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

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin visit the home of Coca-Cola to recount the history of medicinal soda pop and try to finally solve the age-old dispute of Coke vs. Brad's Drink. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We 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 welcome to saw bones a marital tear of misguided medicine This is Sydney McRoy This is Justin McRoy And this is Justin McAroy. Okay, it did fade a lot quicker for me. I was hoping to do some mind games where maybe if I said your name first, they would think I said me and would cheer less quiet, but it didn't pan out. You're a sharp audience and I give you credit. You're right. They like you better when I introduce you.

I think that. I think that. What a thrill it is to be here in Atlanta. I love your city. Last time I was here for Sydney. Was it sort of a heroin con? No, the prescription drug abuse in heroin summit. And no one called it heroin con?

No. Well, we were here before and we really liked it and we wanted to come back. And so we went to your beautiful aquarium for the second time. You know what? I'm sure people say this every time they come through Atlanta. But I'm just going to say it best aquarium in the world. It really is. Every time we go on one of these tours,

we take Charlie to the local aquarium. We've been to a lot. And Cheldor's Museum. I got either one. We go to one of these tours, we take Charlie to the local aquarium. We've been to a lot. And Cheldor's Museum, I got either one, we go to one of those. We asked Charlie her favorite part and she went, the fish. Cool. Great. She was watching a video on her phone at the time. So, she wasn't really in the...

You know, the fish, whatever mom, I don't care. But when I was, but we were coming here in the car last night and when we got picked up at the airport, the driver said to you guys, want a water or a coke? And I was like, that's very novel. And coke, perfect. Cool, I'm in Atlanta, I'm all the coke. Gave me a very small coke that I would estimate was about 65 degrees. And I didn't even want it that bad.

It's just like, I'm an Atlanta. I'm going to have that coke. But it was still great. It was still great. Don't insult coke. Well, no, it was not great through no fall of coke. Because when I opened it, it just like exploded. Presumably getting jostled in a car in the trunk all day long does not of Coke because when I open it, it just like explodes.

Presumably getting jostled in a car, in the trunk all day long, does not do great things for Coke. Everybody else knew that they were gonna be warm, so he'd been offering them all day and nobody else took him up on the warm Coke. Jamie-Man's got his back. I'm still Justin. But we always try to do an episode topic

that's kind of related to where we are when we do these live shows. And we knew, well, we don't like know everything about Atlanta. We knew the Coke thing. And I thought, I thought, you know, it might be interesting when you go back and trace the history of soda, of soft drinks. It's very medical. So this totally relates to our show, so I thought that's what we could talk about.

And of course, we'll talk about Coke, of course, of course. Of course. I'm saving that to the end, though, so that you pay attention. Yeah, and please don't boo enemy sodas. I understand. I understand you be more. Atlanta's still fighting the Cola Wars. There are some us have found peace.

You joke about that, but my very dear friend Carolyn, who is from Atlanta, I drank a diet Pepsi in front of her once, and she got legitimately angry at me. He said, what are you doing? What is that garbage? She grabbed her hand and dumped it on her hand. She didn't do that. And you think she would stop after a little splash down?

She just stood there, and watched a whole bottle empty out, and she said, what's on the floor? And Cindy was like, well, it's a diet, and she cut off, it's a garbage. That didn't happen. So we can have... What we think of as soda, or I guess it depends on where you are, soda, pop, or just coke, right?

Everything here is just coke. Either way, what we think of is that originated in drug stores in the late 1700s and they got really popular throughout the 1800s and they were sold in pharmacies or drug stores because they were full of drugs. So that was an appropriate place for them to start. And the kind of the story of soda is, it starts with mineral water. So people had this idea that mineral springs,

fresh springs were good for you, and you should spend time in them, you should bathe in them for anything. Whatever made you sick, go hang out in a mineral springs, fresh springs, we're good for you, and you should spend time in them. You should bathe in them for anything. Whatever made you sick, go hang out in a mineral spring and you'll get better. Right? No, Sidney, no, you're a physician. No. You should know better than this. I'm shocked. Somebody said, you know what, we need to take this a step further. If it's good for you to bathe in, certainly this is good for you to ingest. And so they started selling bottles of that, but the problem was if you wanted to take it anywhere that wasn't like at the mineral, at the fresh spring.

