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

Episode Date: July 12, 2013

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 launch plague-ridden bodies... in a catapult. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books! One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on 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 Lord, everybody welcome to Saabon the metal tour of Miss fire medicine I am your your co-host Justin Akira I'm kind of freaked out Justin What's what's wrong sweetheart? This is my wife Sydney. She's a medical practitioner. What are you what are you wearing? Oh this uh yeah well you told me we're going to be talking about the plug which pretty spooky for me uh so I thought because my immune system, you know, work on the internet. So my immune system is basically not existent at this point. So, I am trying to protect myself. I made sort of a mask here.
Starting point is 00:01:55 I see that. What exactly were you trying to do with this thing? Well, I'm trying to protect myself from catching the plug. I know you can't catch it from podcasting about it, but it's a conceit for the intro. So what? It's on the bit. Tell me about this mask that you've rigged up here.
Starting point is 00:02:15 What was your thinking with this nose piece? Yeah, the nose pieces to keep the holes that I breathe in separate from my actual mouth. So it's to keep it distant and I've got some popery inside, right? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, Tim. That's both I mean, that's a little something for me, but also to keep the disease out. Right. Obviously. And there was a basis for that. I mean, there wasn't, but they thought there was. So okay okay. And what else, what have you got going on in the eyes here, honey? What would you call these? That's a glass.
Starting point is 00:02:48 That's glass eyes there. Glass eyes, okay. Any significance to having red glass eyes in your mask here? I'm trying to ward off evil, which now that I say it out loud, I can realize that it sounds a little silly. Right, so that was the plan. You're wording off evil, which of course is the plague. The plague is evil.
Starting point is 00:03:11 I assume it's not good. Sure, well, it's probably a scourge from God, as punisher. Exactly, so the glass, you know, I'm gonna take this off. I'm starting, you're making me feel kinda silly. Well, I mean, by all means, if you like it, it's a bold fashion statement. It's not just a look though, I mean, it's definitely a spooky look, but.
Starting point is 00:03:29 It's a very spooky look. You didn't get the whole costume going on. What are my lactic, what do I need? Well, I don't see that your clothes are covered in wax or animal fat or anything. No, I know that. That would have been a good plan. Is that something that they did back in olden times?
Starting point is 00:03:45 Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I don't see your coat or your gloves or your waders. And I certainly, you don't have a cane. No, I have a cane, would that help? Yeah, I mean, how else are you gonna examine patients if you don't have a cane? Okay, you got me on that one.
Starting point is 00:04:02 I'm still a little unsure about taking the mask off though. I'm gonna need to commit to be that it's it's safe. Well, if you're wearing a mask and for the same reason that at a 17th or 18th century plague doctor would have worn a mask. And I am. It's because you believe in the measma theory of disease. And I do. Which means that disease is like bad air, and it's just in an area, and it arises from something in that area, and it makes everybody in the vicinity sick. And of course, that's utterly wrong.
Starting point is 00:04:37 I should just take it off. So basically, you should just take it off. I'm just gonna take it off. Yeah. Oh God, I got sweaty, I just saw that. I'm not about to put it in there. I'm not about to put it in there, but there. Yeah. You know, one thing I will say that you got right is that 17th and 18th century plague doctors were usually people who weren't really doctors. Oh, perfect. It's a great fit for me. Exactly. They were either physicians
Starting point is 00:05:00 who maybe were so bad, they couldn't actually set up their own practice because word of mouth You know they everybody realized like hey that dude doesn't know what he's doing or there were Just people you know just random people who said hey, I could be a plague doctor For instance one of one famous plague doctor sold vegetables right up until the moment he decided hey Hey, I'm out of vegetables. I'm out of vegetable and all these people are I think I can get one of those masks. I can get a, my friend Darrell, that makes sense. My wife's got some popery at home.
Starting point is 00:05:31 I'm a doctor now. Okay, if we're gonna talk about the plague, maybe we should actually learn something about it. Maybe I, you know, other than... Well, I can do this part. It's evil. Okay. Made by Satan or avenge for God
Starting point is 00:05:44 to punish people who let us stray. Right, that's not, it's evil, made by Satan, or avenge for God to punish people, let us stray. Right. That's not, that's not right. Okay, let's try. I mean, that was a good try. Let's hear your pseudoscientific theory. So basically the plague, or it was also called the Black Death. Is it the bubonic plague? It's also the bubonic plague.
