Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: King Tutankhamun

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Live from Columbus, Ohio, home of the first Wendy's, and also COSI, the Center of Science and Industry! Justin and Dr. Sydnee bring forward one of the world's oldest medical mysteries: what happened to King Tut?Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saw bones 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! Hello everybody and welcome to Sobhones, my friends who are a Miss Guided Medicine, I'm your for the mouth. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Sobhones,

Emerald Tour of Miss Guy in Medicine. I'm your GoHos Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Yeah! Thank you. Thank you. It's been a while since I've done a live show with Sid. Haven't missed that. Haven't missed that.

Haven't missed that little kick in the ego. At the beginning of my live performance, how y'all doing, Clombus? We love it here. I know, I'm so excited to be here. One of our, we love Columbus anyway, but one of our favorite places. First Wendy's. It's kind of a religious thing for us. We used to go to the first Wendy's and just kind of like think

WDDD, what would it take to, you know. One of our other favorite places, other than the first Wendy's, is right here in Columbus and that's Kosae. Very important, very important spot to us. If you grew up behind to West Virginia, you went to Cincinnati for concerts and you went to Columbus for science. It was the closest science to us.

So it was a real thrill. That's sadly true. We went to the old, anybody here ever going to the old downtown location of Cosine? Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget to get your prostate checked. But I mean, as long as I've got to catch

some audience here, all of you that just cheered, don't forget. Are you dirty dogs out there? No, what we were talking about, you were like, oh, I know those exhibits at Cosine. I checked those out when I was a free team. No, I didn't. Because in many times. I missed because they're old.

Oh, I thought you meant the, you know. Yeah, there is a really cool prostate exam exhibit there. And a testicle exam and a breast exam. You can squeeze a whole ball sack, no problem. They let you do it right there. They let you do it a lot, but there isn't. They purge you too. There is an alarm that goes off if you do it too long.

I don't know the exact number, but just be careful. I was inspired by Kocy. I saw that they have a new exhibit. We're going to get to go there, which I'm really excited. It's been forever since we've been to Kocy, and the kids are really excited. But I saw that they're doing a special King Tut exhibit. And I thought, is that something I like?

Is there something tied into medical history? And it turns out that a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened to King Tut, what exactly, what kind of illnesses may he have had, and how eventually did he die. There has been a lot, like, we are talking medical workups that, like, I know my insurance doesn't cover and

most of ours wouldn't. King Tut has had. So I thought that that was worth talking about. Yeah. Yeah. You think? Yeah. Let's do it. I don't understand why it's important why he died. It was so very long ago. Why was so fixated on it? We are very fixated on it. I mean lots of papers written lots of research done many times through the years to try to figure this out I will say that and I know like for some people like that was something they were into as a kid was learning about Not like all the pharaohs and you know all about ancient Egypt. That wasn't necessarily my particular what what, you keep moving the table closer to me? I can't move the table closer to me. I know, I'm getting wild. It's very intense.

And I feel I should preface this with a lot of what we have learned about, not just King Tut, but like anytime we've opened ancient tombs or a sarcophagus or sort of disturbed the remains of the dead. I think in, you know, our modern times, we're calling a lot of that into question, right? Like, why do we do that? Is that okay? Shouldn't we go about it in a more respectful way than we did in the 20s? And what do we do with the things we found? Because I think we all know now that that sort of like it belongs in a museum attitude, you know, should really be,

well, but it belongs in a museum that is located in and curated by and owned and operated by. The place where it came from maybe. Okay, Sarah, you telling me medicine's biggest blanket is coming over to archeology too to kill all the fun there. We can't have crystals. We can't tan our taints. And now we're canceling Indiana Jones.

I'm not trying to cancel Indiana Jones. I'm not. I'm just saying that perhaps those artifacts would be best left in their country of origin. But that is all I'm saying. You all laugh, but all the basketball rats come from somewhere else. They're not even from here. You didn't even know that.

