Latest / Ridiculous History / How Robert 'The Fastest Knife in the West End' Liston Conducted a Surgery With a 300% Mortality Rate

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How Robert 'The Fastest Knife in the West End' Liston Conducted a Surgery With a 300% Mortality Rate · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: thank you for tuning in. Today's question, did you ever
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: want to be a doctor when you grew up? Are you?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Are you a doctor listening now? If so, what kind
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'd especially love to hear from some surgeons? Hi, I'm beat, Hi,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I'm no, and Um. When I get blood drawn, I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: have to look away and close my eyes and breathe
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: slowly or else I'll pass out because blood and the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: whole idea of the human body weirds me out. So
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the human body overall, well, no, just the stuff inside
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: should stay inside, remaining inside. I would prefer that to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: be the case. I don't like cutting in movies, never
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: liked it when people get cut. So this story today
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: was a bit of a stretch for me. Um, in
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: terms of my own personal constitution. I see that's what
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: you're talking about this. Yeah, we've also got our superproducer,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram in the house. Like, Casey, did you ever
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: want to think of being a doctor when you were
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: a wee tyke? No? That was that was never one
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: of my kind of growing up. I want to be things.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about the side of blood? Um,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I'm okay. With the side of blood in general. I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: don't like the side of my own blood, so I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: don't like getting blood taken, you know, all that kind
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of stuff. I'm not a fan of you. Didn't ask me, Neal.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I think I have a feeling you seem like a
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: bit of a fearless, iron gutted figure to me. You
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: always have, but no, do tell that's that's very kind
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of you. I I have a life, uh fraught with
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: strange phobias that terrified me, like touching metal or having
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: to touch cardboard. Oh, blood is kind of metallic. Does
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that fall into that category for you? Only if I
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: drink it? So so usually uh, having to do survival
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: training kind of stuff gets you over that initial squig
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: or squick pretty quickly. But I don't go out of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: my way to get in situations where I'm looking inside
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: people or something, because if I were to do that,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: then I would probably be better suited to be a
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: surgeon rather than a podcaster. And today's episode is about surgery.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: There is some graphics stuff, nol. I'm gonna check in
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: with you to make sure that we don't go uh
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: too far out of a comfort zone. I will be
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: the bell Weather of Woossory in this one. No, you're
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the you're the canary in the cave mine of carnage. Yes,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the coal mine cave. But yeah, no slight trigar warning
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: if he didn't already catch the drift. This story is
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: kind of gross. Uh, there is some gore, and we're
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: not going to be super descriptive about it because God knows,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I'll pass out on the floor right here in the
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: shipping container. But just a heads up. If this isn't
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you want to listen to, uh,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: then don't. It's fairly blunty. Yes, Uh, this is also
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: darkly comic. And to begin the story, we're going to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: need to introduce you to a fellow named Robert Liston
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: born on they of October seventeen nine four. He is
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: a Scottish surgeon and he was known for being a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: bit of a showman. It's a bit cocky, kind of
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a show boat, kind of a kind of David Blaine
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: stage magician vibe. I don't know if that's something you
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: want in a surgeon. If a surgeon was a peacock,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: it would be this guy, yes, who's bantam. Indeed, as
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm scared of birds too. Yes, so this
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: is a bird surgeon. A peacocks surgeon is like my
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: worst nightmare. You're welcome for the nightmare that you're going
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to have. Sweet end. Uh So. Robert Liston, though, was
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: one of the best, most widely known surgeons of his time.