Starting point is 00:06:03 What's bubonic plague? It's also the bubonic plague. What's bubonic? Bubonic, that's actually one form of the plague. So it's caused by a bacteria, as a lot of diseases. Okay, not evil. Not evil, it's caused by a bacteria. It's called Yersinia Pestus, named for Alexander Yersin, who discovered it. So this bacteria can cause different forms of the plague and the most
Starting point is 00:06:25 famous the one everyone remembers is the bubonic form, named because it would infect your lymph nodes and your lymph nodes would become huge and swollen and they would turn black and they were very painful and they called them bubos. Bubos. So big swollen glands. And so, that was the bubonic plague. The same bacteria could also cause the pneumonic plague because it infected your lungs. You may have inhaled it. So, where people getting one version, I mean, when these cause like wide swaths of destruction,
Starting point is 00:07:01 is everyone getting one version of these or is it manifesting in these different ways? It depends on exactly how you were exposed to it. The bubonic plague was the one most people were familiar with. And I should say, all of these, I say inhaled, but all of it was transmitted by flea bite. Oh, really? Yeah. I did not know that.
Starting point is 00:07:18 So rodents have this bacteria, usually rats, but rodents of some kind are a reservoir for it. Fleas bite bite the rats and then they bite humans and then you get the plague. And if it affects your... What is horse rats? Is there anything worse than that? I know. You know, I debated this topic specifically because I knew we'd have to talk about rats and you would not...
Starting point is 00:07:39 Just the pit. Now you have nightmares about rats with the plague, although they'd look cute in those little masks. Okay, I do like this. I guess I can just do rats with the plague. Although they look cute in those little masks. Okay, I do like it. It's got now a Stuart Little Vibral. The little rats with the canes, the canes, they're poking little rat patients to examine. I like this.
Starting point is 00:07:54 I like this. So the fleas bite humans and they give you ebubonic, if it infects your lymph nodes, you get, there's septicemic, which means it's in your bloodstream and those people get really sick. They become, they go into shock, their blood bloodstream and those people get really sick. They become They go into shock their blood pressure drops and and they can get an acrotic fingertips and toes things rot off of them And then there's the pneumonic where it's mainly a long infection. You use it to remember things exactly That's that's what it happens you get that plague and you're really good at devising little tricks to memorize things for tests If you didn't die, it'd be a pretty good deal. Yeah, it's it's an X-Men power. Yeah, a short-lived X-Men power
Starting point is 00:08:34 It's not a very popular character But anyway that depending on which which thing in infected that's the kind of plague you got So how far back are we talking when when do we first start hearing about the plague? Well, the thought is actually that the plague was mentioned in the Bible. Oh, yeah. There is a plague in the first book of Samuel that infected the Philistines in 1000 BC after they stole the ark of the covenant. And it is thought by scholars that the plague that they're speaking of at that point was
Starting point is 00:09:04 the plague. So do you think that weird Nazi that's face-melted off in Raiders're speaking of at that point was the plague. So do you think that weird Nazi that's face-melted off in Raiders? Do you think that he got the bubonic? Is that what happened there? Absolutely. Scientifically speaking, that was that was the plague. George Lucas, scientist. Exactly. Have you heard of the great plague of Justinian? Uh, no. You think you would have. You would think you think you'd have caught up to me at this point. A lot of bad blood there. I'm assuming.
Starting point is 00:09:31 But that was confirmed. AD 532 spread through Egypt, Middle East Mediterranean, killed like half of the people. That was the plague. God, humanity just gets going and then something like this has to go and happen. We're just trying to get on our feet. Just kept happening.
Starting point is 00:09:45 Get still out there, man. Oh, man, I didn't need to know about that. I'm has to go on happen. We're just trying to get on our feet. Just kept happening. Get still out there, man. Oh, man. I didn't need to know about that. I'm going to get my mask. Don't worry, there's hope. Oh, good. We'll get to that. We'll get to the hope later.