We stole them. The Kosa basketball rats. If you had never seen that at Kosa, you would have been so confused by that. Oh, what? What is he saying? That's guys, they have massive play basketball. I hope there's at least some of you in the audience tonight

that are not from Columbus. They're like, honey, we gotta go. Are you hearing this? You really should. If there's astronaut ice cream, I'm sold. There is. So. No problem.

So. The Cracker Jack exhibit, you got it. There is. So. No problem. A cracker jack exhibit? You got it. King Tut. First of all, let's talk a little bit about, because I mean, I didn't, again, this was not like a particular area of interest for me. I had a lot of other obsessions. This just wasn't what I wanted to mind.

So you may already know everything there is to know about King Tut. There are a lot of, especially like kids who do and have always known this, even as adults. They've retained a lot of knowledge, like kids who do, and have always known this, even as adults. They've retained a lot of knowledge, like let me tell you about the boy king. Not me, but I learned about it, because we're doing this episode. He ruled over Egypt for only nine years. This started in 1333 BCE.

He was only 10 years old when his father died, and he took the throne, and he was 19 when he passed away. And even like his existence was a mystery for a while. As much as we have focused on how did he die, who he was and who his dad was and what they did was a bit of a mystery because his dad was kind of for the time thought to be like a heretic. When he took power, he basically said, look,

we have all these gods and goddesses. I'm doing away with all of them. I'm changing the game. We're going to monotheism that we think. All of this is still, we're interpreting. But basically, he put one god above all others, which was totally new. Everybody was kind of mad about that. He also moved the capital from Thebes. He moved it somewhere else, and he named it after his new god, Ahten, that he wanted to put in charge of everything. He also made a lot of changes to the art and architectural style. I know that sounds like, why are you mentioning that?

He changed their religion, and he moved the capital, and you're like, also, their artistic styles were very different. But this actually does matter, I promise. So when he finally died and Tudon Common took control of Egypt at 10 years old, he basically reversed everything. So he went back and was like, I don't know what my dad was doing. I'm really sorry. I like the old art. I'm really sorry. I like the old art. This is my life.

I'm really sorry about everything. And a lot of this was, as you may imagine, done through one of his royal advisors, who, by the way, would then ascend to the throne when King Tat died. So we could all question who really wanted it either way. Everything went back to the way it was. So it was sort of like these massive shifts

and then just back to what it was. So it was sort of like these massive shifts and then just back to what it was. And that was it. And so then after everything went back to, you know, the way it had been before, and King Top passed away, all of the next rulers sort of erased their names from the list of kings. Just kind of decided like, eh, they canceled each other out. Maybe we just don't

talk about that anymore. And so it took a while, there was sort of this understanding that there was this gap in like, we don't know who was in charge, and then we think we know who was in charge. But it took a while for us to figure out a lot about King Top, because for a while we didn't know even that he existed really. Now, of course, that would all change. And this is sort of the part of the story where, you know, European archaeologists decide to go in and dig up lots of things that aren't theirs. And this starts with an artist, a British artist named Howard Carter. So he had come to Egypt to actually initially like replicate like ancient artworks

that he had seen there, but he was commissioned by a really rich royal guy, the fifth Earl of Carnivan, Carnar, Vron, Carnarron. We're going to call him George. So George, that was his name. That's good. So George is really rich in royal and he's bored because he's got lots of stuff. He can have anything, right? He owns tons of things, but he's bored. No, I find. I know.

No. And he probably didn't know that. I'm one of those. He didn't know that. Oh, dude. But he had all the other things he wanted and he was like, everybody else is getting to dig up tombs in the Valley of the Kings and I want that too. But that seems like a lot of work.

And so he paid Howard Carter to go in and say, like, dig up the Valley of the Kings, excavate some tomb. I want my own. The artist here is just like, as long as you're there. So he was an artist, but he had started to dabble in other areas. Like working in these kinds of like, yeah, I can work with artifacts. I got that.