It's a crime. No. But like they needed a way to package it or to sell it somewhere without like still having the carbonation. That was the big problem. So there was this whole hold up while they figured out how to carbonate water. And once they figured out how to do that at pharmacies, then they started having just these taps where you could go and get like carbonated water.

That's all it was at first was just, you know, here's some carbonated water for you. Right. Like I didn't think that sounded very good, but people loved it. And it was a very elite, fancy thing. They didn't love it. That's just like, what pass for entertainment? Like, I'll drink some bad water. Like, this afternoon, I'm gonna go drink bad water.

When a waiter asks me if I want mineral or tap water, I want to, like, play them in basketball and then dunk on them. Like, waiter asks me if I want mineral or tap water, I want to like play them in basketball and then dunk on them. Like that makes me so angry. Which the one that tastes like palatable in any way, shape or form, I'm eight by the way, I'm eight years old. It's worth noting. More or less. Okay. But it was, it was like she likes marijuana. She's crazy about it. Oh, Justin, you're under a fine palette. I don't.

I'm one of those. I'll drink tap water, I don't care. But anyway, I wasn't fancy enough. Because if you were very fancy and you were in the know, you would sit at these bars and drink carbonated water and be very fancy. And talk with your very intelligent friends there and like, look at us. Very healthy water. And that was great,

but they needed a way to expand. How do we get more people to drink this stuff? And that's where drugs come into play. So you thought she was going to say flavors but no. So medicine didn't then and still doesn't typically taste very good. So I mean for the most part. So there was already this idea that in order to get people to take medicine we have to make it taste better or attractive to them in some way. Part of that was a marketing play which is why you would get all of these really wild ads telling you like this will were attractive to them in some way. Part of that was a marketing play, which is why you would get all of these really wild ads telling you like this will make your brain function better.

And this is good for your whole body. And this will make you virile and all that kind of stuff. But part of that was also ad stuff to it. Like the most popular was like alcohol, just a nice alcohol in there. And then everybody will want your medicine. But it was really something that you had to put a lot of effort into to sell. And so you can see where these worlds are coming together where it's like, well, we need

to sell all of this bubbly water. We need to sell all of these medicines. Let's put all this together and throw in there some addictive stuff maybe. Nice. That's a really good way that people don't think about enough to keep Be a customer retention is such an issue One thing that you could do once you pay for the acquisition of the customer one very good thing You can do is put a highly addictive substance in them. They figured this out with

cigarettes. Have you heard of this? They used to smoke and be like why am I doing this out with cigarettes. Have you heard of this? They used to smoke and be like, why am I doing this? I actually hate this, but then they figured out, let's make them addictive. And then they're like, I actually still don't know why I'm doing this, but I am going to. And we'll continue to for the foreseeable future. And then tobacco was one of the things

they used to put in drinks, actually, in early sodas. They gotta be careful about that nicotine can be poisonous if you have too much of it like in 3 act tragedy the 10th poro book. It's nicotine. No, we're not doing that. We're not I just finished it's no no, okay. He's not in it a lot. Mm-hmm. Okay. I Can't hear any more about poro on this trip I can't hear any more about Poro on this trip anymore. So you would put things in it, you put flavor in there, that's great, but you would put things like cocaine or tobacco or strict nine or opium or whatever in there too and then or cannabis and people really liked them and would keep buying them. And so that's where drugists, this is where they started, so they would start selling

these medicines. I mean that you would get at like a soda counter. Like, you go up and they would squirt you out a little glass of your medicine that tasted great and had cocaine in it. And it was great. It was like five cents a glass. And that was really popular.