Starting point is 00:09:52 First, we have to start with the utter dismay. And it did. When people think about the black death, what they're usually referencing is the time that the plague spread through Europe from like 1328 to 1351, and it killed a third of the people. It's thought that it probably started in China
Starting point is 00:10:09 and then through trade routes it spread first through Italy, like down through Sicily, and on the boats, the boats carried rats that carried fleas. By bastards. And it spread up through Europe from there. The mortality rate from the plague without any treatment was like 50 to 90%. What if they get help?
Starting point is 00:10:28 If you get help, you can stomach today, we can treat the plague, but it's still about a 15% mortality. Yeah, and this is now, I'm like 2013. Yeah, this is now. No, it's a big deal. And it's interesting when we think back to the time period when it was spreading through in the 1300s, when it was spreading from China across, you know, through Italy and up to Europe, that was actually probably the first incidence of bioterrorism. Really? Where did it, from who? From who to where?
Starting point is 00:10:58 There was a city called Kaffa, which is now Fiodosia in the Ukraine. And in 1346, it was being attacked by the Tarders. And the Tarders outside the city walls started dying of the plague. So obviously they're gonna lose at that point, right? They can't get in the walls. Everybody's dying of the plague. So what do they do? They start flinging plague-ridden corpses over the city walls.
Starting point is 00:11:23 Yikes! Yeah. That's one way to go about it the city walls. Yikes. Yeah. That's one way to go about it, I guess. Yeah. That's one option. And it devastated the city. Yeah, I would think.
Starting point is 00:11:31 Because what do you get in, dude? You can't toss them back. You don't have your own catapult. Maybe they did, but I mean, then you have to go pick up a play grid and corpse. Do you think there was one guy? There had to be one guy on the on the on their team who's like, you know what? We got a catapult these bodies. They're not gonna put themselves into the catapult. Let's just rock paper scissors. Let's. Does anybody have gloves? Does anybody know anything any single
Starting point is 00:11:58 thing about like germs and stuff? No. Any of that? No, I'm asking. This is a question I'm posing to the imaginary people about the fleeing bodies or walls. Then see, they wouldn't even know what germs were. Now, could they have got it? I mean, they couldn't have got it from, I mean, less than a person had a fully on them, right? Like, they were cool. Well, you can, I mean, if they're covered in like
Starting point is 00:12:18 oozy bacteria goo, you know, then yeah, absolutely you can get it. And if people are still alive in their coughing and hacking bacteria in your face. That's disgusting. Yeah, I mean, it can spread. I mean, the main way that the plague was spreading was from these rats and these fleas, but it definitely was spreading person to person. Bacteria goo to bacteria, you goo.
Starting point is 00:12:38 Bacteria goo to back. Oh, I mean, that was the thing is that people were, you know, trying to take care of their diseased loved ones and trying to give them butterfly kisses where they got the bacteria go and then oops, it's in your eye, Ibonic plague. Exactly. Done. And they wish they had those glass eyes then.
Starting point is 00:12:55 They wish they had been so fast to make fun of me. It wasn't gonna ward off evil, but it was gonna ward off, you know, bodily fluids. Worn off something. Yeah. So, you know, the thing is, nobody knew what to do about the plague. They had lots of ideas.
Starting point is 00:13:11 Most of them were really bad. It was my favorite part. But we have a lot of things. We have treatments. So we already talked about the fact that there were special doctors who took care of people. Correct. This, and they were all based on the idea
Starting point is 00:13:23 that the plague was coming from some infected evil air that everyone was breathing in. So it sounds like we like the plot of a doctor who had a certain, most medicine in that time was Dr. Hussainter. One of the most common things people would do is kind of like a rheumotherapy. So you mentioned that you had paparri inside your mask. I did. So that was scientifically based. Exactly, because you don't want to breathe in this evil air.
Starting point is 00:13:50 So you've got to filter it through something that smells good. So some people just simply carried around like bouquets of flowers and held them up to their face. What assholes does we are? Which really is in a plague treatment, so to speak, but... It's not even a plague prophylaxis. How dumb do you think this plague is that you're just... I'm just carrying some daisies.
