Latest / Ridiculous History / Scientists Who Were Horrifically Persecuted, Part One

Transcript

Scientists Who Were Horrifically Persecuted, Part One · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
0:31
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Our super producer, Max Williams is abroad traveling,
0:37
Speaker 1: having adventures, and that means that we are once again
0:41
Speaker 1: immensely fortunate to welcome our super guest producer, the Man,
0:46
Speaker 1: the Myth, the Legend, the returning champ, Casey Pegro.
0:51
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me back. Guys, I'm loving doing this.
0:54
Speaker 3: Hi love say thanks for having me back. Like we're
0:57
Speaker 3: gonna edit this. Thank you, thanks for having us back. Yeah,
1:02
Speaker 3: in the chat.
1:03
Speaker 2: These episodes don't have any edits. We just we just
1:04
Speaker 2: go straight to straight to the feed. Yeah, we're live
1:07
Speaker 2: in studio.
1:08
Speaker 4: Yeah you know, Okay, you essed, Casey pegram you just
1:12
Speaker 4: but I think overall we don't have an insane amount
1:16
Speaker 4: of edits. We're on the on the less editing side
1:19
Speaker 4: in some podcasts.
1:20
Speaker 2: I was actually I was looking at a recent episode
1:22
Speaker 2: and I was like, you know what, there's less cuts
1:23
Speaker 2: than there.
1:24
Speaker 3: Used to be.
1:24
Speaker 4: Well, that's what happens when you do five of these
1:27
Speaker 4: things season pros every week. And actually, you know, well,
1:30
Speaker 4: since we've been doing it in person, more often. There
1:32
Speaker 4: are almost fewer edits when we're in person. A lot
1:35
Speaker 4: of the editing stems from the lag and the weirdness
1:38
Speaker 4: you have to get used to from doing things remotely,
1:40
Speaker 4: which we are doing today in full disclosure. But we'll
1:43
Speaker 4: be back to in person later this week. That's correct,
1:45
Speaker 4: that's true. I am Ben, you are null, and today
1:51
Speaker 4: we are. Today we're chopping it up. We solved a
1:54
Speaker 4: lot of stuff off air, a lot of the world's problems,
1:57
Speaker 4: because we're all about innovation here on Ridiculous History.
2:01
Speaker 3: We're a solution oriented podcast, no question about it.
2:04
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for humans, throughout much of their history, they did
2:09
Speaker 1: not feel the same way about innovation. So we are
2:14
Speaker 1: exploring something similar to our ongoing series on inventors who
2:18
Speaker 1: died by their own hand. Today we're exploring scientists who
2:22
Speaker 1: figured something amazing out about the world and then we're
2:25
Speaker 1: horrifically punished for doing so and potentially fell on their
2:29
Speaker 1: own sword, which is, oh yeah, a.
2:31
Speaker 4: Noble act in the face of complete embracing of disinformation
2:36
Speaker 4: and science denial. You know, it's kind of funny that
2:39
Speaker 4: the idea of innovation in the past, right, you almost
2:42
Speaker 4: have to get into the mindset of like the medieval man,
2:45
Speaker 4: you know, the medieval ruler, and it's like, what innovation.
2:50
Speaker 4: God already did everything. We don't need no stake in innovation.
2:53
Speaker 4: We got the Bible, we got you know, scripture. We're good, yes,
2:57
Speaker 4: set for life.
2:58
Speaker 1: It turns out class systems and socio religious structures were
3:02
Speaker 1: a bit of a stumbling block or a speed bump
3:05
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. Even some of the best
3:09
Speaker 1: scientists in history won what we could call pyrrhic victories.
3:13
Speaker 1: Want to give a shout out to our sources here.
3:15
Speaker 1: Let's start with Galileo to Turing spoiler the historical persecution
3:20
Speaker 1: of scientists. The author there, Olivia Salon, said something that
3:24
Speaker 1: I think stood out to all of us. She notes,
3:27
Speaker 1: of course, Galileo was tried and convicted for publishing his
3:31
Speaker 1: evidence that supported Copernicus's theory that the Earth revolves around
3:35
Speaker 1: the sun. Because, to your point, nol when he published
3:40
Speaker 1: this research, the Catholic Church went crazy.
3:43
Speaker 3: They said, oh, no, no, no. The way we read
3:46
Speaker 3: scripture says Earth is in the middle. Earth is the
3:49
Speaker 3: main character.
3:51
Speaker 1: And so Galileo was basically sentenced to house arrest for
3:55
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, and they didn't kill him,
3:58
Speaker 1: but they destroyed all his stuff.
4:00
Speaker 3: Ah, that's a bummer.
4:02
Speaker 4: That's almost worse, fade, worse than death, to have her
4:05
Speaker 4: life's work just go up and smoke like that.
4:07
Speaker 3: You know, Ben, you mentioned stumbling blocks, speed bumps.
4:10
Speaker 4: I dare say this whole affair is a speed hump,
4:13
Speaker 4: the dreaded speed hump.
4:15
Speaker 3: Have you seen those? They're the same color as the road.
4:18
Speaker 4: You can't see them on a shadowy kind of fall day,
4:21
Speaker 4: and you hit them at full speed and you almost
4:23
Speaker 4: launch yourself like a rocket man.
4:24
Speaker 3: Those things are dangerous.
4:26
Speaker 1: I get a little more intimidated, to be honest with you,
4:29
Speaker 1: when they are garishly painted as though there's some sort
4:33
Speaker 1: of dangerous warning sign. Sometimes you need it, especially in
4:37
Speaker 1: small neighborhoods that are technically private property, because some hoa
4:41
Speaker 1: person will go power mad and all of a sudden
4:44
Speaker 1: that thing is at a crazy like near ninety degree incline.
4:48
Speaker 1: You know, they basically put a curb in the road.
4:50
Speaker 1: Stop doing yourself, Stop doing that. Yeah, no, it's bad news.
4:54
Speaker 4: We everyone's probably of the scientists persecuted.
5:00
Speaker 3: We're going to mention today Galileo Galilei.
5:02
Speaker 4: Banger of a name by the way, it's probably one
5:05
Speaker 4: of the most familiar one that I was not as
5:07
Speaker 4: familiar with.
5:07
Speaker 3: And many of you out there, Oh, and we'll get
5:09
Speaker 3: to Galileo as well.
5:10
Speaker 4: We will, We definitely will. That was just sort of
5:12
Speaker 4: like a little tease. Al Razi or razz Or al Raizi,
5:17
Speaker 4: Abu Bakar Mohammed Eban Zakarayah al Razi, also known as
5:24
Speaker 4: Rozz in Latin, was born in eight fifty four or
5:28
Speaker 4: circa eight fifty four in what is now Iran and
5:34
Speaker 4: was an alchemist and philosopher. You know what's funny, We
5:38
Speaker 4: talk about alchemy and philosophy as sort of being science adjacent.
5:43
Speaker 3: Right very much. This guy had both of them on lock.
5:46
Speaker 1: Which was not uncommon, right because back then, if you
5:51
Speaker 1: were an intellectual of any sort, you were considered to
5:55
Speaker 1: have a few It's like in Dungeons and Dragons or
5:58
Speaker 1: a role playing game where you can multi class. Like
6:01
Speaker 1: you were naturally a philosopher, you would have specialities in
6:05
Speaker 1: other more applied disciplines. And this guy, I believe, was
6:10
Speaker 1: considered in his day the greatest doctor, the greatest doctor
6:15
Speaker 1: in the Islamic world, which for that society meant the
6:18
Speaker 1: actual greatest doctor ever because everybody else was considered you know,
6:22
Speaker 1: savages and the idea. It's interesting because to that concept
6:27
Speaker 1: of alchemy kind of being the predecessor of chemistry and
6:31
Speaker 1: so on, this guy was an alchemist before he became
6:35
Speaker 1: a doctor.
