Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Sleuth-Hound (featuring Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris)

Transcript

Sleuth-Hound (featuring Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Before there was Sherlock Holmes, there was Dr. Joseph Bell.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Bell was Arthur Conan Doyle's mentor in medical school, and
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: he left a mark. Bell could determine a patient's profession,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: where they had lived recently, their diagnosis, and so much
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: more just by making simple observations about their appearance and
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: their behavior. As he would tell his students, the method
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: was quite elementary.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Elementary.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: On today's show, we're interviewing Dr. Lindsay Fitzharris, whose new book,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Sleuth Hound, is all about Dr. Joseph Bell and forensic
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: science in the 19th century. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Elementary Universe.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I think
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: the universe is the biggest murder mystery of all.
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: Oh, hi.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, but I
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: am getting more and more interested in medical history. But, okay,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: is the universe the greatest murder mystery of all just
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: because so many people have died over the course of
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: the existence?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, fair enough.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: The universe is responsible for basically every death in history.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: But what is the mystery there? Like, we all know
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: it's coming.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: No, I just think of scientists as detectives, essentially, trying
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: to figure out what happened. How does it all work?
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: How does it all come together? We are sifting through
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: the clues and trying to understand what happened.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: It's so easy to look around and get frustrated by
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: what we don't know already.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: But what we do know is incredible and vast.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And there's so many things that we couldn't see that
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: we figured out sort of indirectly. And that's part of
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: why I love history of science is just the journey
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: that we went on to get here is so amazing.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Like, you know, your dog did something gross because now
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: you can smell it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: No, that example hits real close to home. My dog
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: just snuck into my office and I need to take
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: care of that in a minute.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: But when I was a kid, I was not just
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: like interested in the nature of the universe. I gobbled
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: up the Sherlock Holmes books because it was so fascinating
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: to me to see somebody use that process, you know,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: like think clearly, make observations, try to stitch it together.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: In the end, it's the data that tells you the truth, right?
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if you're solving a murder mystery, if
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: you're trying to understand what's inside a neutron star. It's
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: the same process, right? Follow the data.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: And what I love about Sherlock Holmes is not only
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: that he was based on a real-life physician, but also
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that Arthur Conan Doyle, during his life, did a little
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: medical sleuthing of his own. Like, for example, Robert Koch
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: thought that he had a treatment for tuberculosis, which was
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: killing loads of people back then.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: He called it tuberculin.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And Arthur Conan Doyle went to Germany to try to
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: like learn about this.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And he ended up being totally skeptical. And there's like
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: books on this topic.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: But anyway, so yeah, like Arthur Conan Doyle was involved
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: in some detective work in his own life. And Lindsay
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Fitzharris's book has some amazing stories where Conan Doyle is
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: working with other people trying to solve mysteries.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And this book is a real page turner.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: In the end, we're all just trying to solve mysteries.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: And the mystery of where you can get your hands
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: on Sleuth Hound is one that's easy to solve.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: You can get it just about anywhere.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: But instead of hearing Daniel and I talk about the book,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: let's go ahead and bring Lindsay Fitzharris on the show
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: to talk all about her new book, Sleuth Hound, The
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Lindsay Fitzharris is
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: a truly epic medical historian. In 2021, she hosted the
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Smithsonian Channel series, The Curious Life and Death Of, which
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: was about mysterious deaths throughout history. But I'm most excited
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: about her amazing books. She wrote The Butchering Art About
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Victorian Surgery, which I referenced a million times during our
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: episode about the history of anesthesia. She also wrote The
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Facemaker about the origins of cosmetic surgery to improve the
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: lives of soldiers that were disfigured during World War II.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: And today we're talking about her most recent book, Sleuth Hound,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: I am so excited to be here. And I was
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: saying before we went on live that I was a
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: little bit nervous because you guys cover big topics like
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: the origins of life and history. Do aliens exist? And
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: I'm a medical historian. I'm always looking to the past.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: You guys are always looking to the future. So I'm
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: a little bit a little bit nervous about the conversation.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: Hopefully I can keep up here. You're amazing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And I think you need to like to understand how
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: we're doing science now. You need to understand how we
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: did it in the past and have an appreciation for that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: And also, I feel like history helps you really appreciate
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: how far we've come, like especially the stories about surgery
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: without anesthesia.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Holy cow.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Well, if you like that,
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: I got a book coming your way because after Sleuth Hound,
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: I'm writing a book called Ether Wars, which is about
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: that moment when ether is discovered. But here's the crazy
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: bit about the story. It's showcased by a dentist named Morton.
