Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Railway Madness

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Trains are statistically one of the safest ways to travel, but please mind the vibrations. Dr. Sydnee talks about the brief period in the 1800's when men kept going wild on trains.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/ 

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, talk is about 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.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth Hello everybody and welcome to saw bones marital tour of misguided beddest and I'm a co-host Justin McRoy and I'm Sydney McRoy That's it. I thought you'd say something else. Oh, why you always say something. I know I usually have something else to say don't I? Yeah, I mean Justin and in our Long relationship you I found you always have something to say. Well, I, you know what, it's tough. I've been on the road a lot. Like, I've been, we went to Cincinnati to visit the beautiful Kings Island. And then there's San Diego Comic Con.

You and I took a trip up to Columbus. It's just been very, a lot of work here and up to go to the beach to vacation. There's just a lot of travel. And I have been growing lots of delicat squash. That's true. That's what I've been. You went with me to several of the things I just mentioned. I know. I'm just saying I am growing. You're a very busy dynamic woman. I don't want to go to the wrong impression. I am busy. I am busy. You know, travel is great leading to our topic today. Even when I do one that's so organic, you can't help yourself. You have to. I didn't know if there was intentional. Of course it was. I've been doing this since 2008. Of course it was. I've been doing this for 15 years.

Of course it was. Was it really or do you? It was like, yeah, yeah. There wasn't an axi. I just thought it was. Was it really or do you? It was like yeah. Yeah. There wasn't an axi. I just thought it was an accident. Anyway. I was so proud of myself. This episode is brought to you by Chris. Chris from Long Island. Thank you. He's our sponsor for this week. When you need authentic artisanal soaps and other handcrafted goods come to Chris from Long Island. I have no evidence that Chris from Long Island can make you our T's and Elsobs.

See, I don't know. They might. Chris might do that. I don't care. So, you're like 12 and he can make our T's and Elsobs. That's true. That's true, so you're like, some of the first player can make our T's and Elsobs.

I can't. We love your soap, so you're, thank you. Thanks, thanks, so you're. I don't know. I don't know. Chris may do that. Chris did not detail that. Just introduced me to this illness, this historical

maladies that I did, one, I like, not, didn't introduce it into my body, like into my system, but like told me about it in an email that I appreciated and then inspired this episode. So we're gonna talk about something called railway madness. Okay. Have you ever heard that? I hadn't either. But before we talk about railway madness, the reason that it has kind of come to popular attention right at this moment is because of a sort of related

issue that was first brought up that Chris talked about, and then some people, some YouTubers have been talking about. And I thought might be just like, you know how sometimes we talk about shark attacks a lot, but it's not because there were more shark attacks. It's just because everybody started talking about shark attacks, you know that phenomenon. I kind of thought that's what this was, but it turns out it might not be.

So the question that gave rise to this episode was why are so many people having some sort of episode, whatever it is on airplanes these days? Mm. Was that rhetorical or are you asking me? Do you know? Do I know? Did you know that was happening?

Did you know that there were more? I mean, I know that we see a lot of video evidence of it. It does seem to be, I'll say related. I don't know. There's been an uptick of that kind of thing at Disney World. There's been. Yeah. There's been an uptick in like violence, people fighting their, fighting cast members.

Remember that one cat that got super drunk in the Mexico pavilion and then started running through the, the kind of, ziggurat that got there and in the Mexico pavilion and then started running through the kind of ziggurat they got there and people had to chase them down and through a barrier, it's in people, like there's a lot of that kind of thing. Now listen, and you know, when I hear that, I think like, well, Epcot, with your drinking around the world,

you've been set up for that for a long time. But that's always been Epcot. That's true. That's true. I do feel like it's more of a thing now. People make t-shirts about it. We'll certainly drink food and wine for us. That's true. That's true. I do feel like it's more of a thing now. People make t-shirts about it. Well, certainly during food and wine festivals. That just kicked off yesterday. They have so many drinking festivals, though. That's true. They're all drinking festivals. Anyway, you have flowering garden. They've been like, this is how Biscuits are going to enjoy.