6:36
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's right, But you know alchemy too.
6:39
Speaker 4: It is something that now with the benefit of hindsight,
6:42
Speaker 4: does come off as a bit snake oily, right, Like,
6:45
Speaker 4: you couldn't really turn lead into gold, but there were
6:48
Speaker 4: folks who could purport to do that, and there was
6:50
Speaker 4: sort of a crossover of the supernatural and like almost
6:54
Speaker 4: like witchcraft. But then there are parts of alchemy that
6:57
Speaker 4: were kind of basic chemistry.
6:59
Speaker 3: Kind of it's based around that, right.
7:01
Speaker 1: A lot of people discovered made some great breakthroughs and
7:05
Speaker 1: discoveries in the world of what we call chemistry today.
7:09
Speaker 1: I think the best way to put it is a
7:12
Speaker 1: lot of people went out looking to turn led to
7:15
Speaker 1: gold or to find the philosopher's stoned and ended up
7:18
Speaker 1: inventing pretty neat pesticides.
7:20
Speaker 4: Sure he could cut on them, but to your point
7:23
Speaker 4: that al Razzi did go on to become a true physician,
7:28
Speaker 4: and he had a pretty inflated sense of himself, not
7:34
Speaker 4: you know, maybe for good reason, but he you know,
7:37
Speaker 4: in some of his writings that have been unearthed, he
7:39
Speaker 4: often compared himself to folks like Socrates and Hippocrates. Socrates,
7:44
Speaker 4: of course being the father, I guess for the godfather
7:48
Speaker 4: of philosophy, Apocrates, you know, literally kind of inventing the
7:52
Speaker 4: medical profession, or the very least the tenants of it,
7:56
Speaker 4: you know, the Hippocratic oath being such an important thing
7:59
Speaker 4: to do no harm, and all of that horm as well.
8:02
Speaker 4: He said it back then, and al Razi wrote about
8:05
Speaker 4: this stuff in two of his most significant works, one
8:07
Speaker 4: known as the Katab al Mansouri, which he wrote for
8:11
Speaker 4: the ruler of what was then called Rey in Persia
8:17
Speaker 4: again now Iran, and the ruler's name was Montsour iban Ishak.
8:21
Speaker 4: And this book was translated by Gerard of Cremona in
8:26
Speaker 4: the twelfth century into Latin, and the Katab al Hawi
8:31
Speaker 4: was what it was known as, became known more universally
8:35
Speaker 4: as the Comprehensive Book.
8:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wikipedia in print the opinions of al Razi.
8:42
Speaker 1: The Katab al Hawe or Comprehensive Book is definitely one
8:47
Speaker 1: of the more popular the Katab al Montsori, despite being
8:51
Speaker 1: a distinct book, is still considered a banger. And in
8:54
Speaker 1: the comprehensive book in Katab Alahawi, we see that al
8:59
Speaker 1: Razi surveyed all the medicine from all the world that
9:04
Speaker 1: he knows about. So he looks at the learnings of
9:07
Speaker 1: Greek physicians, Syrian physicians, early Arabic medicine, and then he
9:12
Speaker 1: dives into the medical traditions of the Indian subcontinent. And
9:17
Speaker 1: the whole time he's doing this, just imagine if one
9:20
Speaker 1: guy was the only editor of Wikipedia. That's what this
9:23
Speaker 1: book is like. Because he'll say, you know, the Syrians
9:27
Speaker 1: or the Greeks do blah blah blah, blah blah, and
9:30
Speaker 1: then in the margins or in the next paragraph he'll
9:33
Speaker 1: add his and here's what I think, and this is
9:36
Speaker 1: why this is good or bad. He's got a couple
9:39
Speaker 1: agendas just spoiler if you're reading it. And then he
9:43
Speaker 1: has a bunch of smaller things, shorter writings that we
9:48
Speaker 1: will call treatises. One example that would be the Treatise
9:51
Speaker 1: on the Smallpox and Measles that goes to Latin, to Greek,
9:55
Speaker 1: to a lot of other languages. Because surprise, surprise, people
9:59
Speaker 1: were worried about measles then as now. Thank you to
10:02
Speaker 1: Britanica dot com. You can find all of this in
10:05
Speaker 1: their biography of al Rossi.
10:07
Speaker 3: That's right.
10:08
Speaker 4: He was pretty varied in his in his studies and
10:10
Speaker 4: in his methodologies, and he was probably, you know, pretty
10:13
Speaker 4: ahead of his time. And as we know, that often
10:16
Speaker 4: can rub certain individuals the wrong way, especially when you're
10:20
Speaker 4: somebody that seems to again have a relatively inflated sense
10:26
Speaker 4: of himself in terms of the way he carried himself
10:32
Speaker 4: and wrote his opinions with a sense of finality and
10:35
Speaker 4: authority that perhaps went counter to some spiritual leaders who
10:41
Speaker 4: felt that they were the ones who should.
10:42
Speaker 3: Be imbued with this level of you know, authority. Come
10:47
Speaker 3: in and enter the chat.
10:49
Speaker 4: A particular Muslim priest who I believe is unnamed in
10:53
Speaker 4: in our historical accounts that we've we've looked into.
10:56
Speaker 3: Right.
10:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, they pulled, uh, they pulled an exhibit on him.
11:01
Speaker 1: They said, you like prescriptions, dog, I'll give you a prescription.
11:05
Speaker 1: This Muslim priest, according to the story, ordered our boy
11:11
Speaker 1: al Rossi to be beaten over the head with his
11:15
Speaker 1: own manuscript.
11:16
Speaker 3: Have a taste of your own medicine.
11:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and not a not a just a get
11:22
Speaker 1: out of here kids, not back on the head, no,
11:24
Speaker 1: but apparently beaten repeatedly, so hard with his own manuscript
11:29
Speaker 1: that it caused him to go blind, after which point
11:32
Speaker 1: he was no longer a practicing doctor.
11:35
Speaker 4: That will teach you that. That is a very sexy account,
11:40
Speaker 4: that really gives.
11:41
Speaker 3: You that martyr umami. You know. I mean again, he
11:44
Speaker 3: didn't die.
11:44
Speaker 4: I know you have to die to properly become a martyr,
11:47
Speaker 4: but losing your eyes that's a sort of semi death,
11:50
Speaker 4: you know, a small death of a sense at the
11:52
Speaker 4: very least. But other accounts do indicate that he may
11:56
Speaker 4: well have gone blind because of cataracts. I personally, I
12:00
Speaker 4: don't know about you, bet In Casey, but I can't
12:02
Speaker 4: picture a beating upside the head so bad that it
12:06
Speaker 4: would make you go blind, but not just like kill you.
12:10
Speaker 1: It would be possible, but you would be you would
12:14
Speaker 1: probably be aiming for the eyes right, to damage the
12:17
Speaker 1: optic of the gougeway.
12:19
Speaker 3: Right.
12:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, But it's it's also I mean, there's so many
12:23
Speaker 1: holes in this story because was he an inordinately prideful
12:28
Speaker 1: person or was he just trying to get the word out.
12:32
Speaker 1: Is he depicted as such because the power structure at
12:35
Speaker 1: the time, Could you like him?
12:37
Speaker 3: You know, I'm with you.
12:38
Speaker 1: I think it was. I think it was probably not
12:41
Speaker 1: being beaten over the head with a manuscript, unless you
12:45
Speaker 1: know he was carving these in stone at that point,
12:48
Speaker 1: they're just hitting him with rocks. I don't know a
12:52
Speaker 1: lot of things to think about, but what we do
12:55
Speaker 1: know is that before this unfortunate blindness, this guy preserved
13:00
Speaker 1: medical practices from around the world. And that's no small feat.
