Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Inside a Doctor's Bag

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

Take a thrilling journey through time with Dr. Sydnee and Justin as they travel to the 1800s and peer inside a doctor's bag. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Saubones 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, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. I'm ready and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tooth misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McRoy And I'm Sydney McRoy. Well, we had a fun weekend said we did Justin. I wouldn't spoke at the
Starting point is 00:01:14 Columbus game developers next row. Hello to everyone who was was so cool to us there. You gave everybody great advice Grace showed us a colon a knitted colon was there. You gave everybody great advice. Grace showed us a colon, a knitted colon. That was impressive. And Charlie got to eat lots of mini cheese balls that were available backstage. So appreciated. So and we also got to go to one of our favorite places on earth. Cosi, the center of science and industry. That's right. Now when you say it that way, the center of science and industry, all that while I was going to say that doesn't sound as exciting, but actually to to you are listeners, maybe it does. Maybe it center of science and industry. All that while I was gonna say that doesn't sound as exciting, but actually to you, our listeners, maybe it does.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Maybe it does, maybe it's right in your alley. Maybe you're on the same page as us. Coast size one of my favorite places, because it's basically a big, amazing science museum in Columbus, Ohio. Yeah. And if you have never been there and you live in that area anywhere around there, it's great. Top flight. Favorite place to go as a kid.
Starting point is 00:02:03 And as an adult. Even after I switched buildings, it's still a delight. Yeah and as an adult even after it switched buildings it's still it's still a delight yeah I didn't even realize it did yeah I used to be downtown next to the first Wendy's well Kosa is amazing and it also gave me an idea for this week's show I'm ready Sydney so in in Kosa they have it's called progress I think and it's like a progress is the name of the section. The time traveling tunnel through. I think if it refers to a tiny town, it could be an embellishment of childhood that you used to walk through a little literal tunnel
Starting point is 00:02:34 to get to this section. And I think there used to be cavemen. I don't really remember. But you got through two old timey towns from like the 1800s and the like 1950s and 60s. It's like my favorite thing. Like one of my favorite places. And it's supposed to be about like the progress of technology and stuff between the two.
Starting point is 00:02:52 But they also have a little display that I was looking at in the old 1800s store, one of the store windows of like medicine and old, you know, patent medicines and a doctor's medicine bag from that era. And I found myself glued to the window trying to read every label on every bottle. And I thought, you know, it might be a neat idea to talk about what would be in a doctor's bag in whatever era of history. All right, well, Sydney, I've got an old time you doctor's bag right here.
Starting point is 00:03:25 Let me just set it on the table. And that's the sound it made. Open it up. Greek. And let me turn my cape over to see what kind of noise. It's not bad. That's pretty good. I like this.
Starting point is 00:03:41 This is like an old-timey radio show now. And what do we find in time? So I'm going to talk about a doctor's bag of the 1800s. This is probably geared towards the later 1800s because of some of the specific inventions that I'll name because obviously these things evolved quickly through these years. And thank you, Kosa, for the inspiration. So generally speaking, a doctor in this time period would want to carry very practical items with them that they were sure to use on most or all of their patients because they were hauling it around usually making house calls. So you don't want to
Starting point is 00:04:18 carry a bunch of unnecessary stuff in there. These also, if you think about it, what kind of bag they would be carrying, if you think of the classic big leather black bag, there's that. But for some, it would even be more of a saddle bag because they would be riding horseback on the front here. So cool. To go see exactly. So Dr. Whitten medicine woman. It very much is. It's very cool. So it could be like a saddlebag. It could be like the traditional black bag. There were like medical boxes and cases as well
Starting point is 00:04:51 that was better for that guy. I probably got a lot of crap for the doctor at bags. Think about that big lung head just carrying around a big dumb box full of medical stuff. What a jerk. Just get it back. It was like, no, maybe it's like daring to be different.
Starting point is 00:05:05 Like the kid at school who would carry the rollie bag. It has a rollie bag bag. Not like the cardboard and the tape at the bottom is old. So it just like opens it in opportune moments and does all this stuff on a sheet. I don't mean like a cardboard box. So like I said, they were traveling a lot. So it had to be something that they could carry around.
