Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Medical Legends of Alabama

Episode Date: March 15, 2019

Did you know that Alabama has been the home of some huge medical milestones? It's true! Join us as we share the inspirational, hilarious and terrifying medical legends of The Yellowhammer State. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

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. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Wounds, Emerald George, Miss Guy and Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin Tyler McElroy.

Can I be said nice, Murl McElroy? So it's gonna be like that, huh Birmingham? Oh man, I'm excited. It's gonna be a good one. It's fine, my feelings aren't hurting anymore. I'm very sad about it. Were you zipping your fly when we came out? Just a little bit, no, actually,

I was, if I can brag for a second, I was checking to make sure it was zipped and it was. So, again, I don't want to brag, but we've been doing shows with Paul of Paul and Storm fame. Check them out at PaulandStorm.gov. And Paul Suboren has a new show for us for a long time. And the very first show he ever did, he did that thing about the show

began when the audience has been needing sufficiently horned for this one. But when Paul started doing shows with us, it was just my brother, my brother and me. So now Paul does that before Saul Bones and it has taken on an uncomfortable vibe, I would say. It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. I don't usually think of our audience

as being horny for... Sorry, if you could say it one more time, I need a clean recording for this ringtone. No, that was good, just the once. Just the one time. I don't have cake on me, right? No, sour diegate, Sydney was really a really teot at me. I was holding our, just about one year old,

so it'll be one year old next week, and I was holding her right before we came out, and Justin handed her a big chunk of cake. And she proceeded to just do it, baby's due, which is kind of wipe it on our face. And then wipe it all over me. And I was like, why? Why? And my defense. There is none. There is none. actually. I don't have one. Hello, Alabama. What a pleasure it is to be here. So whenever we go on the road and we do live shows, we like to try to find topics that relate to the area that we're doing our show in.

And what was really cool, calm down. We don't make y'all come up with it. We do it at a time. What was really cool about, as I started researching, I was looking at Birmingham and at Alabama and looking for different medical topics, I'm used to, as I start my research, I'm going through a lot of really kind of dense,

like, stodgy medical articles about stuff and that like doctors wrote and they're kind of boring, sometimes. And what I started finding a lot of, as I was looking into like historical references, were what I have, and this is with the utmost affection. I call grandma blogs. There were so many amazing first-hand accounts,

like this oral history of all these stories from the area that they really look like, like maybe my grandma made them. But they're cool and they're like, they know the people who told these stories and they knew this person. Anyway, it was really inspiring, it was really exciting to look into some of these what I started calling the medical legends of Alabama. These are true, though.

No, they're true. They're true. But they were told in this just really fun, personal way, which is so different from all the boring articles. You all have a lot of stuff here, medical wise. We've been narrowed down to just one. So, medical legends of Alabama, I came up with that name city originally

wanted to tell Alabama medical stories. And I said, Sid, it's good, it's so close. I love it. Let's build on that. I am one of those boring doctors. You're right. I'm the grandma in a relationship. You are the grandma of our relationship. Come on. No, it's really true.

I'm trying to have a good time here tonight, say, come on. He has two cake carriers, like nice, like fancy ones. That's untrue. I have three. Besides, anything could be a cake hair if you believe it yourself. Please, we're running out of minutes to the medical legends of Alabama. So, can I wait? As I started looking into the history of medicine

in Alabama, what I found is that there was this theme of these systems coming in. The first comprehensive public health system was really created in this state, which is really cool. But what came with it was this resistance to any of it. A lot of people were like, get out of here with your public health. I don't know who you are, and you're from the government. I don't trust you.

And this theme ran through a lot of the stories. And this probably started with what one author called the Alabama Doctor War, which was a little, I would say a little melodramatic, which is really the story of like the beginning of medicine as a discipline in the US, because in the mid 1800s, medicine here was just whatever. Anybody could call themselves doctor. Here in America, not Alabama.

No, just any, yeah, in the US. Medicine was, anybody who said like, I'm a a doctor was a doctor. And especially in more rural places where you didn't have a lot of physicians or any at all, if you had usually a guy come through town with a briefcase full of medicine. cocaine. Then and they said they were a doctor. It's like, listen, we don't have anybody. This is good enough. So, you know, you had the, listen, we don't have anybody, this is good enough. So, you know, you had, actually the cost of medicine was pretty low because there was tons of competition because anybody could be a doctor.

