Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Scarlet Fever

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin discuss one reason the world is a little less scary for today's parents: The history of scarlet fever. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saabones 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.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Sal Bones, a metal tour of Miss guided medicine. I'm your coach. I'm just a macaron. And I'm Sydney, Macroi It used to be when you would decorate your house for all days it would be like an afternoon and when you have a baby it's sort of like a It's an ongoing like process where you sort of like Um, it's like ongoing like process where you sort of like venture through the land of decorating your house like one stop at a time over the course of several weeks. Turns it into like a 401k sort of thing where it's like, well, I want to put this one ornament up in the hopes that here in the future. Few months from now, this is like a real nice. But putting up a Christmas decorations now is kind of like putting up baby traps when you got a baby is mobile and curious as ours.

That's true. It almost makes you wonder why you do it because there are so many things that we have put up in our house. And as I'm putting them up, I think, gosh, I hope Charlie stays away from this because it could like fall on her and smush her. Yeah, but then I think like, why did we put it up? Why did we up? Why did we get a giant live tree and then put it in the corner and hang a bunch of like fragile like glass and stuff on it and then say like. Like we made it harder for ourselves. Like we up the modifier to use halo terms. We put skulls on our baby run and to try to make it more

difficult. Obviously I understand that perfectly. I know you didn't dare. I'm trying to make the shows broadly appealing as possible. But we have a tree that is, by the way, it's also pretty. So it's, of course, something she'd want to touch. We have all kinds of little like

chachkis and figurines, like glass things and porcelain things that she shouldn't touch, but she's going to want to like pick up and put in her mouth and then like throw on the ground. Yeah, there's a lot that we are creating a lot of additional worries for ourself with with I've just for no reason. I've never put all the inflatables inside like we have this year. Yeah, because she likes to hug them and kiss them. I love that game and love them. And then she wants me to love them. And the problem is that it's cold outside, so I don't want to put them outside.

We have to go outside and hug them. Yeah, it's not a great solution. Do you think maybe we're setting up all these traps because we've gotten lax because we don't have to worry about with kids so many of the old childhood diseases that we use to worry about back in olden times. It all seems too easy, you mean, so we're like creating challenge for ourselves.

Yeah, this is the way to make parenting more exciting. Well, what, what, what, terrifying. Like what kind of thing is, and it already is. Yeah, what kind of thing is like not there, because it, for me, is pretty much full-blown terror from, from dust till dawn or, and, and don't till dusk and basically all the time.

Lots of things, but for instance, you don't as much have to worry about like, Scarlet Fever these days. Okay, I don't know that much about Scarlet Fever. I was betting on that, Justin. Half the time when I hear it, I think about the Scarlet letter, which is different, but it's one of the two times people use the word Scarlet.

I would say there's three, I would say in reference to O'Hara. Yeah, Godwin, yeah. And Miss Scarlet, I guess from Clue. This is our show about how we talk about the times that the word scarlet is used to next week, Violet. Catch it. It should be a good episode. Let's talk about the fever, because that actually has to do with medicine.

Yeah. I want to think. I got fever and the only prescription is more talk about scarlet fever. SNL. SNL. Great. That's then.

Everybody loves that bit. So I want to thank a couple people, Emily and Dave and Eva, who recommended this topic. And Eva, by the way, wanted us to know that she was 11, which is super cool. I love high Eva. Thank you for listening. Yes, thank you. I love to hear that kids like this show too.

Here in about seven years, when you have all the buying power, make sure you've gotten a lot of friends and listed into the show too. We didn't even have a wave of new merchandise purchasers. There are advertisers would rather you be 18. Yeah, you could be 18. Like we love you. Or leave them money. We love the whole 11 year old thing that you're doing right now. But just for our demo, we have to be best of your 18 to 24 if you could do that.

We're kidding. We don't care. We love that. We love that you're a kid. Thank you for clarifying that, Sydney, because they have not listened to our show for 114 episodes. They've been for more than six years. I don't know what age sarcasm becomes apparent. Fair enough. I think it depends on how sarcastic your parents are. Charlie's sarcastic already.

