Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Royal Fistula Fad

Episode Date: August 26, 2016

Celebrities have started some pretty weird fads, but perhaps none are weirder than the one started by King Louis XIV, who made it cool ... to have a fistula. Join Justin and Dr. Sydnee for this very s...pecial episode. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:56 Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul bones a metal tour of misguided medicine I am your co-host Justin McAroy and I'm Sydney McAroy. Hey Sydney. Hey Justin. How you doing today? I'm well How are you? I'm good. Good. Thanks. Hey, did you ever see the movie The Man in the Iron Mask? Yeah, oh wow It seems like you asked me that every day, but um as as I've told you so many times before Indeed I have yeah, there's the the two questions I ask you every day. Do you miss Crystal Pepsi? And have I seen Man in the Iron Mask?
Starting point is 00:01:34 And the answer to the first now is no, because it's back. The answer to the second is yes. Yes. I'll ask you again tomorrow and see if it changes. It won't, but that's fine. Yeah, it's Leonardo DiCaprio stars as I think he's like, if I remember correctly, it has been a while, but I think he's like King Louis XIV's brother, identical twin brother, or maybe it was King Louis XIV himself and they were switched. Yeah, I think he was actually the
Starting point is 00:01:59 king. I mean, he's Leo. Like, you think they're going to give him the role, hey, let's get Leonardo DiCaprio to play the role of the king's brother. Well sweetheart. I don't mean to kill it but they're identical twins. I'm assuming you play both plays That would be a lot of choice otherwise That's very probably did didn't he? Yes, he probably did. I love when they do that in movies or TV that magic Where they make one person look like two people like in the parent trap. Patty Duke show. Yeah, for sure. Deena how long I didn't know that was one person.
Starting point is 00:02:28 I figured it out when Lindsey Lowhand remade the parent trap. And I thought, well, I know there's not two Lindsey lowhand. I would have liked that in the town. I know that it must have been the same person all along. That's, that's amazing. Man, I bet they're mad. They couldn't deal with the twins for that heat. Anyway, Sydney, why are you asking me?
Starting point is 00:02:41 Didn't they? Why are you, well, by that point, they didn't look that somewhere. Why are you asking me this about Man in the Iron Man Sydney? It's been 90 seconds. King Louis XIV, I think, is probably best remembered for the film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the man in the Iron Man.
Starting point is 00:02:56 I think that's probably what most people know about him for sure. Right, definitely, whatever. Yeah, that's fine. But lesser known fact, although still popular. Do you know about his butt tunnel? I'm sorry, let's start over. Do you know about his anal fistula?
Starting point is 00:03:12 No, I don't know about either one. I'd know the word fistula and I have a rough idea of what it means, but I did not know of any connection between that and King Louis. I didn't actually know initially about King Louis, King Louis XIV's anal fistula. But we got an email from a net. Thank you, a net for this email that was the best title email our show has ever received.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Sorry to, I love all of your emails, but this was the best title. And it was called King Louis anal fistula. It's a familiar title. I was intrigued instantly had to click on that first to read it. To take no buzzfeed. This was, yeah, this totally worked. That was total clickbait.
Starting point is 00:03:52 It worked. I read it. And I have learned so much. And now I would like to share with you the tale of King Louis XIV's anal fistula. Okay. Sounds good. So he's also known as the Sun King, which just gets funnier as we talk about his butt more, I guess. Sure.
Starting point is 00:04:10 You know I was called the Sun King? I don't actually know why. Because of the brilliance of his court. Oh. Yes. Yes, smart court? He had a smart, beautiful, charismatic court. And he was the celestial orb, the Heliotropic body,
Starting point is 00:04:27 around which they all satelliteed. Yes. And I'm assuming it got better after the anal fistula thing. Cause like before that, say, King Louis XIV was not necessarily what you would consider a healthy guy. Okay.
Starting point is 00:04:43 He had a lot of the things that probably would have been common for the time. He had gout, we've talked about that before, a lot of royalty did because they ate a lot of rich foods, drank a lot of wine. He had gout, he had a lot of dental abscesses. Again, there wasn't a lot of dental hygiene, not surprising.
