Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Phrenology

Episode Date: March 11, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We measure your head lump. Mus...ic: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Transcript
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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! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.
Starting point is 00:00:56 The medicines, the medicines, the escalators, my cop, for the mouth Oh, we're ready and welcome to saw bones and marital tour Miss guided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy Sydney, I need you to look at this On my head Like possibly fatal which lump the lump see there right above my ear Okay, small possibly fatal lump just above my ear. I don't know if I ever had you look at it before. No, you have me look at it all the time. Okay, but just by feeling it, are you able to tell like if it's a serious fatal, probably fatal work on my head. No, I mean, it's assist. Hmm. I'm gonna need some.
Starting point is 00:01:46 See how it hurts when I poke on it? Ow. Shhh, shoot. See? Shoot that hurts. Yeah. Gosh darn it. Yeah, you're gonna have to get that cut out.
Starting point is 00:01:55 It's not fatal though. I'm afraid I'm gonna need some assistance to get it removed. I've touched it. Was that a joke? Yeah, because you said it's assist. Oh. But you're able to just it removed. I touched it. Was that a joke? Yeah, because you said it's a cyst. But you're able to just buy it. You're just full of them.
Starting point is 00:02:10 Just by touching it, you're able to tell if it's fatal or not. It's amazing. Yeah. Well, I mean, and also I've told you like a lot of times that it's not fatal, but you know. Yeah, it's your second opinion. You know what else I could tell just by mashing on your head there. What?
Starting point is 00:02:24 What else? Well, I can tell that you're a very hopeful person. You are really great at friendship, but not so great at legality. Wow, you can tell all that just by touching my head? No, I can't tell any of that by touching your head, but for a long time people thought you could. Really? Yeah. How? Well, for analogy. No, I can't tell any of that by touching your head, but for a long time people thought you could really yeah How well Frinology
Starting point is 00:02:50 Frinology Yeah, you know, this is something I think a lot of people wanted us to talk about A couple of people I know for sure have asked us are Matt and Christopher But I think they are not alone a lot of people have questioned if we've avoided this because it's still popular. No, we just haven't gotten to it yet. Yes, and it's possible. I might have told you that we were avoiding it
Starting point is 00:03:15 because it's still popular because I was confusing with something else. That is possible. No, always a possibility. I don't, as far as I know, and I mean, we'll get to this. This is not still popular. I'm sure as far as I know and I mean we'll get to this. This is not still popular I'm sure there are still people who practice it and believe in it and do it absolutely But that doesn't prove anything
Starting point is 00:03:32 But there are still people drilling holes in their head so and as we have told you many times Don't do that. Don't do that. That's expressly against our advice city. Tell you off for knowledge Pretend let's pretend for a second that I don't know anything about it. I don't think you do so that will not be that will not be hard to will the suspension of my disbelief in that particular arena. So to understand why phrenology even is a thing you kind of have to go back to one of our favorite figures here, not
Starting point is 00:04:07 plenty, not plenty, not plenty or plenty depending on if you're me or everybody else, but Hippocrates. Ah, so Hippocrates. Exactly, Hippocrates. Who says it that way? Bill and Ten. Well they say so crates, but I assume the principal is the same. You know, we, you know, who we don't reference enough on the show,
Starting point is 00:04:30 Bill and Ted, right? The historical prophecies of Bill and Ted. Yeah, the teachers like future and past. Okay, so the reason we're going back to hypocrite is that before hypocrite everybody kind of believed that the heart was the center of Like it controlled your whole body. It was the center of everything Okay, so and that kind of makes sense because When you you can tell when somebody's heart is beating. It's not hard to sense that, you know I mean even without a stethoscope you can feel it beating you can sometimes hear it
Starting point is 00:05:04 sense that, you know, I mean, even without a stethoscope, you can feel it beating, you can sometimes hear it meeting. It's centrally located. Mm-hmm. It's in the center. And when it stops we know that's a bad thing. Yeah, that's not ideal. So a lot of people believe that it was probably the center of all your thought and your soul and your feelings and everything else too. A lot of work for a single organ. Yeah, Yeah, your heart is busy. Hypocrity has disagreed though. He thought that the center of your thought was probably your brain, which, you know, is true. Yeah, that's like the right one.