So sarcasm becomes apparent depending on when your parents became sarcastic. Ha ha, good one. That hasn't got to be. Good one. Please just talk became sarcastic. Haha, good one. That has to get... Good one. Please just talk about Scarlet Fever. I'll do anything. Okay, it's an old disease.

This has been the longest intro in my life. I'm gonna terrify you now. It's an old disease, but it's a very familiar bug that causes scarlet fever. It is caused by group A strap or streptococcus pyogenes, which is the same streptococcus that causes streptop throat. I'm worried about it. I get streptop throat all the time, I used to. I beat it. It's interesting because-

I think I might have it right now because I'm like sucking down the chloroceptic. You don't have streptop throat. Okay. Everybody who has a sore throat always thinks they have streptop throat. Chances are you don't, you might. I mean, by only getting checked out, but you probably

don't. Now, we have known about strep infections clinically for a long time, as in like, hypocrite is described a lot of different infections. And when I say strep infections, I'm talking about infections caused by strep-to-coccal bacteria, a kind of bacteria in the strep-to-coccus family, right? And basically, the strep-to-coccus family, right? And basically, the streptococcus family are, they're named that because they look like little chains of berries. That's caucus means berry and strepto is chena, and so it's a little, they look like little chains

of berries. I didn't know that. Is it supposed to staff or staphilococcus? It looks like staffs. No, that's from staphilocola for a bunch of grapes. They look like little clusters. Okay. So, there you go. That's your... But you can understand my confusion. I can understand that. Okay.

So, we know, we didn't find out about the actual bacteria until the 1870s when theodore Bill Roth actually saw it under microscope. But we knew that there was something that sort of looked like scarlet fever clinically. We knew about like flesh eating disease, that's strep, that's strep. We knew about strep throat in the sense that we understood that there was this syndrome that looked like that. But it took us a long time before we knew about the bacteria. And now when we talk about scarlet fever, let me tell you what it is, because I'm guessing you don't even know what, like if somebody said I had scarlet fever, like what

that would mean. I always assumed that like it made the person really red. That's the only thing I've got. Sort of. I mean, that's fair. You do get a rash that is red. So that's a fair guess. At first, it's like strep throat, basically. You get a sore throat. You get a fever.

You might get like a headache, body aches. You just feel lousy, right? You get swollen lymph nodes. Your tonsils can look like big and red and have white nasty stuff on them. All that kind of stuff that you get when you get stripped throughout. Your tongue actually will get a very particular appearance.

We call it strawberry tongue, where it can look like kind of whitish with red bumps all over it. And then actually the white part will kind of slough off. And then you'll just have like a big red bumpy tongue. Great. Look like a strawberry. Sounds great. And then the bad thing is when this... The bad thing. The bad thing. Those are the good things. Well, that's just like that. That's, I mean like a lot of that you just get what strap through and then nowadays you get it's a man of auto to get better, it's over.

Hopefully it doesn't progress to scarlet fever, which is when the characteristic part is that you see the rash. So you get these red bumps all over your body. They usually start on the neck and then move to the trunk and all of your extremities. They start like anywhere between 12 and 48 hours after the fever. And then it can be a really impressive looking rash. And it actually stays there for a week, two weeks, and then starts to kind of what we would call

de-squam made or like peel off. So it's a really impressive looking kind of rash. Now the rash itself is dangerous. It just means that the strep has become invasive and it can do all kinds of bad things. So it can cause big abscesses or like pockets of infection on your tonsils. It can go anywhere, it can go to your heart. If you've heard of rheumatic fever, it can affect your heart. It can affect your joints. It can affect your kidneys. You can get this

what we call a glomerulone nephritis, which the important thing to know is it damage your kidneys. It can go to your brain. It can go to, like, calls like meningitis and go to your bones, it can go to, it calls like a meningitis, it can go to your bones, it can go to your blood, and go anywhere. And that's when it's scarlet fever. That is bad. Because running wild like hulkelmania throughout your body. Yes, exactly.