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  Speaker 1: He got his education at the University of Edinburgh and
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: became the first Great Northern anatomist of Blackwell's magazine, and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: by eighteen eighteen he was a surgeon at the Royal
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Infirmary of Edinburgh, and his legacy contains stuff that is
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: primarily found in the medical community, you know, like inside
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: trade info and uh then stuff that made it into
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: popular culture. Liston was very very well known for the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: speed at which he conducted surgery. Here in the fantastic nickname,
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  Speaker 1: which was the fastest knife in the West End, which
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: is clever on a couple of levels. It is. In fact,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: there's a little story that's that's in a Mental Flaws
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: article called on the Table if one of history's most
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: infamous surgeons by a guy named Matt Soniac that describes
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: a particular surgery where um Liston actually asked one of
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  Speaker 1: his assistants to set a timer so that he could
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  Speaker 1: show off how quickly he could amputate a gentleman's leg.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna read you a quote because it's
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: very visual and I love it. He goes. The man
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: grabs your leg and begins to cut just below the knee.
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  Speaker 1: He continues to hold onto your leg as one of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: his lackeys gets a tourniquet around it to freeze cutting hand.
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  Speaker 1: He clasps the knife covered in your blood, in his
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: teeth and picks up a saw. He cuts back and
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: forth through the bone, drops the severed part of the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: leg into a bucket filled with sawdust, and shows you
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: up to the applause of the men sitting in the wings.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: They've timed the whole bloody procedure, get it from first
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: incision to clipping the loose threads on the sutures at
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: just two and a half minutes. And that that quote
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: comes from the journalist Matt Soniac who has this fan
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: tastic article about listing. So in two and a half
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: minutes he has performed an amputation. His style may have
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: seemed really cavalier, but we have to remember this is
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: before so many of the medical discoveries and technical improvements
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: that we have today. Yeah, I'm guessing they may have
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: given they have ether back then, that would have been
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: something they at least had at their disposal, right, we imagine.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But this is the age before widespread anesthesia, that's true.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: So maybe I don't know. I don't want to sound
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like an ignorant person here when it comes to surgery.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Like I said, it kind of freaks me out, so
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: let me look into it too heavily. But one thing
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I know from this research is quite often no one
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: was given anything, and there was a whole lot of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: just absolute screaming and horror and terror bit down on
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: this while assistants literally had to hold the person down
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: while the surgeon. So speed was kind of the name
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: of the game, and no one was faster than listen. Um.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: There was even a story I read in the Gizmoto
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: art a car on I oon nine article that talked
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: about how sometimes people would flee the operating table like
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: just like lunging away with a snail trail of blood
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: left behind them. Yeah, because the other people lost their
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: grip the assistance. So yes, speed is key here. It
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: not only minimizes the patient's pain, but it also improves
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: their odds of surviving the surgery. Liston is not only
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  Speaker 1: very very fast, he's also very very good. For the time.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: If you went into Liston's operating theater, you only had
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: a one in ten chance of dying, which right down
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: sounds terrible. It does sound pretty terrible, but let's compare
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: to the competition. Their rate of death was hovering around
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: one in four. Yeah, so you can see why you
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: would want to go to listen. Right. Sometimes patients would
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: camp out, would literally sleep inside his waiting room for
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: days waiting to see him. Hey, can you imagine the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: scene be? Can you imagine this mount? Right? He tried
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to see every single one of his patients. Although he
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: was a little bit cocky, you know, he had a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: good heart when it came to helping people, which is
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: another reason that speed factored into it so importantly, because
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: you can't see people if you're you know, taking your
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: time with that old saw. Yeah, we have to remember
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: in this era, hospitals were very scary, intimidating places. People
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: walked in having made peace with their creator, thinking well,
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  Speaker 1: this might be it might be it for me. I
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: think it's just a cough, But we'll see and listen
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  Speaker 1: understood that. He thought he had a responsibility for his
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: patients feelings. So he wanted to have a thorough knowledge
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  Speaker 1: of anatomy, pathology, all that slow jazz, all the good stuff,
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  Speaker 1: and also be a good diagnosa of symptoms. But he
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: also wanted to be compassion in it. So it's very