Starting point is 00:14:10 I look protect me. I think what's better are the people who said, you know what? I'm smelling the air and it doesn't smell that bad, but it's still making people sick. I'm gonna go the other direction and I'm gonna run and hide in the sewer where things smell super bad because it award off that good smelling infection there. Oh my god. So there were people who took to the sewers and stayed there.
Starting point is 00:14:38 Just because, because they thought that the plague air smelled normal. So if they got that bad funky air, at least it would not be that nice smelling plague air. Right, the poop air, would you? The poo gas that they were inhaling was not plaguing for it. Wored off the smells or the non smells of the plague air. You know the rats got the biggest kick out of that. Oh no, you're safe down here, bro.
Starting point is 00:15:06 You are fine. You just come over here, give me a little petarini. Don't worry about those fleas, we're cool. Which is terrible too, because not only were these people still getting the plague, obviously. Obviously. They were getting everything else. And proclaiming themselves as rat kings.
Starting point is 00:15:22 Learning over the series in a tyrannical reign. You don't want that. Do you think there's still maybe a whole race of people living in the series? The series above ground underneath London. The Boo Boo. And you've got to remember that, especially when we're talking about in like the 1640s, when this next big wave of the plague. So we talked about the 1300s.
Starting point is 00:15:40 So now in the 1600s, this next big wave of the plague comes through. London is packed at this point like there's a lot of people living there and there are a lot of people who are not you know disposing of waste like at all really movies they just throw it at their windows so it's a there are a lot of dirty people living in dirty conditions close to each other so can you imagine what the sewers were like, man? Well, they're fine because they're just thrown on the street. The sewers are perfectly pleasant.
Starting point is 00:16:10 There were some treatments if you actually got the plague that weren't quite as disgusting. So you could just wash them in vinegar and water? Probably going to hurt. No, no. I mean... Vinegar has no properties like that, doesn't it? No, not that I can think of the top of my head. Volcano properties, when mixed with baking soda.
Starting point is 00:16:29 I guess. Well, that's true. And it's really good in some dishes. Yeah. Like, for instance, on french fries. Yeah, that's, that's good. That's not gonna help your plate. So, no. They had french fries.
Starting point is 00:16:40 But that's a tasty treat. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You wanna distract yourself from the black, you're hungry. On your chips. On your chips. Not your french fries. We're in England tasty treat. I'm sorry. If you want to distract yourself from the black, you're hungry. On your chips. On your chips. Not your French fries. We're in England, I guess, right now.
Starting point is 00:16:49 Well, right now for the plague we are. Sure. So one of our standard favorite treatments for anything, bleed them. Oh, yeah. There you go. Just cut them open. Bleed them dry. And then put some clay and some violets on those cuts.
Starting point is 00:17:05 Clay and violets? Clay and violets mix it all together and paste it on there. Were we using leeches, you think of this point? Yeah, if you had more money, you could use leeches. That was usually a class thing. That's the only... A richer people use leeches. That's perfect.
Starting point is 00:17:19 That's what I want. That's what I want roaming around. Not just leeches that'll suck your blood, but leeches that are suck your blood and are infected with the bubonic blood. That's perfect. That's what I want roaming around. Not just leeches that'll suck your blood, but leeches that are suck your blood and are infected with the bubonic blood. That's perfect. That's perfect. Put one to a rat's back and let's just create the ultimate terror, just roaming the countryside.
Starting point is 00:17:33 I like the idea that the class divide with leeches is that leeches will not feed on the blood of the lower class. No, they don't want that. Excuse me. Well, it tastes common. No, thank you. No, like, you don't drink this delicious, this delicious, a tastes common. No, thank you. No, actually don't drink this delicious, this delicious, a flu and blood.
Starting point is 00:17:46 But other than pastes of clay and violets, there are other things that people like to mix together and apply to human bodies. So specifically, let's say you did get the bubonic form in the plague. We got some tinctures come up, some sals. Yeah, yeah, sort of sort of some poltuses. So you got a big bubo Yeah, sort of sort of some peltices. So you got a big booboo, maybe under your armpit. That would that's there are some lymph nodes there or maybe you're in your groin. Like a big blister type thing. There's a big lymph node, big giant swollen lymph node. It looks like a big and then they usually turned black after a while.