Starting point is 00:05:21 A lot of what would be inside a bag would be tools as opposed to a lot of medicines, although as we'll talk about some doctors, maybe more prone to carry more medications than others. And inside the bag, if you open it up, there were usually lots of little compartments, no matter what your bag looked like, you wanted lots of little compartments
Starting point is 00:05:38 so that you could keep all your tools somewhere, and it might be numbered or labeled, usually like little numbers. I have an old, um, medic military medical bag that I got when I was in Prague. And it's neat because when you flip it open, it has little numbers at each compartment. I'm assuming like you would routinely put this medicine in this num, you know, you would know just by the number.
Starting point is 00:06:01 But anyway, this was pretty, this was pretty standard to have it all kind of labeled and keep everything in order. So let's talk about the tools first, because most doctors, especially like general practitioners, but also surgeons, would be carrying tools over medicines in their bag. So one essential tool now, as was then, would be something like a stethoscope. Anytime after 1816, it would be an actual real-dose stethoscope, because that's when they were invented. But prior to that, it would be like an ear trumpet.
Starting point is 00:06:37 I bet that's tough. There can be much better than just like putting your ear on their chest and helping with the best. It's a little bit better. And it's one of those skills that you would have to acquire. It's not, you know, I mean, a Seth scoop is a skill too. Do you know, I don't want to pretend like the first time you pick it up, you're instantly great at hearing heart sounds, but it's not probably as
Starting point is 00:06:56 difficult a skill as the ear trumpet would have been to acquire. So you had to have that. You would have had some things like a folding magnifying glass. Look at it, it warrants closer. Yes, to look at various lesions and whatnot more closely. And because they just look so sciencey, right? You want to have lancets. Now, why would you have lancets?
Starting point is 00:07:17 To lance boils. Yes, sure. Woo! To lance boils. That would be a great reason to have a lance. I've got to have been in 1800s doctors What I'm starting to think you would also want to have have Lansitz or a small kit of scalples or Maybe a flame. Do you remember the flame we talked about the flame?
Starting point is 00:07:34 Oh, what's the flame? I know we talked about it. It looks like a little like pocket knife like Swiss Army knife kind of I think it's all folded up and then you unfold it and it's got a bunch of triangular shaped blades that are great for opening a blood vessel in the event one needs to be bled. So a lot of these tools were mainly for bleeding, your patient, which of course, we don't use this often today, at least not for that purpose.
Starting point is 00:08:02 And as you go into the later 1800s, some of these would be less likely, you know, you wouldn't necessarily find a flame because bleeding had begun to lose interest. Yeah. Yeah, it's not as hot of a, I was going to say like efficacy, but like it was never, it was never effective. It was just people stopped doing it so much. You might have an eye dropper for, you know, drops in eyes. For putting drops in eyes. And after 1867, you may have a thermometer because thermometers, actually, the original thermometer was invented prior to that, but the original thermometer was huge. It was very long and it was very fragile. And it was four butts only.
Starting point is 00:08:43 It was very long and it was very fragile. And it was four butts only. Well, I mean, that is the most accurate temperature. Just. You can't put it in the mouth. It was that big. It's got to be for butts. Think about it. I am, and I'm still not clear.
Starting point is 00:08:59 It's like, think about how silly that would look to have a giant thermometer in your mouth. I mean, it's very long. What do you think it looks less silly to have a giant thermometer sticking out of your butt? No, but that you would have to do them in privacy. So nobody would see you. A rectal temperature is the most accurate temperature, to be fair. Anyway, they were very long and they were fragile and like they had mercury in them.
Starting point is 00:09:20 So they weren't the best thing to just carry around in a doctor's bag. So after 1867, you see the invention of small portable thermometers that are easier for you to actually take from place to place and check for fevers. It must be exciting. Prior to those, doctors had to be pretty good at feeling foreheads.
