Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Pirate Medicine Chapter Three

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

In the third and final chapter of the pirate medicine series, Dr. Sydnee and Justin talk about the dreaded Flux. What is the Flux? Well, it involves something coming out of your body in excess . . . a...nd it's not urine.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys. Um. Oh. Uh, if you don't know who I am, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm.
Starting point is 00:00:09 I'm Riley. Yes. Hi. Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi. Um, if that still means nothing to you,
Starting point is 00:00:16 I'm Sydney's little sister. I do still buffering also. And yeah, if that also means nothing to you, I used to introduce these shows before someone else came along. I also live here, so I feel like qualified to do that. I am Charlie McGroy, daughter of Sydney Adjusted. And this is Sober. Alright, time is about to books.
Starting point is 00:00:52 One, two, one, two, a day for our family. 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. Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobhones and Meryl Duriff. The escalator in the cop for the mouth. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay, we get it. All right, city rules. So hello. Okay, good night, your system. Sheesh.
Starting point is 00:02:01 Welcome to a very special part three of our three part live series of solbones. And it is all about, as you probably guess, from our costumes cyber mitt. No, it's about pirates. Pirates. That's it. I know. You're probably wondering why are they in costume? That's not typically sawbones, but it's been a long year, y'all.
Starting point is 00:02:32 And it's been longer since I've been on tour. Yeah, this is the first. This is the city's first tour since March of 2020. So some things have happened. Changes have been made. And we only dress as pirates now all the time. Uh-huh. We are cosplaying as characters from our flag means death 24-7. Oh, thanks to my costume was made by Julian Alex Bynes and dear friends that are very
Starting point is 00:03:03 talented. So thank you to them. And likewise, my costume was made by my sibling Taylor Smurl. So thanks to them. So, pirate medicine so far, we've covered some general pirate medicine. We did pirate burns last night, we'll be able to hear this at some point. And what about tonight said, how are we bringing it home for a piracy? It's so gross. Oh, no.
Starting point is 00:03:28 So, to late to leave, go on. So, just to kind of give you a general overview, what we've been talking about is the fact that if you were at C on board a ship for many days, you had little access to medical care. And if you were lucky, especially as a pirate, if you were lucky, you had little access to medical care, and if you were lucky, especially as a pirate, if you were lucky, you had maybe stolen or held hostages to get a medicine chest or two. And if you were super lucky, you'd stolen a surgeon somewhere along the way. One of the rare surgeons that actually knew what they were doing,
Starting point is 00:04:00 because it got the qualifications got a little bit sketchy as the the crowd worth it. And since you were just stealing them, you couldn't really argue. Well, I want to refund. Well, we like a better one. Like you killed the other one. You kidnapped them. And so a common problem out at sea that you may encounter as a pirate and then hopefully you had somebody
Starting point is 00:04:25 to help you with was the flux. And I would like to focus on the flux in this episode, Justin, do you know what a flux is? Yes, it is a tool that you use in your delorean to get it out. No, not a flux capacitor. Flux is, you said it's gross. Flux, man, I've never heard it call that, but. I'll give you a clue.
Starting point is 00:04:52 It references a flow of something. I mean, I assumed. Yeah, that's definitely what I was, is it peeing? Nope. Yeah, that would have been a little too easy, is it Pupenson? Yeah. Yeah. The flux, the flux was the word you'd use for some sort of diarrhea that has occurred. There were multiple types that will get into. I'd rather not get into them no matter what the type. I'll find out here, thank you so much. The causes were varied, or at least what we thought to be the causes, and the treatments
Starting point is 00:05:28 were stranger. The worst, and we'll get to it, is the bloody flux. Hard, pass, hard, pass. So flux was noted, I mean, anybody could get diarrhea, right? All right. That's fine. That's fine. An adage that is true today.
Starting point is 00:05:52 I feel like some people, a lot of people actually, it sounded like we're like, I gotta get this off my chest. Yes, I've had diarrhea. I'm so happy to finally admit it. I was asked that once in medical school. One time a professor was like, have you ever had diarrhea? No, like if anyone in this room who has periods
Starting point is 00:06:11 has ever had diarrhea with their period, raise their hand. I still remember all of us sitting there like, is this okay? Can you ask us this? I don't want to talk about that. Anyway, so a lot of people have always had diarrhea out at sea. It was arguably more common. Wait, a lot of people have always had diarrhea or throughout history, all people have at varying times had diarrhea.