Starting point is 00:04:56 He actually probably had diabetes, based on descriptions of his health. I mean, they didn't know that. He had a lot of headaches that was reported a lot. And then the usual host of like childhood illnesses, smallpox and measles, and things like that. But after he became king, his health became meticulously recorded every single day by his court. So we know intimate details about all of his illnesses from the day he became king on. Okay. So can you imagine that by the way,
Starting point is 00:05:29 every morning like being woken up by guys who are like, how are you feeling today? And can I look at your toes and how is that? I'm writing it down. Yeah, and they would just like write down like he woke up this morning and he was a little groggy and he needed a thumbs, no, I mean, whatever. On January 15th, 1685, this is why we know these dates.
Starting point is 00:05:51 On January 15th, 1685, King Louis XIV developed a swelling near his anus. You hate to hear that. Yeah. That's a brough, especially when you're so much of your day consists of thrones. That's a tough one. Ex. Thrones and horseback riding. Oh, woof, woof, woof.
Starting point is 00:06:08 So, this progressed and we can follow, we can track the progress of this swelling near Housainess every single morning until February 18th, so a little over a month later, when the swelling had become an abscess. I bet one of the most annoying parts of his day was trying to describe the degree to which the discomfort caused by his aina swelling had changed. Like, is it better or worse or like 7a? What's your anal fish?
Starting point is 00:06:38 Like, how bad is this swelling? I'd be very annoying. Do you think, see, I haven't read these records myself, but now I really want to, do you think they were like real artful and like it was beautifully described? Or do you think it's pretty straightforward? I mean, I think you got it.
Starting point is 00:06:53 It's the King. Make a safe bet the Kings never gonna read it, right? Like, Kings Royal Dairy Air is... It has implumptent. It's implumptent. Inplumptent with an angry, nodule. But still lovely. Still lovely.
Starting point is 00:07:09 The shade of red becomes more deep and beautiful. One happened next. It became an abscess. It became an abscess on February 18th. What does that mean? 1685. What's abscess mean? So an abscess is usually what's an area of infection that's kind of walled off. So what you would think
Starting point is 00:07:27 of as like a boil is probably a good, if you say boil you probably mean abscess. So like a little walled off hard red actually squishy in the center because there's pus in their area of infection near his anus. Now by May 2nd, which that's a long time, that he just had that. And had a love of it. Yeah. I mean, now let me, I will get to some of the things they were trying to do to treat this in a minute. So there were doctors obviously attending to this. They weren't just like watching it. Right. People were trying to do things for it, but obviously they weren't working because by May 2nd, the abscess has given rise to a fistula. because by May 2nd, the abscess has given rise to a fistula. Now, do you, you said you know what a fistula is?
Starting point is 00:08:08 Well, I remember a gastric fistula, right? Yeah, we talked about that. That whole romance, the guy who had Austin. Alexa St. Martin. Alexa St. Martin. I was gonna say Austin St. John, who was the red par ranger. He wasn't on him. No, it wasn't. Don't get it twisted.
Starting point is 00:08:25 His stomach is like sealed. No problem. His stomach's fine. Unlike Alexis St. Martin, the French Canadian fur trader. Yeah, who had a whole, he had a gastric fistula, right? Yeah, he had a gastric fistula. So it was, it's a connection between the inside of something to the outside. So like, it's how people often call your mouth, your food fistula.
Starting point is 00:08:45 No. No. No, I mean, no one calls. Your mouth is not a fistula? No. About your nostrils. No, because I mean, usually when we say fistula, we mean something that isn't intentionally there.
Starting point is 00:09:00 An unintentional hole. So you got to be specific about your words. It's key in communication. Sure. Yeah. So an anal fistula in this case would be a connection from inside the anal canal to the outside. Okay. So kind of think of like a little bypass road from inside the anus that would open up somewhere
Starting point is 00:09:21 around the anus. I'm not going to think about that, but thank you. I appreciate the invitation. I appreciate the invitation. Everybody, Google Analysts. Sadly, I'll have to decline your invitation. I've marked, I did not mark that I'll have the chicken or fish. I marked regretfully not attending on this invitation. Actually, don't Google Analysts.