Starting point is 00:05:37 That may seem familiar to you at home because you know that to be an actual thing. That the heart is yes very, very important to your health and well-being. It's not a one-man show. No. That the brain's involved, too. Galen, a Roman physician, later agreed with this, and he took it a little further. He said that the brain controls everything, and also, by the way, it's a cold wet ball of sperm.
Starting point is 00:06:02 In the case of most men, that is basically accurate. I think it's a little, I mean, it's a little sexist, Galen, a little bit. I'm being honest. There's also electricity in there, too. Come on. Electric sperm. That's what your brain is. Electric sperm.
Starting point is 00:06:18 If you've learned nothing from saw bones, please, you know, two things. Don't drill a hole in your head and your brain is really just a cold wet ball of electric sperm. You know electric sperm was my favorite Bootsy Collins backing band. Easily top three. If there's not a band caught electric sperm, there should be. So based on this idea, you know, the, and the real reason I bring this up is that once we started to understand that the brain controlled things, that's when we started talking about where it is.
Starting point is 00:06:50 Well, part of it was where does the soul live, what the stuff that makes you you, and then where does your personality live? You know, what, what are there different parts of your brain that maybe make you certain ways, and how do we figure all that out. It was a long time before we had any idea how to do that and I should say we still didn't have any idea how to do that in 1796 but we were gonna go ahead and make it up basically. We're gonna give it a shot and see how it worked. So who started this whole deal?
Starting point is 00:07:20 Franz Joseph Gaul. Franz Gaul. Franz Gaul. Is that like Gaul, that isn't the same thing with the Gaul. Franz Gaul. Franz Gaul. Is that like Gaul, that isn't the same area you can with the Gaul bladder, is it? The Gaul bladder? No, no. Actually, the Gaul bladder is because it stores bio,
Starting point is 00:07:35 which was also called Gaul at one point. Oh, okay. Which we don't really call that anymore. No. We say bio. Gaul didn't call it, um, for noology initially.renology initially. He called it cranioscopy. That makes one sense to me. I can parse that. Because he was trying to figure out the shape and the contours and the
Starting point is 00:07:56 sides of different parts of the cranium of the skull. That was kind of the basis of the theories that he would create. Later, there was a follower of his who dubbed it Phrenology, which is like the study of thought. Hmm. I think he just like touch heads. I think he's dirty. He's a dirty guy like the touch heads.
Starting point is 00:08:18 He just likes to rub heads. He's like to rub heads and he come up with a BS excuse for a while or to rub him so much. That's a weird way to get your jollies. Yeah, he's a weird dude. He actually, I will say this, from what I read, it doesn't sound like he'd came up with a theory, it made sense to him, it was probably, and we'll get into it, it was probably flawed, but he wasn't a zealot about it, I wouldn't say.
Starting point is 00:08:42 Take it to leave it, I came up with this weird thing about rubbing heads, but don't try to, well I mean this is the thing about being a Zellat about it, I wouldn't say. Take it or leave it, I came up with this weird thing about Rubin heads, but don't try to, well I mean, this is the thing about being a Zellat about it, right, when you're a Zellat about something, you invite people to challenge you on it, when you're just chilled out about it, then it's like, I don't know, it's like the Matthew McConaughey School of coming up with medical treatments.
Starting point is 00:08:58 No one's gonna go to Matthew McConaughey and be like, well I should not just keep living, cause they're like, what was the point of that? Why are you trying to argue with it? Just keep rubbing heads. Yeah, just rub the head. Just keep rubbing heads. Not quite as pithy as statement of sort of personal philosophy is just keep living, but
Starting point is 00:09:16 I guess it hasn't. It's police. So this movement that he created became very popular from about 1810 to about 1840. Not a good run for phonology. So maybe that's what happens when you're not a zealot about your about your movement. So 1796 it like is it created? It catches it stride in 1810 to 1840, right? Right. I bet I wonder, I wonder when he died. Cause that makes me wonder if people were just like, well, I don't know, he's gone now.