Starting point is 00:06:51 Is that what we're... Well, and it may be... How's your week been? Much like the other weeks, and every week in the future, and every week before now, extremely bad. What'd you do? Yes, stayed home again. Yep, stayed home at home stay at home. Stay at home. Yep And it may be that it was called to the attention more often of those at sea because it was You know a big bummer to have when you're stuck on a ship and there weren't a lot of treatments or like even toilets really available
Starting point is 00:07:20 To you and it's got to be a little bit like man I wish Grover was here to help with the mast. That guy's always gone. These ropes are so heavy. Where is he? We have to turn that big wheel in the middle. There was one C surgeon, one, and then these were usually barber surgeons who went to C. And you would get that position after you did an apprenticeship for like six or seven years. And you would start early. Like you started at the age of 12 or 13, you did your apprenticeship and then you would be a surgeon and go to see. And if you're like John Woodall, write a book called The Surgeons Mate and tell everybody
Starting point is 00:07:54 what to do. And he noted that to talk about fluxes at sea, among other things are needful of instruments for poor semen and fluxes, never being unfernished in the ship of one or two close stools with doors to them. So these would be like close stools, where these little like stools, they're like little potty seats. Oh, stools, okay. They're like little, that makes more sense. So you get these little potty seats and you open up the top, you know, you can figure the rest out.
Starting point is 00:08:28 And brass pales that poor miserable men in their weakness may be eased thereon and not constrained to go to either the beacad or shrouds for that not only increases the disease but also causes the falling down of the arse good, a fearful accident. So, on a ship, they're at the, at the, at the, at the, it's just in there now, those words in there now, and that's where they are. In the arse there. In the arse there. At the front of the ship, there were like these rectangular wooden tubes that you could sit on. And again, you can figure that out.
Starting point is 00:09:08 But if you had really bad diarrhea, that would be really hard to go back and forth to these other times. Not that hard, it's... Well, I mean, you know, if you... It's diarrhea. So is the tube that went to the sea? Yeah, it's just...
Starting point is 00:09:23 You've moved in the tube and it goes to the sea, just like on a cruise ship. I don't think that's not how that works, right? The captain insisted it's not how it works. And I know what he's covering up still. I've been on a couple and there's just no way the poop doesn't go in the ocean. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
Starting point is 00:09:42 Of course it goes in the ocean. You're lying to yourself. The problem on board a ship is that when one person got diarrhea quite often, a lot of people get diarrhea, this is true today. We know this to be true. You're stuck close together. There was one account of this from a privateer who wrote about this and said, they left what is now Cabo San Lucas. And in September of 1721, a fortnight after my people who had hitherto enjoyed an uninterrupted state of health began to be afflicted with a sickness, which particularly affected the stomachs.
Starting point is 00:10:17 He thought it was maybe their diet. He said that they were eating quantities of sweet meats that were continually devouring and also to our common food which was puttings made of very coarse flour, sweet meats, salt water, and dried beef which was partly destroyed by ants, cockroaches, and vermin. So they, what I'm saying is they had some ideas to why this might happen. It's a very different time because if I have food that has been partially destroyed by vermin, it's been completely destroyed by vermin as far as it's not partially. No, I don't think so.
Starting point is 00:10:54 But they were sweet means. But if it sweet means well. Sweet means. There were different types of fluxes that they identified that you could get, which again, like all of this echoes our understanding of different causes of diarrhea today, but at the time there was like regular old diarrhea, which is just like watery and you poop a lot, and then there was what was called the bloody flux
Starting point is 00:11:16 were dysentery, and that was the scary one. That was the one that you got nervous when it hit the ship. Like an organ trail, we know. Yeah, exactly. There was also lion teria, which is basically when the food seems to look pretty much the same when it comes out. I don't have a choice.
Starting point is 00:11:37 You had a choice. I don't have a choice. You had a choice. And so that was a whole other problem that to be frank they really didn't know what to do with. I mean we are really hungry. I just keep going. I'm just saying that like not a lot of great pranks at the ocean. And things get boring and it would just be convocative prank. We talked about pranks on our episode. We did last night about burns that you could sustain on a ship.
Starting point is 00:12:13 Sometimes you put things that would burn you on someone to try to wake them up. It was kind of like putting their hand in warm water except for pirates. Anyway, so diarrhea, like regular old diarrhea, just like watery, stomach crampy, diarrhea. We're not. We may not know what diarrhea is, and you've got a few more on you. It's my job to educate. So, okay, as long as it didn't go on for more than seven days, nobody thought it was that big deal.