And that exploded. Five cents a glass cocaine was really popular. I'm going on. Go on. I know it's shocking. Exploding five cents a glass cocaine was really popular Go on I know it's shocking that exploded during the prohibition era Because then you couldn't go get booze so instead of the hard drinks You would turn to the soft drinks since we're soft drink. That's where they came from that's where soft drinks came from I want to be what I would be hanging out with the guy drinking five-sink cocaine when they announced her a mission. Like, who cares? I feel as good about this as I do about everything.

And that was really how these soda fountains, why you went and hung out at the soda shop, that's how they exploded in popularity is because you could go there, you get the soft drinks that still had like drugs in them and good stuff in them. And it wasn't a bar, so it was legal. And that's also where you got like soda shops started to get these kinds of reputations, like, oh no, your kids are hanging out down at the soda fountain. Watch out.

That's a dangerous place. Which eventually, over time, soda fount That's a dangerous place, which eventually, over time, soda fountains didn't like, and they wanted to be more family friendly, and so then that's when you finally see them stop marketing these things as medicine, and just calling them a beverage, and then everybody lost interest,

because eventually, as we'll talk about, they take all the fun stuff out of soda, you know. Ah. Yeah. So what is the story then behind all these different sodas? Because they all started out in some drugstore, some pharmacists made them as a medicine for some reason, and then they became a beverage. Well, one thing I did want to address before I got into the ones that we know now is the

concept of a phosphate. I have heard this before. Like in somebody trying to be old-timey and be like, hey, give me a phosphate there buddy. And I always wondered, I don't know, do you know what a phosphate is? I mean, that's hysterical, what you're doing is so funny, but what does that mean? I'm loving this character that you've done.

No, I just mean, you'd hear real say that. I'm like, I don't know what a phosphate is. Can I get more, a little bit more of that old-timey character though? I know you got a little bit more for me. Never again. So It was if you could just say 23s could do we could all move on All it was was early on when they started making these sodas a really popular thing to add was phosphoric acid And it had a very sour taste and you would throw it in there and phosphoric acid was thought to be really good for a bunch of stuff It was great for high blood pressure. Wouldn't it they thought it was it was great for indigestion

It was really good for nervousness and exhaustion just get a phosphate and that'll pep you right up That's where that comes from was that you would go and it was just a really sour carbonated water Is it? That's yum. Again, it was very boring back then. Is that what the stuff that's in Diet Coke that is like they have to put the warning on the can about, you know what I'm talking about?

No, no. You're talking about for phenoceninurics and because of this whole other thing. We don't get it that way. She just knows words like that. That's a whole other thing. And she's married to me and she knows words like that. What did I do? Say some more, sweetie. Just need one more. One more. I want to talk about root beer. Gross. One of the earliest kind of beverages, well, medicines turn beverage that are rose, was root beer. People had already been kind of using the ingredients of root

beer as medicinal tonics for a long time, so this was a natural fit for like, a lot of roots, right? well that's was a stupid got stupid stupid stupid I was trying to not make a joke and be like erpein for once and the word root is right there in the name of the beer what a stupid thing to say what an idiot I'm not saying anything else just do your thing I'm not saying anything else, just do your thing. I'm not saying anything else. I'm not coming back from this. So most early root beers had either sassafras or saspirilla in them.

Sassafras was thought to be a great medicinal plant. That's what's called sassafras. I mean for centuries and it could treat, it was really, it was a cure all. You could use Sassafras to treat toothaches, rheumatisms, swelling, general swelling, menstrual problems. If you have sexually transmitted infections or bronchitis, any of these things, you could treat with Sassafras. And so Sassafras in root beer was a really great, they were like, hey, now this is a really healthy beverage

and it tastes, I mean, people, I'm sorry. I understand everybody loves root beer. I don't, I don't get it. Myself, people love root beer. People who love root beer, they really love root beer. Oh yeah, they like to show off. Like, oh, you don't all take yours, like fine. Clear. But the problem is. Have you ever been offered a root beer and it's the only option and it's like are you kidding me?