Starting point is 00:18:16 They started to dine, no crows, like a big grapefruit in your groin, perfect under your armpit. Wonderful. So they would cut them open to let the infection out. Well, they didn't think that, let the evil out. Yeah, right, the sin. And then you would mix together some natural stuff,
Starting point is 00:18:33 some tree resin, some root of white lilies. Perfect. And some human excrement. Oh, oh good. You dirty freaks. Mix that all together and just shove that right in that open world. The one guy who suggested it. I know what would be perfect. Let's see, what do you have in this poll list? Tree resin? Good. Root of Oito lilies. Perfect.
Starting point is 00:18:59 I have one other ingredient. I would like to humbly suggest as I must experience doctor of two years. I would like to suggest human excruciation. You know that was one of these plague doctors, one of these weirdos. I don't know, we tried everything else. How about some poo poo? And then in these guys were hired by the city. It's not like you called like the plague doctor to come see you and out of the goodness of his heart. He like, no, like the city hired a guy and said, please be our plague doctor. All of our real doctors left. Come up duty in our lands. And a lot of official. And this is, and this is a sad thing, you
Starting point is 00:19:36 know, a sad note. A lot of the, the upper class, a lot of the physicians who were wealthier and certainly the royalty just took off anywhere Anywhere where this was happening, they just left. It was dip. Yeah. Just go to cans for the spring or something. Get out of here, get our base tans. Exactly. That's what they're trying to do.
Starting point is 00:19:56 But they're, you know, they used, like I said, they used human excrement as treatment. But they also were a fan of using urine. Yeah, well, that's good. For treatment. Jellyfish or the plug, either way. Exactly. Jellyfish in the plug. They would, they would bathe in urine.
Starting point is 00:20:11 That was one, one way to treat. Boy, you got to have a lot of devoted friends to get enough urine to bathe in. You're supposed to use your own, ideally, just kind of lie there like a, like a, a, a, a Oh, oh wacky Wacky kids fountain just bring hither and yon just put the stopper in the tub Uh-huh and stay in the tub for a couple weeks. Just stay just stay hydrated. There you go You also your bathtub would be before your plug kill you have a good last week. Guess what you can't I heard you can oops. Um, you could also drink your own urine. Yeah, well, I do that anyway.
Starting point is 00:20:46 It's good enough. I'm plague covered, though. Did you mean to share that? No, that was in my head. It doesn't mean to say that a lot. If you're going to drink your own urine, you should drink a full glass twice a day. Perfect. I mean, if you're trying to fight the plague and you live in the 1600s.
Starting point is 00:21:01 And I'm gonna do it. Yeah. That was not actual medical advice. What about some less traditional? Silly is it? Were those traditional? Silly is it seems? We have anything a little more, you know, magical?
Starting point is 00:21:16 A little more magical. Well, there was the Vickery method. Okay, I'm ready. Name for Thomas Vickery. He was a plague doctor, I guess, or he was some kind of physician. And I mean, he was a doctor in theory. And his recommendation is that you should take a live hin and strap it to the any boobo that you have. You know, you, you real doctors, you get a lot of static and in this day and age, I'm not
Starting point is 00:21:47 sure you alopathic physicians deserve some of the heat you get, but you do have to admit that if you're in the 17th, 13th century, you got the plague, you got three people. One says, uh, I'll, I'll rub some poo poo in there and then maybe pee pee in a bathtub and wall around in it. And an old witch is like put a hand on it. Like you were thinking, okay, old witch, that sounds pretty good actually. I think I will give that a shot before I resort to the duty. Well, and the idea is that you strap the chicken to your booboo. You wait till it drains like on the chicken to your boobo.
Starting point is 00:22:25 You wait till it drains on the chicken for a while. Cool day for a chicken. You take the chicken off, clean it off, strap it back there. You know you're done when the chicken dies. Oh, okay. Either you die or the chicken dies. If the chicken dies, you win. If you die, obviously.