Starting point is 00:12:53 Like, I can think of one person who thought it was a big deal, that person on day six, for sure, for sure thought it was a big deal. Inconvenient, yes. Undesirable, maybe. Not always, though, because if you remember at this time period in history, and we're really focused on the golden age of piracy. So we're talking about the mid to late 1600s and to the mid 1700s, sort of that era,
Starting point is 00:13:22 the humoral system of medicine, meaning that we have four humors in our body that we have to keep in balance all the time for good health That was still very much the dominant theory and one of the ways that we commonly treated people was to get rid of a humor that we thought you had too much of by making you poop a lot So a lot of people would look at diarrhea, especially like surgeons and say, yeah, you probably just need it So a lot of people would look at diarrhea, especially like surgeons and say, yeah, you probably just need it. This is probably, like, they had good diarrhea and bad diarrhea. And good diarrhea was like, listen, you've got some sort of sharp humor in you from something you ate. And you're going to poop it out and you'll be fine.
Starting point is 00:14:02 And then bad diarrhea is when it goes on for longer than seven days and they're like, okay, actually, no, this is not good. This is an imbalance in your blood humor and we're gonna do some really wild stuff to fix it. You laugh at our pirate friends, but I kind of assume all diarrhea have is the good kind of diarrhea. Like, I guess I need this out.
Starting point is 00:14:24 Like, I gotta trust my body. My body I guess I need this out. Like, I gotta trust my body. My body knows if I need this out, and I wish I don't approve of its methods. For sure, for sure, I wish there was another way, but I assume if there was another way body, would have done it. There's not. Well, one thing I love about medical histories
Starting point is 00:14:39 that like, there are grains of truth in this, right? Like, there aren't times where we're- The grains from other stuff, I mean. Where we don't. Corn for sure. There are infections where we don't want to just plug you up. We want to treat you. We didn't know what we were doing yet, but we were figuring it out.
Starting point is 00:15:02 The color of diarrhea was very important in diagnosing the patient. Egg yolk yellow. This is actually egg yolk yellow and green were bad. Safron was worst. It's very attractive too. Would you say it's more of an egg yolk yellow or a saffron? And then rusty green was even worse than that.
Starting point is 00:15:32 If you had to have something reddish in there, it was better for it to look like the leaves. This is how it was described. The leaves of wine, which would be after you made wine, that sort of reddish, purplish, left over yeasty bit that was in there. Like somebody described it that way, like that's better than if it's black. If the soul's black, that's not a good sign. What a relatable frame of reference for everyone.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Well, they're pirates, they're drinking. They're not making wine out there, right, though. It might be. I don't know. I tried to make wine once. How'd I go? It was poorly. We put it in a bottle and then all the stuff.
Starting point is 00:16:15 And then we put a condom on the top, because you have to, I don't know what we were thinking. This was before she knew about science to be fair. The condom expanded with carbon dioxide and then exploded. And that was, we did not get our damage deposit back at the end of that story. Now, like I said, there was lion teria, which was very different.
Starting point is 00:16:36 It was basically the food comes out the same way that it goes in. In case you've somehow forgotten the last 30 minutes, let's revisit the idea. They would note that this was usually accompanied by a loss of flesh, which is just a really gross way of saying a loss of weight. Right? Like, loss of weight is better than loss of flesh.
Starting point is 00:16:54 Come on. And this was blamed on. I appreciated this description. It was blamed on something called Kyle, which is not that Kyle, not the name, not the C-H-Y, not the name Kyle, which is a milky fluid that's made of lymph and a most-fied fat, and basically they would be like, well, if it gets really gross and corrupted and there's not enough fluid in it, then it is driven along the cavity of the guts
Starting point is 00:17:21 till it is entirely thrown out of the body by the anus. Ugh. Which I like the agency that the anus is given in this. All right, you. You've gone quite enough. Throw it out of the body by the anus. The medicines, the medicines, that ask you let my God before the mouth. Hey, I'm Dan McCoy.
Starting point is 00:17:48 I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kaylen. 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.
Starting point is 00:17:59 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 our one, the flop house. It's just called the flop house. I do a lot of correcting Dan.