And the question is, it's the same bacteria. So why sometimes do you just get strep throat? I mean, because this is not, it's not like if you had strep throat and we didn't treat you, everybody this would happen to. Like I don't want to insinuate that. But some people who get strep throat, this could happen to.

So why? There's some theories that- Because the quiz are you asking rhetorically? No, I'm not. If one of those is true, I'm terrified. There's some theories that it has to do with a certain toxin that's produced by some strains of that strep bacteria

that can that can cause it to be more likely to do this Which is it's kind of interesting the reason some strep can caught can do that is because they've been infected by a Bacteria fade which is a virus that infects bacteria Did I just blow your mind so the bacteria can do it because the bacteria sick because bacteria is sick with a virus that makes it produce a toxin that makes you sicker. Whoa! Crazy, but it's not always consistent because there are some people who get the bacteria that are infected and get the toxin, blah, blah, blah, blah, don't get scarlet fever. So it also has to do with the person in their immune system. It's really complex.

The point is we used to see it a lot. Nowadays, we almost never see it. Antibiotic certainly have something to do with that, but there's probably other factors involved. So that scarlet fever so that you kind of know what we're talking about. Got it. And as I said, hipocrates may have

been the first to write about it, like 2,500 years ago. It may go back to Razi's wrote about it in the 10th century. But we know for sure that it was described by an Italian doctor Giovanni Ingrassia as Rosalia, as its own distinct rash causing, you know, entity in 1553. And it was known as Febrius scarletina or scarlet fever. Good job. Good job, Justin, by Sid and Ham in 1676.

They also used to refer to it as Scarletina, for sure, which kind of a- I once knew I Scarletina, the love of my life. It's an adorable name. It's beautiful. Oh, you've got Scarletina. That's not, I mean, it's not like a cute thing to have. No, Scarlet Fever is still, Scarlet F fever by any other name, et cetera, et cetera.

There were a lot of early writings that probably are describing scarlet fever, but they, you know, there were a lot of things that caused red rashes. So it gets really tricky. Like, are they writing about measles? Are they writing about rebella? What are they writing about measles? Are they writing about rebella? What are they writing about? For a while, there was a distinct clinical entity that was described called dukes disease, because climate dukes knew that there was something

that wasn't rebella that caused a rash and they called it dukes disease, but then we figured out that that was scarlet fever, actually, which the only important part about this is, have you ever heard of this? For duke, I've already was so bombed, you know, you had that whole disease named after him and then all of a sudden. I'm like, no, sorry, that was Scarlet fever all along.

Scarlet fever all along. Well, he said, well, what, maybe we just change Scarlet fever, start calling that juice disease, maybe I named it too. And it just didn't catch on. You know, it is kind of weird though, because have you ever heard of the term fifths disease? Have you ever heard of that fifths disease? No. Okay, well, a lot of people have.

Would this probably better if I, let me try again. Oh yeah. It's a different virus. The only reason that matters is people have asked me for like why is it called fifths, is in like the number five, like fifths disease. Because we used to have like a list of the common childhood like what we call viral examathems,

meaning viruses that cause rashes. And although they weren't all viral, they're just examathems. The list went in order of when they were likely to get them. So it was like measles and then scarlet fever and then rebella. The fourth one, so for a while scarlet fever was called fourth disease was Duke's disease.

Okay. So Scarlet fever was on this list twice, so it threw off the whole list because then fifth is erythema infectiouseosin which we call fifth disease because that sounds a lot easier and then rosial is sixth, but the list is off. Fifth disease should be Forth Disease. Oh man. Isn't that crazy? How about you guys have a good laugh about this at the office Christmas party, huh?