Starting point is 00:09:50 So he didn't even seem to believe it that much. It does outlive him a little bit, but we'll get it, you're jumping way ahead. Sorry, I'm sorry, it's true, I'm sorry. So, so he started out, his, he had the initial theories, it kind of spread throughout Europe, but different places stuck to it to different degrees.
Starting point is 00:10:07 You know, some countries were like, forget this and others really got into it. The center for its study eventually ended up in Edinburgh. There was a Frinal logical society there. And that was kind of the seat of investigation into this until it became unpopular, which as I said was not very long after it became popular. His idea was that there's really, at this point in time, there's no good way to study the brain of living people, right? So we could wait until people died and we could dissect brains and kind of look at them. But we had no clue what different, I mean, you know, to look at them. But we had no clue what different, what, I mean, you know, what did, what did they do? So they're the center of thought and they control everything and they're connected
Starting point is 00:10:50 to everything, but what do we know past that? I mean, does he have any basis for it? I mean, is there any sort of grounding and so this is what he thought. You can't, you, there's no way to dissect a brain or to figure out by poking at what parts of it do different things while a person is alive. So what he thought was, okay, let's go ahead and theorize that there are different parts of the brain that are responsible for different things. Which is true. Which is true. And he said so in, if we think that the center of personality of who you are also resides in the brain fair enough, then there's got to be a bunch of different segments that control your personality. So different parts of your personality. So there's your kindness part and there's your
Starting point is 00:11:40 anger part. So he's doing good so far. More or less. I mean, the brain's not divided quite to that extent. Not as cleanly as he might have hoped. No, but I mean, the idea that different parts do different things is certainly 100% true. Now, this is where things get a little a rye. So he thought, if there's a part of your brain, let's say you're an exceptionally kind person. And I am. And so there would be a part of your brain where your kindness would come from. His theory is that that part would be bigger than in someone who wasn't as kind. And since he believed that the the cranium, the skull fit around the brain, like when you're forming as a baby, just like a glove, you know, just just mushes right up against the brain tissue, really closely. And since he believed that baby skulls while they're
Starting point is 00:12:32 forming are probably, you know, malleable and flexible and squishy and can move with the brain, that if that kind part of your brain gets bigger, the corresponding area of your skull would expand to fit. So there you go. And so by measuring, so it wasn't just feeling the bumps on somebody's head. I mean, yes, that was part of it because if there was a particularly well-developed area of the brain in one, you know, in one trait, well developed area of the brain in one, you know, in one trait, uh, so does region, so to speak, that would be bigger or bumpy. So would he have to sort of back into it, I guess, right? Like find someone who was regarded as exceptionally kind and then check out their head and just
Starting point is 00:13:15 try to find some areas. Exactly. So what he looked for were people who had something that would be a very, um, defining or outstanding trait that he could study, so he could make those associations and then try to apply them to everybody else. It's weird that he was even able to create any kind of consensus, you know? Like, you would think with a random sampling of like four people, like, it would be pretty easy to disprove.
Starting point is 00:13:42 Well, this is where things get sticky. This is why most of what you'll read about for knowledge online immediately recognizes that it's a pseudoscience. Most of his early subjects were criminals. Right. So he was specifically looking for some sort of uniformity, can I find one place on every one of these people's heads
Starting point is 00:14:06 or at least on multiple heads that is enlarged? And then I will call it like a criminal area. The crime, the crime lump. Well, he also, to be more specific, he called it either the murder organ or the theft organ. Depending on what you did. Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:14:26 Now, if you did both, you just look like the elephant man. It was heinous. Organs everywhere. Now, and to be, uh, to be fair, all the areas that he eventually came up with on the brain were called organs. He kind of looked at the brain as a collection of eventually that, and this, this is where we start to go awry. He looked at all of the different like personality regions as different
Starting point is 00:14:49 organs to themselves and then they were all kind of squished together as the brain. So every region was called the organ. He thought there were 27 distinct organs. 19 of those are shared by multiple species, so not just humans, but then the rest are unique to humans. So you would just go around, and so basically what he did was go around and measure, you know, different parts of criminal skulls. And then when he found like, oh, these three people all have this one area that's big, he basically said, okay, this is the crime area. I'm gonna keep looking for more crime area, like people with one in a large crime area and only count them.