Starting point is 00:18:14 The flop house, a lot of correcting Dan. Hey, it's John Moe, inviting you to listen to depression mode with John Moe, where I talk about mental health and the lives we live with all kinds of people. Famous writers? David Sideris, welcome to Depresh Mode. Thanks so much for having me. Movie stars?
Starting point is 00:18:33 Jamie Lee Curtis, welcome to Depresh Mode. I am happy to be here. Musicians. I am in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm talking to Abyman. Great to talk to you. And song exploters. Wishing case, here we're welcome to Dupresh Mode.
Starting point is 00:18:46 Thanks so much for having me. Everyone's opening up on Dupresh Mode on Maximum Fun. Dissentary, of course, the bloody flux was the most feared. You get fevers, you get chills, you get cramps. Obviously, there's blood. It was considered bad if, you get fevers, you get chills, you get cramps, obviously there's blood. It was considered bad if it progressed to just like, just blood. Then they were like, well, we don't know. That was too bad. And they had like descriptions of like, did you see the blood on the side of the stool, on the front of the stool, just sort of sitting on the stool. Oh no, it just came out, oh, that's bad. Diet was blamed a lot, and probably not unfairly, right?
Starting point is 00:19:30 Like, there probably were a lot of times where... It sounded bad, it sounded really bad. Something you ate was responsible for your diarrhea. Sometimes it was just you ate something new while traveling, which could have been right. Hey, that one, that one I can vouch for. It's been a long few days. There are some very specific theories about foods that made you stop sweating.
Starting point is 00:19:54 Bear with me, I know this sounds weird. So, it was thought that certain foods would make you sweat less. And when you ate the foods and you sweat less, then sweat sort of builds up in your body. And it's got to come out somewhere. So if you eat the foods that stop sweating, you get where I'm going with this. So specifically mushrooms and pork make you sweat less.
Starting point is 00:20:21 And if you eat them, you'll get diarrhea because now you're not sweating enough. And the you get sweat comes out your butt. Yes Okay, you get sweat diarrhea Sweat diarrhea. There's another one that's just in my head now. That's where I keep pictures of my kids You know memories and stuff it's the same brain that has to now have sweat diarrhea up there forever It's the same brain that has to now have sweat diarrhea up there forever. This was, and this was, like I said, this was a commentary because in that same line, they thought cold air could cause diarrhea because cold air would tighten your pores.
Starting point is 00:20:57 And again, you can't sweat. And so if you can't sweat, the sweat's got to go somewhere. There is, and this is why I have an entire book written about like the science of sweat, the sweat's got to go somewhere. There is, and this is why I have an entire book written about like the science of sweat is because people were really obsessed with sweat for a while. Another cause that people pended on were like, if you eat uncooked fruits or veggies, which again was probably fair. I heard someone in the audience quietly say, yep. Yep. That's alright. You can.
Starting point is 00:21:28 It's okay. Well, I mean, again, that's a fun thing about looking through this kind of history. It's like there are moments where they're like, yeah, that's spot on. I get why you got diarrhea. For sure. Like, if you would ask me in the future now like Sydney, will I get diarrhea? I would have said yes, wash that off first, but you didn't and you got diarrhea. But the thing is, any time that one thing was blamed like cold air gives you diarrhea,
Starting point is 00:21:57 then they would like also somebody would be like, well no, it's really hot air. And somebody's like, well it's when it's dry and somebody else is like, no, it's when it's damp. And someone's like, no, it's really hot air. And some of it's like, well, it's when it's dry. And somebody else was like, no, it's when it's damp. And someone's like, no, it's just any change in the weather. The problem is the air. We've got to get rid of this air to cure our diarrhea. Because humor is, we're often to blame at this time in medical history, yellow bio was the bad one when it came to diarrhea.
Starting point is 00:22:20 There was always something, like when it came to a burn, we blamed blood. That was the humor that was to blame in burns. When it came to diarrhea, the humor we blamed was yellow bio. Like, you just have a lot of it. Or your stomach is just too weak. That was also blamed. But again, in some cases, the thought was like, you know, if you have too much blood, a bloody flux could be desirable. Specifically, this was after an amputation was performed. So the thought process was that, let's say someone has a wound, we don't know how to fix it,
Starting point is 00:22:55 a surgeon amputates. Now you have all this extra blood just floating around in you. Yes, yes, yes. And it's got to come out. And we know if we let it come out the place where we amputated things don't go well. So we stop. It's got to be another hole.