Yeah, I mean, because at the time, like he wasn't doing the work, right? He was just paying people who actually live there to do all the work. So he got commissioned to go find a lost tomb. And it took a while at the time to... It being lost and all. Maybe in loss. It took a while to find it, of course. It took a while to, like, he had to sort of

convince the Egyptian government, which at the time, people were willing to pay a lot of money to get to come in and excavate these sites. And so eventually it was like, well, we do, we need this money, we do need this in our economy. I guess we will take this, but they would set rules around it. Like they had laws passed to try to protect whatever was found. Like, listen, you can do this, but you can't take the stuff, but it wasn't working. Like we all know that now. It wasn't working, and that was the deal that they would make is that, okay, you can look for this lost

tomb of, we think, King Tut. You can look for it, but whatever you find has to stay here. And he was like, absolutely, that is no problem. And that was the story for a really long time. Until eventually, like, you know, here in the US, the Met was like, sorry, we actually have like 19 things that ended up here. Sorry about that. So today everything we think has been returned. But yes, many artifacts were lost during this process.

So Carter starts digging. It takes him a long time. In 1922, he finally uncovers the tomb. And there is so much to be found. You could do, I mean, this is not the podcast we do, but there were 5,600 be found. You could do, I mean, this is not the podcast we do, but you could do, there were 5600 items found in this tomb, like other than obviously King Tut was there, you know. That's the big thing.

A lot of pugs, I would imagine. He's pretty into pugs. A lot of Pokemon cards. Do you count those as decks or just individual cards as part of the 5600? I'm assuming individual items. You know, he was buried with his mouth. LAUGHTER I knew I thought I knew how it would feel saying it.

Yeah. Madison's, Madison's, that skill it my God for the mouth. -♪ I'm glad you said that, because nobody says that. Can I just say thank you to you for such a thoughtful interview? Oh, my God, yeah. I think you nailed it. Bullseye, interviewers with creators you love and creators you need to know.

Listen to the book. for such a thoughtful interview? Oh my God, yeah, I think you nailed it. Bullseye, interviewers with creators you love and creators you need to know. Listen to the Bullseye podcast only from NPR and Maximum Fun. Hey, I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kaelin.

Listen, you like podcasts, right? Sure you do. Don't try and lie to me. You're listening to one right now. So when I try a different one called R Listen, you like podcasts, right? Sure you do. Don't try and lie to me. You're listening to one right now. So when I try a different one called R1, the flop house. Uh-huh. And on the flop house, we watch a movie and talk about it.

And then sometimes we also do other stuff. It's all meant to be funny and fun and we think you'll have a good time. And just to be clear, the name of the podcast is not R1, the flop house. It's just called the flop house. I do a lot of correcting Dan. The flop house. A lot of correcting Dan. So, a lot of the things, you know, you can probably imagine. We've seen sort of like the funeral mask, the gold mask, which by the way, an interesting

side note, was probably initially made with his mom in mind, but then he passed away first, so then it was sort of reused by him and said. I know that's a bummer isn't it? Sorry about the bummer. But they found like not just like jewelry, like stuff you would expect, lots of like, you know, jewels and things, but they also found like furniture. There were all kinds of like beds and fainting couches. There were fans made of feathers. There were solid gold sandals inside. Like just all kinds of amazing riches. Among them, they also found two smaller mummies and part of the research that we would do

throughout the years to try to figure all this out. And of course, they couldn't do this in 1922, but was to eventually connect the DNA. We did DNA analysis of these two smaller mommies with King Tut to figure out that these were his kids that were actually mummified and sorry. But I know, I don't mean to be... What are the odds that they died the exact same time as him?