13:05
Speaker 3: No, no, again again, Maybe I'm You're right, Ben.
13:08
Speaker 4: It's easy to do when you get a whiff of
13:11
Speaker 4: someone being a little big for their britches. It's like, oh,
13:14
Speaker 4: do this guy think he is, you know, with his
13:16
Speaker 4: philosophy and and alchemy and all of that stuff. But yeah,
13:20
Speaker 4: you're right, the tone of it, the tenor of the
13:23
Speaker 4: way he's portrayed, could well have a twist on it.
13:26
Speaker 4: But also it's not out of the question or beyond
13:29
Speaker 4: the realm of belief that someone like this could be
13:33
Speaker 4: a bit of a pill.
13:34
Speaker 3: Oh.
13:34
Speaker 1: Sure, we've all met surgeons who knows to say, yeah,
13:39
Speaker 1: did you know that surgeons are famous among the other
13:42
Speaker 1: doctors for that kind of behavior.
13:44
Speaker 3: Well, I just remember in the show Scrubs the surgeons.
13:50
Speaker 4: Were sort of a particular class of ahole that was
13:53
Speaker 4: sort of and also in any like you know, general hospital,
13:55
Speaker 4: the surgeons are always kind of depicted as being like
13:58
Speaker 4: the frat bros of the crew.
14:00
Speaker 1: You know, you get to have you have to have
14:03
Speaker 1: a certain perspective towards the existence of other human beings
14:07
Speaker 1: to be able to dig inside them.
14:09
Speaker 2: Just a classic line from Rushmore, these are are scrubs?
14:12
Speaker 3: Oh are they are? They?
14:14
Speaker 1: Apparently we see that this sort of persecution of scientists,
14:27
Speaker 1: unless we sound in islamophobic, was by no means restricted
14:31
Speaker 1: to the Islamic world, which for time, of course, was
14:35
Speaker 1: the forefront of human innovation and learning. Right, There's a
14:39
Speaker 1: lot of today's technological and scientific breakthroughs can be traced
14:44
Speaker 1: directly back to the golden age of Islam in that regard.
14:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, which I guess is why this story was a
14:50
Speaker 4: little surprising, because I know, we certainly have instances of
14:53
Speaker 4: you know, Muslim priests and leaders being very heavy handed,
14:57
Speaker 4: you know, and iron fisted when it comes to keeping
15:00
Speaker 4: folks in check in terms of.
15:01
Speaker 3: Whether they follow their orders. Or belief systems or not.
15:05
Speaker 4: But I guess I always do think of the Muslim
15:07
Speaker 4: faith in this part of the world as being a
15:09
Speaker 4: little more open to innovation and a little more open
15:11
Speaker 4: to scientific discovery, much more so at least than like say,
15:15
Speaker 4: the Catholic Church.
15:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
15:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, they wouldn't get that rap for like having, you know,
15:21
Speaker 4: being such a innovative, you know people, if they were
15:24
Speaker 4: shutting everything down left and right.
15:26
Speaker 3: You know.
15:27
Speaker 1: In defense of the Catholics, we'll find that the Protestants
15:31
Speaker 1: did similar things. Let's go to Michael Servitus. You may
15:36
Speaker 1: recognize Michael Servatus if well I didn't for a while.
15:41
Speaker 1: But anyway, this guy, Mike is a also a physician.
15:45
Speaker 1: He's in Spain and he was born people think around
15:50
Speaker 1: fifteen eleven in Aragon. And he wasn't just a physician,
15:56
Speaker 1: you guys. He was also in his heart a religious reform.
16:00
Speaker 3: Ooh, that's where he went wrong. Yeah, the meds. Yeah,
16:04
Speaker 3: he after around and found out. Yeah.
16:06
Speaker 1: So while he was in the entourage of Emperor Charles
16:11
Speaker 1: the fifth, he published a pamphlet in fifteen thirty one.
16:16
Speaker 1: It was an anti Trinitarian pamphlet. Now, a lot of
16:20
Speaker 1: us probably fell asleep when we heard that. Yeah, where
16:24
Speaker 1: you can see in the doc that all of us
16:26
Speaker 1: are looking up anti trinitarian.
16:30
Speaker 3: Sure, it's the idea.
16:33
Speaker 1: It's rejecting the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, Father's Son,
16:38
Speaker 1: Holy Ghost or I think they changed it the Holy Spirit.
16:41
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, but that's like the main thing. How
16:43
Speaker 3: are you going to reject that? Yeah, that was a biggiet.
16:46
Speaker 1: So Protestants and Catholics are super mad about him doing this.
16:51
Speaker 1: They're like, this guy doesn't get it, and they hound him,
16:56
Speaker 1: they persecute him. Remember, these are theocracies such that you know,
17:01
Speaker 1: legal action can be taken against you for your religious beliefs.
17:05
Speaker 1: So our boy Mike high tails it to France and Noel.
17:11
Speaker 1: You know, I love this one. He assumes a new name.
17:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, always fine, Michael de Villanov, which is a great
17:20
Speaker 4: director as well. Was his name Casey? What's his first name? V?
17:26
Speaker 4: Casey on the case Casey on the cow. What a
17:29
Speaker 4: great opportunity for that. I always go to town when
17:33
Speaker 4: pronouncing that name, Just it gives me the mouth feel
17:36
Speaker 4: of it is a delight. I gotta ask, though, Ben,
17:38
Speaker 4: we're we're gonna you know, we're getting we're getting to
17:40
Speaker 4: the part where he's on the lamb. He's changed his name,
17:42
Speaker 4: but I'm stuck on this anti trinitarian, Bet. I just
17:46
Speaker 4: want to get a little clarity from you and what
17:48
Speaker 4: you guys think, Like why throw that part out? Like,
17:51
Speaker 4: of all the weird stuff in religion, why is that
17:54
Speaker 4: the sticking point for this guy? He's like, all the
17:56
Speaker 4: rest of it's cool, but this trinity, this Holy Trinity,
18:00
Speaker 4: is bogus.
18:01
Speaker 1: He said that he was practicing something called modylistic monarchism.
18:08
Speaker 1: It's the idea that God is all one thing, and
18:13
Speaker 1: that you are when you're saying it is three things,
18:16
Speaker 1: you are somehow erroneous about the nature of Jesus Christ,
18:21
Speaker 1: who is himself God and not a distinct, separate part.
18:27
Speaker 1: It's anyway, that's that's the answer for the obscure religious
18:34
Speaker 1: history episode of Jeopardy that Ken Jennings refuses to do
18:39
Speaker 1: despite my letters.
18:40
Speaker 3: I think that was helpful, Ben.
18:41
Speaker 4: I appreciate that because it's you know again, it's like
18:43
Speaker 4: I always find it funny when people were religious reformers,
18:46
Speaker 4: they get hung up on one thing, and you're like,
18:49
Speaker 4: that's the thing you get hung up on, Like it's
18:51
Speaker 4: just that there's so many other things. Oh.
18:53
Speaker 3: He was also against baptizing infants.
18:56
Speaker 4: Well, now that I can agree with honestly, Like, even
18:59
Speaker 4: from an outside perspective who's not a religious person, it does.
19:02
Speaker 3: Feel like removing the choice. Yeah.
19:05
Speaker 4: In Methodism, you know where where I grew up in,
19:07
Speaker 4: you don't do that. You confirm it's a choice. You
19:11
Speaker 4: know that the kids able, obviously with a lot of
19:13
Speaker 4: prodding from their parents probably and indoctrination from the church.