Starting point is 00:09:38 That seems so scatter shot, say, that's like a nerfing. But I guess like what? Guess on the other hand, he's got fever. What do you want to do? I don't know. I don't know. Nothing. Not different, I guess, from what I thought. No, I mean, the treatment's going to be the same, right? Bleed him. Bleed him. Bleed him. No, you know, actually they've done studies to like test how good parents are at feeling foreheads on kids and predicting feverish. And they're actually pretty decent. Yeah, I feel like I have a pretty good sense of it,
Starting point is 00:10:07 which really? Yeah, yeah. I think I mean, we're wrong sometimes. We do an okay job. Yeah, we could get thermometers now, though. So like get a thermometer. Yeah, get a thermometer. No, along the lines, along the lines of bleeding, you could also get a scarificator. Do you remember those things? They're like these little spring-loaded round cylindrical devices that you would hold on your skin and then push a button and multiple blades would spring out and cut you at once
Starting point is 00:10:39 so that you could bleed somebody more effectively and efficiently. Or they were later used for vaccination against smallpox. That was part of how that was performed was using this device. So you may have had one of those in your kit that would look particularly intimidating, I think. You would have a small selection of things like forceps, tweezers, scissors,
Starting point is 00:10:58 just really kind of practical things you might need for removing various debris or a small sewing kit for suturing for stitching people up that kind of thing. You might have something like some scales to measure out dosage. If you are going to mess with medicines, you might need some scales because you're probably going to you're probably not bringing pre-mixedixed pre-prepared medications most of the time a lot of it doctors are Kind of measuring out for themselves either they're they're creating for themselves or they're buying
Starting point is 00:11:37 Concentrated kind of mixes that that have to be diluted and stuff So anyway, you might have some scales and like a mortar and pestle would be a very common thing you might find if you were going to carry a lot of medications. And along those same lines, syringes and needles would be pretty essential if you're going to administer medications, especially one of the earliest things that a doctor might carry with them standardly would be some kind of opiate. Oh, sure. So morphine or something or heroin. That'll fix them up.
Starting point is 00:12:04 Right. And so you might have something like that And and you would need a syringe you'd also want a syringe for flushing things out So like just no needle on it just the syringe part that you could fill with water and flush things out Just to clean out wounds and stuff we did that in school. We had We would get like a syringes without a needle in them. And you spray each other. Yeah. They're great for squat guns.
Starting point is 00:12:29 Not the needle though. Not the needle. Leave, leave the needle out if you're going to let your kid play with it. There's my advice to you. Man, and they say this show isn't educated. Several different sizes of speculums for various orifices of the body. Remind me, what's the speculum? A speculum, it depends on exactly what we're talking about. You can use a gynecologic speculum, which is a duck bill looking device that opens and
Starting point is 00:12:56 you can use to insert inside the vagina and take a look in there. You can use various speculums to get a better look at the rectum or there are ear speculums and there are no speculums. I'll just like devices that help you get a closer look inside of North. It sounds like a spatula. Because like people don't call anything a spatula. Not a spatula. No, I don't. It's not a spatula. I'm just saying the term
Starting point is 00:13:21 Speculum sounds like it's used for as many things as spatula is. There's no good consensus on what a spatula is. It irritates me. That's a good point. It's just a kind of a flat metal thing with the lines. That's what I have to have, like, spatula city spatulas. Right. But like, also people call the like little flat spoons spatula.
Starting point is 00:13:38 But that's a spoon you love. It's a spoon you love. CUMS spoon you love. Speaking of spoons, you might have an ear spoon in your kit. The greatest segue I've ever done in the show is the cleanest thing. Thank you. I'm sorry, I called this engine to it. You might have an ear spoon, which would be, as you can imagine, a little spoon used for
Starting point is 00:13:57 cleaning out your ear. Sometimes they would get really fancy and have a toothpick on one end and a spoon on the other. Clean your teeth, Clean your ears. Exactly. And there were very fancy ones. They're like gold. You can look at pictures if you're ever curious.
Starting point is 00:14:10 If this is the kind of thing you're into, which apparently I am, look at pictures of old ear spoons on the internet. And you can find really fancy like gold plated and like, you know, dual in-layed ear spoons. So there you go. You might have a small kit of probes, various long sticks that you're...
Starting point is 00:14:31 You can gas probe things with. You may have cupping devices. We've talked about cupping on this show before that for a good bit of history and actually currently some people believe that cupping would in one way shift humors that was the origin origin of it was to pull humors away from or towards different parts of the body. And so you would have the little glass cups, they were usually glass at the time and then some lint that you would have with them so that you could set fire to the lint to use it to create a vacuum inside the cup and then put that on the skin and with them so that you could set fire to the length to use it to create a vacuum inside the cup and then put that on the skin and create a big nasty ugly looking bruise. For medicine.
Starting point is 00:15:11 For medicine. And then maybe catch your patient on fire. Who knows? Try not to. She thinks lively. A trafine. For trepination. Ah, good.