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: Some people out there might know this story. And right
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: after that, he tries to patent it. And four other
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: people step forward and try to claim ownership of this discovery.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: And so it's really this kind of instance of medical
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: capitalism in America. And it ruins all these men's lives.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: And it's about what we do when something changes the world,
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: who gets ownership of it. And, you know, I think
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: that can resonate with today with AI and those kinds
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: of fights that are breaking out, who gets to control it,
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: who gets to own it. And so I'm really looking
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: forward to it. It's going to be my first American
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: medical history story. Of course, I will be still talking
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: about the impact in Britain today. And the discovery of
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: chloroform that happened shortly after. But yeah, I'm going to
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: take you back to the very early Victorian operating theaters
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: when there was no anesthesia. And let me tell you,
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: it was pretty brutal.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I can't wait.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I love these stories because they showcase the human
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: side of science and of medicine. So much of it
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: is driven by ambition and sometimes greed and pettiness. But
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: that just tells you not that science is flawed, but
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: that it's a human endeavor. And there's no way that
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: scientists across the globe are colluding to do anything. They're,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: if anything, working to undermine each other at all costs. Yeah.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, my gosh. Preach, Daniel. I mean, honestly, and this
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: is such an interesting point, because with my first book,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: The Butchering Art, which was about the father of antiseptic surgery,
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: Joseph Lister, it's interesting. At the end of his life,
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: he actually asked that his personal correspondence, anything that didn't
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: have to do with his science and his discoveries, be destroyed. Now, thankfully,
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: that didn't happen, because what I learned about Lister was
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: that he was very much a product of his Quaker upbringing.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: He was raised by an amateur scientist. His father had
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: a microscope, which was an unusual instrument in medicine in
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: the 19th century. And so he brings the microscope to
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: medical school. And it's kind of like his lightsaber moment.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: You know, this is what's going to help him solve
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: this moment, this mystery in medicine. And all of that
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: is because of his upbringing. And his father really encourages
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: him to stay in medicine. He has a mental health
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: breakdown at one point and leaves medical school. His father
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: encourages him to go in. And so you're absolutely right
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: that science and medicine isn't created in a vacuum. And
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: it's also why we know that there aren't any global
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: conspiracies because everybody is very competitive, especially doctors. They all
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: want to be the first. And I very much doubt
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: that they're colluding on anything.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Something else I'm excited to hear your thoughts on are
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: about how the process has changed. You know, sometimes people
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: imagine science as like a way to do things. And
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: we went from not doing science to doing science. But,
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: you know, it's evolving. It's a method that's changing. And
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: it's important not just to remember like what people didn't know.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: 200 years ago or 100 years ago, but how they
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: were trying to figure things out and how that process
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: has evolved. Because as Kelly says, it helps us understand
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: how it can evolve in the future and how like
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: aliens might do it differently, for example.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: Oh, here we are. We're already five minutes in and
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: we got to the aliens. This is what I was
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: waiting for. But yeah, no, I absolutely, you know, one
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: of the things, it was interesting during the COVID pandemic
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: because a lot of people were saying, well, look, these
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: experts keep changing their opinions and And that was unsettling
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: to the public, but actually to me as a medical historian,
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: that was comforting because, of course, as scientists and doctors
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: are studying the virus, they're learning more, they're changing their advice,
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: and that's exactly what you want to see. My husband,
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: who is an illustrator, he's a caricaturist, and I wrote
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: a children's book called Dead Ends, which is all about
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: failure in medicine and the need to fail.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: Because failure teaches us sometimes more than the success. And
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: one of my favorite stories involves the clockwork saw. It
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: was this circular saw. I actually have a prototype in
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: my office, my weird office. And it was a massive failure.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: It was invented in the 19th century when doctors and
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: surgeons wanted to be faster in the operating theater. And
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: it wound up and you would release it and it
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: would spin continuously. And WHB Winchester, who invented it, brought
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: into the operating theater and he accidentally took off his
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: assistant's finger. And it was just a complete failure. And
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: so he learned that too much speed was actually a
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: bad thing. And so I love the clockwork saw because
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: I don't think we talk enough about failure in in
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: science and medicine to the public. And I think the
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: COVID pandemic was this sort of opportunity to communicate that process.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: And maybe doctors didn't do that as well as they
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: should have. And maybe that's where we need to kind
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: of improve that education with the public about how these
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: vaccines are created and how you learn about viruses and
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: how a lot of what we learned about COVID was
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: built on what we already knew about other similar viruses.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: So it was an interesting experience to live through. I
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: also have to say that as a medical historian, I
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: completely was in denial about where we were heading in 2020,
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: which is really shameful. I don't know how you guys
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: dealt with it, but I remember specifically I was shooting
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: the Smithsonian series and my manager said something about the schedule.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: And I said, I don't think this is going to
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: become a thing. But then I said, well, you know,
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: as medical historians, we're taught that a pandemic goes through
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: certain psychological phases. And the first is denial. And we
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: kind of laughed nervously. Nervously. And then I thought, oh
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: my gosh, is this where we're heading? And the second
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: phase is blaming others, you know, that you can't catch it,
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: that it's, you know, like with HIV, it's a gay disease,
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: you know, that we went through all that. And so
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: you go through these different psychological processes until you sort
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: of accept that this is happening. And so I also
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: went through that because there was a moment where I
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: should have known better, but I thought, No way we're
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: going to end up in this kind of global pandemic.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: And here we were.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I am so with you.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: I remember it was my daughter's birthday party and they
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: canceled school right before the Saturday where we were going
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: to have her birthday party. And they're like, we don't
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: know when we're going to come back. And I was like,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: that's weird. And then I was like, I shouldn't think
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: that's weird. Things have been scaling up. But I was like,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: but we'll be back on Monday probably. And then we,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: you know, we weren't back for a year.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: It was like years later.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did not see it coming.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: I didn't.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I should have, but it blew my mind.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: We just completely lost, you know, that time. It's weird
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: when I think back on it because sometimes it's still...