Oh no. Plain a minute. This is a comedy part. Why would you include that? Why, Sid? I think the scope helps. I'm trying to wrap my mind around the ensuing medical, like the house episode that will follow to try to figure out what killed King Tut. Like, because really, that's what we embarked on afterwards was to try to figure out, like, gosh, this 19 year old guy died a long time ago

and I have to crack this case. And a lot of time and money and effort will go into this. And I think part of that, it was this fascination with what was found initially. I think that as I'm trying to wrap my mind around like, why did we do all this? Part of it was this, we opened up this tomb and it was like nothing anybody had ever seen before.

I think that must be part of it. And now of course, there were their own, like sort of medical kind of mystery connected to the opening of the tomb, because there's a thought that a curse Philippon everybody who was present at the time That's you're gonna tell me curses aren't even real Specifically George our rich Earl who had paid for the whole thing of course as soon as Howard Carter opened the tomb

He was like you got to get down here. I found it. You're going to be this thing. You're going to be so excited. That can get a bite before he's all gone. We're all getting lots of mortality in youth. So he rushed down there. And while he was staying in Cairo, he actually

died in his hotel room, not long after arriving. And what they think is that basically he got a mosquito bite that got infected, and then he got back to Remy, a bacteria in his blood, he got some sort of secondary infection, and then he died of that, which is pretty wild, from a mosquito bite. So that is a, I mean, you know, is pretty wild from a mosquito bite. So that is, that is a why, I mean, you know, and there was this whole like other story that like, at the same time that he died, like,

there was a, there was a power outage back home and also his dog died at the same time, time, time. Oh my God, I was about to make a joke about a puppy dying. And you're just like, swoop right in there, like, dream no more, that happened to. And then Carter's pet bird got killed, and it was like, it's a curve. When you, when we were backstage,

you were like, you said, verbatim, don't worry, J-Man, I'm about to bring the yucks, and then you put your fists like this, and I pounded your fists. I don't, I feel like you have betrayed that pound, like that pound where you said you're about to bring the yucks. I think you said hardcore, if I remember right, don't worry, J-Man, I'm about to bring the yucks hardcore. Okay, okay, go on.

I'm sure that we've passed the nadir, I have to imagine. Well, I mean, we are going to talk about King Tut Dye. Okay. So I'm sorry about that. But in terms of the, I mean, I just think it's an interesting sidebar. Like eventually what, like we would look back at the people who were there when the tomb was opened and like who died, when and how and kind of go, it all just seems kind for the most part, like it's like the normal thing that happens to like humans and it's

not a curse. But like at the time, that was the bigger medical mystery like even Arthur Conan and Doyle was like I think it's spirits from the tomb He did have a turn towards spiritualism late in life. That's not too surprising from late Arthur Conan Doyle Coming in here with some some extra knowledge some literary knowledge for us and you get on a medicine. Yeah, I know everything. Oh Everything You get on a medicine. Yeah. I know everything. Oh. Everything. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know how I was going to end the sins. I was as surprised as you are that I said everything is great. It's not true.

We know that, right? Like you all know me for over a decade. You know, that's not accurate Like, you all know me for a redecade. That's not accurate. I'm nine on 16 years now, they've been gone. You know I don't know everything. Definitely not directions. You still get lost in our hometown. And it's not big.

So immediately after, eventually Carter, it was a process, right? Like they opened the tomb and it was a while before he was able to open the sarcophagus. And it was in the autopsy that followed when they realized that King Tut had been so young, I think this is when the quest for like, oh, okay, what caused this? Is this a mystery that we need to solve? So a few clues were evident pretty quickly. One is that we knew King-Tot had an atypically formed foot. This was thought to be,

and this was something that probably plagued him his entire life. This has been thought to be the result of something called a collar disease, which is basically when there's not enough blood flow to a certain bone in the foot, your nevicular bone, and as a result, I mean most of the time you just get like a lot of foot pain for a while and then it goes away, and that's usually it. So it doesn't explain everything, but we think maybe he had that. We know that he struggled somewhat with walking because they found 130 walking sticks and canes. Very...