19:17
Speaker 4: But to baptize an infant does feel a little bit
19:19
Speaker 4: like without consent kind of.
19:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's removing the choice. So
19:26
Speaker 1: I got a juicy quote for you guys when he.
19:30
Speaker 3: Was asked about this.
19:31
Speaker 1: The term is pato baptism. Yeah, baptism of infants uncool?
19:38
Speaker 1: Mike said the following quote it he's an invention of
19:41
Speaker 1: the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity.
19:46
Speaker 1: So that's how he wrote about stuff. You can see
19:49
Speaker 1: why the Catholics and Protestants might think he's going hard
19:53
Speaker 1: in the paint there.
19:54
Speaker 3: What came we into this wilderness to find? I was
19:58
Speaker 3: about to watch the Witch again?
20:00
Speaker 4: This is the way that guy the polemicism or if that's
20:03
Speaker 4: the word of that guy, that character, you know, you
20:06
Speaker 4: could see why the church leaders cast him, he and
20:09
Speaker 4: his family out because he was just really really going
20:12
Speaker 4: at it hard.
20:13
Speaker 1: I love how they never explain in The Witch of
20:16
Speaker 1: the Witch, which is just one of the most phenomenal
20:19
Speaker 1: horror films that came out recently. I love how they
20:21
Speaker 1: never explained what their nocturnal disagreement was. You know, they
20:25
Speaker 1: just know that he was too strict. He was he
20:29
Speaker 1: was too hardcore.
20:30
Speaker 2: It was like a settlement of the hardcore. And he
20:32
Speaker 2: has even too hardcore.
20:33
Speaker 3: For this, that's right.
20:34
Speaker 4: I mean, I think you could sort of glean some
20:36
Speaker 4: of what his stuff was in that speech that he
20:38
Speaker 4: makes at the beginning when he's sort of like denouncing
20:41
Speaker 4: the whatever, the religious leaders. But you're right, Ben, it
20:44
Speaker 4: doesn't it doesn't necessarily spelled out. What is spelled out, though,
20:47
Speaker 4: is what our guy did. Michael Servitus when he moved
20:51
Speaker 4: to France and changed his name to Michelle de Villeneux,
20:56
Speaker 4: he studied medicine in Paris, specifically at the University of
20:59
Speaker 4: Paris in fifteen thirty six, and then he went into
21:02
Speaker 4: his own medical practice where he made some startling discoveries
21:07
Speaker 4: what I would consider again, not like a student of
21:10
Speaker 4: medical history per se, but pretty early some of the
21:13
Speaker 4: stuff that I would think of as more relatively you know,
21:17
Speaker 4: modern discoveries, not modern, but like things that would require
21:20
Speaker 4: a bit more no how and technology to really get
21:24
Speaker 4: into the nuts and bolts of the idea of pulmonary circulation.
21:28
Speaker 4: You know, what direction does the blood circulate? Does the
21:31
Speaker 4: blood flow from the body in the body, rather that
21:34
Speaker 4: it goes from the heart to the lungs and then
21:36
Speaker 4: back to the heart.
21:37
Speaker 3: This was a huge discovery, right.
21:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was huge because it disproved some things that
21:45
Speaker 1: ancient Greek physicians were wrong about, and people just sort
21:49
Speaker 1: of said, well, the Greeks are ancient and they were
21:52
Speaker 1: really smart, so they're probably right about the blood. The
21:56
Speaker 1: understanding of the circulatory system would immediately start saving lives, right,
22:03
Speaker 1: and later other scientists and physicians would add on to
22:09
Speaker 1: these discoveries. But yeah, I think you're right, Nol. It's
22:12
Speaker 1: difficult to properly articulate how big Mike's innovations were. And
22:19
Speaker 1: around the same time, Servatus gets into a conversation that
22:26
Speaker 1: I don't want to quite call a flame war with
22:29
Speaker 1: a guy in Geneva named John Calvin, and as their
22:34
Speaker 1: correspondence continues, they get more and more beefed up with
22:38
Speaker 1: each other, and Servitus says, I not only denounced the Trinity,
22:43
Speaker 1: but I also think your doctrine of determinism or predestination
22:48
Speaker 1: is just for the streets. It's absolute trash. This is
22:51
Speaker 1: John Calvin of Calvinism.
22:53
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah, this is a big, big performer in
22:56
Speaker 4: his own right, of course, and that is the kind
22:59
Speaker 4: of the ten or at least at the center of
23:01
Speaker 4: what his particular twist on Christianity was this idea that
23:05
Speaker 4: God has laid out a plan for every action, reaction,
23:11
Speaker 4: and whatever that will ever take place in the known
23:14
Speaker 4: universe amongst his creations.
23:16
Speaker 3: You were born, saved or damned. Right, Yeah, yeah, that's right.
23:21
Speaker 4: But even even like your path, right, your your all
23:24
Speaker 4: the choices you make are not your choices to make.
23:27
Speaker 4: So this is a big one because it really removes
23:30
Speaker 4: the idea of free will from the from the proceedings.
23:34
Speaker 4: And I could see how Servitus would this would be
23:37
Speaker 4: the kind of thing that that kind of it's on
23:40
Speaker 4: brand for him to be against this.
23:42
Speaker 1: Any doctor, right, like the idea of medicine is that
23:46
Speaker 1: through intervention and through science and practice technique, one can
23:53
Speaker 1: save people from death. You know, So that's obviously John
23:57
Speaker 1: Calvin's not vibing with that unless you also that it's
24:00
Speaker 1: God's plan for you to Uh.
24:04
Speaker 3: I don't know.
24:04
Speaker 1: I wonder if Drake is a Calvinist, you know from
24:07
Speaker 1: that song God's Plan? Is that about Josh Calvin?
24:10
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I like that.
24:11
Speaker 4: I think that's what that's about, the part about how
24:14
Speaker 4: he only likes his bed.
24:15
Speaker 1: And you know why that Sorry, Yeah, she asked me
24:18
Speaker 1: for love you I told him only partly. I only
24:20
Speaker 1: love my bed and my mom. I'm sorry. Uh my bed,
24:24
Speaker 1: I think is the name of his kid to their
24:26
Speaker 1: levels to it.
24:27
Speaker 4: I also has he is notoriously has one of the
24:30
Speaker 4: most expensive beds ever made serious. It's like it's like
24:35
Speaker 4: covered in like black fur and it's it's insane. I
24:38
Speaker 4: think it was like literally a three million dollar bed
24:41
Speaker 4: or something along those listenes.
24:42
Speaker 1: That's so unnecessarily like he Drake showed up in our
24:46
Speaker 1: I think it was Drake showed up in our episode
24:48
Speaker 1: on uh sneakers and logo origins because I believe he
24:53
Speaker 1: owns the most expensive pair of pikes, but they're unwearable
24:57
Speaker 1: because they're made of gold and precious medals.
25:00
Speaker 4: Oh wow, Yeah, I over reestimated a little bit. Four
25:03
Speaker 4: hundred grand for too much bed.
25:05
Speaker 3: Still too much.
25:07
Speaker 4: It's a really cool lookod mattress I got spring alone
25:10
Speaker 4: is pretty dope. It looks like a like an old
25:12
Speaker 4: like chest or like a suitcase or.
25:14
Speaker 1: Something brought out my Larry David And like four hundred
25:17
Speaker 1: grand for a bed too much, too much, too much,
25:19
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty maximum.
25:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll do it.
25:22
Speaker 4: Also, they just throw mattresses at us, something that comes
25:25
Speaker 4: along with being in podcasting. They're always just sending you
25:28
Speaker 4: mattresses without your consent. Yeah, or like swimming and mattresses.