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: Like you think about 2020 and you think, that was
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: only like a year ago. It just feels like time
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: has moved fast and slow at the same time. But,
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: you know, my grandmother was alive at that time and
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: I would call her and she kept saying, have you
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: ever heard of anything like this? And I thought, of
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: course I have. You know, I was working on a
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: book about World War I and we went through a
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: pandemic at the very end of that. And, you know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: it's just one of those things. It's weirdly comforting to know, again,
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: not a global conspiracy. This is what happens in human
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: history today. And we often bungle it as well, which
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: is a very human trait. You know, we don't want
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: to believe it's happening. And we kind of shut down.
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: And it's scary. But yeah, I think that failure in
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: medicine is something that we don't talk about enough. And
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: of course, there's a lot of failure in my books, too.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: And Joseph Lister fails in certain ways. And Harold Gillies,
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: who was rebuilding soldiers' faces, failure was his constant companion
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: on those words. And so it is an important thing
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: to acknowledge in medical history.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: And hey, the future is hard to predict, which is
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: why we have these processes to gather data, to change
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: our minds when we get new data. You just got
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: to follow the data. New data means new conclusions. That's
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: just the way it works. So that's what I love
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: about your book and these stories is that it shows
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: us how the process works. and why I can't perfectly
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: predict the future.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people look to me,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: by the way, I thought my moment had come in
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: the pandemic. I was like, yes, medical historian, I'm finally relevant.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: Like I can finally, you know, talk about something that people,
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: you know, instead of useless cocktail party, you know, tips
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: or whatever. But I did say that early in the pandemic.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: I said, look, I can't predict the future. And you're
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: absolutely right. Even when going into a pandemic and looking
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: at past pandemics, there's so many variables and There's so many,
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: you know, we control our fate ultimately. And I always
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: say to people that today is the best day to
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: be alive. That is my superpower that I am one
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: of the few people in 2026 who could make you
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: feel good about living today. Today is the best day
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: to be alive and tomorrow will be even better. And
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: having gone through breast cancer myself in 2022, I can
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: say that, you know, every day it's getting a bit
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: better in terms of, you know, how we handle these
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: viruses and these diseases. And so if anybody is out
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: there and going through their own diagnoses, just hold on
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: to that thought. You're not in the 19th century on
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: that operating table without any anesthesia. Yeah. Well, yeah.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: And we live in a time where we got what
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: the COVID vaccine in a year or something like that.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: That is amazing to.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Get a vaccine that quickly and then get it like
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: scaled up and sent out to the population.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Like, holy cow.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. And actually, I got called up.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know how it worked in the US. So
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: everybody listening, I have this Chicago accent, but I've lived
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: in the UK now for 24 years. But. we got
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: called up on like a lottery basis. And so I
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: got called up and the day I got my vaccine
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: was the anniversary of the first ever vaccine by Edward
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: Jenner for smallpox. And I thought that was just so
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: nerdy and amazing. And I tried to tell people at
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: the center and they just didn't care because they had
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: more important things to do, which was to save people's lives.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: But I'm always filled with the useless knowledge as I
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: walk into hospitals, but it was pretty cool to get
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: that on that anniversary. And for people who don't know,
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: the smallpox vaccine. So there was there was inoculation before
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: Jenner came along, but inoculation and vaccine were different terms
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: in the past. And so inoculation used the live smallpox virus,
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: which was very deadly and very dangerous. You could become
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: contagious through that process, whereas Jenner took the cowpox virus
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: and used it to create the vaccine. And in fact,
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: The term vaccine, which he coined, comes from the Latin
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: words meaning from the cow. So that's the first ever
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: vaccine was the cowpox vaccine that Jenner created. But there
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: was inoculation before that time.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And we eventually used the smallpox vaccine to wipe smallpox
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: off the face of the planet in the 80s.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Like, I mean, amazing.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: The only human virus to ever be eradicated. It is
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: actually incredible. And it's one of those viruses, like, don't
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: think too closely about, like, what would happen if that
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: came back. Like, that's all I can just say is, like,
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: if that was ever used as a biological weapon or something. Like,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: let's not go there. But that's where my, because, like,
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: I love, you know, obviously medical history, but I love horror.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: I love Stephen King. So I'm always going to kind of, like,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: the darkest, worst place. That's often what I think about
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: when I think about the virus.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: But there you go.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: But we have eradicated it. It's the first and only
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: human virus we've eradicated, I believe. Yeah. All right.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Well, so usually I am not super optimistic about stuff.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And so I'm glad that we had like an optimistic,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: uplifting chat to start things off. But let's transition to
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: talking about your amazing book, because I would love to
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: geek out about vaccines with you all day long. But
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: you also wrote this great book.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll come back. I'll come back. OK, awesome.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: That sounds good.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people know that Arthur
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Conan Doyle is the guy who created Sherlock Holmes. But
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I think far fewer people know that he also had
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: a bunch of medical training before that. So could you
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: tell us a bit about his life and his medical
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: training and how he ended up meeting the man who
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: would inspire Sherlock Holmes?
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So Sleuth Hound is about the origins of Sherlock Holmes.