Starting point is 00:09:42 Yeah, no kidding, since then. I mean, you know something. Don't imagine it. Some people are doing that though. We don't have a theater of the mind this. Just get to the education. Our listeners. I know our I know you guys. Some of you were doing it. So it could develop because of an infection in like the tissues around the anus Which is probably what happened in this case. Sometimes fistulas are the results of surgeries, but again not in this case. Sometimes fishedulas are the results of surgeries, but again, not in this case. This was probably just a really bad infection and it created this tunnel and there you go. Now you got a fishula.
Starting point is 00:10:13 It was thought at the time that it was caused by too much horseback riding. That was a theory for Louis XIV, is because he spent a lot of time on horseback. So this is probably where this came from. Other popular theories at the time were that you could get an anal fistula from eating too much,
Starting point is 00:10:33 having sex too much. Okay. Or the certain feathers that you might find in the seats of carriages. Sure, what? Yeah. Obviously those don't cause. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:46 I got I was most ever heavy on that one. The treatments that were tried and this would have been from the initial swelling on January 15th on mainly consisted of peltices. So they would take like a mixture of flour and barley and flaxseed and beans and water and vinegar and kind of create this. Make chilly. Make some Chilean slap it on there and see if they could draw out the infection is probably what the theory was
Starting point is 00:11:11 that they were trying to do. Enemies were tried, many, many enemies. And we've talked about this before. It's exactly what you want when you're in that position. I would assume. An enema. An enema. No, I don't think so.
Starting point is 00:11:23 I think you got enough discomfort going on down there as it is. But not for Louis XIV, because if you remember, I think we mentioned this in our Anema episode, he was a huge fan of Anema's anyway. Sure, he was crazy about the things. Maybe that's how he got official in the first place. Hmm, I don't think so. I think I'm going to be able to tell you why he may have developed it. Right on, feathers.
Starting point is 00:11:43 No, but he did. He did. It is documented have over 2000 enemies in his lifetime. Although some historians are like, that's an exaggeration. There's no way. Boring. No way. What killed joys?
Starting point is 00:11:55 Either way, he did like enemas and there are all these anecdotes about him having enemas while holding court and people trying to impress him by like, ladies having enemas while they're talking to him so that they see that like, hey look, I'm into what you're into. Yeah. Anyway, none of this stuff was working and he was basically unable to sit. He couldn't, I mean, he was just in exquisite pain.
Starting point is 00:12:19 He couldn't sit down, he couldn't lay down. He was, it was really bad. Now why did he get this? Remember something about King Louis. This was during the time period when humanity in general, specifically, let's say, European humanity, was un-based. It was the great unwashed. We thought at the time that water was dangerous because it could carry disease into your skin and make you sick and weak. So people did not want to submerge themselves in water as a result. So bathing was highly unpopular. It was also thought that it was
Starting point is 00:12:57 immoral. So doctors told you not to and the church told you not to because then you got naked. Cool church. So and we've talked about this again before. There was this time period where it was not okay to be naked ever really. Ever. So you just wouldn't as much as you could be naked. So most didn't bathe. Now there's this again, this is debated, but King Louis claimed to have only bathe twice in his life.
Starting point is 00:13:21 Yeah, I think, sir, I think I've diagnosed the cause of your anal fistula. So this is probably part of the problem. He may have bathed more than twice either way. He did not bathed very often. A lot of royalty would claim this as like a way to show how much better they were than everybody else would say. Like I've only bathed twice or whatever.
Starting point is 00:13:41 Queen is about the first of Spain was noted to say that she only bathed twice in her life on the day she was born and on her wedding day. And those were the only two days that she would ever bathed. That's so grody. It's just, I don't have a joke. It's just like so grody, Sydney. Now they probably not feel like a desire to bathe. If I make it to like 11 in the morning, I feel like, and I have not shawared yet, I am like flipping pig pin. Like please get me into some hot water.