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: easy for us looking back to forget that softer aspect
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of his persona. He did care about people. He was
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: crazy good, but he did care about people. And it's
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: kind of like Tony Stark in the Marvel comics or
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the m c U, because you know, he's kind of arrogant,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: he's a bit of a show off, but he's got
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a heart of gold underneath that. Here's one example that's
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  Speaker 1: very Tony Stark of him. Listen loved treating cases that
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: his fellow surgeons had dismissed. I think the surgeons say, well,
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  Speaker 1: there's no way I'm going to do that because you'll die.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: It's an incurable condition. Good day, sir, I said to you.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Good day. They would go to Listen and he would say, oh,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: they say they can't be done. They say it can't
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  Speaker 1: be done. I will prove them wrong. Start the time
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: book exactly. Yeah, so, I mean it's an it's interesting
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: combination of compassion and cock sure, bravado for sure. Uh.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And what ends up happening that enters into the big part,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: the quite disturbing part of our story is that very thing.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It's a combination of all those factors kind of playing
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  Speaker 1: into a perfect storm of horrible outcome. That's right. Although
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: he was good, he was not perfect, and sometimes, like Icarus,
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  Speaker 1: his hubris was his downfall. Once, for example, Liston was
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: in such a hurry to amputate a leg that he
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: accidentally cut a patient's testicles off along with the leg. Yeah,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: like Icarus, he saw too close to the taint. Yes,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: his most famous story along these lines happens this way.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: There's an operation, it's Snilo's operation, right, and he's moving
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: so so very fast that he takes off the fingers
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  Speaker 1: of his surgical assistant. He's cutting through a leg, and
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: he cuts through his assistant's hand while they're holding the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: patient down. That's right. And again we have to remember
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: this patient would have been struggling. It was no small
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: feat to you know, restrain these folks. And I'm sure
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: there were some restraints involved to like having them strapped
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: down but you can't have somebody flopping around like a
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  Speaker 1: fish when you're trying to saw through their leg. So
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: not only did he miss Q and slice the fingers,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I think part of this had to do with he
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: would have aimed too high and he saw it through
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: up the upper at the hip or near the hip area,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: which is probably where the assistant was gripping him to
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: get you know, purchased to keep him help down exactly.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And this he already knows this stuff is happening quickly.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: This is not ideal. Uh. So he's not going to
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: stop the surgery, though. The show must go on. So
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: he switches instruments, you know, throws one thing into that uh,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: to the floor, to a bucket us sawdust or what
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: have you. And then while he's switching instruments you can't
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: see here, folks, but I am doing a pretty fantastic
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: arms flailing impression here. He switched the instruments and still
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how this happens, because he must
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: have been just throwing his arms wide. There's a spectator
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: standing nearby, just watching the surgery because that's what people
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: used to do, and he slashes the spectator's coat with
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: this bloody instrument and this guy, the guys, just the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: onlooker freaks out. Yeah. First of all, I'm not trying
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: to you know, throwing but under the bus here, but
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that spectator was probably a little too much of a hovery.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Looky Lily probably should have been keeping his distance a
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: little bit in the situation. So I'm gonna argue that
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: he sort of had that coming a little bit. But yeah,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: he also like clearly was squeamish about the blood because
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: by this point, fingers are off on assistant squirting blood
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  Speaker 1: out of like bloody nub stumps. Then the leg is
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: off blood squirting out of their absolute pandemonium in the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: operating theater, and the spectator, uh, you know, almost gets
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: you know, when I first read this, I saw sliced
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and coat and I misread a sliced throat. Yeah, but no,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: he again, this is like the stuff of legend. Almost
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: hard to confirm what exactly happened to this guy, but
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we've seen it written in several places that he had
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: an immediate massive heart attack and died, right, Yeah, he
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: died later that night of fright, and the patient died
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: because they got gang green in the hospital. The assistant
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: died because they at Gangreen in the hospital. I think
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the that it all kind of spread from that original
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: saw too, that may have been tainted and it wasn't
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: properly sterilized, which like you said, you're they're throwing stuff
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: into buckets, they're covered in blood. It seems like the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: more like a butcher shop than a proper you know,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: operating room. And yeah, that infection got into the assistance