I went I went to somebody's house and they were like do you want something to drink? I was like what do you have a root beer and I was like I looked at this one. I said I'll drink water No really I drink water. It's unheard of. And now. So the problem with sassafras was saffron. So that's an oil that is in sassafras. And I mean, probably in small amounts, it's fairly harmless.

But they started doing studies on saffron. They found that when they were injecting larger amounts of saffron in two rats, they got cancer. And so there was this big stir. Should we be putting sassafras and beverages? I mean, it's totally unregulated. We have no idea how much. I mean, you could go on a root beer kick and drink gallons of root beer.

And then we don't know how much sassafras you got. So they started removing sassafras from beverages. Now you will find it back today, but that's because we actually have a process where we can take the sassfras out of the sassfras so you can still have sassfras, but that's why it's not in there. I still don't want anything for offering.

Sassbarilla, though, took over as the more ingredient, more found in root beers. And it was also thought to be a cure all, but specifically, it was thought to be helpful for syphilis. So this really helped root beer out. That's... Especially when you consider that we were still dealing with maybe you should inject mercury into your penis

because you have syphilis drinking a root beer. Yeah I'll take the root beer thank you. No you know what I just thought about it I would still take the needle in my penis. Take that root beer. Not that bad. Um, got him. Also root beer if you're here, I am sorry. The medicines, the medicines, the escalate my God before the mouth. From root beer, there came other sort of like plant-based, root-based beverages, and that's where you start to see the creation of things like Ginger ale or ginger beer or a birch beer or my favorite in this kind of group is

Doctor Brown's Selray now There are fans of Selray. I had never heard of Selray and I was really excited to learn about this Celery flavored Soda And I was really excited to learn about this celery flavored soda. This is still around. You can still go buy celery. It's still a thing. Okay. You were always the one to tell me weird food facts and I don't know how you don't know this.

No. Weird soda is my dad. My dad will be like, hey, they made Pepsi hot. Great dad. Do you mean like left it? No, like temperature hot. It's like spicy now. Thanks. Cool, I guess. Great. How is it? Bad, okay. You see that coming? So from my understanding celery is it bad? It came at a time when celery was thought to be a major health food. So this was in the late 1800s, everybody was eating celery if they could get it because it was just thought to be good for you for every reason.

It was really thought to be like one of the healthiest superfoods you could eat. And so you wouldn't just find celery drinks, you would find celery gum. Seriously, there were celery soaps that you could use so that you could infuse yourself with celery. And it was thought to specifically be really good for your stomach and your bowels and digestion and all that kind of stuff. But it was just generally thought to be a good healthy tonic. And so this is where celery came from.

It was really just celery seeds, so it's not like, you don't imagine them grinding up celery and sticking it in a drink. And I mean, it is, it's supposed to be like a light bubbly refreshing soda that happens to taste like celery. It sounds okay. Now that we've all marinated in it for a little bit, like, it sounds all right. It actually, it was generally sold in delis,

and I guess it complimented really well like a rich, deli food, like a big, like, pastrami sandwich or something. So you would have that and you'd have a celery, and it was really popular, and you can go buy them still today. Yeah, I would love to. So there you go. But now we know. Yeah, I would love to. So there you go. But now we know that celery, I mean celery is not,

I mean it's fine. I'm not saying it's bad for you. So it's basically water, right? It's water you can eat. Yeah, it's a green crunchy water. And that's great if that gives you to have your water, but you know it was celery. Coke actually did make a celery cola at the time,

but it did not catch on. One drink that I have to mention, one soda that isn't as popular in most of the country, but if you go up to Maine, I understand that you will find Moxie and it's very popular there. And our friend John Hodgman talks about it, so I had to mention it. Moxie is a New England based soda.