Starting point is 00:14:22 They probably did do something like wipe their bodies down with things like... Hack baths. Vinegar. Or alcohol. Kind of like the wet, wet, wet one bath that you sometimes in the airport bathroom, like when you've been on a really long flight,
Starting point is 00:14:38 you're just kind of going to like wipe yourself down with something like that. Like we do with the washcloth thing we do with Charlie's time, so we just can't. We just... When we just can't. just we just can't we just can't We we bay their child frequently. Yeah, I like we're bad parents. We're not bad parents. We're like every night Listen, and don't tell us that that's wrong because I don't know. We're all just trying to forget this thing Part of the bedtime routine. Okay. Okay, just back off and just do there. We're just trying to make it to 18 all right
Starting point is 00:15:02 Anyway, so a lot of people did not bathe. The court itself, everybody would have been heavily powdered and perfumed to try to hide the smell. And this is well documented. Like a Russian ambassador once wrote after meeting King Louis XIV that he stunk like a wild animal. The King would often tell people to open the windows
Starting point is 00:15:23 as he entered rooms because he was awake. He should face somebody to do that. Attention subjects, your king approaches. Please open the windows or we're just going to knock this whole room out. It's rough in there. He was French. I don't do French.
Starting point is 00:15:44 Zoodle Lord. Just put the m do French. Zoodle lore. Just put the method Zoodle lore a lot. We'll edit that back in there later. So he was well aware that he smelled bad and everybody knew it and he would cover it. Can you imagine that like all that stench and then you just cover it in as much perfume as you can? So everybody smelled that way. But he knew it and he would tell him like, open the windows, I'm coming in, I don't want my staff to pass out because we got
Starting point is 00:16:07 work to do. So anyway, the doctors are treating him, they're getting, they're using poltuses, they're using enemas, they had some weightments, they were trying. Of course bleeding, I didn't really mention that, but of course he would have been blood multiple times to try to treat this. Up to that point, we kind of already knew that anal phisial is were a thing that happened. And we sort of knew that we probably needed to do surgery for them. That actually dates back to hypocritees
Starting point is 00:16:35 who said, you know, you really need to go in and cut this thing open to get it to heal. In the 1300s, they documented some surgeries that were tried and they would use something called a seatin where they would actually take like a cord and like loop it through the tunnel and then back out the anus. And as a way, like you could do something like sharp
Starting point is 00:16:59 to like pull it through, to like try to open it up or just as a way, you would just leave it in there too. You could just leave it. And then it would heal all the way to the seat and then you would pull it out. That kind of thing. Of course none of this was done with antisepsis in mind. So anyway, so we kind of knew
Starting point is 00:17:18 as in like any attempts to stop infection. Okay, I got it. I mean, I'm gonna be understood infection so nobody was trying to stop it. So we kind of knew that maybe surgery had to happen. King Louis, of course, was doing everything you could to avoid that because there's no anesthesia, there's no way to prevent infection. A lot of people would have died from surgery.
Starting point is 00:17:34 You think that you would just second up for like a day and see if it got better. You know what I mean? I mean, like just do the surgery once if he was in such pain. Well, but you got to think about the fact that it's not just the pain of the surgery. It's the risk of surgery at the time meant death most of the time. Yeah. So, you know, because we couldn't stop bleeding and people died of infection anyway. They finally caved and said we got to get a surgeon in here.
Starting point is 00:18:01 Now, by a surgeon, of course, I mean a barber surgeon. Yes, right. During the time period where doctors would not cut into a human body. It was considered just completely. Profane. Yes, profane. The church forbade it and a doctor would never do such a thing. But Charles Francois Felix was a barber surgeon who would.
Starting point is 00:18:20 Barber surgeons did things like poultry and bloodletting and minor surgical procedures as well as I guess cut your hair. Probably that too. So he was called upon to come save the king. He checked the king out, looked at his fistula and said, all right, I'll do this. He didn't want, you have to imagine this guy was like, terrified. I'm gonna lose, lose.
Starting point is 00:18:43 No, I mean, you kill a king and that's it. He checked it out and he said, I'm gonna do this, but I need six months to prepare. Why? Well, I'm gonna tell ya, but first, why don't you follow me to the billing department? Ah, let's go.