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: Most people think Sherlock Holmes began at 221B Baker Street,
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: which is why I have the 221B sign. door behind
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: me right there. I know people can't see it on
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: the podcast, but I had my husband create the door
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: because my office wasn't silly enough. But yeah, most people
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: think he began at 221B Baker Street, you know, with
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: the hat and the pipe and the cocaine. But he
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: actually began somewhere far more obscure. He began on a
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: hospital ward in Edinburgh. where a Scottish surgeon named Joseph
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: Bell was teaching students how to read a human body
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: like a crime scene. Bell had this incredible knack at
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: being able to tell everything about a patient before they
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: ever spoke a word, where they came from, what they
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: did with their hands, a callus, a stain, a limp.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: All of these were clues to Bell if you only
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: knew how to see them. And in 1878, Arthur Conan
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: Doyle becomes one of his students. So one of the
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: things that you might not know is that Conan Doyle
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: actually qualified as a doctor. And he practiced as a
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: doctor for quite some time while he started his writing career.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: And eventually his writing took off and he just abandoned
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: medicine because the writing paid a lot better. But he
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: was a fully trained doctor. And it was Joe Bell
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: who had this incredible characteristic, this method of seeing that
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: he then bestowed upon Sherlock Holmes and became kind of
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: one of Sherlock Holmes's most famous traits.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: So if Bell is the inspiration for Holmes, is Conan
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: Doyle himself the inspiration for Watson? Is Watson basically.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: The stand-in for Doyle? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. Well,
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: you know, it's funny because at the very end of
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: Sleuth Hound, there's a postscript. And it's a very strange postscript.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: But I thought, you know what, I'm going to put
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: this in because there was a writer in the 1940s
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: named Irving Wallace. And he wrote an essay on how
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: Bell was the original Sherlock Holmes. And Adrian Conan Doyle,
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: the youngest son of Conan Doyle, took great offense to
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: this and said that his father was Sherlock Holmes. Oh.
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: But this was such a strange argument to make because
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Conan Doyle literally says Joe Bell was the inspiration. I mean,
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: there is a clip of Conan Doyle speaking. And this
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: is incredible because he was a man who was born
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: in 1859. And we actually have a clip of him
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: on film speaking. And in it, he talks about Bell
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: and the influence he had on the creation of this character.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: But Adrian Conan Doyle just took great offense. So in
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: the postscript, I talk about this weird fight that broke
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: out in the 40s and 50s. Because it allowed me
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: to end the book on this incredible quote from Conan
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: Doyle's youngest child, Jean. And she gave this quote in 1993. Now, remember,
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Conan Doyle, born in 1859, his daughter is alive in 1993.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: So you can do those math. Wow. Only men can
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: do this, by the way. And she said, she said,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: it was most certainly Joseph Bell who gave my father
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: the idea for Holmes. He has said it in black
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: and white. What further proof do you need? And I
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: thought that's the perfect way to end this book. And so,
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: so like I said, Conan Doyle, he didn't make it
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: a secret. He outs Bell as the inspiration for this
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: character in 1892, very shortly before he kills off the character.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: So it was really a, there was a media frenzy in,
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: in Bell's own time around him and about him being
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Some of the stories in the book about the, like,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: deductions that Bell could make.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Feel like, could that, is that really, could he really
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: have done that?
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Like, how much do you think was, like, over exaggeration
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: or like the story growing over time or was he
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: really this amazing like you know the kinds of deductions
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: in the books i think.
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: He was really that amazing and actually when you first
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: so here here's a really weird uh fact a confession
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: so to speak I had never read Sherlock Holmes at
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: the time I had sold this book. I never read
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: the original Holmes story. And then when I sold the book,
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: I decided that I wasn't going to read it right
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: away because I knew that the comparisons to Sherlock Holmes
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: had dogged Bell at the end of his life. He
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: found them rather reductive. And I wanted to tell the
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: story of the real man behind the myth and to
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: give it that medical history lens that I felt he
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: deserved as a doctor and somebody who also understood helped
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: with forensic science. This is kind of the first moment
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: that medicine enters the courtroom. So I purposely put that off.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: But Belle, when you first read the book in the
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: first couple chapters, there's so many stories that feel so Sherlockian,
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: almost to the point where I make the case that
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: Conan Doyle probably transplanted a lot of these stories directly
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: into the And I don't think that they were exaggerated
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: because everybody believes this about Bell. He was a wonder
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: in Edinburgh. It was said that his students actually thought
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: it was a magic trick and they thought that perhaps
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: he had gotten sight of the clerk's notes before he
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: went into the consulting room. But this was always proven
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: wrong when a last minute patient came in and he
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: would do this trick that he had. It was observational
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: wizardry and it was a phenomenal thing that he could do.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: And Conan Doyle never forgot it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: Well, it's like magic in plain sight, though, right? It's
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: like there's no magic about it. The process is obvious.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: He tells you exactly how he did it. It's the
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: best kind of mystery because it's the kind where you're like, oh,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: I should have figured that out. I had all that
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: same information. It's the incredible power of forensic research. I
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: love that.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And also, if you think about it, you know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: when I talk to a lot of doctors, I say
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: to them, are you surprised that the original detective was
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: a doctor? Because, you know, they had Bell had to
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: cut through the petty deceits of his patients. You know,
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: his patients weren't always giving him all the full information.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: For instance, there's a story of a woman walking into
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: the consulting room and he says, show me your cutty pipe.