anyway Up until the 1800s scarlet fever was Endemic in certain areas meaning that you would always see a couple cases But would periodically cause big outbreaks like every you know Decade or so, but not commonly, you know, it wasn't something that you saw in large numbers. That's interesting to me because if you're what you're talking about, like, the bacteria having to be a precursor to that, like a certain kind of bacteria being sit, like, that would be what was spreading, right? Like, when it would come in waves, that is actually what

was happening if that theory holds water right exactly I wouldn't expect an outbreak of something that would or wouldn't evolve into Scarlet fever right exactly it was either it was either that that strain started to predominate um you know the one that produced the toxin and then you see an outbreak or you could also theorize that it was, and this can happen without breaks, it's spreading to populations that aren't already affected by it. So like a virgin population,

somebody who doesn't have any innate immunity. So when it spreads beyond kind of the community that's already been dealing with it, you might see an outbreak too. All right, but yeah, that's a good point. Good job, Justin. Science in the heck out of that one. No big deal.

In the 1800s, we start to see some cyclical outbreaks with very high mortality in urban centers. So like places of dense population, you see a lot of people actually dying of scarlet fever, but there's still just these kind of, like they crop up, there's a big outbreak and then it goes away. This is, and this happens up until the 1880s

when the outbreaks start to lessen in frequency and severity and mortality, and then finally the mortality drops to like 1%, and then in the 1900s, it's not quite as big a deal and it starts to be less terrifying and then finally we move to now where like we never see it So when we think about like the period of time when Scarlet fever was really scary thing because there was like there was this time in history where Scarlet fever was terrifying We're really talking about between like 1825 and 1880s. That was the that was the time period where for whatever reason, the good old days, in terms of Scarlet Fever's time.

For Scarlet Fever, it was good old days. For humanity, it was not. But that's when we see that Scarlet Fever's actually a fairly large contributor like childhood mortality. I mean, it's a bad, it's common, and it is much more severe than it would be now. So the treatments I want to talk about for Scarlet Fever mainly come from this time period, okay?

Right, because after that it was like not such a big deal. Well, once we get to the 1940s and we get antibiotics, it I think it's less exciting in terms of the infectious disease. Right, yeah. From the perspective of bacteria and viruses. So, well, really just bacteria. So treatments. So if you got scarlet fever in the 1800s, the first thing they would do is load you up in a fever cab, like an ambulance kind of thing. Like a cash cab. Exactly. I see questions on the way to the hospital.

You won't be able to answer them because you got scarlet fever. Right. And they would take you to the hospital where you would stay in isolation for weeks. This was very common at the time. Just lock him away in the hospital, keep him away from everybody else because you didn't want anybody else to get scarlet fever. All of your belongings would be burned. Which sounds bad, but you know, it was the mid-1800s. You didn't have a lot of things.

You probably had like one dress and like a baking pan and like a wash bin. We were probably the only things you had. Is that what you think everybody had? It's probably a Bible too. You know what this reminds me of, did you ever read the Velveteen Rabbit? Uh, no.

You do know that book at all? Yeah, it's about Scarlet Fever. It is. Took a shot of the dark and nailed it. I mean, it's about a little boy in his stuff bunny, but like he gets Scarlet Fever, and so they have to burn the Velveteen Rabbit. Sounds like a really killer book.

Can't wait to crack that one open. It's okay though, because the Velveteen Rabbit gets turned into a real bunny. I guess before it gets burned, or maybe that's like heaven for the stuffed animal. Can you please move on? This is like omega-vomit. There's also a character in it called the skin horse, I think. Good. Family show. We should read that to try later. Maybe you can just recount it to her because your way of telling it is so beautiful. I really fact I'm getting all the

nuance. If you had to see, you really didn't want to force clump down from the darkness and the Velveteen rabbit burned alive Could scarlet fever is a children's story, hey? He became real because he was loved or maybe he was in heaven like get your facts trace tomorrow Okay, so if you didn't want to burn all your things Which I can't imagine like I know your things kind of sucked because there's eighteen hundreds of it like't want to burn all your things, which I can't imagine, I know your things kind of sucked because it was 1800s, but it was to burn all their things. Well, they make a point that there are some things, like wool, for instance, that you could just put it