Exactly. Exactly. They're all drinking festivals. So, my first thought was, are people really, and when I say, I'm using the term episodes because it's like we're capturing a wide variety of things that are happening that cause people to behave in ways on airplanes that are probably not conducive to air travel for them or anyone else on board. I didn't think it was true.

I thought, well, it's probably just that one, we're noticing it and two phones, like we film them. And then we put them on YouTube and TikTok and all the other social media apps. And so we're just seeing them, right? We're just aware of them. That's some kind of bias. But then I found this article that was published

in the LA Times a month ago, where there was an analysis done by the International Air Transport Association. And basically they said, unruly passenger incidents. So I guess that's the term. Yeah. A little bit more about these. Unruly passenger incidents on airplanes increased 47% from 2021 to 2022. So they have

gone up from 2021 to 2022. Yes. Okay. And they weren't okay. This is not so there was an uptick in mass-related incidents. Yes. We are talking about even after they stopped the mass- Here's what I think it is. It's the right, here's a 2021, the people are like, wow, I don't care about the mass, it's just so great to be on a plane.

I love this. Just to be around this many other people, what a joy. Then 2022, they're like, oh, other people are forgot. Oh, I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. And certainly like all of that plays into the city, like how many people,

but I mean, we're talking percentages. So like the number of people, although the more people, you know, like we're more people flying in 2022 than 2021, almost certainly, right? Right. Did they were there definite? Um, I think you could probably,

there's definitely some economic factors here with like budgetary shortfalls, labor shortages all over. I know there's a problem for a lot of these places. So a lot of things play into this. Like, why would that happen? I mean, I'm not going to tell you the one answer because there's so many confounders to that. I couldn't, I couldn't do that. But there have been some really famous incidents, I think, on social media. The one that a lot of people noticed, I think, it was surfaced to me on my TikTok, I know, about the passenger who thought there was someone in their seat next to them who wasn't there, like an imaginary person. There was an incident where somebody thought they were stuck in a time

loop and was becoming very upset and distressed as you would be if you were stuck in a time loop and was becoming very upset and distressed as you would be if you were stuck in a time loop. There was another one where the person charged the door and tried to open the plane during the flight because of some again. And like in all these incidents, what is happening exactly? We don't know. I mean, it's not like afterwards. There was no responsibility of the airline to give you a follow-up later to be like, just so everybody knows, here's what was going on. We don't know, right? We know that something happened, someone became very distressed and upset, and it was dangerous for everyone on board, including the person who's upset.

And usually, if you look at, like, statistically, why do these things happen on planes? Alcohol is a huge factor. I'm not saying in any of these cases, I don't know. I have no idea. But a lot of the times people get really drunk on planes. They get drunk in airports, they get drunk on planes, and they behave in the way drunk people behave. There are people who it's just the annoyance of being on an airplane. Sometimes the person next to you is bothering you in some way that probably is pretty minor and where you both on land, you would just walk

away from each other. But since you're crammed in this metal tube next to each other and you can't move and you then everything they're doing is really wearing on you. And so then a minor incident becomes something really intense or it might just be like a lot of people who are afraid of flying. So you have all that fear and that anxiety. You're, pumped up, fight or flight, decide to fight. Because you can't fly, because you're always flying. And that can manifest as a lot of paranoia if you're somebody who starts thinking, like, I'm feeling this way, does it mean something?

Which a lot of people do. I have a sinking feeling, does it mean something bad is gonna happen on this flight? No. And if you have a literal feeling, that means something has. Why would it be more? Well, we know that people are drinking more. That's a fact.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we've seen that and probably this is related in part to the pandemic, but there are lots of factors, lots of things when that too. We're, by the way, we're drinking more liquor specifically. These are US stats. People in the US are drinking more liquor. Mm.

We are drinking as much liquor as we did during the Civil War days. Weird. That's a lot. Yes. Like, we've shifted away from beer and we're drinking more liquor. So there's that. I think the pandemic has contributed to this in myriad ways. I think there's been, there was so much fear and anxiety around travel, around being

on planes, around being around other people. It makes sense that that would play in to people's already sort of underlying fears, anxieties, or chronic mental illnesses. We have seen cases of psychosis in general are increasing. We don't know why. There is the thought, is it related to COVID?