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: And she's very embarrassed. And then he says, show me
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: the pipe. And she pulls the pipe out. And then
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: she's ushered out of the room. And he tells the students,
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: I knew that she smoked a Cuddy pipe because I
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: could see the superficial burn on her cheek. I could
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: see the cancerous ulcer on her lip, which you only
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: get from a lifetime of smoking. And so he was
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: able to sort of cut through the noise and to
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: get to the real diagnosis in that sense. And so
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: this was the method that he ended up teaching Arthur
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: Conan Doyle. And at the time, policing in the 19th
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: century was really in its infancy as well. And so
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: you really did get this sense of the bumbling Bobby,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: you know, the Jack the Ripper crimes couldn't be solved.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: And there was all these kind of mishaps and mistakes.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: And so when Sherlock Holmes comes into existence in fiction,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: there was this idea, if we can only apply that
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: kind of scientific method to policing, how would it change
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: everything in the way we capture criminals? All right.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Well, I am desperate to learn about how we did
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: policing before we used observation and forensic science. But first,
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: let's take a break. So All right, we're back, and
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: we are talking to Lindsay Fitzharris about the incredible story
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: of the true inspiration of Sherlock Holmes, a man who
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: actually had incredible observational powers. And before we went to break,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: we heard that the police picked up these techniques. And
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: I was wondering, what did they do before they used
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: forensic science? Was it all just random guessing? I mean,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: it's hard to put yourself in the minds of those folks.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: It was a strange time. You know, in fact, there
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: was this thing that was called trial by beer, the
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: beer that the body lays on. So B-I-E-R. And so
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: what would happen is you would bring somebody close to
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: the body, and if the body spontaneously began to bleed,
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: then it was a sign that they had murdered this person.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Really unscientific, right? And people were sometimes executed on the
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: basis of this quote evidence. I share a few stories
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: of this in Sleuth Town. So yeah, there wasn't a science,
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: and you can imagine a lot of innocent people were
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: convicted in earlier periods. You start to get a professional
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: police force in sort of the 1830s. You get the
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Bow Street Runners in London, eventually replaced by the Met.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: And so you start to get a professional police force.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: But again, it was a lot of, you know, trial
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: and error. And so this book is as much about
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: the story of Joe Bell, but it's also about his
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: relationship with this man, Henry Duncan Littlejohn, who was a
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: police surgeon in Edinburgh. He was a brilliant forensic scientist.
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: And it's about how they partnered up and solved some
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: of the biggest crimes in the 19th century. But in
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: between that story is the story of forensics and the
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: story of the expert witness. And this is when medicine
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: first enters the courtroom. And so what little John is
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: teaching his students in Edinburgh is how to be that
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: expert witness, you know, how to do the autopsies, how
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: to look at the evidence, how to convey that to
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: a jury. And he's involved in some of the highest
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: profile cases. And he brings his friend Joe Bell on unofficially,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: much like Sherlock Holmes, to work on several of these cases.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: So I always like to tell a small story and
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: a big story. You know, it's a story about Bell,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: but it's also a story about the development of forensics
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: at this time. And there were a lot of competing theories.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: For instance, there was phrenology, which we know was based
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: in racist beliefs. But here's the thing about phrenology. A
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: lot of people call it a pseudoscience, but I don't
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: think you should call it a pseudoscience because it was
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: a science that did harm in the 19th century. It
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: was taken seriously by scientists and doctors, and so it
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: was used. I think calling it a pseudoscience outright, like
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: how we would understand it today, minimizes its impact that
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: it had in the 19th century. I think that needs
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: to be acknowledged. But you had things like phrenology, You
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: had something called optography, which was this idea that the
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: eyeball acted like a lens of a camera and that
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: you might be able to extract the last image a
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: person saw before they died off the lens of their eyeball.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: So you might be able to catch the murderer, you know, and,
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: you know, whenever I put this on social media, people
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: always inevitably ask, well, did it work? Because it. Kind
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: of sounds like it could, you know, it sounds like
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: it has that plausibility. It could be in Bobfest, right, Kelly?
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: That's right. Yeah. It sounds like a plausible, absurd kind
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: of thing. And so they even discuss this in relation
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: to the Ripper crimes. And so you have all of
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: these trial and errors. You have, you know, some things
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: that caused harm, some things that just outright didn't work.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: And then the pulse of it is you have the
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: development of the expert witness in people like Joe Bell
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: and and Henry Duncan Littlejohn. And so that is also
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: part of the story. It's not just about Sherlock Holmes.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: It is about expert medicine in the courtroom.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: Help me understand why this development came so late. I mean,
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: we've had like experimental science since Galileo and Francis Bacon.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: You know, why are people still relying on, you know,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: mysticism and stories and superstition?