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: blood as well, and he also died from the effects.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And this is what led the distinguished surgeon and an enthusiologist,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Richard Gordon to call this the only operation in history
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  Speaker 1: with a three mortality rate. He is also the guy
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: who coined the nickname the fastest knife in the West
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  Speaker 1: End for Listen, So let's not forget legacy wise, Listen
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: was remembered you know, in his community, in the medical community,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: which is a very niche, kind of close knit community
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: with a lot of esoteric knowledge that wouldn't mean much
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: to anybody else. They remembered him for a lot of important,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: you know, deeds and works to further the medical profession.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: But of course, you know, most regular old folks are
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: going to remember much more the story where he accidentally
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: killed three people, Yeah, by slicing through them with a
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you know, infected blade. Well, he created the Listen splint
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: bulldog locking force ups. Those are still around today. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: he also did play a role in the administration of ether,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: so he made proper contributions. But you know, if it bleeds,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: it leads, and so now Listen is known outside of
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the medical community as the surgeon with a three mortality rate. Again,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: that story is somewhat anecdotal, but it is illustrative. I
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: would I would argue of the problems with medical care
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and surgery at the time. I mean, this is still
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: before people washed their hands when conducting surgery. It's true.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: He also published a couple of important medical texts, The
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Elements of Surgery and Practical Surgery, and this is pretty interesting.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Near the end of his career, he made history when
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: he performed a surgery in Britain on a man named
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Frederick Churchill in eighteen forty six who had a right
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: knee that had been giving him a lot of pain.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: So nothing had worked for him and the only option
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was going to be amputation. But instead Liston didn't use
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a knife. He actually pulled out a jar of ether.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: As you said, and then that became something that dentists
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and surgeons um used as a surgical anesthetic from that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: point on. Right, And these are the days when people
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: were still saying maybe we should hypnotize patients. But he
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: found the ether ether worked as well. I don't want
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to let this go, the importance of people washing their
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: hands just in general. Uh. There was a guy, a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Hungarian doctor named Ignaz samul Weiss, and he was the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: person who could have saved so many lives, especially during
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: childbirth and so on, by the simple technique of washing
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: one's hands. Yeah, I believe he introduced that in eighty
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: seven at the amalgamines crunkin House and h in Fair,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Deutsche Land. But doctors were upset and they didn't listen
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: to him. They said, this simul vice guys making us
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: look bad because he's implying that we're giving these women
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and children and fevers. He also wasn't very tactful. He
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: was kind of a Larry David or Bernie Sanders figure,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, a bit of a curmudgeon. Anyway,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: semmel VIIs eventually ends up in a mental health facility,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in an asylum. So wash your hands is the conclusion
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: of this, and hey, sometimes speed isn't everything. Yeah, come on, guys,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: lets slow down, smell the roses. Speaking of the most
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: vague summations I can make of going real fortune cookie
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: caption here, something interesting will happen this week? Oh oh wow, okay,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that one was interesting. Time It's time, gentleman. Jonathan Strickland's
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: a k cuister. This is this may uh, this may
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: come as a surprise to some people. But you're you're
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: back again. You're back at at your old uh, your
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: old shenanigans and tricks. Huh. You just can't keep me
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: out here. You keep changing the locks. I keep breaking
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: in a well as I missed you guys. Oh hey,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: it was really good. Thank you for asking my arch nemesis. No,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and it was fantastic. I highly recommend London in Paris.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It was wonderful. They that's right, you went to the UK.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I was there, Yes, yes, I was there doing some
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: interesting protests. We'll just leave it there. But now I
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: want to know, is it like about brexit? Okay, okay,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: let me tell you something. If you want to take
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the chunnel from London to Paris, don't do it. When
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  Speaker 1: a dude has climbed up on top of the train
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  Speaker 1: station because you ain't going nowhere? Were you? The dude? No, no,
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  Speaker 1: I was in line, a very long line to get
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  Speaker 1: on a train that was almost certainly not going to leave. Well,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: thank you for narrowly escaping disaster. Forward the channel to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: come with us and play one of our most device
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: of games. Yes, the most cringe a with the segment
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in all the podcasting is which was which was? Again?