Starting point is 00:18:57 The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my cards for the mouse. I'm Travis. And I'm Andy. And we host Bunkerbodies, a comedy apocalypse podcast, every Wednesday on MaximumFun.org. We've got a brand new format for our podcast that we hope you want to come and check out. We try out products for your go-back. We'll try out cheddar larva and cricket bars so you don't have to. We play Would You Rather and Answer questions from the audience?
Starting point is 00:19:25 And we have great guests that pop into the bunker. It's everything you love about the show and more. Come check it out every Wednesday here on MaximumFun.org. Stay safe out there. There's always hope and cheesecake. So Sidney, he needed six months. That's right. I imagine that if this was a movie, that this would be probably the worst montage in movie
Starting point is 00:19:50 history. This would be the most upsetting, maybe, the most disturbing montage. So Barbara Surgeon Felix knew he was going to have to practice, because this was not a surgery he had done. He sort of understood what he needed to do, but those are two very different things. So he's got to find some like cows or pigs with anal fistulas so he can practice on them, right? Justin, this is the king we're talking about.
Starting point is 00:20:14 This is the sun king, King Louis the 14th. Yeah. You cannot practice on cows and pigs and then operate on the kings rear end. Okay, that's fine. Oh man. You need actual human butts. No. That's right. So he said to the king,
Starting point is 00:20:33 I'm gonna need some people to practice. I'm gonna take king. I'm gonna need some butts. That's pretty much what he said. And he was given butts, 75 of them, 75 men. How 75 of my finest butts? The finest butts in the game. Well, I don't think the finest from prisons, a lot of them came from prisons.
Starting point is 00:20:56 They might have had great butts. Well, that's true. That's short. That's true. I'm not saying that you don't have a great butt. You're a person. I think it wasn't so much that he was looking for people with my quality. My Nolte got arrested. He had a great butt.
Starting point is 00:21:11 Does he? I don't know. I don't even know if he got arrested. I might have just slammed her in Nolte. Well, stop doing that. All I mean is that his selection was not based on the quality of their rumps. It was based on that he could tell them that they had to go have a surgery for practice.
Starting point is 00:21:29 Got it. So he got people from prison. There were a lot of probably peasants from the countryside. I don't know if they were offered like money, like, hey, if you survive, you will pay you something. Or if it was just, this is in service to the king. Cause it could have just been that.
Starting point is 00:21:43 This is in service to the king. This is your duty. you are his subject. And that's no spread. Either way, and to be fair, these people did not have anal fistulas. Yeah. So he was practicing a surgery on something on them that they didn't, I don't even know how that works.
Starting point is 00:22:04 The point is, let's not spin this, Sydney. There was sucked. This sucked. There was no anesthesia. Nobody knew how to prevent infection. He didn't know what he was doing. He was working on developing special tools for it as he was doing it.
Starting point is 00:22:17 So it was like, well, that thing didn't work. Let's tweak it a little bit and try it on the next guy. Next, who's up next? Many of these men unfortunately did not survive this practice surgery. Some actually did, which I think is almost more surprising than anybody would have. He managed to, through his practice, fashion two instruments to use for this surgery. One was a kind of scalpel that really, if you looked at it, it looks like a little scythe. It's kind of the long curved end, a small scythe. And it was called a royally curved,
Starting point is 00:22:55 is the way they described it. It is a royally curved scythe. So you're in the special curvature of the royal butt. Exactly. They also, he also created a retractor, something to move tissue out of the way, that was, you really, you can, there are pictures of these online. So if you want to look up the retractor that was made specifically by Charles Francois Felix to spread open the King's, you know, Aynas. Oh, you better thread that Google image, sir, needle so tight, you better thread that needle. Oh, boy, how do you are? You are just on a razor's edge with that Google image search.
Starting point is 00:23:40 Now, let me tell you, if you want to see them in person, these instruments are still on display, the museum of what like medical technology or something like that in Paris. You can still see these instruments. That would be the only context in which I will ever see them because the Google image search, like the amazing collection of like boolean mastery and like you would need to not see something that would scar you for all your days is just incomprehensible. The risk reward is off the charts. I feel like my job as a podcaster is to be able to describe this thing to you. I don't know that I can and do it justice. You really need to see it.