in an oven for two hours at 220 degrees Fahrenheit and that that would probably kill it. And that the fabric would probably survive. So if you had the time. And what else are you doing? You have scrawling fever. You have scrawling fever, you're just gonna lay in bed anyway. So if you had the time. And what else are you doing? You have scrawling fever. You're just going to lay in bed anyway. So you're going to stay in bed. And that was very important because if you didn't stay in bed for the first two

weeks, you would get what they call drop sea, which you could get drop sea in a lot of things. Why is it? Did we talk about drops you recently? We've talked about drop sea on and off. It in this sense, they're meaning a demon. They're meaning swelling. They're meaning fluid places. Drop sea was used to describe a lot of different ways that fluid could cause you like... It was an oversized thing, right? Yeah, so they would say like you could get like dropsy of the lungs or dropsy of the legs or dropsy of whatever of the heart and fluid.

The main treatment while you were there would be bleeding. This is a time period we're in. So you would either cut the patient and bleed them until their lips and cheeks become pale and they pass out. Not a work or blister them for the same effect. Or you could apply two to six leeches behind or below the ears on each side. Two to six. Depending on how bad your scarlet fever was. That's the art of medicine. It's that you know, the sciences you know, it's between two and six leeches. The art is how many exactly for this patient.

Ha, ha, ha. Usually bleeding is the worst of the treatments, but things got a little rougher for our scarlet fever patients. What happened? Well, I'm going to tell you about it, Justin, but first, why don't you come with me to the billing department? Let's go. The medicines, the medicines,

that ask you lift my car before the mouth. Okay, so Sid, you had just told me that the worst of it was not the bleeding. What was the worst of the treatments? So this was a time where we didn't really know what to do for a lot of different things. The humors kind of were still part of the idea that we have these four humors, that we have to keep in balance, which is where the bleeding comes in. So we would just, as we've discussed before, kind of try whatever seemed to cause a big response in the patient, make them pee or poop

or puke or something or bleed. And so, you know, we would also give people, the, the medics, which means medicines that make you puke to purify your body. And then the diet that would follow, like kind of cleaning the person out, so to speak, was pretty rough. So at first you want to avoid anything that would be hard on the stomach. So obvious stuff, liquor, spices, anything that's animal-based, you pretty much stay away from it first. There was a concoction of pedophilin, which is like this alkali that's made by plants, that the

reason I know about it is that we can apply it to genital warts. Oh, okay. But in this case, you would want to mix it with Epsom salts and like eat it Was like one of the treatments And then you would also make a mixture of aloe and salt and treacle and we'll taste your probably yeah and eat that as well Once you were tolerating that once you're tolerating that well. Yeah, you can move on to toast or and that well. You can move on to toast or barley or rice water and you want to add some potassium nitrate in that, which by the way is salt-peater, which I think is like used to make gunpowder. You want to throw that in there and also some ammonium acetate as well, which is used for different chemical reactions. Sure. In addition, so as long as you're

eating all of this weird stuff that's gonna help clean out your body, you want to do something to the tonsils themselves because you started with a strep throat kind of thing, right? So you want to take some silver nitrate, which we still use silver nitrate. Some today I've used it before in the office to stop bleeding. It's like on the end of these sticks and it stops. It's caustic. It's not very comfortable and you would apply it to... Well, that is a generous way of putting it out.

Not very comfortable. You would apply it to the ulcerated tonsils. Morning and night with a camel hair pencil. what was described I a camel hair pencil I thought like a brush maybe I would have thought a brush but they say pencil maybe that just a minute using it a half brush and I know it's a camel hair pencil silver nitrate to the all-surrated tonsils morning and night I just would rather be blood go ahead that doesn't do anything, but it's less unpleasant, I guess. If you've got the big swollen lymph nodes, like you can get in your neck,

you know, when you have strep throat, you might get what people call swollen glands. Yeah. Like lymphatinopathy is what I would say. You can treat that by creating an ointment made from iodine and suet, which Justin can tell you what suet is if you don't know. Yeah, it's like pig fat.