About 77% of the US population has had COVID as of the end of 2022. They have found evidence that that's how many of us, and now it'll be higher than that, right? So like eventually 100% of the US has had COVID. If the concern has been can COVID cause long lasting mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, or even psychosis, can they?

Can it? We don't know. There've been some correlations, nobody is sure. It's been suggested, we don't know. There are more incidents happening on planes. It seems there's a lot of factors and the question is what is it about specifically travel that seems to trigger this? Now does this tie into the railroad rail? It does. The railroad? The railroad. The railroad, the railroad.

The railroad. You just want to talk about trains, don't you? Yeah, that's cool. That's what you sound like a little kid. You just really want to train. I know, you're excited about the trains. You want to talk about the trains. So I think what's interesting is there is precedent for it

in that we saw this kind of problem early in the railroad days. It's weird because planes aren't new. It's not like we just all started flying on planes in the last couple years. So, I mean, it's not a perfect example. But certainly, there was, for a while, the thought that traveling on a train triggered some sort of psychosis wouldn't have been the word we use then, but like nervous condition probably would have been the phrase people used. It was a big turning point. We're talking about like mainly the mid to late 1800s is when like railway transportation for like people just going places. You know, I mean, obviously the railroad existed before that, but this is when the really

the birth of like, hey, you could get on a train and go somewhere. For travel, wouldn't that be cool? You can get there faster. It gives you a lot more freedom. It gives you, it gives everybody a lot more, everybody who can buy a ticket, who is allowed to get on the train and can buy a ticket, gets more freedom this way,

and they can get places faster, but that's also intimidating. All the sudden, you have more options and- That photo gets wild. The photo is like, I could be in Colorado with my nephew or whatever it is. I don't know the old Tommy people. You have a nephew in Colorado?

It's like an old Tommy person. It's like, I don't think you have a nephew in Colorado. I know your nephews, they're not in Colorado. Right, I'm just not like an old Tommy person. I could be taking a drink right now in Colorado. Does it griffin' other. I can see that big canyon. Everybody's been talking about, I hear it's mighty grand

and that that was before it was called the Grand Canyon. Right, but that was how it got called the Grand Canyon. Somebody said that and they were like, oh, that's what we should call it. Everybody on trains, we can spread the word. Really fast. So part of this, I will say, and this kind of plays into the whole issue

that would happen, is that a woman could get on a train and go somewhere very quickly without anybody controlling her. And that's where it all went wrong. And that was intimidating specifically and concerning to the men folk. Yes. Who didn't like the idea of these delicate flowers. Just disappearing.

Being from being in one place and then a few hours later being somewhere else. What do we just do with that? Swifferly transported anywhere. And if they had the means to purchase the ticket, they could maybe go without your permission. So there was a lot tied up. And the reason I put this concept in your head is that the people who seem to suffer from

this railway madness that we're going to talk about were primarily men. They seem to be the ones who were stricken with whatever was happening to them. And, you know, it is not, I don't think it's wild to suggest that part of it was them being confronted with this new, like, revolution in industry and technology and travel and, like, the implications of that for their sort of stranglehold on all of society. If that's fair to say. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Yeah. So throughout the late 1800s, and like really the 1860s, as we'll restart to see a lot of

these reports, the 60s and the 70s, are where you see like tons of reports in newspapers of railway madness. It will really fade out for the most part in like the 1890s. There are a couple scattered cases after that. But for the most part, this is when we see like men getting kind of wild on trains for reasons that I used to I used to love that TV. That in when I was in college, it ever has one TV. It's like men go wild on trains. Men going wild on trains, 1999. So let me give you a flavor of what this look like. Because you're like, 20 leads like men go wild on train men going wild on trains 1999 So let me give you a flavor of what this look like because you're like what are what are these guys doing? I know that's what you're wondering like what is railway madness? What is happening?