Starting point is 00:15:20 There's my guy. Yeah. So you might want to have a handheld little head drill. Just in case, I'm just going to go. Yeah, and I mean, largely at this point in history, they were being used for traumatic skull injuries. So somebody gets stepped on by a horse and we know that the, we didn't quite understand why, but the brain was going to swell.
Starting point is 00:15:40 We know that those pieces of skull are going to be a problem. And so drilling a hole in the head would have been not an inappropriate treatment at the time. The good kind of trepination that does exist. Now, this was still done under absolutely no sterile conditions. Oh, yeah. No, you're not washing your hands or the trafine or anything. So I wouldn't say it's like the best kind of trepination.
Starting point is 00:16:01 No, yeah, but it's like, Yeah, but not done for fun. Yeah. You may have dental tools. A lot of doctors at the time would pull teeth too. Sure. Because why not? They were there. Yeah, they're already. And it was a great show.
Starting point is 00:16:14 You could do that in front of people and earn a few extra bucks. Perfect. And some fame. You would probably have one of those little alcohol lamps. There's just for like, you know, those little teeny lamps that run on alcohol. Those are very common to find in doctor's kits. And you might have some things like little glass bottles or slides or something if you want to collect samples
Starting point is 00:16:33 to take back to wherever your doctor lab is to analyze. And wait for someone to amend the microscope. Wow, I think we have the, yeah. And we have, and you might have some leather straps or like turn a kit kind of things to use or maybe because you needed restraints if you were going to do something incredibly painful. And then like I said, without getting into the medicines too much yet, it would be very common to have some little ampules full of opiates of some sort. That was very common just for pain relief. And then after the 1860s cocaine was a very common thing
Starting point is 00:17:11 to find in a lot of doctor's kits. So. What about snacks? You have a major snack when I was assuming a doctor on the go probably has a cliff or something, right? At least at least in there. One of those little things that I love,
Starting point is 00:17:24 one of those little containers that have like cheese and nuts and raisins. Buck wild for those things. Like the little trays. I can't have cubes of meat right now. Just cheese. That's right, right, right. They're delicious. But no, unfortunately, these old-timey doctors would not have had them. You wouldn't find bandages.
Starting point is 00:17:53 I thought this was worth mentioning. You would not, if you meant, if you noticed, I didn't mention anything about any kind of bandaging material, it would have been really bulky for doctors to carry around, because we're talking about cloth bandages at the time. Right, right. Like, come up with something.
Starting point is 00:18:07 It would have been a big space, a waste of space in your bag and you really would have expected the patient's family to supply those to you. So basically you show up and if you need bandages, the patient's family is going to tear up some sheets or whatever to give you those. I had to guess, and this is like complete conjecture on my heart, but if I had to guess, I would bet you probably had to be ready to deal with like first aid type stuff on your own. Yes.
Starting point is 00:18:35 By the time you know, there was no EMT there. Yeah, right. No, you're exactly right. And so like, well, yeah, yeah, so the bandages probably would have been come up from the family. And that kind of thing was actually expected. We mentioned this a long time ago in one of our childbirth episodes that when you went to the hospital to have a baby, you would bring your own not like bandages but like sheets
Starting point is 00:18:58 and blankets and towels and all that stuff, like a basin to put water in. Like you provided all that stuff that just they didn't have it for you back then There wasn't any need for antiseptic use mention you might have noticed I didn't mention that because we didn't know that that was a thing There was a need for antiseptic. Well, there was a need But we didn't understand it. We didn't believe it. We were still really mad that some of ice brought up hand washing and Decided not to do it. Well at some point in this time period, depending on where you are. But anyway, so we weren't washing our hands and we didn't worry about antiseptic. And, uh, and again, about delivering babies, most docs weren't doing it.
Starting point is 00:19:33 So you wouldn't need any kind of obstetrical equipment. Uh, back then it was largely midwives. And especially if we're talking about doctors who are going from house to house, um, if people are having home deliveries, midwives are doing that. So you really wouldn't see a lot of docs carrying a ton of obstetrical equipment around, unless that was something that they had a specialized interest in, or they knew that's what they were coming for. No blood pressure cuffs, no sphig mominometers. Oh, this seems like it's a natural part of the not around yet. Doctors bad not around around. No, okay.