25:31
Speaker 1: But speaking of swimming and stuff, this guy, Mike Servitus,
25:35
Speaker 1: he is now a fish in water with this polemical
25:40
Speaker 1: religious opinions.
25:41
Speaker 4: Did he sort of out himself? I guess a little bit,
25:44
Speaker 4: because he already had to move and change his name.
25:46
Speaker 4: Now he's getting beefed up again with this Calvin fellow
25:50
Speaker 4: for a lot of the same. Like, you know, it's
25:51
Speaker 4: almost like he should have left well enough alone, like
25:54
Speaker 4: stick to the medicine.
25:55
Speaker 3: Stuff. He's making innovations leaps and bounds here.
25:57
Speaker 4: But instead he's got to start running his mouth about
25:59
Speaker 4: pre nature whatever.
26:00
Speaker 3: I get it. You have, you have, you have feelings.
26:03
Speaker 4: In fifteen fifty three, he's working in what I think
26:06
Speaker 4: is pronounced Van Orvin. It looks like Vienna, but it's
26:09
Speaker 4: not quite. It's a southeastern France. Yeah, maybe we'll get
26:12
Speaker 4: a little casey on the case here. I would guess Vien,
26:15
Speaker 4: case on the case, casey on the case Vienne. And yeah,
26:19
Speaker 4: so he's hanging out there. He publishes anonymously, you know,
26:22
Speaker 4: to his I guess credit for at least in terms
26:25
Speaker 4: of like his reading of the room, a religious tract
26:29
Speaker 4: called the Restitution of Christianity. Only I can restore Christianity,
26:35
Speaker 4: former Christianity.
26:37
Speaker 3: He's doing the chest compressions.
26:39
Speaker 4: Another big, big dig on Trinitarianism. He hates that he
26:44
Speaker 4: doesn't like it one bit. And the book has sections
26:48
Speaker 4: in which he reveals he somehow is weaving in these
26:54
Speaker 4: medical discoveries as well, which I think is interesting. Again,
26:58
Speaker 4: not a lot of separation of church and state going
27:00
Speaker 4: on here.
27:00
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Dave Chappelle, where he will he
27:03
Speaker 1: will make some really brilliant good points or awesome jokes,
27:09
Speaker 1: and then he'll be like, and the next fifteen minutes
27:11
Speaker 1: of me saying this thing, And that's what this book
27:15
Speaker 1: is kind of like. And I love the you know,
27:18
Speaker 1: I don't know if we mentioned it yet, but of
27:20
Speaker 1: course it makes sense that religion and science would coexist
27:26
Speaker 1: because religion was kind of a technology as well, right,
27:29
Speaker 1: it was the science. So it was like in the
27:34
Speaker 1: the minds of people at this time, they weren't as
27:38
Speaker 1: aware of what we acknowledge as the sometimes conflicting goals
27:44
Speaker 1: of science and religion. They thought there were two equal
27:48
Speaker 1: ways of understanding the world that were mutually exclusive.
27:53
Speaker 4: That's right, and it's all I've always found it interesting too,
27:55
Speaker 4: Like throughout my religious upbringing, I've always known some very
27:59
Speaker 4: very smart people who are devoutly religious and they find
28:04
Speaker 4: a way to whatever that way might be. It's not
28:07
Speaker 4: for me to say to allow those things to coexist,
28:10
Speaker 4: you know, but there was this time where that crossover
28:14
Speaker 4: just wasn't possible, you know, at least in the minds
28:17
Speaker 4: of those in power. But so it was very innovative
28:21
Speaker 4: and very forward thinking for someone like Saravitis to be
28:24
Speaker 4: able to do that to be able to like occupy
28:27
Speaker 4: this place of science and religion, have the two things
28:30
Speaker 4: kind of commingle rather than like cancel each other out.
28:33
Speaker 4: That that always really fascinates me, and I think it's,
28:36
Speaker 4: you know, a really interesting thing to consider.
28:38
Speaker 1: Mike had to be aware of this, do you guys
28:41
Speaker 1: like how I'm just calling him Mike like out? Yeah,
28:44
Speaker 1: So Mike was telling us all though, just putting that
28:48
Speaker 1: out there.
28:50
Speaker 3: He's got you.
28:50
Speaker 1: Know, he's got big Reddit energy, right, He's got that
28:54
Speaker 1: actually ara about him. But anyway, he writes this book,
28:57
Speaker 1: and he had to know or this tract I should
29:00
Speaker 1: say this treatise, it's shorter than a book. He had
29:03
Speaker 1: to be aware of these conflicts that you and I
29:06
Speaker 1: are talking about, because he did publish this anonymously, and
29:11
Speaker 1: he clearly was publishing this as a response or a
29:16
Speaker 1: disc track toward John Calvin's earlier book, The Institution or
29:21
Speaker 1: Institutes of Christianity, and because you know, being literate was
29:28
Speaker 1: a bit of rarefied air at this time, and because
29:32
Speaker 1: these people were talking about the same quite specific subjects.
29:37
Speaker 1: He gets identified, he gets docked, he gets outed. A
29:41
Speaker 1: friend of Calvin's says, huh, I'm familiar with the way
29:46
Speaker 1: this guy writes Johnny C. This guy, Mike Servitus is
29:51
Speaker 1: the one who wrote this terrible thing. And then he
29:54
Speaker 1: goes to Yeah, then he goes to the authorities and snitches.
29:58
Speaker 1: They arrest and they try him for a heresy and
30:03
Speaker 1: they sentenced him to what nol like, Fine, maybe he's got.
30:08
Speaker 3: A little rap on the knuckles or the war.
30:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Now a different kind of wood involved in
30:14
Speaker 4: this prospect. Burn at the stake is what they Yeah,
30:18
Speaker 4: the big one, the one for witches and the like,
30:20
Speaker 4: you know, vessels of the devil, the infernal powers. You know,
30:25
Speaker 4: this is not this is not looking good for our
30:28
Speaker 4: boy Mike, thankfully though, and I don't I'd love to
30:32
Speaker 4: hear some more details on what this rollicking escape scene
30:38
Speaker 4: must have felt like.
30:38
Speaker 1: But he was able to get out of there, he was,
30:42
Speaker 1: he escaped, he high tailed it yet again. This guy
30:45
Speaker 1: is now an international fugitive. So he goes to Naples
30:52
Speaker 1: and no one is sure why the following things happened.
30:57
Speaker 1: Even the historians working with the primary source aren't sure
31:00
Speaker 1: exactly how this went down. But from what we understand,
31:06
Speaker 1: with a price on his head, under the threat of death,
31:09
Speaker 1: Mike Servatus decides to go through Geneva on his travels
31:15
Speaker 1: to Italy, where John Calvin is doing a sermon and
31:20
Speaker 1: old boy Mike sneaks in. Who knows again, big redded energy.
31:26
Speaker 1: I picture him like wearing a hood in the back
31:29
Speaker 1: and he's just waiting for John Calvin to say something
31:32
Speaker 1: about the Holy Trinity so he can like pop his
31:36
Speaker 1: hood off, start with a big actually or whatever. Anyway,
31:40
Speaker 1: he gets recognized at this sermon that he never should
31:44
Speaker 1: have attended, and he is arrested by the authorities. He
31:49
Speaker 1: is thrown into prison, and this time he has tried
31:52
Speaker 1: for heresy in a Protestant court, and noel, given that
31:56
Speaker 1: the Protestant saw the Catholics as sort of backwards and
32:02
Speaker 1: to authoritarian, surely the Protestant court had had a different
32:06
Speaker 1: sentence for our boy Mike.
32:08
Speaker 4: Nope, oh no, Now, in fact, they even doubled down man.