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like we have to straighten out the historical
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: record here. Which was your idea? Yes? It was? I
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  Speaker 1: one day on a whim, suggested that I present you
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: with different scenarios and you have to determine whether or
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  Speaker 1: not the scenario I'm presenting to you is in fact
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  Speaker 1: a real one or if I made it up. Seats
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  Speaker 1: the scenario and then the the the two gentlemen will
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  Speaker 1: have three minutes to deliberate on whether or not I'm
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  Speaker 1: telling the truth or I'm lying, and they may ask
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: questions of me if they follow an arbitrary rule of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: my choosing, which I realized I did not think of
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: before I came in here. So in honor of the topic,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: for you to be able to ask a question, you
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: must preface it with the phrase, doctor, doctor, give me
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the news. I got a bad case of cutting you.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Just just the first part, just just the gimmian and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: followed by your question. And now I will read out
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the scenario. When I am done, we will start the timer.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So get the big Grandfather Clark ready. M hmm, I'm
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: limbering up. Doctor Hasty Lanyon was a bit of an
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: eccentric surgeon. He was nearly equal parts performer and doctor,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: and had a flair for the macabre. He had studied,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: though probably never directly, the work of Luigi Galvanni, for
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: whom the Galvanic Response is named. Lanyon took to extremes,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: and in northern England in the early eighteen hundreds demonstrated
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: some rather google ish applications of the technology upon cadavers
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that I am assured were totally acquired legally. While there
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: were no truly reliable reports from those demonstrations, some reporters
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of questionable honesty wrote of corpses pointing, grimacing, twitching, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: in one case even sitting up and gasping in response
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: to the electrical impulses. Dr Lanyon applied. Modern historians and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: doctors doubt the veracity of those claims, but it seems
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: that Hasty Lanyon was at least well known for some
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: pretty primitive corpse puppetry. Start the timer, doctor doctor, give
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: me the news? Yes, mr, uh? So this this guy
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Hasty Uh. This guy Hasty was primarily known for this,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: or it was how he became famous. Otherwise he was
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a doctor studied at the University of Edinburgh in the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: School of Medicine. But apart from these are really the
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: only records of He doesn't have like a long storied
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: career that exists in any record, but there are records
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: of these supposed demonstrations. Hasty Huh sounds made up to me.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Sounds like hasty, like he was a little too hasty. Perhaps, Yeah,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't know why
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I feel optimistic about this, but I'm going with true.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Wait what Oh, that's not what I was getting at.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: It all bad. But you know what, let's debate that
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: was I was really ill name going on because the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: name is super sketchy, right sounding. I feel like that
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: that's true. Maybe you could ask, maybe doctor, doctor, give
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: me the news. What did he do again. So he
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: stuck electrodes onto cadavers and Zapp made them twitch around
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: a lot. He to give you a little more detail,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: just because I said early eighteen hundreds the time period.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: We're looking at his eighteen o eight, so that's about
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: three decades after Galvani and also supposedly was one of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the inspirations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That that, Yes, That,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: which is published in eighteen eighteen. I feel like there's
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: too much detail here now I'm starting to doubt it.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stick I'm gonna stick with true. You're gonna
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: stick with true. I'm gonna stick with true. You're starting
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to doubt it, and you're going to stick with true.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: You are a man of contradictions. Well, you were a
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: man of mind game file Quister creature. I'm out of
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: practice with the Quister. That's true. He's been relaxing in
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the on the sand. That's true. I did. I took
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: a cruise. It was nice, nice. It was not a niece.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: It was in Paris, was Petissri, right across the street
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: from the apartment. What did you say, You're gonna stick
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: with true, I'm gonna lock I mean you want to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: lock it in three to one. True, you guys got
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: to read more. Dr Hasty Lanyon is a character and
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde I made it up seas