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: You know, some of it had to do with the
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: way doctors were taught in the 19th century. And so
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: one of the things I discuss in Sleuth Hound is
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: how forensic science was much more progressive in Edinburgh. And
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: there was a good reason for that. They start teaching
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: it at the end of the 18th century, whereas you
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: don't get a professorship in 18th. England until I think
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: the 1830s. So they're quite far behind in England compared
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: to Scotland. by the time forensic science starts developing. In Scotland,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: they were just more scientifically minded for various reasons.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Was it the haggis? I bet it's the haggis.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: It was the haggis. It was in the blood sausage,
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: and it really fueled the brain. But if you think
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: about it, too, Edinburgh is a much smaller city. So
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: when you were training as a doctor like Arthur Conan
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: Doyle was, you had one university, you had one hospital.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: Whereas in London, there were multiple hospitals and multiple universities.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: And so your training wasn't standardized across the board. And actually,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: this was one of the issues that Lister faced when
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: he was invited to come back to London to teach.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: He was up in Glasgow and up in Edinburgh. And
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: he worried about that because he felt that there had
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: to be some kind of standardized antiseptic method adopted across England.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: So Edinburgh is just this incredibly progressive city. in science
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: and medicine at the time. They have the famous Burke
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: and Hare crimes, which I don't know if you guys
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: know this story.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Tell us.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: Yes, I love telling people when they don't know this story.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: So Burke and Hare. So in the early 19th century,
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: doctors needed a lot of bodies. And the only legal
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: bodies you could dissect were those of murderers who had
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: been executed. And there weren't that many.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Sorry, why did doctors need a lot of bodies? Just
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: to figure out what's inside them?
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: They needed a lot of bodies to learn anatomy.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So this became part of the medical experience. This
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: is part of how the training started to change. And
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: it was a lot more focused on the actual science
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: of the body and anatomy. And so they needed a
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: lot of bodies to teach medical students. And of course,
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: there weren't that many legal bodies to dissect. And so
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: you get this kind of economy that grows around this
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: and you get the body snatchers or the resurrection men.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: And these guys would go out into the graveyards and
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: they would steal bodies. They were they were very good
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: at it. They would only open the grave at the
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: top of the grave. You know, you would think that
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: they'd open the whole thing, but they only dig down
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: from the head of the grave. They would use instruments
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: to break the coffin lid, and then they would use
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: chains to pull the body out. They could do this
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: very quickly. They could steal as many as, you know,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: 10 or 12 bodies in a single night. Wow. And
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: this was really important to what medicine becomes. Well, Burke
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: and Hare decide this is a good gig, right? Like
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: selling bodies to the anatomists could be very lucrative, but
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: they didn't want to go out into the graveyards in
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: the middle of the night. And so they decided to
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: just skip that part and start killing people and selling
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: those fresh bodies to the anatomists in Edinburgh.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Early disruptors. These are the tech bros of the 1800s.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: They were thinking outside of the box, guys. And they
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: do eventually get caught because the bodies were suspiciously fresh
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: and recognizable. And the way that they were killing these
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: people became known as burking. So what they would do
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: is they would put their full body weight onto the victim.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: They would get the victim drunk. They would put their
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: full body weight onto the victim and hold the nose,
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: pinch the nose, hold the mouth shut and they would
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: suffocate them. And so that became a term in the
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: 19th century, birking. A lot of people call Burke and
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Hare body snatchers. They were never body snatchers. They were
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: just full out murderers. They were caught. Hare turns King's evidence.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: He gets to walk away from all of this. But
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: William Burke ends up swinging for the crime. And because
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: it's in Scotland and they want to do an additional punishment,
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: they end up publicly dissecting Burke. And they take his
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: skin and they make various trinkets out of it, including
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: a book, a pocketbook bound in human skin, which you
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: can now see at Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh. If you
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: ever go visit, I've held it. Oh, yeah. I have
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: held it. It feels just like leather, unsurprisingly.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: It is leather.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: And they have DNA tested some of these. Yeah, exactly.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: It is leather. And they have DNA tested some. It
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: actually was so, I don't want to say it was
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: so common, but it was common enough that it had
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: a term, anthropodermic bibliopathy. binding books in human skin. It
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: was a thing in the 19th century. You guys think
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: we're bad with our true crime addiction now. The 19th
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: century was a wild ride. Burke and Hare were very
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: much a part of that dark underworld of medicine in Edinburgh.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: And Robert Christensen, who was one of the first toxicologists,
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: actually helped convict Burke. And he ends up teaching Henry Duncan.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: Little John is also, he also teaches Joe Bell. And
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: so Bell is very much, you know, coming up in
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: that tradition of early forensics in the 19th century.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: And did they feel differently from a moral point of
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: view towards dead bodies?
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: I mean.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I know different cultures have different attitudes about it and
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: different people have different attitudes about it. How big a
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: deal was it to steal somebody's body? Is it as
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: big a deal as it is today? I mean, it
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: sounds like a big deal.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: I feel like, yeah, today you definitely would end up
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: with like your own Netflix series if you were just
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: like out there digging up bodies.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: That's not a career tip, everybody.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: Not a suggestion, guys. It's a quick way to fame,
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: but you know. I think there's a series called The
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: Mortician where something like that is going on. But yeah,
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: it was, you know, everybody had a different opinion about it.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: But the public were really fearful of this. There was
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: a view of a physical resurrection. And so you wanted
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: your body to be intact. And of course, you just
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: didn't want your body of your grandmother to end up
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: in the dissection room chopped up into little pieces.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Let me push on that for a minute. Why not?
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Why does somebody object to having their grandmother be dissected?