It was introduced in 1884 by a doctor, Augustine Thompson. And it was supposedly made from this very rare South American plant that one of his friends, a lieutenant Moxie, brought back and they turned into a tonic. It was originally thought to be this brain and nerve toxin or tonic that would not talk I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know either way But it was supposed to be really good for your nerves. It was supposed to be good for quote loss of manhood

All right. Helplessness. Helplessness. Helplessness. That's a good way. Maybe hopelessness. It's a very good soda. Soffoning of the brain.

It was good for that. For doing that or not. For undoing it. No, it was good to fix it. Okay, got it. Yeah, it was a tonic. It was, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it. Okay, got it. Yeah, it was a tonic. It was, it was, it was supposed to be really good for us. I just didn't know if softening the brain was like ideal or not ideal. It did, it did have, it had gents and violet in it, which is actually an antifungal. It actually is.

That's great. Interesting. Alright. And you'll actually find it in some bitters too, because bitters started out as medicine as well. And moxie still, I think it's like the official drink of Maine and it's still around, if you up to New England, go up New England way, you can go by moxie still, I think it's like the official drink of Maine, and it's still around, if you go up to New England, go up to New England way, you can go by Moxie. But I hear the taste is challenging.

Challenging. Challenging. Now, some sodas that we're more familiar with also started out as medicine. One that I will just mention briefly is, of course, Pepsi. I know. I asked you specifically. mentioned briefly is of course Pepsi. I know. I asked you specifically. I will now spin the rest of the podcast, Edmonna, shake you.

It was, I just think it's interesting. It was also created by a pharmacist, Caleb Brattum. A dumb pharmacist, right? Dumb Caleb. I asked you. And well, I asked you to not do this. Well, I mentioned it though, is the name, I didn't know this. Pepsi originally was called Brad's Drink. What?

Which is a terrible name. I mean, that's awful. And can you imagine the confusion every time I say, what's your drink? A Brad's drink. Brad's drink? What? Does he know? Yeah.

He left it unfinished. Oh, God, that's good. So Brad's drink was introduced. It was supposed to be a digestive aid Brad's drink. And eventually, for obvious reasons, it's a terrible name. They changed the name because it had a great name. It had pepsin in it, which was aid in digestion, and then it had colinate cola. And so they changed it later to Pepsi Cola because of those things, and also because nobody, I assume

was buying Brad's drink. Do you want Brad's drink? No, I'll get my own, I assume was buying Brad's drink. Do you want Brad's drink? No, I'll get my own, I think. I'm like Sydney's drink, please. Yeah. I don't know Brad. Yeah. So, and of course, it's not as good a Coke.

Obviously. Yeah, OK. Now, my personal favorite and America's oldest soda is Dr. Pepper. That's my problem, sorry, that's my personal favorite. It has a medical name, even. It was created in Waco, Texas by Charles Alderton in 1885. And it was sold at a place called Morrison's Old Corner

Drug Store. That was really the name of the store. Folksy? I know. And at first it was called Awaco. So he invented it and they started selling it at the drug store and people would say, hey, shoot me Awaco. And they'd fill you up a little cup of Awaco and you'd drink that.

Was it called Awaco or Awaco? No, like Waco. Oh, all right. Sorry. Just like for where it was. I just always like, because it woke you up in the morning, if you had one, it's like, Aw, Awaco. No, just like that.

Everything makes more sense. Yeah, like just like the town. Morrison bought it from him, the guy who owned owned the drugstore bought it from the pharmacist who developed it and Renamed it Dr. Pepper for another pharmacist that he had like a printist under and respected Charles T Pepper and so there you go And also Dr. Pepper is probably a better name and more widely It's actually kind of a buck wild name. We're just like, I'll use to it.