32:13
Speaker 4: They condemned him to death by burning at the stake
32:16
Speaker 4: and used his books for the fire. Evil that's like,
32:22
Speaker 4: I mean, you know what was it? Galilea just had
32:24
Speaker 4: his books destroyed and was put under house arrest. This
32:27
Speaker 4: guy was burned with his own books. I was looking up.
32:31
Speaker 4: I was trying to find some details about Servitists' previous
32:35
Speaker 4: skirting of the law escape of death death, and I
32:39
Speaker 4: couldn't find any details about that. But apparently even though
32:44
Speaker 4: Calvin did essentially turn the guy in and had him,
32:48
Speaker 4: you know, condemned to death for heresy, he fell on
32:53
Speaker 4: the mercy of the court or the judges and asked
32:57
Speaker 4: that Servetus be killed by the sword instead of by burning,
33:03
Speaker 4: but he was denied, so he was trying to exercise
33:08
Speaker 4: a little bit of restraint there. Pretty interesting stuff, especially
33:12
Speaker 4: considering that, like, this is the guy who's responsible for
33:15
Speaker 4: the reform kind of church views that Servitus is going
33:20
Speaker 4: against directly, and this guy is like, I'm gonna have
33:23
Speaker 4: you dealt with sir.
33:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, it all catches up with him eventually.
33:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird to think that a court, a religious
33:31
Speaker 1: court especially, will be sitting around and going what is
33:35
Speaker 1: the most christ Like thing to do in this situation?
33:38
Speaker 1: But the guy who has harmed nobody, has saved some lives,
33:41
Speaker 1: but does disagree with us about our religious fan fiction,
33:46
Speaker 1: So they decided the most christ like thing to do
33:49
Speaker 1: would be to burn him alive. On October twenty seventh,
33:52
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty three. As a result, the book that he wrote,
33:59
Speaker 1: his religious screed with the discovery of pulmonary circulation, it
34:03
Speaker 1: never got widely circulated, and people didn't know about this
34:08
Speaker 1: discovery until many years later, centuries later. In fact, when
34:13
Speaker 1: the book was reprinted in seventeen ninety, someone said, oh
34:17
Speaker 1: wait a minute, heart to lungs and so on and
34:21
Speaker 1: so forth. That makes sense. So we don't know how,
34:26
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want a soapbox or tied to
34:30
Speaker 1: a stake here too much. But it makes you wonder
34:34
Speaker 1: how many people actually died as a result of that
34:39
Speaker 1: death sentence and the suppression of that research over those centuries.
34:43
Speaker 1: The knowledge of pulmonary circulation could have saved many lives.
34:46
Speaker 1: So how many folks did they condemned to death when
34:48
Speaker 1: they burned that one guy alive?
34:50
Speaker 3: We're fun at parties.
34:58
Speaker 4: Let's try this one out for our next subject on
35:01
Speaker 4: this episode on famous scientists that had their hats handed
35:06
Speaker 4: to them when they, you know, wouldn't back down on
35:08
Speaker 4: their scientific discoveries and or believes Gerhardt Domock, I think
35:14
Speaker 4: that's a d O M A G K. I Also,
35:17
Speaker 4: when I look at it, I immediately read it as
35:19
Speaker 4: Gerhart do magic.
35:21
Speaker 1: I when I look at it, it reminds me of
35:25
Speaker 1: men use at a Turkish restaurant and I want to
35:29
Speaker 1: order a domok, you know, like I'll get the domoch
35:32
Speaker 1: side of you know, and and it, you know, screw
35:36
Speaker 1: me up with that hot sauce fan. Anyway, Dolma Dolma
35:40
Speaker 1: is the grape believe, the rice covered in grape leaves.
35:44
Speaker 1: That's there's good, It's it's a it's a weird egg
35:47
Speaker 1: roll take for uh sure. So what about this guy?
35:50
Speaker 1: What about Let's call him.
35:51
Speaker 4: Gerard Gerhart okay, Gerharts, yes, Gerharts, Yes, yes, he was
35:56
Speaker 4: born in Germany, in Lagou He's the son of a teacher.
36:00
Speaker 4: We've got some great sources from a biography from the
36:04
Speaker 4: Science History Institute, and they write this following little blur.
36:09
Speaker 4: But I think it's just good to do a quote outright.
36:11
Speaker 4: Denmock decided early in life to become a physician. His
36:14
Speaker 4: medical studies at the University of Kiel were interrupted by
36:17
Speaker 4: his service as a grenadier and medical corpsman corpsmen perhaps
36:23
Speaker 4: in World War One. He completed his medical degree in
36:26
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty one and then began an academic career. Pursuing
36:29
Speaker 4: research and pathology. He adopted a dynamic approach to pathology,
36:33
Speaker 4: incorporating physiology and chemistry and his work.
36:37
Speaker 1: And this is important, Okay, no folly. As we know
36:42
Speaker 1: at this point, religion and science are increasingly seen as
36:46
Speaker 1: separate and not necessarily oppositional. This guy wins the Nobel Prize.
36:51
Speaker 1: I am really excited about Nobel Prizes. I'm just going
36:53
Speaker 1: to spoil that. You need to know that he's good
36:56
Speaker 1: at what he does totally, and other people realize that
37:00
Speaker 1: there's a diamond in the rough here. In nineteen twenty seven,
37:05
Speaker 1: he gets recruited from the University of Munster by the
37:08
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical arm of a German conglomerate named ig Farbin Industry,
37:15
Speaker 1: which is made up of a bevy of other German companies.
37:19
Speaker 1: The Bear Company at the time they specialized and dies
37:23
Speaker 1: and Farbin his worth dies and other fine chemicals. So
37:28
Speaker 1: this happens all the time. Pharmaceutical companies recruit from your
37:32
Speaker 1: favorite universities, places like Georgia Tech for instance, where I
37:36
Speaker 1: went to school for a time, and not for pharmaceutical stuff,
37:40
Speaker 1: if you're listening, dad, So in this setting, he loves this.
37:46
Speaker 1: He loves being hooked up with big Pharma because they
37:49
Speaker 1: give him a lot of resources, tools and agencies to
37:53
Speaker 1: pursue his research. He decides he's going to spend the
37:57
Speaker 1: rest of his career there. Of course, as we know,
38:00
Speaker 1: after World War Two, I G. Farbin is broken up
38:03
Speaker 1: and the specific division that Gerhard worked for.
38:09
Speaker 3: Becomes the Bear Company once again.
38:11
Speaker 4: And that's Bear, of course, like aspirin and stuff, right,
38:14
Speaker 4: like the big, big industry over there in Germany. I
38:17
Speaker 4: actually did not realize until recently. I think, I think
38:20
Speaker 4: it there. They've got a lot of presents in Berlin,
38:22
Speaker 4: They've got a lot of presence, and yeah, I think
38:25
Speaker 4: that's when I noticed, like.
38:26
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, that's this is the beer in question.
38:29
Speaker 4: So Domac again he gets recruited to start this kind
38:32
Speaker 4: of special laboratory, uh for pharmaceutical innovations, and he's given
38:38
Speaker 4: well maybe not given, but he's put in the company
38:40
Speaker 4: of two very well regarded chemists won by the name
38:43
Speaker 4: of Fritz Meisch I believe, or mesh And and Joseph Klaer,
38:49
Speaker 4: and they all banned together. They Wonder twins, it up,
38:52
Speaker 4: or maybe that's there were only two Wonder Twins, so
38:55
Speaker 4: this would be more of a Power Rangers kind of
38:57
Speaker 4: situation under triplets, but the syllable don't work for dealing
39:01
Speaker 4: with odd numbers, right. But they are combining their powers
39:05
Speaker 4: of science to test compounds that are connected with synthetic DIES.