It's like the fat from around the kidneys of what pigs and cows and stuff. She's in British baking a lot. Yeah, like we, now that you've, it's more common than vegetable suet now, but anyway. Yeah, but in, I'm assuming this would have been animal-based suet back in the day. Mix it with iodine, make an ointment, put it on a piece of soft leather, and then just like wrap it around your neck, and like keep that on there.

Okay. Eventually, when you're starting to get better, you could advance your diet, and diet was a big part of this, if you can't tell. Like the idea that, I don't know, we don't know what else to do to people, so like we'll just regulate what they eat really closely. Because they had literally no other ideas. Yeah,, we'll just regulate what they eat really closely. Because they have literally no other ideas.

Yeah, because we're just, we're trying anything. We're definitely, yeah, we're, we're into the, like, the heroic era of medicine right now. So like, just whatever, whatever. You would advance to broth and tea after two to four days and you would feed them broth or tea or both every three hours, which is like really demanding on whoever, like your nursing staff, whoever's doing. Yeah, but for an error medicine called a heroic error of medicine, it's still not a tame. Like if you were keenly aware that the error,

error you are practicing medicine in was called the heroic error of medicine, like I would think you'd be a little bit intimidated to just announce like, and now I'm going to do the patient broth much more frequently than they would normally have broth. Like, that's not very heroic, don't you? I mean, it's okay, but it's not like, not gonna wow me.

I'm not gonna like adapt it into a three-part series. It's not gonna, like, could be a crossover event. Can you imagine how ticked off the nerves would have been like, seriously? Seriously, every three hours? Every three hours. That's what you want me to do. That's what you want me to do with my training. Do you have a P.P. PP solution or no, okay, great.

You could also give them at this point something. I had to read about this. Liebig's essence of meat. This is a liebig, it's a trade name. It's product of the brain. It's time to eat meat, not me. I just want this. I just want the essence.

That was actually exactly the thought. Was that people need the nutrients from meat, but they can't afford meat or they don't have the essence. And that was actually exactly the thought. Was that people need the nutrients from meat, but they can't afford meat, or they don't have the time, or whatever the means to eat meat itself. So that's that robust, hearty meat, flavor, nutrients. This was this like, 10 meat product that you would make by like boiling down,

it actually was like a 30 to one ratio. Like by boiling down like 30 kilos of meat, you get like one kilo of You know sounds expensive me essence. You're right. Yeah, that's what I thought like that's a lot of meat to go into There's probably not a lot of um how am I gonna put this choice cuts? In there I wouldn't think when did you get a lot of choice cut? Yeah, I had a lot of salt to it and I guess I heard it described as like it like almost like a black paint like I heard it described as like almost like a black paint like

oily paste kind of thing and like a bottle and you would eat some of that You could like a spread it on bread or whatever you wanted to do just quit And it was it was often thought of as something for like to to like help sick people heal or just to use for kids Who were like malnourished or didn't have access to all the foods I need like just eat this beat meat essence and you'll get better I think later they were making boy on cubes. I mean, that would be something. If the patient's head is hot and they start to get confused, so I'm assuming like what we would call now like a fever

and maybe some delirium, you should shave their head. Okay. It's very important, they'll die if you don't. That was an important point, so shave their head. Really? Yeah, no, no, I mean not really. Oh, okay. No, that was the thought. Then on their, on their now balled head,

you want to put ice or cold rags on the head. Keep the head really cold. Your feet, you want to wrap and flannel and then stick them in like a warm water bath. And then sponge down the rest of them with like, tepid, like you know like room temperature kind of water. Okay. I don't know if we're like confusing the bacteria,

this is probably hot. What are you doing? It's cold, it's lukewarm, I don't know what's happening. I don't know where to go. You wanna apply a solution because you could get like some like drainage from the mucus membranes and crustiness and stuff. So you wanna apply a solution to your eyes and your mouth