Starting point is 00:20:06 So what are medicine? Well, Justin, I'm going to tell you about medicine. But first, why do we head to the billion department? Let's go. So you promised me Sydney medicine and I want medicine. That's right, Justin. So like I said, any doctor might carry medicines with them, and especially if they had medicines they were making, because you, that was not uncommon to find a doctor who also kind of made
Starting point is 00:20:34 their own little concoctions. But specifically, if you were a homeopath, you probably carried a collection of... Lies. I don't know, I was going to say medications, but the loose use of the word there. Lucy, Lucy, you've made up some bottles of some bottles of water. Or perhaps an herbalist, you probably would carry a separate box full, not just dedicated to your medicines. I mean, because you, you may be able to fit that all in the one doctor bag, but you'll see a lot of old medical kits
Starting point is 00:21:07 that are just the medicines kind of separate from everything else. And you would carry some of the basics, such as like some anti, some of the early like antibacterials. We didn't know that's what they were, but we knew that these were good for putting on wounds. They did something, we didn't know why.
Starting point is 00:21:23 Things to make like poltuseseltuses, like to help things heal or what we thought were drawing out poison toxin, we didn't know again infection. Just contemplated by ear. Yeah, that kind of thing. You might have some willobark, which was used for pain because it was made to aspirin. Exactly. Thanks for it's very good. Acetacillac acid.
Starting point is 00:21:47 Acetacillac acid. Now you're supposed to be able to see the bill. Acetabilla killer, killic acid. Acetacillac acid. Acetacillac, salic. Stop.
Starting point is 00:21:56 How cold an acid. You might have some medicinal brandy in there. So just some alcohol with something in it, because why not? Lodnam was a staple. I'm going to, I'm going to make a line of brandy called It's Medicine, and that'll be the brand. And you just say, Oh, no, this, it's not something. And so, and you, and you, and you definitely, like I said, we want to have some Lodnam, because it was good for everything, because it made you feel so good. And especially back in the 1800s,
Starting point is 00:22:25 you would give it to a woman who complained about anything because that's what we did. Sorry. Sorry, everybody. So you had to have the lawdnum. Lawdnum for the ladies. Lawdnum for the ladies. Ladies lawdnum. A lot of these that I'm going to talk about maybe in the form of powder. So you would actually, they would like wrap them in little squares of paper, like newspaper, or something like that. So you would have a bunch of teeny little packets. See that in the old time you movies a lot.
Starting point is 00:22:52 Like a little packet of some. Take a powder. That was like a common, just take a powder. It was a common fray, turn of phrase. There might be some liquids or tonics or tinctures in there. A lot of things that might need to be reconstituted. So like this, you know, you can take a couple drops of this.
Starting point is 00:23:06 So there's your eye dropper. Take some drops of this and put it in some brandy. And there you go. Some kind of alcohol to reconstitute it. That was very common. And then some doctors would take the time to actually make their own tablets out of some of these different things.
Starting point is 00:23:21 It just depended on, again, kind of how into it they were. Yeah. How much do you want to work? This is very, kind of how into it they were. Yeah. This is very, this is a very loose science at this point. This is more of a hobby. Uh, so you're, you're probably need a machine to make pills, right? At least some sort of tool, I would think. Yeah, something to press it into a pill shake. I didn't find any mention of that, um that just because I think it would be bulky.
Starting point is 00:23:46 So I think you would probably want to make them at home and carry them with you or just carry the powder. It'd be easier and lighter. And you could think about how many you could stack of just little packets of powder in the bag. In addition, some things you might carry around. And a lot of these, I actually was able to just find a bunch of old medical kits and like look at all the different bottles in them and try to figure out what were common, common themes.
Starting point is 00:24:10 Cream of tartar to use as a laxative was not uncommon. Yeah, I didn't know that it would do that. I mean, don't try that at home. There's something called... You can consider how I may have my rings. There's something called there's something called mana Not that mana Not from heaven. No, it's from plants. It's just plant material that again will work as a laxative
Starting point is 00:24:37 So it was not uncommon to find a bottle labeled mana and it would be from various plants Again anything that worked as a laxative was very popular There was something called turkey rhubarb, which I only enjoyed because the bottle actually said, tincture of fine turkey rhubarb. It's delicious. Which it does. It sounds pretty good. Turkey rhubarb. I don't know what that was supposed to do for you.