Starting point is 00:24:15 The point is he created a special but retractor so that he was able to spread everything and get to where he needed to get. And finally the day arrived. All right. November 18th, 1686. It's been a while that he's been dealing with this sucker. Seven a.m. It is its magic hour. Our barber surgeon Felix arrives with his trusty instruments in hand.
Starting point is 00:24:45 The king is there, of course, so along with here are the people who he had present for this surgery, which of course, in part, it was very dangerous, it was very risky, there was every chance he would not survive it. So having loved ones nearby is not a strange thing, but it was also kind of in a private area. Sure. Nevertheless, he had his mistress on hand. No, you got to.
Starting point is 00:25:10 His son was there. His confessor was present. That seemed smart. His doctors were all there as well because they wouldn't do this, but they did want to kind of see what was about to happen. And his minister of state. Well, that's maybe, yeah, to handle the power, transfer of power, right? In case he died on the table, the minister of state need to be
Starting point is 00:25:30 there to pass it down to his son, right? I like to think he was just there to like, I'm going to be working while this is happening. Like, I've got to pay the work, but I do want to hang around for support. If you need anything, if you need an iced tea or whatever, just let me know. Maybe they were just super close. Maybe. Like President Bartlett and Leo, like they were also just best buds. Maybe they were just best but buds. Who cared about each other's buds very much. Said it worked.
Starting point is 00:25:54 It worked. It was about a three hour surgery, three, four hour surgery. He was successful and the king survived and did not die of infection. And within three months, he was riding a horse again. So it was very successful. He healed the Fistula. The end. What a crazy story, Sydney. Yes. And what followed was in some ways crazier. That's not the end. No. That feels like the end. That is the end of King Louis' anal Fistula. It is healed, it is fixed.
Starting point is 00:26:25 It has been late open and allowed to heal from the inside out, which is the, that's the ideal thing with fistulas. You don't want them to seal off on the ends because then just infection accumulates in there and you keep getting, you know, you sigger and sicker, you want it to heal from the inside out. Okay. And so cutting it open allows it to do that.
Starting point is 00:26:41 Anyway, this made the fistula fashionable. People all over Paris wanted to have their own anal fistula. It was very much in fashion at the time to do whatever royalty, but whatever royalty did was cool. So it really didn't matter. I mean, they stunk and they covered themselves in perfume and powder and that was cool. So if an anal fistula is what the King's got, it's cool.
Starting point is 00:27:06 So people started going to their own local barber surgeon and asking for the operation, even if they didn't have an anal fistula. Oh, man. The King got it, so I want it too. Now I am not saying that they necessarily performed these surgeries, but people were going and requesting them. Some people even started claiming they had ainofishulas just because it was cool, it was in,
Starting point is 00:27:29 and wearing bandages over their clothes like around their butts to display. Not how that works, good job old people. They're ainofishulas, like look what I have, and they call them leroial. Leroial. It was very much in to have an anal fistola. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:27:50 That's right. That's right. That's the question. What's a Royale with cheese? That's rough. But I mean, I guess there are a lot of weird fashion trends, you know? Yes, and I guess I guess I lot of weird fashion trends, you know? Yes, and I guess I'm weird fashion. What do you say? I wear those giant leg pants, like those giant jenko jeans for a while.
Starting point is 00:28:11 Like that's probably that's basically the same thing, right? Yeah, that's basically the same thing as that. Now, Barbara surgeon Felix got, uh, he was, of course, rewarded, rewarded handsome Lee for his, uh, for his job. Well done. He never again performed that surgery or any other. He went out on top. He went out on top.
Starting point is 00:28:30 He was given an estate and a title and lots of money and lots of fame as a result, which I think he was probably paid better for that surgery than any surgeon in history, but you know, it was the King's butt. This would also, the other important thing that resulted from this is that the doctor's present and the court and King Louis all began to say, you know what, maybe surgery isn't this kind of lowly, disrespectful thing that we know is necessary, but none of us want to talk about. Maybe it's actually a good thing.