So you had all of these like the traditional doctors who actually went to some sort of schooling and in a printist other physicians and learned some kind of science who were arguing for like a traditional kind of medicine. And then you had this whole other group that became known eventually as the eclectics, which were just kind of doing their own thing. And at the time, that made a lot of sense because if you looked at traditional medicine in the 1800s, your doctor would come and be like, well, I don't know. I know there are germs now because we're at that

point where I've learned that germs do things, but I also have no idea what to do about this. So I'm just going to bleed you and then give you some mercury. And then cocaine. Cocaine was a big part of it. So was opium was a big part of it. But then, but the and opium is part of it. Guys in the David S. Pumpkins. He's here. He's here. What a David. We have Tom Angst on our podcast.

But we did it. We just got David as pumped as. He won't answer to Tom. He's been really weird back then. I was like, kind of an unnerving presence. It's almost like we tricked him into coming here, and he doesn't know why he's here. We don't have any of the money we promised him.

So the eclectics came in and said, I know that these doctors went to school or whatever you want to call it, and we didn't. But also, they're not helping you. And in some cases, what they're doing makes you really sick. So what we're doing, we think, makes more sense because a lot of what they were drawing on

were sort of like herbal traditional medicine. And if nothing else, some of the cures, even if they didn't work, maybe cause a lot less harm than some of the treatments that the traditional doctors were using. So there was this big battle at the time between these two kind of camps, which were really like everybody who went to whatever was considered medical school at the time, and everybody who just said, I'm a doctor. And this came to a forefront in Alabama between all of these different doctors fighting, and it was really money was the big problem, because the more people who joined the eclectics,

and the eclectics, the wild thing about it is, it wasn't enough to just practice medicine and do it in a kind of a different way. They were, they would teach you how to do it in a kind of a different way. They were, they would teach you how to do it for yourself, which was really putting doctors out of business and lowering the price of medicine because they would come and like, deputize people. Yeah, like here's, it was almost like sort of like a multi-level marketing kind of thing. I think here's your kit of herbal medicines that you can buy for me and then you too can

be a doctor. So, and this was a problem all over the US, and in response to this, a lot of doctors started organizing, and this is when you see the AMA, the American Medical Association for Form, to try to start like standardizing. Here's what a doctor is, here's what it means to be a doctor, here are the tests you have to pass, here's the, you know, you have to have this degree and this license and all that, and if you're not, you're not a doctor, and it was actually in Alabama, the medical association of the state of Alabama, was, it was formed like right alongside the AMA,

it was one of the very first states to really try to like formalize that, and fight back and say, no, we need to have like doctors who are doctors, and not just anybody be a doctor. They started taking out the eclectics, right? It says- Well, I mean, they didn't. No, they started taking them out by any means next year. No.

Rolling doctor hit squads. No. Taking out all fakes. No, not like that, just like that person's let it out. But never know that it was a crime, because they know eight places on the human body to poke to kill somebody in someone. That's why I try not to get Sidney too mad at me.

To see Gratz who a happy marriage. It's no that the other person could kill you and get away with it, no problem. Is that why you've been taking Taekwondo? Yeah, right. I can't have any defense. I'm a blue belt, Sydney. Three years, maybe. A big part of this in this state was Dr. Jerome Cochran, who was kind of like the father

of public health, at least as far as Alabama's concerned, and probably should be as far as a lot of other states are concerned, because he was one of the first doctors to start promoting the idea that there are things doctors can do to improve the health of a community and prevent illness on the front end instead of waiting to treat it after somebody's already sick. And so he created this whole public health and sanitation system that was really revolutionary and would become the model for a lot of other states

to follow, it started here. The problem he kept running into is that he had to organize all the doctors. So now like we've created this organization that standardizes doctors, so he's got like an army, so to speak, of doctors, and that word means something. But he's got to get him to give him data. That's public health, right?

You got to have data. You got to know how many people are being born, how many people are dying, how many people have this disease, and what are they doing about all these different, you need numbers. And so he started looking at all these doctors and saying like, can you just start, let's start easy. Give me your birth records, like how many babies did you deliver?

And death records, how many people died that you pronounced. And what he found was that the doctors said, no, absolutely not. For a couple reasons, one, they were too busy. I love that the big thing was like, I don't have documentation as such a hassle, which is, I love to hear because it's the same thing doctors say now, like, I don't have time to write all that down. What's the biggest pet peeve, you ask doctors, like, what's the biggest thing that's causing burnout?