Starting point is 00:24:54 I just don't like turkey rhubarb. Some castor oil. Some peppermint water. Inemetic. I guess I should say. I don't want to get it. Some peppermint water water which would help with vomiting, diarrhea. Yes. You mean far? Yes. Yes. Lavender was a common herb you would find like some
Starting point is 00:25:22 sort of preparation of lavender for digestion and depression. So that's a nice little combo for you. And listen, if you're sad about how much of a tummy hurts, it's the perfect remedy. There you go, then take some lavender. We've talked before about Epsom salts. Those are very popular for soaking things in and at times they would advise in adjusting them. I would not advise that. But you would carry some Epsom salts with you. And then you may have some
Starting point is 00:25:52 patent medicines in there. Now, not all doctors were fans of the patent medicines. Many of them found them to be kind of hoaxes as they were because they contained things like alcohol and opium and... Well, and I would imagine if you're a doctor, you probably have a healthy amount of... If you're a working physician who's actually trying to do science-based stuff, you probably have a pretty healthy skepticism of non-doctors trying to sell medicine. Exactly. They were helping their basement.
Starting point is 00:26:22 Exactly. And so, there's definitely friction there. So not all doctors would have carried any patent medicines. And the ones they would have chosen to carry probably, they would have been pretty particular about. But then you find some patent medicines that were using ingredients that even doctors were recommending. So these might have been like easy preparations for them to carry along with them. So like one example would be something like Dr. Steeer's chemical, a pol-opodel doc,
Starting point is 00:26:52 opodel doc. This was a word I was unfamiliar with. That's not, it's a fairly clumsy portmanteau, it seems. Yes. So opodel doc is a kind of cure all, and I had to read about what this is, because Dr. Stiers is not the only one who made one of these. His in particular was used for aches, pains, bruises, it was made of soap, spirit of wine, camp for rosemary, oil, and sometimes spirit of ammonia. But the original Obo-del-doc dates back to Paracelsus, who we've talked about before, bombastic parisalsus, who made a liniment from it
Starting point is 00:27:26 that was maybe named for the different herbs that were in it. That's this is one theory, opaponax, bellabadelium and aristolokia, and maybe from that that he put it together into opodel doc. I don't know. Theories is good as any, I guess. Where else did he come up with it? I-Doc. I don't know. Theories is good as any, I guess.
Starting point is 00:27:47 Where else did he come up with it? That's not like a portman, too. And yeah, I mean, it sounds like something that probably was just kind of stuck together. It does not roll off the tongue. And these were things that were already being used for various medicinal purposes. He's also had soap, alcohol, campfire, and then could have some other herbal elements in addition to those. And this theme of an opodeldok became so popular
Starting point is 00:28:12 kind of in culture and like, what everybody recognized as a kind of cure all that someone might have made of very substances that the name, Ode opodeldok,oc was like a stock character for a lot of different like plays and writings from the time. So you would have a physician that was named that in the play and it would be like, they would kind of be like comic relief. Poe used the name as a pseudonym for a character in the literary life of thing-em-bob-esquire.
Starting point is 00:28:46 And this opa del doc would have been very widely used during post-life, so I'd never heard of this before. Opa del doc, it's kind of not full. It is, it is. But you may have found some variety of opa del doc in there. Usually a sasparilla-based medicine, those were very popular at the time. So heirs, saspar. medicine was a very common one.
Starting point is 00:29:08 There were lots of other ones, but anything was S.B.R.L.A. wish we got an opportunity to say more. S.B.R.L.A. Celery based medicines were incredibly popular. We've talked about Lydia Pinkham's before. She's great. Yeah, find it. You can still find it. Do you think comes out there? Yep. So then the kind of vegetable based medicines or cellular based medicines are very popular. Blistered plasters, like a mustard plaster, these were to use, we've talked about these before, it uses like counter irritant.
Starting point is 00:29:34 So you have inflammation or infection or something going on somewhere in the body and you put this plaster on healthy skin somewhere else. It will irritate the skin and cause inflammation there, drawing blood away from the side of injury illness and making you better. Making you more annoyed. So you might find these in a doctor's kit. Maybe some strict 9. Okay, so you just got too much. Just, well no, we've talked about that strict 9 was used in medication for a while.