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: Because of the physical resurrection. But also remember that the
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: only legal bodies to dissect at this time were those
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: of executed criminals. So there was that kind of, you know,
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: shame around that, that it was somehow seen as like
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: a punishment.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Because, for example, I'd be very happy to have my
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: body be like used for science or med students or whatever.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: you know, taxidermy or whatever. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: don't care, whatever.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: Daniel's there for the human skin book. Like, yeah, he's
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: fine with that.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: Special edition of my book, Bound in Me. There you go.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: One copy only.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: Only one available. Yeah, no, I mean, but here's the difference. Consent, right?
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: And so these people obviously weren't giving consent. And a
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: lot of, you know, anatomical collections that we see in
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the U.S. and in the U.K., are comprised of people
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: who never gave consent. These bodies were stolen and these
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: body parts were put into jars to study. They are
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: important and it's important to acknowledge that medicine became what
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: it became because they had access to these bodies and
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: they had access to these collections. But yeah, there was
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: this real fear around the resurrection men in the 19th century.
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: There was a story about how one time this one
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: graveyard in this village, they found out that a body
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: had been stolen And the people in the village went
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: to the graveyard and dug up their relatives and dragged
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: the coffins back to their house until the graveyard could
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: be made secure. And they would make it secure with
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: things like cemetery guns and watchmen. And they also had
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: coffin collars so that they would put around the corpse
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: so you couldn't drag it out by a rope. So
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: there were ways to protect the body, but of course
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: that cost money. And so a lot of the bodies
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: that end up being stolen, you know, come from the
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: poorer graves. And so a lot of medicine was built
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: on on the backs of the poor. All right.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: I've gotten this way off track by asking all these
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: stories about bodies. Take us back to sleuth hounds and Dr. Bell.
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: So one of the parts of the book that I
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: was just like so drawn into that I had to
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: like cancel the rest of the stuff that I had
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: going on that day so that I could keep reading
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: was about how we got to the point where we
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: could identify people.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: More than once.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: So like if you're a repeat criminal offender, how do
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: we know that in an era where like you don't
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: have fingerprints or, you know, photos on social media yet?
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: Like, Yeah.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Can you walk us through that history? Because that was amazing.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: You know, I feel like this, of course, you would
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: ask this question, because to me, this was like one
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: of the most Alphonse Bertillon, who is the French police
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: officer who creates this this method for measuring. He has
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: 11 measurements. and how to measure a perpetrator. It's a
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: very complicated system, but let me take you back. So
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: you're absolutely right that in the early part of the
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: 19th century, if you ended up being prosecuted and later
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: you were released and then you were caught again, you
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: could just use an alias, like nothing was stopping you
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: from doing that. And so it was really difficult to
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: identify repeat offenders. And there was a real concern about this,
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: especially in Britain, because in the middle of the 19th century,
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: the colonies in Australia stop, you know, accepting criminals from Britain.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: And so Britain is suddenly worried about, you know, all
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: these repeat offenders that might be walking around in Britain.
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: And so there's this concern about this. And there's a
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: French police officer named Alphonse Bertillon, and he starts putting
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: his mind to this. And he creates these 11... different measurements.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: So like one of them is from the tip of
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: the finger to the crook of the elbow and a
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: measurement of the foot and all of it was highly
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: choreographed so that it was standardized and there was no
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: way to do it incorrectly. And then after he created
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: that system, he also created abbreviations for all this so
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: you could basically put all of it on an index
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: card and it would include a photo, the front of
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: the person and the side of the person. So that's
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: kind of the mugshot that we have today. And this
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: was supposed to help identify repeat offenders. Now, when I
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: was writing this section, it was so, I felt like
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: it was really complicated. And I remember my husband, remember, artist.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: So we're both like artistic, we're not scientific. And I
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: remember showing him the abbreviation because I give an example
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: of of somebody who has a scar on his left
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: arm and yada, yada, yada, and the eye color. And
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: then I show what that would have looked like in
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: Bertillon's system. And it's absolutely, it looks like a science equation.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: And my husband said, oh, that bastard, you know, it
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: seems so, so complicated and so crazy, but actually it
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: was more simple than what they had before, you know? So,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: So Bertione, he becomes very famous. He almost becomes as
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: famous as Sherlock Holmes. But that is quickly replaced with
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: fingerprinting within 10 to 15 years, which is obviously more
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: effective and a simpler process. But we still have the mugshot.
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: And so, yeah, there was all of these problems that
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: had to be solved in the 19th century. How do we,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: you know, identify repeat offenders? And also, it's not even just,
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: you know, repeat offenders. There's a story in Sleuth Hound
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: where I talk about shipwreck and this this sailor who
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: died and the mother believes that maybe he had survived
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: and then lo and behold a few years later a
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: man in Australia steps forward and claims to be him
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: and he doesn't look anything like him he's like 300
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: pounds and apparently the other guy was very slim he
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: doesn't have the tattoo that her son had allegedly there
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: were so many things but she just wanted to believe
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: it and she ends up giving him money each year
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: and she ends up dying thinking that was her son
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: and And then later he's brought up on fraud. And
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: of course, it wasn't him at all. So there were
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: all kinds of reasons why, you know, being able to
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: identify somebody correctly was important back in the 19th century.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: So all of that kind of taps into forensics. And
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: I talk about, you know, the first ballistic fingerprint, the
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: first time that we match a bullet to a gun.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: All of this is, you know, background to the world
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: that Bell grew up in.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: But it still seems to me like practically impossible. Like
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: you get somebody in your police station, you're trying to
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: figure out if they're the same as somebody else. You
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: have to like match them against all of your records.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of when I was a kid and
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: you'd use a credit card and then they have like
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: a book with all the credit card numbers that had
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: been stolen and they had to like sift through it.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: And at least those are in order, right?