Starting point is 00:23:18 I mean, I don't like the blood coming out here, but it's better than the other holes, right? Someone please. So it was thought to be a therapeutic sort of dysentery at that point. A therapeutic dysentery. A therapeutic thank you. Did you say therapeutic? Sydney Crouse. My favorite reason for diarrhea of the time was... Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You can't just say my favorite reason for diarrhea of the time.
Starting point is 00:23:52 I just really got married. Go ahead. It was Iatrogenic, which means we caused it. A lot of times the medicines that we would treat patients with at this point in history would like, we were looking for them to do something. We didn't, if it was doing something inside you that we couldn't see, it wasn't doing anything because we couldn't see it. So we were looking for an effect.
Starting point is 00:24:15 So either it made you puke or it made you have diarrhea. So we gave lots of medicines that would, you know, be laxatives, that would make you have diarrhea, and then sometimes we went too far. And so that was a really common cause of diarrhea on board, with like, you went to see the barber surgeon for like a cut, and they gave you a laxative, and now you can't stop pooping. So how did we treat it? The general overview, if you're on a ship and you're facing a flux, what are we going to do about it? So, first of all, we need to cast out the humors that are causing it. So we need to get rid of the bad humors. That's the first thing that you're going to try to do.
Starting point is 00:25:05 Then we're going to try to fix what's wrong with your blood. So the bad humorists have to go, the good blood is a good humor, but there's something wrong with it. We've got to fix that. Then we have to heal whatever is wrong with your stomach or intestines or both. And then finally, we're going to strengthen everything. We're going to fortify the heart and the liver
Starting point is 00:25:25 and the kinds of medicines. I mean, you think like Mary Poppins given the kids medicines to make them strong? You ever thought about that? She just gives a medicine like, this will make you strong, take your medicine. Like what's in that? Cocaine.
Starting point is 00:25:42 I mean, all of a sudden, it was cocaine, right? It's definitely cocaine. Folks, she gives his kid, she gives his kid some of this medicine to make him strong, and then he's on the ceiling with his uncle and in a cartoon. So pretty good stuff, Mary, thank you. That's why she always lied to the dad.
Starting point is 00:26:06 She's like, I'm not going back to jail. I do not know what your kids are talking about. We went to see super pets at the movies. Then we came back. So how do we get out bad humor? The number one way that you need to get rid of humor is bleeding. This has been used throughout history.
Starting point is 00:26:24 If we've got to get rid of a bad humor, we just cut somebody and we bleed them, and then we can get rid of humors is bleeding. This has been used throughout history. If we've got to get rid of a bad humor, we just cut somebody and we bleed them and then we can get rid of it. Now, you think like, well, but not when you're having bloody diarrhea, right? Like, certainly, you're not going to bleed somebody if they're bleeding. Nope, you'd be wrong.
Starting point is 00:26:39 That's the number one time you want to bleed somebody is if they're already bleeding. Yes. Because if you bleed them enough from somewhere else, there's nothing left to come out of their butt. That's real. I mean, it's not real. Like, it was a real theory.
Starting point is 00:26:59 It strains credulity that no one was like, this doesn't really make sense, does it? Like I feel like this just feels wrong. You could use animas, which again seems like questionable considering the situation, but animas of egg yolks, sugar, milk, so you would like mix it all together and warm it with like hot pebbles, you would like like, tumbles hot and then they're those in their warm it all up.
Starting point is 00:27:31 You could throw something in there that was considered medicinal like St. John's Wart. Nice. That's a way you could administer that. Or warm wood was a common thing and you just like give them an inema and then hope that everything that comes out is the last of it. That will be done. There were certain foods that were recommended. Like plantains were commonly recommended and I thought like, I don't know, I mean bananas
Starting point is 00:27:55 constipated our kids. So maybe plantains. I don't know, maybe. Guava eggs, acorns, those are all common foods. Like if you could get them. And a lot of it is you're at sea So it's like where are we? What do they have? That probably works. Yeah Let's try that that worked one time. You could also fumigate your butt so
Starting point is 00:28:18 It's it's sort of like Gwyneth Paltrow wants you to do with your vagina except Your butt. It's like it in the sense that it also doesn't do anything. It's unlike it in the sense that it's your rectum. And you would like get one of those little stools with a hole in the top and like put some hot coals and some like vinegar and brandy in there. And then just like let the fumes.