If someone introduced a new soda today and they're like, this is my soda, Dr. Philippe, you'd be like, that's actually a wild name for a soda because it's not a medical doctor at all. It's a cola. It was the same as everything else. And a lot of this just had to do with the fact that these drinks had caffeine in them,

so they were marketed as like brain and nerve tonics. They were thought to stimulate your brain function and make you more awake and give you more energy and I mean they had caffeine. So yeah, that was pretty much it. The only thing I'll say about Dr. Pepper is I once had an eye doctor on an eye exam look in my eyes and say, do you drink a lot of Dr. Pepper? I said yes, and I don't know how he knew to this day. Very happy Halloween.

I don't know what it does to your eyes. I don't know what it does to your eyes. I don't know. Seven up. This is one of the interesting ingredients. We all know caffeine was in all these drinks. But seven up has really strange origins. A businessman named Charles Grig invented it in 1929, and it was called Bib Label Lithiated Lemon Lime Soda. Because it contained lithium initially.

Whoa! Which I did not know that. Now lithium, you may know, medically is used, of course, to this day as a mood stabilizer. And it had been known to have these sort of properties for a very long time. Lithium was used for a variety of different psychiatric diagnoses, but in its heyday, Lithium was also thought to do a lot of other things. So in addition to treating those illnesses,

it could be used for things like gout or kidney stones or arthritis. So why not just put it in a beverage unregulated and sell it to everybody. Oh, I know why not. I can handle this one. It's dangerous. Well, and by the way, they knew what they were selling too because their original slogan, the original slogan of seven up was take the ouch out of grouch. All right.

Well, elevate your mood with all the lithium in there. Of course, the problem with lithium is that it has kind of a narrow therapeutic index. So, as long as your levels are in a certain range, that's fine. But once it gets above that, you can become toxic. And nobody was measuring how much seven-up you were drinking, or well, at the time, the Biblable Lithiated limon lime soda. So eventually, they had to remove lithium in the 1940s. The name seven-up, nobody's entirely certain where he got that, because obviously it changed.

Again, some of this is just obvious. Nobody was going to buy, I can't even remember, I have to look at it every time I had bib-label-lithiated limon lime soda. Nobody's going to buy that. I have to look at it every time I have a liby liby liby liby. Nobody's going to buy that. So it may be from the time it was sold in seven ounce bottles. It may be that it had seven ingredients. They're not sure. And then the other thing is that there was like a very common cattle brand that was used.

And it was a seven with a U and it's thought that this guy Greg just really liked the look of it and that's why I called his soda seven up. I mean it's no worse than any of the others right? They call that one Bradstrain remember? Like I probably, I can help with this. He did something and then he looked at it and said, well, it's better than Brad's drink. The up, by the way, is because it's carbonated and the bubbles go up. Seven up.

Sure. That's the thought anyway. I don't know. I feel like you drink it down. So what are we doing? Like, it could be anything. What are we doing? It could be anything. This is Calibol.

So finally, Coke. Let's get to Coca-Cola. I feel like telling the story of Coke is really silly here, because that's what you guys do at around the holidays. That's all their history. That's all their history classes are. You sit down. No, I picture like family gatherings, like everybody sits down and then like, you know,

like dad gets out the big book of Coke and by the fire, like has his pipe and it's like, now listen, children, as I tell you and everybody, it's like, dad, not again, we all know. We all know the miraculous story of Coke. The birth of Coke. Also, considering that Coke invented Santa Claus, it's actually not such a buckwild berry. Yeah. They did, totally.

So John Pemberton was a Confederate colonel who was wounded in the Civil War. No, right, a lot of, sorry. Sorry, he was. We can't do this. And from his wound, he was treated with morphine, which was available as a painkiller at the time. And he developed an addiction, and he began to see-

Thank you for not wooing addiction. But he made something good out of it because he began to try to find something to help him fight this addiction, what's something else that can be used to treat this morphine addiction that by this point in history we knew was a problem. And so he ended up discovering Vin Mariani, which was a very popular

European tonic that had been made out of combining alcohol and the coca leaf, and because you could extract more out of the coca leaf with the alcohol. And so you had this really delicious fortified wine with cocaine in it that was for some reason really popular and was thought to be able to restore health and vitality. And so he started, he tried it and he thought, this is amazing. I need to make this and sell it. And so he developed his own that he initially called French cocoa wine and it had wine and

it had cocaine. But then he threw in there some colonnut because then you're caffeine too. So this is the best beverage ever that he has now created. And oh, and initially some Domiana, which was supposed to be an affidagiaque. So you just cover all your bases with this French cocoa wine.