That seems like too many. A lot. Some did show evidence of use, as you may imagine, many were just decorative. So we know that he used some sort of device to assist him in walking. Oh, okay, nevermind, start going. What? He used him while he was alive, you mean? Yes. Yeah.

Did he? Nope. Nope, keep going. Keep on going. Did he think I was suggesting? Right this way, ma'am. Nothing to see here, keep on going. Right this way, ma'am.

Nothing to see here. Keep hung on. Just keep hung on. This This led to a theory that was really prevalent for a while where people said well, he was probably injured in a chariot wreck and whatever injuries he sustained eventually resulted in his death. And the clues for this were simply that there are pictures of him riding in chariots. So, so maybe. But they also noted like, well, but you can see some other evidence not just in his foot, but there are these other places where it looks like some bones were broken.

But what really complicates this whole story is that a lot of what happened when they were excavating the tomb resulted in a lot of other injuries and damage. And so there's a lot of stuff in these early like, there were theories of some sort of wreck or we'll get into like, there were murder theories. A lot of that is probably just the result of like Howard Carter's excavation team. Not really.

I mean, this wasn't his area of expertise. He didn't know what he was doing. And even after they did the initial autopsy, they sort of like brought him back and just left him there. And then like poured paraffin wax, and we're like, this should do. This should be fine. And so it gets really hard to start to tell like what did we do

and what might have caused him to die. So there was also this sort of like, it was noted in the 60s, because people continue to go back and revisit and look again and say, well, this chariot thing, we don't have a lot of evidence for. We need to revisit this. What else do we think could have happened? So they eventually did some x-rays. That was our first sort of medical diagnostic study. We started easy, we started with some X-rays. There was a profile, there a team from Liverpool who did all these X-rays and they found that it looked like there was some sort of hole made in his head.

Uh-oh. He didn't listen to us and there was a theory like it was murder. Somebody bashed him in the head and that's we've solved it. King Tut was murdered. And everyone was, but later on other people who actually, I mean, I think this is always the problem. Like gosh, us doctors will think we just know about stuff the way outside of our way sometimes. Yeah. Because there were experts in like, mummification processes who were like, that's just how you, that's what you do when you're going through a mummification processes who were like that's just how you that's what you do when you're going through a mummification now that hole was made after his death we can tell this is a normal process that would have been done he wasn't I mean we don't know if he was murdered but that hole was not that's not murder it was also noted in the 60s and this was a big

mystery for a while where everybody went, hey, we think his penis is missing. But that book was closed pretty quickly because then they looked at these. And that's how he lost it. They looked at... What? How does this suit read? That's the wrong way to read. It shouldn't be anywhere near the book.

They look back at pictures from the original excavation and they were like, no, it was there then. Which I guess is a whole other mystery because then for a while they were like, who stole it? Who? But then it was in the were like, who stole it? Who? But then they just, it was in the sand, nearby they just found it. So.

But can I say, not until 2006. The long time. How on? Who is in the sand? That was thinking around and they're like, what in the? Hey, Kevin, do you know what I think this might be? Please don't laugh. They were attempts made, especially as we, like, you have to imagine, like, as medical

science was advancing, we were getting these new tests, like, we were like, ooh, X-rays, we can do those now. What should we do with them? Do we have some mummies? What's X-ray? And then also, we began to understand, like, blood typing, and that sort of science, we were like, ooh, we got a bunch of mummies over here. Let's try to blood type them and figure out

if they're all related. And like maybe we can pin down. Because there was also this sort of side quest for King Tut's dad that was happening. Because they thought they had found where he was buried, but he wasn't there. They don't think. And then they would look somewhere else

and they were like, well, this isn't where he should be buried. But we don't know who this mummy is. And so there was this other narrative going on. So they did these sort of blood tests like in 69 and 76 and 84 and they kept repeating the, I mean, these are all like published papers where they're like, well, we did it a very important study. We're getting the blood tests of these mummies and here's what we think at this point. To try to figure out like who was related to who.