It's not one thing. It's basically people behaving sort of like I talked about on planes in ways that are not conducive to railway travel right while on trains There's a guy on a train to Liverpool who started, who pulled out a pistol and then started attacking all the windows with his pistol and like hitting them and just running up and down the train, yelling at people and kind of freaking out and attacking. He didn't actually shoot anybody, but obviously had a gun, so it was scary. And then when the train stopped,

not, he was riding all the way to Liverpool, so it wasn't his stop. But when it did stop for other people to get off, he like chilled out, he sat down, he was calm, and then when the train started going again, right back up attacking the windows. Wow. Right.

There was a case of a really like a Scottish guy who was like a rich aristocrat, like, well to do, probably the kind of guy who would sit there very posh, you know, staring down other customers is kind of like the vibe I get. He took off all his clothes and was like leaning naked out of the windows yelling as the train was going. Oh, why? We don't know. And but once you got off the train, totally fine. Oh. Mm-hmm. Regained his composure and seemed to be fine. You once you got off the train, totally fine. Oh.

Regained his composure and seemed to be fine. You can find, by the way, if you look this up, you'll find illustrations from old-timey newspapers. Oh, nice. And I love these because they're like, some of them are like cartoon panels, like comic strip style. Like, here's the guy emerging from his train car looking kind of like wild hide. And here he is in the hallway with his fist rays. Like he's yelling

something. And then here he is trying to like attack a woman in a train car. And like the woman is you know, it's all Victorian. So like she's like fainting and he's looking very wild. And then there's one of like, um, people like restraining a passenger, and then somebody like punching a guy, like one guy punching another guy, and everybody looks very dignified, except for like the one guy whose eyes are really wide, like, this is the wild man. Everyone else is very dignified. But I would highly recommend if you want to know more about these railway madness incidents, you would check out these illustrations just because I just think that's really,

why don't we do that anymore? Why don't we just take pictures of things? Why don't we do illustrations of events? All you know, you see illustrations for time, you know, time, we'll have one on the cover, New Yorker cartoons, I think are some big thing. We have had a total of cartoons now. We've moved forward to these hilarious goof factories

for editorial cartoons. There were, and there were more intense, like some of these were kind of like these stories. I'm telling you, where it was mainly like somebody sort of running around screaming or somebody like waving out the windows and they were acting really threatening or intimidating, but they didn't necessarily do anything.

But there were like actual injuries, knife attacks, and murders that took place sometimes. And, and like, there was this story that, and again, this was like, these stories would be published and everybody would talk about them. And after they were in the newspaper, there was like this huge sailor guy, like this big burly guy who like, you know, whatever happened, he started becoming very threatening and running around and out of his head on a, on a train. And so four guys had to hold him down and tie him to a seat for the rest of the journey so that he wouldn't attack anybody.

And so what was happening? I don't know, Sydney. Right. So like all of this is going on. But why? You just give me a lot of questions with no answers. Well, I'm going to tell you. Oh, thank goodness. But first we got to go to the building department. That one I saw coming. you. Oh, thank goodness. But first we got to go to the building department. Eat that when I saw coming. Yeah.

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That's tiny victories with Annabelle and Laura Mondays on Maximum Fun. Woo! It's a tiny victory system, make a network promo. Honestly. Okay Dr. McHeroi, you kept me in suspense on love. Now, I think part of what you've got to know too is like, the milieu around these attacks is that people were becoming really afraid of like trains and

what they could do to people and why people were doing it. And part of that was because of like, at that point in history, the design of the train itself, and like, if you were in a bad situation, your ability to access help. I mean, first of all, you're on a train. There's a reason why like a mystery on a train is a thing. You're stuck there. You can't go anywhere. Yes. It's scary. Yes. That's a scary place for bad things to happen. In addition, if you were in like a private carriage, those lock from the inside. Right? Yes, the perfect place for a murder.

Not only that, like all the carriages and some of them lock from the inside, and you might have to share it with someone else. So then you're really stuck, right? If somebody starts to become, you know, I don't know, whatever, they start to have some sort of episode and you're locked in there with them. Nobody can get to you from the outside. Even if they could, the chances that anybody else on the train would know it was happening are pretty slim

because there wasn't like an easy way of communication. It's not like they had people going around peaking in every window constantly to make sure everybody was not taking their clothes off or whatever. In fact, they specifically don't want windows so that you can take your clothes off or whatever you want to do.