Starting point is 00:29:02 Maybe we should spend a little more time thinking and talking and learning about surgery. So much so that by the time Louis the 15th came along, he opened the first Royal Academy of Surgery, which now is called the National Academy of Surgery and you can still find Felix's portrait hanging there. So how cool is that? So this actually helped this surgery, actually helped to lead to all surgeries and the profession of surgery and surgeons and everything. Anything else? Louis would go on to live many more years.
Starting point is 00:29:36 He didn't die until just before his 77th birthday. He always had to fall. He always said, we can just leave, you know, you can just close these books without like flipping to the last stage and then he died like a long time later, but he died too. Okay, well, let's go back to the minute. He lived 400 years ago, so he definitely did die later.
Starting point is 00:29:54 I'm just saying he went to live on many, many more years before that. That's excellent. One weird fact about this surgery and something else that came from it, during the lead up to the surgery, the French people were not supposed to know that this was happening. They were not, I mean, they very much wanted to keep the secret, which is not weird. I mean, we've talked about this before in politics
Starting point is 00:30:13 and leaders don't want their people to know that they're weak or sick. So the French people weren't supposed to know that the king had the fistula that he was going to have surgery, anything. But of course, rumors spread, people talk. And everybody kind of knew. And everybody was very nervous. They loved their king. They didn't want anything bad to happen. And even though they weren't supposed to know about these 75 men
Starting point is 00:30:37 who were being practiced on, somebody was disposing of those bodies, word was getting around that maybe this wouldn't go so well. Maybe this was bad. So, the headmistress of the Royal Girl School, Madame DeBrennan, wrote a prayer for her students to say for the king. It was called God Save the King, and it was a prayer specifically. It doesn't mention his butt or his fistula, but it is about hoping that God saved the king through this anal fistula surgery he's about to have. And they recited it every day.
Starting point is 00:31:09 Well, of course, after the king survived the surgery and was better, she had it set to music. And when he came to visit the girl's school, they sang it for him. Well, someone happened to hear this song, Someone with the last name, Handel. And then this was in 1714. Handel really liked this song, went back to England, translated into English. And you know the British national anthem?
Starting point is 00:31:38 God save the Queen. Sydney, I love this sounds apocryphal to me. I don't, but I don't buy it. This sounds, I need yoursterisk on this bad boy. Here's the problem. If you read anybody who's writing about this from the French perspective, this story is absolutely true.
Starting point is 00:31:56 And they will, I mean, hand to God, this is what happened. If you read any British historian, this is not true, this is not where this came from. So I don't know. I'm gonna believe it. I think it's a clever, funny story. And I enjoyed anyway, because then it means that it's really a secret song
Starting point is 00:32:16 about the French King's butt surgery. It may not be. It may not be. It's a great song either way. And we stole my country tiz-of-thee from it. So we all share. Folks, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for taking the time. I'm sorry, where did they lay on this one, but, you know, life. If you want more episodes of our show, if you want to hear the whole
Starting point is 00:32:39 back catalog, it's all available for you. If you go to SaulBoneShow.com, that'll lead to the MaximumFund.org where you'll find all the episodes. Or find us on iTunes and maybe leave us a rating or review. That really helps us out a lot. We really appreciate it. Or the best thing you can do is tell somebody to listen, say, hey, I think you'd like this show.
Starting point is 00:32:56 I think you'd enjoy it. Please listen to it. You don't have to start with the one about a butt fish. No, but you could you could do worse. Oh, I see. Thank you. As I was mentioning to the maximum fun.org network is actually just called maximum fun. It's not called the maximum fun.org network on like this part. But there's a lot of great shows for you there. Listen to like Adam Ruins.
Starting point is 00:33:18 Everything the new one tights and fights to show about wrestling is brand new and our dear friend Liz Gilbert has the second season of her show Magic Lessons where she talks about creativity and helping people pass their creative problems that is just wonderful and well worth listening to. You can find those all at Maximum Funded or on iTunes. Thanks to TaxPatre.com for letting us use your strong medicines as the Intro and Outro of our program. Anything else, sister?
Starting point is 00:33:41 No, just thank you, everybody who listens. Thanks. I really appreciate you. But until next time, my thank you, everybody who listens. Thanks. I really appreciate you. But until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Art and Stone
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