It's the electronic medical record. It's always blamed on documentation. And it was the same thing then. Nobody wanted to write anything down. When did Jerry beef it? I don't know Tuesday. I don't know. Old Seinfeld was on. It's a play that I go see. And they do old Seinfeld to play Every Tuesday at 9 p.m.

It's called MWP, Must Watch plays. There's like several plays they do every Tuesday. They do black and white Frazier. Old Seinfeld. Caroline in the village. Caroline in the village? That's a wild reference thing you just pulled out. Sorry, I'm not just saying.

Full shack? That's something. Full shack, thank you very much. A acquaintances. That's something. Mark and Mindy, who was a witch. She commends with aliens. The medicines, the medicines that ask you make my car for the mouth. So clearly the doctors were very busy. And then the other thing is there was just a lot of distrust.

The idea that, I mean, one, if you've got this guy coming in and he's like, listen, I'm with the government and I want to know how many of your patients died. Doctors were instantly like, why? What are you trying to say? I'm not telling you that. Nobody. He had tons of, that was actually their first problem. He had tons of doctors who turned in like zero deaths. Nobody died.

Krusty. In this entire, it'd be like for a whole county, like how many people died in the county? Nobody. Nobody. First of a million. I win. Like it's been five years, nobody died, nobody died, I don't know, it's going great here. I'm really good, don't come, don't come here to the town. Doctor O'Neil rules. And when he tried to like lean on the community, when he tried to start saying like,

listen, if you don't report, like you're gonna get fined and you're gonna get in trouble and maybe you won't be able to serve this community anymore, the communities would actually protect their doctors and be like, well, forget it, we won't fund your public health system anymore then. You can't have any of our money, we won't pay our taxes. Eat it.

And so, they really protect us. So it took a long time, of course, eventually, and this system is really revolutionary for the time. The idea of collecting these statistics and start implementing better sanitation methods and public health started here in Alabama, and eventually it spread through the state and spread to other states, and it was a really effective

program. Alongside that, carrying into our next story was Dr. Judson D. Downing, who was one of the health officers who would have been coming out into the communities like I'm a doctor and I'm sort of with the government and I want to ask you questions and intrude on your lives and it was not popular at the time or anytime like nobody likes that really. I do. I work out of the home so we'll accompany.

You know, it we'll accompany. You know, it doesn't harm. So if Dr. Dowling came to your house and said, listen, we are working on ordinances to start pasturizing milk because there's a bunch of germs in milk. And if we heat it up, then we kill them. And then people don't get sick and die when they drink milk. And so we would like to start doing that in your county,

how would you feel about that? And also, we're gonna have to inspect periodically. So not only are we gonna start enforcing pasteurization, but then we're gonna come out and check your milk for like bacteria counts and stuff and make sure like you actually did it. How would you feel about that? I always say, all my milk's milks already pastures about a Walmart.

Well, I mean, it's 2019, so that's a, yeah. Okay, well this, You didn't, I was listening. This is 1921. If you're going to do a hypothetical, you've got to set a scene for me, please. So it's 1921. Okay, okay, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't Well, partner. I don't know much about pasturization.

Do you know about Jesus and stuff? That's me in 1921. So the people that Dr. Dowling started visiting were not fans of this either. They thought this sounded very intrusive. They didn't like the idea of inspections, and they didn't know why we needed to heat up milk. That seemed weird. So, in response, he was kidnapped. Hello, Bama. So in the middle of the night, masked vigilantes came and kidnapped him from his home and roughed

him up a little bit and then told him, you have 30 days, leave town. Can I say, reasonable. For people that just kidnapped you and beat them somethings out of you, it's like very reasonable. Like, oh, we don't want you. I mean, make sure you have another place lined up and it's not a big deal. Now this this actually helped turn the tide of the the opinion of the community because this was not the response people wanted. Like they were suspicious. They didn't like the idea of this,

but they didn't want to beat the guy up. And so in response to this, people found it so outrageous that this poor doctor would get beat enough for just wanting to pasteurize their milk, there were actually laws passed that made it illegal to wear masks in public or in parades. Which I found very specific. Hey, you're, are you all okay? We all do it all right. The parades thing is great, because it's like,

the guy's dress is the, that guy's dress is a little see-through. I think he's about to steal someone so they don't eat up milk. Part of the laws were also that you couldn't lorse someone out of their house under false pretenses. I really appreciated that too. Hey, free pizza. That was a lie. Or free pizza pizza. Okay. Anyway, because of all this, by 1923,

they were pasteurizing 80% of the milk and the rates of thyfoid were way down, so it were. It was great, it was great. One of my favorite stories that I kept stumbling over was about Davey Crocket. Apparently, in Davey Crocket's many travels throughout the South, he's been some time in Alabama. He came on like a prospecting trip. And while he was here, he got really sick.