Starting point is 00:15:30 This is why this wasn't a great science. Theory being perhaps if you were to press him on it and you shouldn't press on him right now because I don't know, bugs would come out or something. But if you press him on it then. He's definitely gone by now. While there would be a trend of people who had the crime won't be an also committed crime,
Starting point is 00:15:52 having the murder, or the theft or it wasn't necessarily a prerequisite for committing the crime, right? No, but I mean, a lot of it, this is why things got, this is why this was, it's weird that this was ever accepted as a good science by anybody for any length of time, is that he basically, and this was all of his followers who, the researchers who followed in footsteps, discarded anybody who didn't fit into his predetermined kind of structure and only accepted people who proved his theory,
Starting point is 00:16:26 which is a common theme among everybody who studied phonology. And I mean also, if you're feeling the heads of a bunch of criminals, you've already determined that everybody, everybody who's heads your examining should have a murder lump, so you just feel where the lumpiest part of the skull maybe naturally is.
Starting point is 00:16:52 What did the process of doing this look like? Were there tools involved or was it just using your hands? At the time the only tool you'd really need is to measure a measuring tape. So you use your hands and then you measure because it's not just again, it's not just where the bumps are which is kind of what everybody thinks with Phrenology, you just read the bumps on the head. And that now eventually that would become about all it was. But you would also measure different parts of the skull to see how broad they were as well. Like the front versus the side versus this angle and that kind of thing. And he divided it, like I said, into all these different organs. And I mentioned a couple. There was the mortar organ, the theft organ.
Starting point is 00:17:29 There was good stuff too, the self-esteem organ. Some very specific things. The love for your children organ. The wit organ, the conjugal love organ. That's in your brain. Yeah, that's not the other one. What's up? There was even, I think this was great.
Starting point is 00:17:50 He knew there were areas for memory and language, which are true. Correct. Not associated with lumpiness, as far as I know. The area, and you can find these diagrams all over online if you're just curious, if you wanna feel your own head and try to you know And I do For knowledge for in a law will jize for in for in whatever yourself
Starting point is 00:18:13 The area for language is this like tiny area under your eye So I don't know how helpful that is So anyway, he developed all his theories and Um, so anyway, he developed all his theories and he was not like I said, he just kind of wanted to sit there and study criminals and write about it and publish some books. You think he just liked touching criminal heads? Maybe. Maybe that was the fetish. That was his game.
Starting point is 00:18:38 And he, he, what he wanted to publish books about it, but he was not out there lecturing and trying to turn all scientists to his way of thinking. Because I think deep giant newest made out. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe a little bit. It's weird. Like I said, for somebody with a scientific mind to just... and this is evidence that doesn't fit our predetermined thesis, so we'll throw it out. You get to a point, Sibri, you just want to make your mark, you know, you just don't want the the march of time to forget you. So you'll try anything. You even rub the heads of criminals. I don't know why you want your mark to be a murder organ. Fair enough. A couple of his big followers. One was Johann Spurtsheim. He worked with him initially as
Starting point is 00:19:20 an anatomist, and then he went on. They had some sort of fight and they went their separate ways, but he was still an ardent follower of his. He lectured a lot and did try to promote the ideas more so. He also refined the theories a little bit, got rid of some weird stuff like the murder organ, for instance. On the phonology bus, you'll probably find an antique stash stores. You wouldn't necessarily see that anymore. Oh. He, there was also George.
Starting point is 00:19:47 Well, because it's very, it's very judgey, isn't it? I mean, it's like nobody wants to be told like, what, what's an organ called again? It's sort of like the bad feeling, like the bad vibes mean guy, or you mean? It's when you're not being so nice. It's when you're like not being so nice. It's when you stop being nice and start being real.