Starting point is 00:28:46 So all sweat lies for your but- Yeah, for your butt. They recommended- So, exercises recommended for so many things, and so often it's not going to do anything for that thing. In this case, exercise would be recommended for a flux and specifically horseback riding. And I know what you're thinking, if you're at sea,
Starting point is 00:29:11 why would you tell people to ride a horse? And then also, even if you're not at sea, if you have diarrhea. The last thing you want to do. Like the last thing you want to do. Like the last thing you want to do. For sure. It feels like really high risk, right? There were lots of medicines that were prescribed for fluxes.
Starting point is 00:29:33 And they were kind of like in different categories. They were like antidotes, like things that were supposed to stop it. Like, trekol was a common thing. Like, if you just give people this, it'll stop it. There were things that would just stop like the pain, like opium. There were stringents, like frankincense or rose or nutmeg or pomegranate. Those were all thought to be useful. There were things like sea buckthorn, which were cathartics, which were just like, make you poop more. Great. Like just
Starting point is 00:30:01 get it all out. Just get it all away. Let's speed up the process. There were cordials, which is more like the Mary Poppins medicine we're talking about. Like alcohol-based things, or like absinthe, was a common cordial you could take. And basically, it was like, this will make you feel really strong. Which I can kind of see, like, if you took that alcohol, you'd kind of be like, I can get through this.
Starting point is 00:30:24 Hey, yeah, this is going to beat me. I feel so much stronger now. There were also like, again, medicines that were thought to make you sweat, diaphyritics were common because if you sweat, it won't come out your butt. This was this really like threw off medical science for a while. All these people who were like, we don't know the connection between sweating and pooping, but we're going gonna figure this out. And then there were things that would make you throw up That was the other thing like well if we make it come out the other end will it stop coming out the bottom?
Starting point is 00:30:55 There was one specific cure called crocus martis Which is it's essentially rust water You would put iron filings in like pee. And then let them rust for a while. And then collect the rust. Why? And drink it. No.
Starting point is 00:31:18 And it didn't, I mean, I have to assume it didn't do anything. There's no evidence. I have no evidence. I have no evidence. I have no studies that tell me. I do want to tell you before we're done, one of my favorite treatments for the flux. William Cochburn, who was a sea surgeon, who, come on, guys.
Starting point is 00:31:42 It's just his name. And this is me saying, you're better than this. He wrote a ton, a lot of the information we have about, that's a great thing about like reading about pirate medicine and medicine at sea, is like all these surgeons would like take care of people and then write tons about it. And we have all these recorded histories of the stuff they did that was weird or wrong or right or whatever. about it. And we have all these recorded histories of the stuff they did that was weird or wrong or right or whatever. And he wrote about a flux cure that he came up with, and this would
Starting point is 00:32:11 not have been uncommon for a surgeon or a doctor to come up with their own sort of like patented medicine that may or may not do anything that they would like promote to people and usually use testimonials to tell people about. So what he said is, he came up with a cure to put an end to the practice of this kind of a diarrhea. I am fully persuaded that my medicine is an absolute cure for all those cases. If it is administered when the sick are left with the possibility of retrieving their rune strength. So this was a big, he was really all in for this medication that he invented. He promoted the heck out of it. He did a study. He actually, there was like a case on board a ship where a bunch of people had diarrhea.
Starting point is 00:32:51 They had some sort of like flu-like kind of thing, viral illness, and then they were also having diarrhea. And he gave it to everybody. And their diarrhea went away. But again, with a lot of things, the diarrhea does go away. So anyway, he thought he was on to something. So he got a great testimonio out of this. There's one letter where he gives an account of men that were cured by fluxes, and he adds an observation that he says, there was one guy in particular that when he saw him, he was lying a bed so weak that he was not a bed so weak that he was not able to help himself any manner of way.
Starting point is 00:33:27 He told me that he had 100 stools and 60 vommets in 48 hours. So that's like a bad case. His pulse was low. He gave him some cordial, of course, that's what Mary Poppins would do. And then he gave him some of his electuary, that's what Mary Poppins would do. And then he gave him some of his electuary, some of his special patent medicine for fluxes. And he was so thoroughly cured in seven days that he was able to walk about and visit Brazil.
Starting point is 00:33:55 So he saved his life. So you're wondering like what was in this medicine? And it took us a long time to try to figure out what was in his special electuary and it took us a long time to try to figure out what was in his special electuary, and it was opium. There you go. Thanks so much for listening to our show. Thanks to the taxpayers.
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