So that was initially what he started selling, but the problem was prohibition came very shortly after this. And so he had to kind of make do without the wine. We had to get the wine out of there. So he started adding sugar syrup instead of wine. And then at that point the main ingredients were the coca leaf and the colonut and coca cola was born. And it was initially marketed as a nerve and brain tonic again because it was thought to stimulate you and give you a ton of energy and make you be able to think more clearly. They thought it was really good for, again, for stomach, for your stomach, so for like dyspepsia and things like that. And for any kind of like erectile dysfunction, it was marketed a lot for that. Like, oh, you're just drinking Coke, and then that's fine.

And it just like all the other drinks I talked about was originally sold at drug stores. You'd get a little glass of it. Five cents was the general price. And I should note that these Coke was not the only drink to initially have cocaine in it. It was a pretty small amount as my understanding. It would be like a 10th of a line of Coke.

I think someone estimated. Sorry that's a metric that you are for kind of comfortable enough with that you could just like use it. We're also just be like oh a tenth of a line. Okay so as much as I would normally do when I myself a human do a line of coke but just a tenth of that. It's like a tenth of that. Got it, perfect. So it wasn't like a ton. I'm not saying nobody does coke. I'm saying. I mean, I just don't, that's the measurement I found. Anyway, so there wasn't a lot of it.

Like, you might as well say I get an acorn cap of coke. I don't know the amount that a tenth of a line is. So my point is there wasn't a ton of cocaine. Now, I mean, granted, if you had a lot of a line is. So my point is there was an atomic cocaine. Now I mean, granted, if you had a lot of nickels, you could eventually ingest a lot of cocaine. You did there. And a big bladder. So it was really popular.

Obviously, the cocaine was removed in 1903. So there's not cocaine still in coke. Or in any of these beverages, because the FDA came in and said, why are we letting you put cocaine in these drinks? And they were all like, yeah, I really got it. Sorry. Good point, good point, fair, fair for. And the only caveat I'll add to that is that, and Coke obviously became America's leading beverage brand, and a lot of that had to do with the marketing, the advertising, which was always genius in ahead of the game.

And so everybody bought Coke, and it tastes great, obviously. And one of my favorite, because so Coke has been, cocaine has been out of Coke for a very long time. But everybody kind of always knew that, like, didn't it use to have cocaine? And I feel like in the 1980s, Coke started an advertising campaign that was based on this kind of like mythological, like, didn't it have cocaine in it,

believe what it did, called Coke in the Morning. And it was the 80s. And I feel like that they were trying to mark to everybody like, don't do coffee anymore. Do Coke in the morning. Do Coke in the morning. Do Coke in the morning. Coke in the morning. Do Coke in the morning. Cash the fever.

I feel like I had to be like like, like, wink, wink, Coke in the morning. Anyway, my understanding is it didn't catch on people still drink coffee. Sorry. And that's the story of sodas. You guys, would you, is it medically advised for anything you want?

I know at the hospital, they have shasta problems. No. So let's hope that soda is not medicinal. No, that's the sad code I will say is that nowadays I spend a lot of time trying to convince my patients to drink less soda. I will get them next time. It's no longer medicinal beverage, but yeah. Oh, well.

Folks, that is going to do it for us. Thank you so much for listening here. Thank you. Thank you to the Cobb Energy Center for the pouring arts for having us. We're going to be back with my brother me here in a second. But we're going to take a little break before that. But thank you to the taxpayers,

for letting us use our song Medicines as the Inture Natural Roar program. That is gonna do it for us for this week though. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your hand. Music Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture

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