough.

This was a drop in the lead bucket, basically. So it probably has nothing to do with lead in the glass, which takes us back to what was happening. Brown note. I mean. It's like the brown note for depression. Yeah, there's like a certain frequency you can play, it makes you poop your pants. This is like that, but it's like a certain combination of notes on this glass harmonica and makes you go wild and

get sad or whatever, you know, affect the hazelnut. It's everybody different. It'd be really interesting to do a study and see like with neurons firing, look at patterns and brain activity while listening to this instrument and see if there is something about this collection of sounds repeated over and over again that has some sort of effect. That would be really interesting, Sid.

Your baby would be interested in that. Well, my job. That would be really interesting, Sid. I know. I would be interested in that. One of the interesting. Oh, my job, it's actually very interesting. I have this old instrument that barely exists, and I rub it to see if it makes people, makes people insane. And then I try to figure out why.

It's very interesting. I'm just saying, I think it's weird that just, I mean, like, it just, all these stories mounted and then it just went away and it's never really regained the popularity it could have had. I mean, I don't know if part of it is just, it was a very impractical instrument. I mean, there's still, it's not the only glass instrument. There are other crystal of phones. So, like, this isn't the only thing that would be difficult to transport and you had to

be careful with. I mean, all instruments are fragile in a sense, you know? I mean, you can break a guitar. You can break anything. That's a great point. I just mean, I don't know why this instrument, it's a mystery. I don't know why you don't do more episodes that you're outside of medical science and because you're understanding a lot of this stuff is very impressive. I just mean, I don't know, to this day, it's a mystery. Why did this instrument, why did it, is it just that it sounds a little creepy? Is it just that simple, like that the sounds, even if you're playing a happier song on it,

it has that sort of like echoey mystical sound to it that makes you feel a little out of this world. And so I don't know, maybe it's just that simple, but that's the story of the glass or monica. Thanks so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed yourself and you weren't driven to the Pravity by that brief clip that you heard about the instrument. We should have warned people like listen. This is kind of like the ring except probably made up. I heard as I was listening to different somebody was playing um the Harry Potter thing on it the Hagrid's they're not Hagrid's um

thing on it, the Hagrids, they're not Hagrids, um, now, head, head, headwigs, headwigs, the Owl. Yes, gotcha. Yeah, I think it's called like, headwigs theme or so. Anyway, yeah, it's that that anyway. It's, I wonder if it's played on the glass,

Armonica, because it sounded right to me. It sounded like the way it sounded in the movie. I actually don't really like Harry Potter as much anymore. I said, I don't know if you've heard, but the creator of the franchise has some problematic Takes on people I'm really surprised. He's so I am not oh my gosh. No, I don't know I I saw the movies a long time ago back before we knew Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Thank you. So thank you so much Bill and Ted go tell past me so I So I should be willing to go tell past me. So I don't want to

get away. If you're listening, go word everybody. If you could do a quick stop off at the Pangolin store and just tell people to not eat them, that'd be great. Actually, Bill and Ted, there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff, Bill. Now that I think about it, Ted, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed yourself. This is hugely exciting. If you go to McElroyMerch.com, you'll find a pen of the month for February.

You can only buy it February, and the pen is called Bookstore Travel. It's a stack of books. This is a pen you'll only enjoy if you listen to our episode about the need to poop in bookstores. Mariko Aoki. Mariko Aoki, yes. Yes. No, I'm not. Yes.

I must pronounce that on the episode. I just fixed it. That's why I was saying it right. The proceeds for that pin, all proceeds go to the National Black Women's Justice Institute. There is also another we have a I'm not ashamed of my clown husband bumper sticker. I'm still not. And unfortunately, the president's map will go towards the Huntington Children's Museum, which is a children's museum that I and some other folks are trying to get going. So it's very funny bumper sticker designed by Jacob Bailey. You can go check that totally out. That will do it for us. Oh, thanks to the taxpayer's fees.

So there's some medicines in the intro and algebra program that you're all again to buy those things. Maccorder Merch.com. The pin of the month is just this month. The bumper sticker will be there, you know, while supplies last. But that's gonna do it for us. Till next time, my name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Sydney McRoy. And it's always don't. Jolay Hull in your head. Alright!