Starting point is 00:22:43 You don't want to fill it out and fill it out. Somebody should unstrap the chicken dies, you win. If you die, obviously. You don't want to fill that with that. Somebody should unstrap the chicken. Can you get this chicken off me? I think it died. And I don't feel any better. I would love to see somebody with like, I keep picturing them with hands strapped all over them, you know, and their armpits and in their groin.
Starting point is 00:23:01 Yeah, people could laugh, but those people smelled like poo poo that they put in their open wounds. So I don't know where they get off. I don't know that smelling like chicken poop is any better. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. There were some ideas that actually weren't dangerous. They probably still didn't work, but people thought that any food that could spoil might make you more risk to get the plague.
Starting point is 00:23:21 And I can see where that idea might arise from. People seemed like they were spoiling when they got the plague. I mean, they would become necrotic and things would fall off of them. And so they went from meat and cheese and fish and stuff that can go bad, just eat things like bread or vegetables. Yeah. Which, you know, it didn't work, but again, probably not dangerous. And then there were some efforts for sanitation. Okay. Oh, thank God. So they thought, hey, maybe if we cleaned all this human and animal waste off the streets, that would help, which I don't know if it helped with the plague, but it certainly would help with like just the whole life, just property values. It would help with the smell.
Starting point is 00:23:59 Yeah. It sucks that that's what it took for that to go like at no point before the plague. No one had said, guys, this is gross. It's gross. We've got poo poo everywhere. Well, you got to understand like it took people a long time to understand the concept that if you lived by a river because you needed the river for water, that you should like get the drinking water upstream from the place where like you pee and poop in the river.
Starting point is 00:24:26 Like it took us like decades to figure that out. Cool, good job, manity. So, you know, this is pretty good. So they want to clean the streets up. And then that also gave rise to the whole, you know, our, the Monty Python, bring out your dead thing. Oh yeah, there's big carts of bodies. That was a real deal.
Starting point is 00:24:42 They really had the body collectors come around at night. They really did. You know, bring out your dead. And now that after a while, they couldn't come out at night because they just had to come out all the time because they were overwhelmed with bodies. Or they would cart them out of the city and burn them with their clothes as well, the thought being
Starting point is 00:24:57 that whatever was on them, they didn't want in the house. Again, that kind of was, even though they didn't know what they were doing, was kind of a good idea. I don't know that it helped very much. What about religious folks? They always like to get up in it. Well, and the plague is no exception. You know, any, any, before we really understood the idea that germs caused disease, it was always thought that, you know, whether it be cholera or the plague or tuberculosis, that it was probably a punishment from God, that it was always thought that whether it be cholera or the plague or tuberculosis, that it was probably a punishment from God, that it was probably something we as humans had done to displease God. And that was across all religions. So there was a lot of prayer,
Starting point is 00:25:35 depending on what faith, some people just kind of strapped in and said, we gotta wait this out, God's kind of cleaning the countryside and we you know, we earned it. But that gave rise to a lot of self-flagulation. Like in Da Vinci code? Exactly. So you just beat yourself and maybe then God will stop being mad at you and take your plague away. Boy, there's another feels better when you're plagued right and then just hitting yourself with a whip. That would...
Starting point is 00:26:01 Who would that go so smooth? That was the other use for the canes that the plague doctors carried. Here, take this into the other room and do the right thing. I'll be in the hall. You're joking, but that's not far off. Oh, man. They really, some patients resorted to that, not knowing what else to do.
Starting point is 00:26:16 They would take, you know, the doctor could offer their cane. Such a bummer. There were some others, so they would sometimes eat the powder of crushed emeralds. Oh, good. Finally, a solution that everyone can do. It seems very cost-effective. It's delicious. At least then, when you rub your poopy into your wound, it'd be beautiful and sparkly. Well, you've got all those emeralds laying around. Why not crush them?