He got some kind of fever. And like, if you look into like medical records of the time like what what what did he get? It's always like mountain fever or swamp fever or I don't know evening fever. Morning fever. It's always it's just a fever and whatever what he was near, he was like there's a tree. It's a tree fever. So he got a fever. And he was very sick, like near death. And so he ends up in this valley that's owned by this family, the Jones family.

And he writes, and we know that this happened, this isn't fake, we know this happened because he wrote about it in his own words. He, the wife of Mr. Jones who owned the property, had a bottle of what were called Bateman's Drops, and she thought, if they killed me, he was only gonna die anyway, so we may as well try these. Like, basically, you're about to die.

I'm gonna give you this medicine. It might kill you, but you're gonna die. So, Bateman's Drops. So she gave him the whole- That's it, was that they're slogan? Anyway, these might kill you, they may not. Anyway, Bateman's drops. So she gave him the entire bottle. That.

He said, and this is from him, which throed me into a sweat that continued on me all night. When at last I seemed to wake up and spoke and asked her for a drink of water. So he credited these Bateman's drops with saving his life. He spent all night sweating and then he was fine. So I looked into what were these Bateman's drops. Bateman's drops were one of the most popular patent medicines of the time. And patent medicines were basically like fake medicine. They usually had something like opium or alcohol

or something like that in them that made you feel really good and they were really well marketed and branded, but they generally didn't actually treat or cure anything. Bateman's Drops was one of the most popular, and it was probably because it largely just contained alcohol and opium, and that was probably because it largely just contained alcohol and opium and that was it. So that's what she gave him a bottle of. And it, I mean, and it worked? I mean he got better. It's one of those right.

Well, Dr. Strong, Mark Roy, don't you think we should talk about this a little bit? I mean, he's got that. He's been pretty hard on the OPM and alcohol and makes together in bottles over the years, but it seems to have really done the trick for all of you. It was one of the wild frontier, David Cargett. Then there was never a doctor, Bateman, that these were named for.

It was just marketed that was Bateman's drop, so he was Bateman. We don't know. It just sounds official. And they really, they were one of the eight most popular patent medicines of like that century. I mean, really, when they looked through that time period, everybody was saying, Bateman Strasse,

which you could understand, because they were alcohol and opium. So, they made David Crockett feel good. This is gonna seem like a bummer to mention, but I wanted to briefly mention the great cholera epidemic of 1873. And I'm going to be doing some good jokes about the great cholera epidemic of 1873.

Sensitive, tasteful jokes about a cholera epidemic that was apparently great. So what happened, people we knew about cholera is an illness that gives you terrible diarrhea is the main thing you need to know. And it's serious because if you... I thought that was my moment, but no, no, no. Keep going. It's serious if you can't rehydrate somebody. Now, especially in the developed world, we can give you IV fluids and get you through cholera, before we could do that, and especially when we didn't know what was going on, people could die and did, from cholera, quite often.

So cholera was a big deal, it was a big bad deal. And so when it landed in Birmingham in June of 1873, people were really freaked out. It probably came, they've traced it back. I think it's so fascinating, we have this record. They traced it back to this guy who's only known now as Mr. Y. OK.

Like the letter, not like the question, like Mr. Y. Y cholera, who lived in Huntsville and then came to Birmingham. So it's Huntsville's fault. It actually, he moved and the cholera didn't come with him initially. It was when his stuff came. Like all of his stuff got delivered to you. And it's jar of cholera. He brought his jar. Why did you save it, Mr. Y?

So he got sick and after he unfortunately succumbed to cholera, they didn't properly dispose of all of his stuff. And that's kind of how this thing spread. So like the people who were exposed to like betting and stuff, they got sick. I'll take a toilet. OK, well, I should do that. Those people didn't realize that they had cholera, so nobody properly disposed of and stuff. They got sick. I'll take a toilet. OK, well, I should do that. Those people didn't realize that they had cholera,

so nobody properly disposed of that stuff, so it kept spreading from there. And at first, like I said, none of the doctors really knew. Like we knew about cholera. They knew about, like cholera could pass in epidemics and like that there were certain ways to dispose of clothes and belongings and stuff, but they just took them a while to figure out that it was cholera.