For a dentist in a normal way. In a normal way. In a normal way. In a normal, appropriate way. So there were train lines that tried to address this by putting little teeny windows in every car, which was just like... What, I mean... It's like the peeping top window. It's like the pervert window.

It's like a special pervert window, just for pervert. I know, nobody wants that in their private car. It's so mental. Especially if you're sleeping there overnight. Like, I don't want a little window where somebody can stare at me. Well, I'm sleeping. I appreciate the effort. And then they tried to like figure out like, well, how can we like wire communications

through the train? But there was just no easy way at that point in technological history to do that. So you were secluded. You were kind of trapped. Nobody could know. Like you could scream for help and people might not hear you right away. So that, I mean, that added to like, it was really scary for a lot of people. And because of that, it attracted the attention of doctors and scientists, medical professionals who are like, we've got to figure this out.

Why are men going wild on trains? Especially men who, I mean, the thought was that these aren't necessarily people with some sort of psychiatric diagnosis. There's something like these are people who had no issues, got on a train, behaved very atypically for them, and then got off the train and were fine. I wonder if part of it was claustrophobia. I know that they know you're not technically, with claustrophobia, it's not just about the like, the physical confinement is the idea of confinement, right?

It's the idea that like you can't do something if you need to. And I could see that getting, you know, if you're someone who tended to perseverate on things, anyway, it's starting to get a little maddening. I can see, I mean, I can definitely see people having a variety of different panic attacks and anxiety attacks in those situations.

I mean, I certainly have had moments because I'm not afraid of flying, but I do get nervous sometimes. And I have had moments on airplanes where I'll just get this thought that I can't, it's an intrusive thought, that's what it's called. Like, the plane's gonna crash, and I can't get it out of my head. And I have had those moments, and it is hard, because it's your brain doing it to you, to convince yourself that it doesn't mean something.

Right. Like, that's just a random intrusive thought. It doesn't mean anything. And then you're at the back of your head, the brain's going like, or maybe it does. But what if it does? Maybe we all have a little clairvoyant Sydney. It's a great... Maybe we all have a little clairvoyant, Sydney.

It's a great, maybe we all have a little touch of it. It's one of our great flaws that the thing that is supposed to talk us out of bad thoughts is the same thing making the bad thoughts. We just have the one mind. Exactly, exactly. And so a lot of that, now I mean, I do think it's, and when you hear about people who are just sort of like screaming or threatening other passengers. A lot of that makes sense. People getting naked, it starts to break down or actually like stabbing someone.

Someone with claustrophobia doesn't, they're not going to do that. What's your chain drunk? No, I mean, they could be drunk. Like, this was not a whole other level of drunk. If you ever see someone train drunk or playing drunk, that's a different drunk. We're in Victorian times. So I imagine there's a lot of like suppressed flasping ship.

Desire in a variety of ways. I don't know if people were drinking. I don't know. They might have been. They could have been. But they started, so they started looking into like, what could this, what could be happening? Which by the way, part of this too was

that thought initially like, are these people who are already mentally ill in some way that we, that this was the popular theory. They're escaping from some sort of institution and because we have trains now, they can get away really quickly. Oh, right. Like, hello, I'm a regular master.

Sure. I'm ready to get on. No, no one's lucky for me. Let's go. It's like, and there was this, there was very much this fear like, but now people, with the advent of trains, people could escape from, you know,

a psychiatric hospital and be anywhere instantly. Kind of like an infectious disease. See these things echo, like it's the same thing, right? And now the virus can get on a plane and go anywhere. So, the popular medical opinion at the time was the vibrations of the train. I love that kind of stuff. Yeah. Sure, well, wouldn't it be? Yeah, that's what, that was what, The popular medical opinion at the time was the vibrations of the train. I love that kind of stuff.

Sure, well wouldn't it be? Yeah, that's what, that was what, there were a lot of doctors who published papers and did lectures basically theorizing that, you know, when you're on a train, it's shaky, vibrates, there's vibrations, you can feel it moving. And the thought was that these concept vibrations

were also like shaking your nerves. And at the time, the concept of nerves, and depending on where you live, you may still hear those used frequently. I have nerves, I have bad nerves, I have a bad case of the nerves. Which isn't really like that's not a diagnosis. Now when people say it, they usually mean something like anxiety. That's usually what they're referencing.