Eventually, this would move on to DNA testing, as I alluded to, to figure out the other mummies that were present, that were King Tuts kids. And part of what threw off as they were sort of on this quest were like, okay, we're doing DNA test, blood test, but what ultimately, we don't think it was murder, we don't think it was a chariot wreck, what ultimately killed we don't think it was murder, we don't think it was a chariot wreck, what ultimately killed King Tut,

one thing that sort of sent everybody off in the wrong direction was worthy artistic changes that I mentioned his dad had instituted. If you look at sort of the depictions of King Tut and his parents, they were very different than the artistic depictions from like the previous royal family. And so there was this thought that maybe the way that they were drawn was because of some sort of genetic syndrome they had.

And so they started theorizing all of these different genetic syndrome based strictly off of this artistic choice that King Tut's dad made. And that was a whole other paper that was published in JAMA in the Journal of American Medical Society. In 2007, where they were like, okay, we looked, we don't see Marfan syndrome,

we don't see Craniosynostosis, we don't see Antley Bixler, we don't, and like, looked for all of these different genetic syndromes, and then finally they said, we think the arts just different. I always... They just drew them different for a while. I wish they could be in heaven with that guy when his friends like, Craig, come here, they're looking at their pictures. Oh, what are they saying about them? Oh, man.

Yeah, they're good. It's just that they think that maybe as a genetic, yeah, they like them. They said they're good pictures. You shouldn't come over here. Let's go back to the chocolate waterfall. So eventually, a little over a decade ago, they, as they were doing these different DNA analyses, they did some CAT scans as well.

So now, I mean, they've already x-rayed and they've done blood type and they've done DNA and now they're putting mummies in CAT scans, which I was reading like, I had to read this whole paper. I'm reading like, was it a mobile cat scan? Tell me, I need to know, like, did they bring the mummies to the hospital? Did they bring the cat scans to the mummies?

How did they do this? It was a mobile cat scan in case you're curious. So I'm reading, like, how did they do all these CTs on all these ancient dead people? Like, what did they do? And so they did that, and they did find like, there was definitely some kind of injury to his right leg

that they think was consistent with something that may have occurred like as a wreck or something. You can't tell for sure, but there was some sort of injury and they saw so much damage to the bone that they started to think, huh, maybe this was like a chronic infection, like a bone infection, like what we would call osteomyelitis and maybe King Tut was sort of fighting this infection for quite a while. We still don't know if that would have been a cause of death it could have been, but the DNA test finally

kind of gave us the last piece of the puzzle, because when they were looking at the DNA to try to make like family trees, they also found the DNA of plasmodium falsoparum, which is malaria. And they said, oh my gosh! King Tut had malaria. And so then they finally cracked the case.

It was malaria all along. You are cheering for malaria? And it was, it made sense because he was immunocompromised by this other infection he had. He had some chronic medical issues. On top of that, he got a really bad case of malaria. And then to add to the final piece of evidence, they looked around the tomb and there were lots of medicinal herbs from that time period that would have been used for these sorts of And then to add to the final piece of evidence, they looked around the tomb, and there were lots of medicinal herbs from that time period that would have been used for these sorts of illnesses,

for fevers and whatnot. Two little two laborers. Fit together. Thanks so much for hanging out with us for a few minutes. We appreciate it. Hi. I want to say thanks to the taxpayers for these their song medicines as the intro now

to our program. We are going to take a brief intermission. So please go by yourself a poster, if you would be so kind, they're really, I mean, I think they're really cute. That is gonna do it for us, did anything else for you bud? No, that's it, thank you all.

That's gonna do it for us, it's gonna send us our names just to McIwell. I'm Sydney McIwell. As always, don't go on holding your head. All right. Yeah. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists don't?

Audience supported. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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