So once they started to figure it out, their initial reaction was to burn pots of tar on the corners of the city, that's not effective against cholera. Kind of a takeaway for you all the time. But it was commonly thought to be effective at the time, because they thought I had something to do with bad air. So it's like, there's just burn some things and

burn some talk. Burst the talk. To make some nice good air. That one doesn't even hold water illogical. What I liked about the story is that a lot of the doctors in the city stayed. Like, people vanished from the city during this epidemic. Just scores of people just took off. Forget it.

This happened, I mean, when you read about color epidemics all throughout the United States, not just in Birmingham, the cities would just empty out. But the doctors all stayed. And the doctors all stayed to take care of people, a lot of them anyway. Other people who stayed were one, a local madam named Louise Wooster. It was a very, a very famous local madam who wrote an autobiography that parts of it

might not be true is my understanding, but if they are, lived a very amazing life. But there's a lot of folklore, but she stayed to help take care of all these cholera patients and a lot of her employees stayed and also helped take care of cholera patients. So they were credited with like really caring for the sick and nursing a lot of people back to health. Alongside them was the city alderman, Francis Pio-Brien, who I mentioned him because he stayed and took care of sick people, got cholera, got so sick that they ordered him his own casket and printed his obituary in the paper.

But he didn't die. What a cool thing to have. Can you imagine? Anyway, this is my obituary. And I'm still here. So how much did you want for that used car? Did I mention I have my own obituary? So that's why I bring up a color epidemic. I just think that's amazing.

All these people stayed and they took care of people. The last, this is the last brief story that I want to mention. And this is not our usual saw bone story. Usually we kind of talk about like the weird or the wrong or the wild stuff that we've done in medicine. This is one of those like positive stories, amazing, but positive that I like to share, especially in lieu of the fact that it is Black History Month.

This is a story I had never heard. It's about the first female physician who practiced in the state, who was also a black female physician who practiced in the state. And this was in the 1890. So this was at a time where the idea of women being doctors was still, you know, on the fringes. And so the fact that she was a black woman doctor was a huge deal at the time. She had already gone through medical school and there was an advertisement for, they needed

a doctor. It was actually at Booker T. Washington had put out an advertisement that they needed a doctor to come and take care of some of the students, so at the local school they needed a doctor on staff to come take care of some of the students. And so he put out this advertisement and she decided that she would come and interview for the job and he was a big fan and he thought she would be great for the position and so he wanted to hire her. But before she could do that she had to pass the licensing exam for the state

of Alabama to be a physician here. The licensing exam and this like to think about this now as a physician to have to take this exam, it makes me so anxious. The licensing exam was a 10 day oral examination and each day you had to go in and sit face-to-face with a leading expert in that, whatever that day's test was on, in that field, and answer questions. For however long they decided they needed to ask you questions. And so you can imagine she had to sit for this 10-day exam

with, I mean, they were all white men, and answer their questions for 10 days, which is just, and she passed the exam. They could find no fault. So she passed the exam and she went on to be a physician. And I just think, I think that's an amazing story. And it's when we're not often told. I haven't even named her.

Hayley Tanner Dylan Johnson was her name. I realize I just can't say her name. And, Dr. Johnson passed this exam. And it's just, I don't know, 10 day oral exam, face to face with leading experts in the field. I feel pretty confident. I feel pretty confident that to the federal exam, face to face with leading experts in the field. I feel pretty good. I'm going to pride after day three. I don't think I could have handled it.

I feel pretty confident that I could do it, but I am a mediocre white man. So I got that sort of built in. Alabama, thank you so much for being so cool. You're fantastic. A lot of great medical history right here in your home state. We got a lot more show for you. I want to thank the taxpayers for the use of their song medicines.

This is the International Word program. I want to thank the Alabama Theater. Beautiful. I want to thank Paul Saboren. And we got a lot more show for you to stick around, but until the next time that we join, my name is Justin McAroy. I'm sitting back right here.

And it's always don't drill a hole in your head! Thank you. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE MUSIC All right. Yeah. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Art and Stone Listener Supported