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: now interestingly though interestingly though, I should say, first of all,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the the inspiration UH supposedly for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Dr Joseph Conrad Dipple, who was active in the seventeenth
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: century and was born in bah bah Bam Castle Frankenstein.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: And then Giovanni Giovanni I'll Dippy, who was the nephew
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to Louis G. Galvani, actually did do demonstrations similar to
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: what I described, where supposedly corpses had opened up their eyes, pointed,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: punched the air, kicked the air. But again these were
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: just supposedly. People would pass out looking at these demonstrations.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how reliable those are either, but
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: what I gave you was total fiction. Yeah, That's why
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I began to suspect when you had too many ready
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: made details, ye that you were dare I say Hasty
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: to provide? Well, I wanted to give you a chance.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: You've lost the last few and I thought, well, if
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I just keep feeding them, They're surely they're going in
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: but nope, nope, you just had to go down that
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: road with me. It turns out we're hungry boys. Well,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and to be fair, it is similar to things that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: have been reported. I was mostly I was mostly hoping
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: that you had had read Dr Jackal and Mr Hyde.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I was really I was like, this is a coin flip.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: It maybe that that been turned to me that you
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: mean like the character and Dr Jekyl and I would say,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: whoop sees, it's been a long time. But you know what,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: that gives us new goal. Maybe one day we can
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: ask a question that just completely blows up the scenario
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: you've presented. If we did that, would you ever be
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a situation You say, no, No, I know you too well,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: my old friend, you would you would continue with with
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the sharade. Here's here's the problem is that if you
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: ask me a legitimate question about a legitimate historical fact
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and I don't know the answer, I would be honored
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: bound to say I don't know the answer to that question.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And that means that I should probably do the same
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: thing for the fake ones, because otherwise, if you ask
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: me a question and I don't know the answer to
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that question, and I tell you that you're going to say, well,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: this is obviously one of the true ones we win.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I was so close when you started giving out the details. Well,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: that one's on me. Can't win them all, but we can't. Actually,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: you know you were almost even with me for Part
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: of the fun of this though, is eating crow from
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: time to time, you know, Barry, Tom and Jerry to me,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I like it. So despite winning today's round,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland k the Quister, thank you so much for
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: dropping by. We're glad that you made it out of
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the chunnelan Sure did you say, Durian, what's that mean?
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: It's nothing. Usually what you say if someone says thank you,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the common responses it's nothing. Yeah, like not a problem,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: no problem, no sweat, zero perspiration. Thank you for coming
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: on the show. Thanks as always to our super producer,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, Thanks to Gabe Lucier, our fantabulous research associate,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and thanks to Alex Williams, who composed So what are
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: some of the strange saw bone esque stories of medical
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: quackery or medical mishaps that you have heard? What are
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: your favorite ones? Share them with us and your fellow
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: listeners also shout out to the podcast saw Bones. That's
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a great show yeah on the Maximum Fund Network, which
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: we're a huge fans of. Justin McElroy, as I recall,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: is one of the hosts of that show. I do
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: believe you recall correctly. Um. You can write us at
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous at how stuff works dot com. We're gonna stick
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: with that one for the meantime. We may have another
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: one inching in pretty soon, but for the time being,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: he's that one. You can also hit us up on
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, where you know folks
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: are posting memes, the Jonathan Strickland, the Quister even creeps
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: his way in there from time to time. Just true.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Just don't think we don't see you getting tagged. I
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: don't think we don't see you. You can also you
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: can also find us on Instagram and Twitter. We each
• 27:39
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• 27:42
  Speaker 1: our various shenanigans. I'm Ben Bollan, i am at Embryonic Insider,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I'm at John Strickland. We'll see you next time, folks.
• 27:59
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• 28:01
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• 28:04
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