Starting point is 00:20:06 It's like, that's cool because I really want to marry you, but like, what's going on about this organ? And like I said, George Com was the other one who started spreading it to the English-speaking world. And you said, before you married somebody, you'd want to know about their murder organ, that's not far off. At the peak of its popularity, not only would you absolutely want to go get your head examined
Starting point is 00:20:31 so you could find out about yourself, they would advise you on good partners for you. You could get a prospective spouse checked out and make sure that they don't have a really large murder organ. Just a tastefully sized murder organ. You could, even if you were an employer, you could demand that before you hired somebody, they go to their local fornologist and get their head checked out and make sure that like their honesty is big. I assume the protocol was just, you slide the guy a five or, say, like, listen, we all
Starting point is 00:21:04 know this is made up and there was definitely some of that As as it became more popular and spread there were a lot of people who used this a lot like Palm reading or fortune telling, you know, I'll also read the bumps on your head for five more dollars. No problem It did one thing it did do is it was as it was becoming popular is influence the prison system because there was this idea that you're kind of, you are who you are. It's already built into the way your brain is designed, that you couldn't punish people out of this kind of behavior. So it's because it's predetermined.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Right. So you could, but what you could do is empower them by teaching them about themselves and then reforming them to kind of take, okay, these are your bad impulses. This is what you're born with. Let's channel these in a healthy way. So for instance, one example I found was, let's say that you have a really large murder organ and you want to kill people a lot. Just become a butcher. organ and you want to kill people a lot just become a butcher. Ah, perfect. Like Dexter. Well, that's really, that was the idea, which wasn't a negative thing at all to happen
Starting point is 00:22:11 to the prison system. So basically, you know, reform over punishment. They were saying that yes, there is a predetermined reason why you have an excuse, but we're asking you to accept that excuse and overcome it with hard work. I'm assuming they've just never met people before. I've never met a human being. See all the again, figure out. Now this is, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:22:30 I mean, we're going into like the Victorian times. I didn't think these were necessarily hopeful times, but this is cited as one of the reasons why this did gain some popularity despite its lack of any scientific basis, is that it allowed for this balance between free will and predetermination. So yes, this is the way your brain is when you're born, but by going and getting yourself
Starting point is 00:22:52 checked out and then knowing what you're up against, you can decide how you're going to live your life. You know, you can decide whether you're going to be a murderer or not. It was also a time when people thought it was very fashionable to be well informed So this was an easy to understand yeah Science so to speak like all the great scientists it was easy to understand so it was very it was very cool It was very trendy to be able to explain it and have had it done It was reconciled very well by the people who you know
Starting point is 00:23:28 Who kind of proselytized it with Christianity and a lot of scientific theories of the time weren't. So nobody was offended by this because as we've kind of talked about, God has made you this way and he's put things inside you that are going to make you want to do, you know, make you want to sin and commit, you know, do these bad things, but it's up to you to resist that temptation. And this all fit very well with, you know, kind of Judeo-Christian values. And that's why, you know, like I said, at this point, it became pretty popular to open a phrenology parlor, whether or not you had any understanding of phrenology, and then read your, read people's skull for a pretty high price. I think it's simpler than all this. Honestly, Sidster, I think it boils down to one simple thing.
Starting point is 00:24:11 Most people, a lot of people, not all people, most people like to have their head touched. They like their sitting touch in their head. It's very pleasant. Like, you could go to the doctor, he's not gonna say like you have a, you have like the cancer organ or something, like it's not pleasant. Like, you could go to the doctor, he's not gonna say like you have a, you have like the cancer organ or something, like it's not gonna be bad,
Starting point is 00:24:28 it's just gonna like rub your head for a while, it's nice, it's nice to have something rub your head. Are you asking me to rub your head more? Not at the moment, I've got this lump here and it's actually quite painful, but once I've come through the surgery, well, I'm sorry, if I come through the surgery, I would like that very much, thank you. Um, I could just avoid rubbing your lump. Maybe, but what if
Starting point is 00:24:51 you rub the lump away and then my final love just doesn't know that I have a murder organ and then I've put everybody I love in danger. You'd even think about that. If you have a murder organ, you really should have told me before we got married. Plain fast and loose. Definitely before I got pregnant. I smell a downfall, by the way, especially since I know that this is only lasted for 30 years, really. So, yeah. So by 1840, people were starting to get a little wary of this.