and with a dropper into your ears of Borax. Okay. I still am unclear what Borax is, but it sounds kind of chemically. It was like a chemical like we used it to like Like we talked about it as like a food additive for a while to like keep food fresh longer a preservative kind of thing Just sound clean stuff. Sounds like an alien weapon It's not a good idea to put it in your eyes, ears, mouth, or anywhere else in your body. You have to make sure that the patient is peeing every six hours and pooping daily and give them whatever medicines are necessary to make that happen if they're not. As they get better, you want to advance to solid

foods very slowly because that is the first thing they would say is that if somebody dies of scarlet fever, it's probably because you gave them solid food too quickly. That's probably not true. You can go outside, as soon as you're able to get outside that's great because fresh air was seen as like a kind of a cure off. Yeah. But don't walk. Run.

No, don't just sit. Okay, I got it. Have somebody just wheel you out and sit in the beginning and only if the weather is good of course. Of course. If you can get to the seas beginning. And only if the weather is good, of course. Of course. If you can get to the seaside. You don't want to get double scarlet fever. No, which you could. Which you could.

You want to go to the seaside if you can, because the air there is better for you, but don't get in the water for at least a month. That was actually in the Velveteam Rabbit, too. The kid had to go to the seaside. They always advise, as you're getting better you want to do like a tonic which there were tons of tonics at the time which were just like syrup with like iron or something in them that was seen as like boosting your health and making you more vibrant or something you know whatever. At the time that you know

this was like homeopathy was around at this period and in history it still is now But this is when it would have been popular. It still is now and by the way Quick homey off to the sidebar. I went to the drugstore because Charlie had a cold and I was looking for Some medicine that that we could give her by the way He didn't ask me about this because if he had asked me I would have said no. There's there is no medicine No, but I can give her, so don't bother. I know, but I want to say, so what I want to say is, I was looking, and because I was there already,

wouldn't a special agent, but anyway, there was some stuff that was for 12 months and younger, and it was labeled as homeopathic medicine, and it was on the same shelves as the other medicine. Like, that made me really angry because that's fake. Like, there should be another section with the fake medicine if you want to go hog wild on it, but don't get it over there with the real medicine

for people that don't know any better. That's crazy. Well, that's the problem. First of all, they can say that it's for 12 and under because it is fake, 12 months and under because it's not gonna do anything. You know, and it's not regulated by anybody. None of that stuff is though anyway.

I tried it. I didn't regulate the supplements and the homeopathic. We tried it before. Pretty nice during our homeopathic episode, but that was a while back in Solban's history. We tend to go ham on stuff a little bit more commonly now. I'm just gonna say, that's made up medicine. It doesn't have any place next to the real medicine.

In case you have it, you can go back and edit that in your own personal copy. The homie opposite, by the way. Yes, absolutely no. Homie opposite, that's not, it doesn't do anything. And back then, they told you. And it's for babies, that makes me so angry. It's so friggin hard to have a baby who's sick

and you feel like completely powerless. There's nothing you could do. You're only looking for anything that can help. And you find this fake medicine, next to real medicine, makes you want a friggin' puke. It makes me sick to the stores and sell it, next to real medicine, it makes me sick that people would sell it

to people knowing it doesn't do anything. And if I ever met the people who were responsible, I would punch them in the mouth. There, that's what I think about homie-off, I think. Wow. Makes me mad. You got really upset there. I'm genuinely upset.

Can I just make one, can I just make one corollary point? If you're good, if you're homie-off, Wow. May she mad? You have a really upset there. I'm genuinely upset. Can I just make one, can I just make one corollary point? If you're good, if you're going to help me out, you better be a couple. No, I'm not defending home. I'm not in any way. I'm also going to point out that what you are calling the real medicines, I would be really careful about ever giving your kids if they're sick, don't if they're under two. But if they're over two, I would really talk to your doctor because this is something I

talk with parents a lot about that a lot of those cough and cold medicines. I know we all take them as adults because like our nose is running and we've got to go to work and it's embarrassing and so we deal with all of the not so great side effects. As far as if you need them, you usually don't, your kids often don't. I would talk to your doctor before just giving them any of the what we would consider real medicines. Yes, they do things, but do you really need them to do those things at the any of the, what we would consider real medicines. Yes, they do things, but do you really need them to do those things at the expense of the side effects? Just a note.