Starting point is 00:26:40 And that was the earliest noted case of bedazzling. Come back once we go around it. There were a lot of things, you know, they also, if you didn't have emeralds maybe, because like nobody did, you could crush some egg shells, mix them with some leaves and some marigolds and put them in some ale and add some treckle and then drink that. It was treckle. Treckles, it's like this syrupy stuff that's left over in the sugar process. So when they're really like making sugar, when they're refining sugar, it's a syrupy byproduct. So it's like sweet. Although dark treckles kind of bitter, I read. So anyway, any other fake treatments for we talk about the real ones? By the end of the last big run of the plague in the 17th and 18th centuries people were trying anything
Starting point is 00:27:28 They were drinking arsenic. They were mercury was back on the scene They started just behavioral things don't think about the plague Don't think about death it won't happen. Oh, you may. Stop having sex Well, I mean if you have the plague that's probably not like super bad advice. Don't go outside There's plague there and and in the worst case no jokes here in the worst case Genocide there was there was a belief for one period of time that it was related to those of the Jewish faith. And so it actually resulted in killing Jewish people
Starting point is 00:28:10 at one point. That's great, humanity. I know. And then did it again. I know. Hey, so Sid, I've got the plague. What are you going to do for me? It's 2013.
Starting point is 00:28:20 It's a new day. We have real medicine. What are you going to do for me, a plague hammer? Well, first I'm gonna go put on the mask you just took off. Perfect. Just to give everybody the room a laugh. And get my flage-lating cane. It's important to laugh.
Starting point is 00:28:36 And then I'm probably just gonna prescribe you an antibiotic. A lot of antibiotics, streptomycin, genptomycin, tetracycline, floric winelones, a lot of different antibiotics will work against the plague. Again, it's still a serious disease. 15% of people can die, even with treatment. Is that like, when you say even with treatment, is that like everything else where
Starting point is 00:28:58 if you get to a little bit earlier than your odds are a little bit better? Or is it? Absolutely. And you also depends on how healthy the person is who gets it and where they are. And like you said, how early they seek treatment. A lot of the problem is that let's see you get the septicemic version. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:13 It can put you into septic shock, which we can help you through. There are hospitals, doctors, there are ways we can support you and save your life and get you through that. But if you don't come in and get help right away, that it might be too late. Yeah, there's not a lot they can do for you at that point. And this disease is still happening. I mean, it's not something that you, we certainly see a lot in the US,
Starting point is 00:29:32 but it does happen in some parts of the Southern US and then in other developing nations, we're still seeing the plague. Not common, but it still happens, it's still out there. So, ladies and gentlemen, keep your masks on. Keep yourself safe from plague carriers, namely rats. If you see one, just go ahead and put it out to pasture. Just for me, for nobody just to... Did you just advocate killing rats? Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:30:00 Well, no, I have a better idea. Just don't hang out with rats. Just don't hang out with rats. Even if you are the rat king or part of the rat community The start of the 1700s and has not had never seen daylight which they have convinced themselves as a mystery I like the idea that this this this rat king community is living in the sewers below London and also they're listening to our podcast Yeah, the one they still have Wi-Fi the savages. There are biggest listening bass actually. There are number one fans. Speaking of listening bass, thank you so much for listening at home. If you've reviewed the show on iTunes or tweeted about it, we super, super appreciate you.
Starting point is 00:30:35 It means the world to us. I want to thank Boing Boing for writing about our program and recommending it. Lots of you tuned in as a result of that. So thank you so much. Thank you to folks tweeting about the show, Christian Halberg, Brian Muthaney, Tally Robinson, Ren, Soul Rosenbaum, Matthew Voss.
Starting point is 00:30:57 So many of you are tweeting about the show with the Salbone Tash tag. You can also follow us at Salbone's show. I wanna thank the Max Bon fun network, as always, for having us on their family of programs. Lots of great stuff you can listen to. Judge John Hodgman, Jordan Jesse Goam, Wambam, Pow, and thank you so much for listening to our program. Again, it means so much and if you could share this with a friend, we would certainly appreciate it where a young
Starting point is 00:31:20 podcast just starting. Absolutely, guys. Yeah, and thanks for listening. It means a lot to us. I really appreciate it where a young podcast just started. Absolutely, guys. You're going to be in the earth. Yeah, and thanks for listening. It means a lot to us. I really appreciate it. Don't take anything I say seriously, but do keep listening to it. Yeah, we appreciate it. And make sure to join us to get next Friday for another episode of Sawbugs.
Starting point is 00:31:37 I'm just a McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. As always, don't feel off me. I'm Sydney McRoy. always don't feel awful. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artists Don't Listen or Support It

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