Starting point is 00:25:17 It was falling out of favor with kind of the upper classes throughout Europe. And this is really how this, it was like a trend. It was like a baby names or something. You know, the royal people and the rich people, the high class people all got really into it. And then they lost interest. And then a lot of scientists who are very popular
Starting point is 00:25:36 at the time were saying this is crap. There's no way this is right. So as it started to decline among, you know, rich people and royals, everybody else kind of followed suit. By 1850 it was in very steep decline, very few people were practicing it or believing in it. And part of this too is because as we move, you know, the last Dregs of it that continued to, now I should say, that continued through the late
Starting point is 00:26:05 1800s. It did. I mean, there were still people and you could definitely find like charlatans who were going, you know, kind of traveling around, especially in the U.S. reading, like I said, reading your fortune and, hey, your head while we're at it, kind of thing. It started to become used as a tool for some racist ideologies. So, you know, they would check out differences in size and shape of different skulls across different ethnic ethnicities and, you know, different racial groups and then say, oh, this is how we can tell that everybody of European descent is definitely superior. So, that turned obviously turned a lot of people off and made it kind of one of those uncomfortable French things that you weren't really into
Starting point is 00:26:46 if you were a good scientist. There was a brief second life that this had in the US, and this is where, like I said, if you find one of those antique, phrenology busts, I've seen them, a lot of people have them. I think they're popular now. You can probably buy them like on Etsy or something. Yeah, exactly. But if you find an authentic one in the US, it was
Starting point is 00:27:11 probably made by the Fowlers, two brothers, Orson and Lorenzo, who lived in New York, write it kind of the tail end of the whole phrenology thing. They jumped into it. They relate to it. Yeah, they relate to the game, but they opened a phrenology thing. They jumped into it. Little late to it. Yeah, they relate to the game, but they opened a phrenology practice and then started producing these phrenology busts. And that kind of gave it a brief second life in the US. Even though it was still widely not accepted,
Starting point is 00:27:38 there were a few people like Thomas Edison, for instance. Oh, good job. It was a proponent, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thomas Edison is always such a creep. Seriously, it's like I was in the pit. You don't like Thomas Edison? I always do a story about Thomas Edison someday. I know there's not a big medical connection
Starting point is 00:27:53 that guy was the worst. It's stole from everybody. It's the pits. Maybe you'll have to tell me all about Thomas Edison. I will, I'll tell you about Thomas Edison. But basically because they started making these really cool for analogy busts that were really easy to understand again
Starting point is 00:28:05 because you just look at the head and you look and go, well, that's the spot where hope is. And all my hope, Mary, it feels really big and oh, hey, look, your wit area isn't very big. I could have told you that. Much like Buckland. Walker, Walker. Much like Buckland, I still believe in a place
Starting point is 00:28:22 in my brain called hope. It's right here under this large lump. but I still believe in a place in my brain called home. It's right here under this large lomp. It's under my eyeball, next to my language. So one interesting side note before I closed this out here is that Orson Fowler, one of the two Fowler brothers who made all those phonology busts, also invented the octagonal house.