Or they may be just sort of talking about like stress, not not an actual like diagnosis, but more like my nerves are really bad today. And what they mean is like I'm having a rough day. It's very stressful that kind of thing. At the time, nerves that send signals through your body, electrical impulses and all that stuff, messengers. And your sort of general like ability to deal with stress and stuff, it was all kind of the same, right? Your concept of that was all the same. So we still thought that nerves was a thing

and that it made you weak and scared and anxious. And also it was very much associated with being a woman. Nerves was a thing that pretty much women got. Men could get it, but it was really a problem of women. And it was very much related to like hysteria, which we've done a whole episode on, which was basically like a woman behaving in a way that we don't want the woman to behave. She is hysterical. And that was tied to like movement of the uterus throughout the body and stuff like that over time. But like basically the idea is that these vibrations by shaking your nerves can make you into

a woman, not literally, but your constitution becomes like that, like unto that a whole like that of a woman. So you will become weak and frail and easily startled and upset. And you will feel that. And the theory put forth by some male doctors at the time is that we cannot, we cannot get too upset at these men. We cannot blame them because they are not weak and frail. They don't wanna, it was very much like hysteria. Some people said like, is this just what hysteria looks like in men? Well, we don't wanna label them with that, right?

Because the reason women become hysterical is because they're weak and their minds are weak and their constitutions are weak. And so they can't deal with the modern world so they become hysterical. Men certainly could never do that. This is again, and this is not me. We're right.

The city is referencing the past. She is not saying that like the current, in the current time period. Right. So basically, history does exist. So yeah. Yes, history does not exist.

That is not a thing. So it's so basically what is happening is that these men are getting on trains and they're fine. And then the vibrations start and they start to feel these changes in their body. They start to feel themselves becoming weak and anxious and of, you know, like a woman, basically, like their concept of what a woman feels like inside. I want to play with you in the space, but you understand how hard that is for me to like add to this suit. I'm just going to let you handle this.

When faced with this loss of manliness and virility and the strong, tough constitution that a man has, when faced with that, it is only natural that they would become mad. And that they would take all their clothes off and wave pistols it. You feel all their manpower, being drained from them by the vibrations. It is, it is only, it is expected of someone with a strong constitution that when faced with the concept of losing that they would appear to us as if they had become psychotic. Mmm.

God, that was actually much perfect. Well, for women, this is just inherent to who and what they are. For men, this is a physical problem that caused this, and it's a train's fault. And it's not man fault, it's train fault. And now women, it's still their fault. Women, it's all their fault

because they're so weak of mind and constitution, but for men, it's really just like it's the train. So it was really just because they were afraid they were turning into women. We can't blame them for that. This was the popular medical explanation from people at the time, is that these vibrations did something to your nerves. This is why you lost it, but also why did it mainly happen to men because women are used

to feeling this way, basically. Women always feel the way men feel on trains. We walk around and- This is what it's like for you every day? Yeah, we walk around in a constant state of feeling frail and weak and anxious and hysterical. Like at any moment, we could just go wild, take our clothes off. Yeah. And then many years know, many years later, there'd be a whole series about the girls going wild, but not yet. No, on trains. No, the girls didn't go, I mean, I don't know. I didn't watch those videos.

They may have gone wild on trains. That's totally pop. Don't Google that. Don't Google that. So anyway, you could imagine too how this would play into like, if this is what the vibrations were doing to men on trains, what could they do to women? I mean, they're already, they're already so free. They're already so free. They're already so free. They're like T2, just melt, melt, melt. You just, you feel the right vibrations and you're just, you're gone. No, there was a lot of concern that extended train rides would be hard on women because they already have such poor constitutions. And so like if you put these frail women on trains and they feel these vibrations for too long,