Just a note. Just a note. We're going way long. I'm sorry about this. And I'm sorry about this. My fault. But you know, you're right. Homeopathy's crap.

They used to tell you to take Beladonna to prevent scarlet fever because Beladonna caused a rash. And it was the whole like, like, cures like things. So if we cause a rash, then you won't get a rash from scarlet fever. That's obviously not true. Don't take balladana. A couple historical notes, one of which I already mentioned, a scarlet fever impacted a lot of people. Charles Darwin lost two of his children, scarlet fever. John D. Rockefeller founded Rockefeller University to research the biomedical sciences eventually

after losing his three-year-old grandson. Scarlet fever, so that's probably why it exists. There has been some thought that maybe that was what Helen Keller lost her hearing in vision to at 19 months was to Scarlet fever, although it may have also been a meningitis, so that's not. I actually think I read Scarlet, like I remember reading like a kid's book about her and reading that it was Scarlett fever It's hard because at the time a lot of people would have been diagnosed with scarlet fever And maybe because we didn't we couldn't tell because we didn't know what they had so she may have or maybe I or could have been

Min and Gytus It's it's it's not entirely clear And that is why like for instance we used to think Mary Ingalls a lot of people would read that Had had scarlet fever because her doctor at the time did diagnose her with scarlet fever And that is why, like, for instance, we used to think marrying Ingalls. A lot of people would read that. Had had Scarlet Fever because her doctor at the time did diagnose her with Scarlet Fever, but she probably actually did have meningitis too. It is what Beth had in Little Women. Oh, okay.

She has Scarlet Fever. I can remember her. I was in her yellow. Or yellow fever. Yeah, I was definitely Scarlet Fever. Got it. Big difference. She didn't travel.

Huge difference. Sometimes I hear an Africa that's where yellow fever is hot? Yeah, you can get, yeah, lots of places, but yeah, explosion always got in one. So the treatment in terms of like what do we actually do now for Scarlet fever? Because we don't do any of that stuff that I just that I just named. In 1924, you know that Gladys and George Dick actually did make a vaccine. It's kind of interesting. They came up with a test for it and then they came up with a vaccine. But it really was never that popular.

And in the 1940s, we came out with antibiotics, penicillin saves the day. And we really don't use the vaccine. It's certainly not around now. And nowadays, we don't really see that kind of virulence. There was, there are occasionally in the last couple decades, we've seen some, some bigger outbreaks like Hong Kong and in 2011 But we typically don't see scarlet fever anymore most of the time it's just strep throat We give you some antibiotics and you get better interesting But but it is interesting. It's not impossible that it could that it could happen Well, good to know living fear

I want to say just go see your doctor when you're sick. That's always my message. Don't forget to talk to your doctor. And a big thanks to the taxpayers for all this user's home medicines is the insurance outshow of our program. Anywhere for getting? No, I think that's it. Thank you all for listening.

Thank you for your topic suggestions. Thank you for emailing us and reviewing us on iTunes and tweeting about us. Sobones at maximumfund.org is that email address, and if you want to follow us on Twitter, it's at Sobones. Pretty easy to remember. Yeah, I'm sorry, Justin got some ad this episode.

Yeah, me too. And I'm sorry if you're a homey-opathy and you're listening. I'm sorry that it has to come to this. Yeah. If you're the concept of homey-opathy and you're listening, I'm sorry that it has to come to this. Yeah. If you're the concept of homie-opathy and you somehow figured out a way to listen to podcasts, I'm sorry that I stepped on your toes. If you really are a true believer in how homie-opathy, I think that's groovy. I just think you should buy it at a separate store or maybe separate shelves at the very

least. Anyway, that's good to know for us. Until next time, we have a topic to discuss with you. I am Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. As always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!