Starting point is 00:28:44 I found this mentioned so many times as I was reading about it, I had to click on the link and find out what they were talking about. I'm assuming you're just an octagonal building. Yeah, it's an octagonal house. Okay, I got it. It was a briefly popular style of architecture in the Victorian era. And you can still find them across the US. You probably, some of you have seen,
Starting point is 00:29:05 I'm sure an octagonal house. Literally, it's just an octagonal house. I'm rubbing your head here, see if I can find the easily entertained of your brain. They're a picture that they look like. They have like a verandole the way around. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:22 Anyway, the only other. It's to keep people out, because otherwise, people are like, I've got to live in that house- It's to keep people out, because otherwise, people are like, I've got to live in that house. It's on tag, though. I don't know how to get in. Oh, good. In 1905, so at this point, again,
Starting point is 00:29:36 there's very few people practicing this for knowledgey. But there was a guy in Wisconsin, Henry Labyrinth, who said, you know what, maybe if we just updated it, made it a little more high-tech. People would be into it. He invented something called the psychograph. You can find pictures of this online. It's like a chair you sit in with a big metal dome that they kind of lower down over your
Starting point is 00:29:59 head. It doesn't connect to your head in any way. It just sits on it and there are different pressure points, the different little metal spokes will touch on your head, kind of rest on your ears. And anyway, it electronically reads your personality, is the idea. It will provide you, no, it doesn't at all.
Starting point is 00:30:18 It doesn't do any of that. But the idea was that it would provide you with a little paper printout, which would, it would take, it had 32 different areas. So not 27 now, we have 32 organs. And it will rate you from either deficient to very superior in all of these different areas, just by putting it on your head. And then it had like an accompanying like vocational chart that you could use your results to try to figure out what job you should have.
Starting point is 00:30:42 Seems legit. I read that you can still find these. There used to be something called the independent museum, or the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, as was called the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. It's been, as far as I can tell online, consumed by the science museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. So I think if you live near there, you can go check out these psychographs.
Starting point is 00:31:07 I smell our trip, Sid. Yeah, I would like to because it showed pictures on the website of like guests and tourists like trying them on. I want to do it. I know. I know. Well, we hope that you have enjoyed our podcast. I hope the part of your brain that measures podcast pleasure is enlarged right now. And if any of you are still practicing phonology now, I'd love to. Well, that's interesting. I'd like to hear about that. I don't think it's, you didn't ask me, but I'll tell you.
Starting point is 00:31:42 I don't think it's practiced today. Okay, and it's not legit, right? We clarified. No, there was really no science behind it. It did lead us to some better understanding of certain things and some interesting ideas. So it wasn't entirely useless, but no. The idea of chronology was flawed.
Starting point is 00:31:58 And I do not think it's a big movement by any stretch today. Thank you to people tweeting about the show, like Mark Little, Cresty, Jen, Katie, Jennifer, Lear Moriarty, I'm assuming, Lear? Lear Moriarty. And why? Well, it's short for Lear Moriarty, let's go back.
Starting point is 00:32:19 Maggie L, E C, Elliot, Ashton, Cleakaz, Tribibor, Justin Allison, Justin Allison again, Amber Wojzek. So many others, thank you so much for tweeting about our program. You can use the at-sol bones, use your name to tweet about us, but don't put that first, because otherwise, only people who follow us will see that, and you gotta be really careful. Nobody knows how to use Twitter. Nobody knows how to use Twitter. I mean, me included, like, I don't know how to use it.
Starting point is 00:32:46 So thank you for listening. We hope that you will subscribe to our program on iTunes and tell somebody you care about to do the same way. Or they are, why not leave us a review or rating? We sure appreciate that. I want to be able to. I read them all. We want to thank the taxpayers for letting us use their song,
Starting point is 00:33:03 the medicines, or just medicines, actually. You can find all their music at myspace.com forthslash of the taxpayers and go buy all their stuff, follow them on Twitter at the taxpayers. So thank you so much to them. And thank you to the next one for the network for letting us be a part of your great lineup of shows like the goose down Jordan Jesse go, stop podcast yourself, we have a pound one bad mother. My brother, my brother me so many so many fine programs and you should go enjoy them all and ask them to find out where
Starting point is 00:33:30 you're there. What up? Discuss our program in the forums and I think that's everything that's going to do for us. All right we'll go take care of that mystery lump now. Come run my head. And be sure to join us again for another episode of Saul Bones next Tuesday until then I'm Justin. I'm Justin I'm Sydney As always don't drill a hole in your head Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listen or Supported

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