Starting point is 00:30:00 So maybe some strict 9, maybe some mercury. It was a very popular cure for syphilis. Oh. Also in the form of calamel for any kind of stomach complaint. Perfect, man. So thank you, Pat. As you sure did have a wide range of uses. So mercury would have,
Starting point is 00:30:15 mercury would, it would not be uncommon to find mercury in a doctor's bag. And then hopefully didn't open because that's like the whole day. That's it. Well, that's what those old thermometers were probably good for. Yeah. They just broke open and then you let your patient eat what was inside. I guess. And they cure their syphilis. Anything that generally caused sweating or
Starting point is 00:30:33 peeing or vomiting or pooping was considered a good thing. I mean, drive all the way out to the person's house on a horse and they want something to happen. Well, actually, you hit on a point I wanted to make, which is that a lot of times patients did not feel that they had been cared for unless they were given some kind of medication. And so medicines like these that would produce some sort of visible result were very popular because then you knew the doctor gave you something that worked, which could have been a very powerful placebo effect.
Starting point is 00:31:10 And in fact, some doctors actually carried literal placebo with them. Just the light. They would carry sugar pills. That's so good. Just to give, if they knew it was something there was nothing to do for it, or they thought was gonna go away on its own,
Starting point is 00:31:24 or whatever, but they also knew that the patient would be very dissatisfied with that answer They would give them sugar pills. That's so good. So that was actually now This is totally unethical. We do not do that anymore. That is not a thing that we do But no, we don't we really don't are you waking? I'm not Stop telling people that Why are you winking? No, I'm not. Stop telling people that. So that's how I'm winking.
Starting point is 00:31:45 And a portable drug kit could hold anywhere from 12 to 36 vials of some sort of powdered medicine, just depending on. And you can, again, these are really cool to look up. I'll just the different varieties. Are they cool? Are they cool to look at? Yes, they're very cool to shut up. In just one note, if you were a military surgeon,
Starting point is 00:32:03 a lot of this, you would probably find useless. A battlefield surgeon would want to carry a lot of some sort of opiate for pain control, which makes sense. Lansets and scalpals and sutures obviously make sense. And then you would have a whole other box just full of really big knives and sauce. The No No Box. You can probably imagine what those were used for. Yes.
Starting point is 00:32:33 Cooking up. I mean, get well lunch for all your friends and you use that to carve the meat or to cut the vegetables. No, no, no, no, no, amputations. Well, that's going to do it for us this week folks. Thank you so much for joining us. Let me hold on. Wait, shut the bag.
Starting point is 00:32:56 The bags all shut and that's going to do it for us. We'll have to look into some more medical bags from, I don't know, maybe we maybe we can find some ancient medical bags and see what's inside. We'll also have to look at this more devices for fully work if we're gonna go down that road. But thank you so much. Hey, if you wanna tweet about the show at Solbones is our Twitter account.
Starting point is 00:33:16 So you can tweet it us or just tweet about the show and tell people to go listen to it because that's how we get other people to listen to it. And so please do it. Okay. Thanks. I mean, thanks in advance. We appreciate that.
Starting point is 00:33:30 Thank you to the Max one fun network for letting us be a part of their podcasting family. We sure appreciate it. Oh, here's a bit of good news. It isn't necessarily podcast related, but Bullseye, one of the max fun shows that is also on public radio stations is coming to a honeyton is cool. What's your public radio? So check their website for for listings, but bulls eyes a pop culture show host by
Starting point is 00:33:58 Jesse Thorne who runs max fun and it is great. Thank you. Dad, thank the taxpayers. I'm looking twice. Just think just their great. Thank you so much for thank the taxpayers. I'm looking twice. You're not going to take it again. Just thank just their great. Thank you so much for letting me down. Thank you so much for letting me down. You're not going to take it again. Thank you for listening.
Starting point is 00:34:10 But that's going to do it for us. So until next week, my name is Justin McRoy. Justin McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and culture, artist owned. Listen or supported. How's it going everyone?
Starting point is 00:34:43 I'm Oliver Wang. And I'm Morgan Rhodes. We have a brand new show on the maximum fun network that we'd love to share with you. It's called Heat Rocks. Morgan, we should probably explain what a heat rock is. It is a banger, a fire track true fire. Right, dope album.
Starting point is 00:34:57 Each episode we will bring on a special guest to join us to talk about one of their heat rocks. It might be a musician. A writer? Maybe a scholar? I mean, I would have been happy to just talk to you about your heat rocks, it might be a musician. A writer? Maybe a scholar? I mean, I would have been happy to just talk to you about your heat rocks, but this is a different show. Yeah, I think people might enjoy hearing maybe the guests instead.
Starting point is 00:35:12 To do that, you'll have to go to maximumfun.org. So if you want to talk about hot music, check us out. Heat Rocks.

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