39:11
Speaker 4: And again this does, doesn't this ben kind of seem
39:13
Speaker 4: like that sort of thing where you're in one industry
39:15
Speaker 4: and then you realize there's crossover into another. So we've
39:18
Speaker 4: got this synthetic DIES and we're realizing there actually might
39:20
Speaker 4: be elements in these compounds, in these that could be
39:23
Speaker 4: helpful fighting disease.
39:25
Speaker 3: We can treat.
39:26
Speaker 1: Something with this technology that we already have, right, that
39:29
Speaker 1: we were using for a different purpose, similar to viagra,
39:35
Speaker 1: that's the original purposes. The original purpose of viagra, or
39:42
Speaker 1: that's the name brand for the compound was to treat
39:44
Speaker 1: high blood pressure and chest pain due to heart disease.
39:48
Speaker 4: So the two messens was a side effect and the patients,
39:52
Speaker 4: the patients just kept reporting that they were feeling great.
39:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, after we had a very.
40:00
Speaker 4: Us bulge, and then that became the feature, not the
40:02
Speaker 4: bug exactly.
40:03
Speaker 1: And so this happens all the time in science. One
40:07
Speaker 1: of these scientists, our buddy Fritz, had already synthesized something
40:12
Speaker 1: called atabrine, which was a successful substitute for the anti
40:16
Speaker 1: malarial substance quinine. It's it's something they were pulling from trees,
40:24
Speaker 1: and it's not super great for you all the time.
40:27
Speaker 1: I think it's been used in drinks. I can't remember.
40:29
Speaker 3: Tonic water.
40:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, Quinine is definitely the active ingredient, and tonic water
40:33
Speaker 4: that makes it taste so despicable, But somehow when you
40:37
Speaker 4: mix it with like gin, it kind of cuts the bitterness.
40:40
Speaker 4: It's a weird thing, you know.
40:42
Speaker 1: I think I'm sensitive to it or something, because the
40:46
Speaker 1: side effects of that stuff include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, It
40:52
Speaker 1: can affect your hearing if you drink too much of it,
40:54
Speaker 1: which is weird anyway. So there are advantages to having
40:57
Speaker 1: a substitute for this is the is the main takeaway,
41:01
Speaker 1: and finding substitutes for natural treatments for bacterial diseases was
41:06
Speaker 1: a huge priority for the team, not because it would
41:10
Speaker 1: make the world a better place, but because they could
41:14
Speaker 1: make a lot of money with it.
41:15
Speaker 4: Oh, of course, I mean that's the number one priority
41:19
Speaker 4: of any Conglomo Corporation situation. So in nineteen thirty two,
41:23
Speaker 4: Domach did make this discovery, as you mentioned, the one
41:28
Speaker 4: that earned him that Nobel prize whoop whoop in physiology
41:32
Speaker 4: or medicine. I love that it's an ore like there'd
41:36
Speaker 4: be one for each perhaps, or there'd be an an there.
41:39
Speaker 4: But that was in nineteen thirty nine, and that was
41:43
Speaker 4: because this red dye material that he was experimenting with
41:49
Speaker 4: was called, by the way, prontosal rubrum. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
41:55
Speaker 4: that's the stuff. He spearheaded research. It's involving laboratory animals,
42:03
Speaker 4: specifically mice and rabbits that would demonstrate that injecting this
42:08
Speaker 4: substance would prevent them from succumbing to lethal doses of
42:13
Speaker 4: staphylococcy uh and uh hemolytic streptococci, which were as we know,
42:20
Speaker 4: like that staphalacoca. I believe is what would be considered
42:23
Speaker 4: a staff infection, right like in a hospital where when
42:26
Speaker 4: when you're you know, you can you can have a
42:30
Speaker 4: injury or a wound that if it's uh, if it
42:33
Speaker 4: gets you know, dirty or whatever, it can it can
42:36
Speaker 4: cause a really really bad bout of this.
42:39
Speaker 3: I believe this would be considered a bacteria. Yeah, can
42:43
Speaker 3: bacteria that can cause pus formation. It's uh.
42:47
Speaker 1: It can also, like you said, it can make skin infections,
42:50
Speaker 1: bone infections, can lead to pneumonia. It's nasty stuff. So
42:54
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool to say, oh, look this, this
42:58
Speaker 1: thing that we were using to turn fabric red is
43:02
Speaker 1: going to save people's lives. And he found this by
43:06
Speaker 1: testing mice and he said, Okay, it's very effective in mice,
43:11
Speaker 1: but will it work in humans? I don't know. And
43:14
Speaker 1: around the time he's asking himself that his own daughter
43:17
Speaker 1: becomes incredibly ill with a streptococcal infection on a twist,
43:22
Speaker 1: and in desperation, he gives her a dose of prontosal.
43:26
Speaker 1: She recovers completely, and he says, I'm not gonna mention
43:32
Speaker 1: this for a while. I don't want people to know
43:36
Speaker 1: that I thought my kid was going to die and
43:39
Speaker 1: I threw all medical ethics and methodologies out the window.
43:44
Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty five he does mention that he
43:49
Speaker 1: dosed his daughter with prontosal when other clinicians test the
43:54
Speaker 1: new drug on human patients. And during the years to come,
43:59
Speaker 1: there was a lot of work done in countries around
44:01
Speaker 1: the world on this not just this substance, but this
44:05
Speaker 1: new class of antibacterial compounds, and as a result, now
44:10
Speaker 1: thousands of derivatives of sulfonalamide have been produced and tested
44:16
Speaker 1: for their anti bacterial properties. Pron tosal is a derivative
44:22
Speaker 1: of sulfonylimides.
44:31
Speaker 3: You know. It's interesting too.
44:32
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, there were certainly I mean, like
44:35
Speaker 4: the Nobel Board, you know, and all of that, these
44:38
Speaker 4: kind of committees that decide who to give these awards to,
44:41
Speaker 4: but also medical bodies, you know, hospitals and things like that,
44:46
Speaker 4: prestigious universities that would have overseen regulations I guess surrounding
44:51
Speaker 4: things like human testing, but it certainly wouldn't be at
44:54
Speaker 4: the same level of rigor and oversight that we have today. So,
44:59
Speaker 4: you know, in and now, seeing that he had done this,
45:01
Speaker 4: while it would be considered controversial, it wasn't like it
45:04
Speaker 4: was going to be enough to like shut him down
45:06
Speaker 4: or get him like canceled, you know by the authorities.
45:09
Speaker 1: Right, Oh yeah, how do we get this far without
45:11
Speaker 1: using the modern parlance canceled. Here's how he gets canceled though,
45:15
Speaker 1: because folks, we're telling you an inspiring story. But let's
45:19
Speaker 1: not forget the theme of today's episode. Scientists who are
45:24
Speaker 1: persecuted here's what happens to our boy. So everybody agrees
45:30
Speaker 1: he's onto something. He's done something really smart. However, he
45:36
Speaker 1: runs a foul of the power structure of the day.
45:39
Speaker 1: This time it's not a church, it's the Nazi Party
45:44
Speaker 1: and German governance. Because the Nobel Committee was already beefed
45:49
Speaker 1: up with Germany, they gave the nineteen thirty five Nobel
45:54
Speaker 1: Peace Prize to a guide named Karl von Ossietsky, an
45:58
Speaker 1: outspoken German pass So Germany and the Nazi Party super
46:04
Speaker 1: mad about that. They're like, no, don't support pacifists. We've
46:07
Speaker 1: got to get out, We've got to get our what Liebenstrom.
46:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we are warifists. That's definitely a word. No
46:14
Speaker 4: pacifism for us please, nor for any German citizen. Because
46:19
Speaker 4: of this beef with the Nobel Committee, German citizens were
46:24
Speaker 4: prohibited from ever accepting a Nobel prize, and after Domach
46:29
Speaker 4: did officially accept his, the Gestapo came for him whoops,
46:34
Speaker 4: and forced under god knows what circumstances him to send
46:38
Speaker 4: a letter rejecting the prize.
46:41
Speaker 1: Which is ridiculous. He was eventually able to receive his
46:46
Speaker 1: prize in nineteen forty seven. Decade later prize right after
46:50
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, where you know, a
46:52
Speaker 1: couple things happened. He by the time he got it,
46:56
Speaker 1: the Nobel Committee had already redistributed the prize money, so
47:00
Speaker 1: he just got the metal, which is still I would
47:03
Speaker 1: say at that point awesome because you're still recognized as
47:08
Speaker 1: one of the world's best scientists. And I think that's
47:12
Speaker 1: just really cool. But it's also pretty sad. And for
47:16
Speaker 1: a long time, these drugs, which we could call soulfa drugs,
47:19
Speaker 1: were used to treat all sorts of conditions gon rhea,
47:24
Speaker 1: blood poisoning, gas warfare, meningitis, who name it. But then
47:29
Speaker 1: penicillin came out during World War two, right.
47:33
Speaker 4: It made me think, Ben, you know, this idea of
47:35
Speaker 4: dies or whatever restretching to die, wasn't iodine for a
47:39
Speaker 4: long time kind of like largely or primarily used as
47:41
Speaker 4: a dye or as a coloration. I think red number three,
47:46
Speaker 4: or the very least that iodine goes into the production
47:48
Speaker 4: of red number three. So again I'm not like a
47:52
Speaker 4: super science y minded guy, but the idea of dies
47:56
Speaker 4: being of use in other ways I think is really
47:59
Speaker 4: really interesting to me, and it would seem that that's
48:02
Speaker 4: the case I had dined. Of course, is something you
48:04
Speaker 4: know if you're infected. I watched the movie Outbreak the
48:07
Speaker 4: other day. I distinctly remember a part where the suit
48:11
Speaker 4: gets ripped when they're in the containment zone.
48:13
Speaker 3: Immediately douses this cut with iodine.
48:15
Speaker 4: And iodine is a very I dine pills, you know
48:18
Speaker 4: in situations of nuclear fallout things like that. It's like,
48:22
Speaker 4: you know, one of a very old substance that has
48:24
Speaker 4: been very useful for a lot of things for a
48:26
Speaker 4: long time.
48:27
Speaker 3: And speaking of.
48:29
Speaker 1: A long time, we realized that we were we were
48:31
Speaker 1: running a little long.
48:32
Speaker 3: With this episode.
48:33
Speaker 1: We haven't gotten to all the scientists, but we want
48:36
Speaker 1: to end on our our boy here, the Nobel winning
48:41
Speaker 1: die King of Germany, Domach because he has a bit
48:45
Speaker 1: of a happy ending. Yes, he was stiffed for the
48:51
Speaker 1: Nobel prize, he also paved the way to a better
48:57
Speaker 1: world with his research. Right after the arrival of Pennasula,
49:00
Speaker 1: he starts to work on an anti tubercular drug to
49:03
Speaker 1: replace streptomycin, which has already become increasingly ineffective, and his
49:09
Speaker 1: work and his team's work later lead to multiple discoveries
49:13
Speaker 1: in these and related fields he has not burned at
49:16
Speaker 1: the stake.
49:18
Speaker 3: He gets a.
49:20
Speaker 1: Ton of accolades, all well deserved, honorary doctorates from you
49:24
Speaker 1: name the university, and then.
49:27
Speaker 4: The night of the Order of Merit in nineteen fifteen
49:30
Speaker 4: zero Japanese.
49:31
Speaker 3: Order of Merit of the Rising Sun.
49:33
Speaker 4: Oh wow, Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Health
49:36
Speaker 4: of Spain. Sorry, are just really fancy.
49:39
Speaker 3: There's a huge paragraph of them.
49:41
Speaker 1: And he dies on April twenty fourth, nineteen sixty four,
49:45
Speaker 1: but he is recognized for his Nobel Prize NOL. We
49:49
Speaker 1: had talked off air, we are going to probably return
49:53
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more in the future about
49:57
Speaker 1: Alan Turing, about Galileo and a few more scientists. But
50:03
Speaker 1: I think here we can we can call it a day.
50:06
Speaker 1: We've we've established a pretty clear pattern, have we not.
50:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, Turning may even be worth his own episode. There's
50:12
Speaker 4: a lot to talk about with them.
50:14
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think Tony galilethematics, Yeah, yeah, maybe so, Yeah,
50:17
Speaker 1: for sure, they definitely are.
50:19
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, in a funny way, Turing is almost
50:21
Speaker 3: feels to me like.
50:22
Speaker 4: A modern Galileo in some ways in terms of the
50:25
Speaker 4: level of innovation that his research produced. But yeah, man,
50:30
Speaker 4: Thank you, Casey, thanks for hanging with us again for
50:33
Speaker 4: this uh, for this extended cut.
50:35
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me back. Yeah it's funny.
50:37
Speaker 1: Hey, Casey, thank you for listening to my uh, thank
50:42
Speaker 1: you for listening to my cover wrap saw.
50:46
Speaker 3: Just for you this morning. It was the delight and thanks.
50:50
Speaker 3: I think I was a little more delighted than you,
50:53
Speaker 3: old friend. But uh, and.
50:54
Speaker 1: Thanks of course to our super producer on the road,
50:58
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, also pinch hitting his research associate for
51:02
Speaker 1: today's episode. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter, was
51:06
Speaker 1: talking to him over the weekend.
51:08
Speaker 3: We might end up at def Con. I don't know.
51:11
Speaker 3: In case you guys want to go, do you want
51:13
Speaker 3: to go to deaf Con? I don't know what that is.
51:15
Speaker 1: Def Con is a hacker convention held in Las Vegas.
51:18
Speaker 4: Okay, well, I am going to Las Vegas again in
51:21
Speaker 4: May for.
51:22
Speaker 3: A glass convention with my girlfriend. But I did have
51:26
Speaker 3: a good time.
51:26
Speaker 4: I've been practicing my blackjack on the app, so I
51:29
Speaker 4: think I'm trying to learn basic strategy.
51:32
Speaker 3: No, I'm not. I'm not gonna go quite that far.
51:34
Speaker 4: But I have discovered in watching some videos that if
51:37
Speaker 4: you just memorize the very least basic strategy and play
51:41
Speaker 4: kind of conservatively over a little bit longer time period
51:44
Speaker 4: with a good bit of starting seed money, you're probably
51:47
Speaker 4: gonna end up up, like you know, at least a
51:49
Speaker 4: couple hundred bucks and just don't win a couple big hands.
51:53
Speaker 4: Then all of a sudden raise your bet to like
51:54
Speaker 4: everything you got right. You know, slow and steady wins
51:57
Speaker 4: the race. And that's what I'm learning.
51:58
Speaker 3: With these with these apps, use a different name. Yeah,
52:03
Speaker 3: it's a tradition. Now it's our little thing.
52:05
Speaker 1: Uh. And then we also want to think, of course,
52:09
Speaker 1: Chris rossiotis Eve's Jeffcoats here in Spirits Gables. Yay, check
52:13
Speaker 1: out this day in history class. Thank you very much
52:17
Speaker 1: to all the scientists who helped make this podcast possible
52:21
Speaker 1: in one way or another, primarily by you know, allowing
52:25
Speaker 1: our ancestors to stay alive.
52:27
Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks.
52:36
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:40
Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.