then they may be hum, hysterical and you'll have to institutionalize them. Also like it's a good reason I think to tell your wife not to get on trains alone. The show would be useful to keep her at home. Yeah, if you had this. If you told her that the vibrations would harm her because men can barely stand them. It was also a good reason why women were encouraged not to like ever work on trains, not that that was a huge option for many of them at the time, but like to get them in the engine room would be, I mean, that's where the vibrations would be the worst. So this is why I was in the shower this morning. You came into the bathroom and started yelling about how you weren't allowed to work the worst. So this is why I was in the shower this morning. You came into the bathroom and

started yelling about how you weren't allowed to work on train. That sounds like a joke that I made up, but it's actually what Sydney did. And she said, you men always keep me from working on a train. I can work on a train if I want to. I was absolutely like in the zone enjoying my book, like on tape or whatever it was, I was listening to it. I assumed it was a Disney video. Sometimes it's a Disney video, sometimes it's an audiobook, a well-read man. Driven in the same by trains.

So anyway, it was a big deal, Nelly Bligh, the famous investigative journalist, who I think most of us remember the story of when she went like undercover in one of the institutions for a lot for People for people who had mental illness, but then a lot of people were put there for very short. There is certainly a solbona's about an L.I. Why right no, I don't think we've ever done a solbona L.I. Why she also like famously made a train trip that was a I didn't know that but like that was a big part of it was like she wrote on a train for a really long

Time and went on an in train adventure, and that was a big deal because like she was a woman and she went on a train adventure. And that that's part of why it was a big deal is like trains were dangerous. Yeah. And she went on a big train adventure. How many minutes you have sort of like watching over her throughout this adventure? You know, I don't know. I don't know a ton about her train adventure. It may have been, you're saying it might have been solo.

That's terrifying. Yeah. I was solo woman on a train. What will they think of next? It's like a dog playing the piano. So anyway, what they finally came to is like a little train riding could be okay because maybe even though the vibrations in a man

can be dangerous, the vibrations in a woman, yet too many could be dangerous, but maybe a little would be actually good for them because maybe it would make them stronger and tougher, kind of like, kind of like men are, maybe they're tough in them up. So I don't know. I don't know why train vibrations suddenly can alter your gender identity in this, in this Victorian concept. But that was very much like what people thought for just like a couple decades, like these train vibrations. And then you'd hear these reports in the news, and be like,

oh, another guy, the vibrations look with the vib- look at this poor man, look at the vibrations said to him, stay off those trains, honey. Don't you get on those trains just a little bit because you're more fun when you get on a train for a little bit, but you're on there too much. And I'm going to have to institutionalize you. And then it just went away. It's like a lot of these when we've talked about sort of like these mass psychogenic illnesses that we've talked about in the past, kind of like the dancing plague or like the laughing plague and things like that.

So like this was there. And then in like the 1890s, we just stopped talking about it. And people were just riding on trains. And if somebody had some sort of episode or something on a train, there was another one. In 1894, where there was a person who got naked and like tried to disable the communications on the train. And then like was roaming all over, trying to attack people. Like it was a very intense thing.

And of course it was reported on. Like of course the news is gonna talk about it. But it was in no way tied to railway madness. It was no way put in the context of this thing that we talked about for a couple decades and we're all really worked up about and that doctors wrote papers about. It was like, well, I don't know.

I got a guy did a weird thing on a train anyway and other news. And they moved on to other things. And like railway madness was pretty much forgotten, and nobody worried about vibrations on trains anymore. Go figure. So. There you go, I don't know.

Trainers, hey listen, trains are statistically speaking still on the safest way to travel. I hope no one has put off of trains through this. You know, I love trains. I know you love the romance of the rails. The romance of the rails. Hey, thanks so much for listening to our podcast. It's called Saw Bones. We've been doing it for over 10 years now.

It's true. If you enjoy the show, we'd ask you share it with a friend. What about that? We didn't ask that. Just say, like, hey, this is a good show. Put on your threads or your blue skis or whatever you're doing these days. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of our song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thank you Chris from Long Island. I have wouldn't own anything about all of this if it weren't for you sending us that email. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, what's our email again, Justin?

Sal bones. At maximumfund.org. Yes, if you have a topic suggestions, please keep sending it in my way, because I love learning about this stuff too. And that's going to do it for us until next time. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your hand. Alright!