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: But you know, if somebody's real name is, you know,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Albert Alphonse and they come in with an alias and
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: You know, Zeus Zanzibar or something. You have no idea
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: where to start looking. You have to look through your
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: whole catalog to see if it's a match. It seems
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: terribly impractical.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, and also, of course, like people change.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: They age, you know, they gain weight, they lose weight,
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: they change. And so it definitely wasn't, you know, maybe
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: the science that Bertillon hoped it would be. Like I said, thankfully,
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: fingerprinting sort of replaces that pretty shortly within that period.
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: But yeah, when you think about how did they catch
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: anybody in the 19th century, it's incredible. It also kind
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: of tells us why they never caught Jack the Ripper.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: You know, it was sort of the golden era of
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: being a murderer because it was difficult. You know, now
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: we have DNA and, you know, do you watch true
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: crime and you think, have they ever seen a true
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: crime episode? Like they're never going to get away with that,
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: but they still try it. But the 19th century definitely was,
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: was the time to get away with, with murder because
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: it was a lot more difficult to trace those kinds
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: of crimes.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: And we are back to, it is way better now,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: which I love.
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: And so, so what I was going to say is
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of what the early forensics is built on
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: the brutalized bodies of women who never got justice in
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: the past. So something we can kind of like talk
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: about a little bit about, you know, the victims who
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: fed the science that, you know, is featured in Sleuth Hound.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's take a break. And when we come back,
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk about just that. So Okay, we're back.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: And so let's talk about this sad topic, which is
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: that a lot of what we learned was from the
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: bodies of victims.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: And a lot of those victims' bodies were women.
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and this also kind of holds true today.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: You watch a lot of true crime and you see
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: a lot of the victims are women. But certainly this
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: struck me when I was writing Sleuth Hound because it
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: is a fun book about Sherlock Holmes and about Joe
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: Bell and Arthur Conan Doyle and all of that. But
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: it is a story about a lot of women who
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: were murdered by their husbands and never received any justice
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: at all. Oh, man. And I do make the point
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: that a lot of the forensic advances in the 19th
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: century were born out of these brutalized bodies. And so
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: one of them was a woman named Jane Kelly, who
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: in 1888, the same year that Ripper started killing, was
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: murdered by her husband. And Belle and Little John perform
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: the autopsy. They find out that there's more than 50
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: injuries on her body. But at the trial, he is
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: not convicted of murder. He is convicted of culpable homicide,
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: a lesser offense, because she was drunk during the time
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: of her murder. And between, I think it was something like, yeah,
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: it was between 1850 and 1900, no man in Scotland
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: was convicted of murdering his wife when the wife was
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: seen to be drunk or or to be nagging. Wow.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: So she was partially responsible for her own death. And
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: so time and again... We had.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Positive points for Scotland earlier, but now....
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: Not so good, not so good. Yeah, so it was sobering,
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: you know? And then from there, I kind of move
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: on to the Ripper crimes because talk about the most
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: famous five female victims who never received any justice at all.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: And Jo Bell and Little John... Do work on that case.
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: I won't give too much away, but they they claim
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: to have solved it. They exchanged envelopes with the name
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: of Ripper and it had the same name on it.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: And then later, Little John works on a case of
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: a man named William Berry, who was in Whitechapel during
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: the murders. And he had the opportunity. He fits the
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: profile well. And then he goes up to Dundee in Scotland.
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: And one day he this is what he claims. He
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: wakes up and his wife is dead. And he was
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: just he was he had this compulsion to chop her
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: up and put her in a box. I mean, we've
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: all been there, right? You wake up, your spouse is dead.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: You're like, oh, I'm going to cut him up. I'm
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: going to put him in a box. It was just
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: like this weird story. So he goes and he confesses it.
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: And he says that he's worried that he'll be seen
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: as Jack the Ripper. And then, of course, the media
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: picks up on it. And people do believe he's Jack
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: the Ripper himself. And so that story is also fascinating.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: And the man who ended up hanging William Barry said
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: that Barry confessed to being Jack the Ripper. But I
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: do think that it's such a weird story. Like he
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: thought that the police would believe him that he just
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: that she just died this sort of natural death and that,
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: you know, he just he just ended up cutting her
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: up and putting her in the box. And he has
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: no idea why he did that. So.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: As one does.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: As one does. There was a lot of there was
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: a lot of alcohol in the 19th century. I mean,
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: it was it was a wild time. But so Ripper
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: appears in Sleuthound and also, you know, Ripper not being
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: caught in the hysteria around Jack the Ripper. explains a
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: lot about why Sherlock Holmes became such a famous character.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: You know, there was this real increase in literacy at
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: the time. People were consuming true crime through the newspapers.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: And here you come with Sherlock Holmes, and it's just
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: fascinating and really, you know, puts to shame the bumbling Bobby.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: And here in Sherlock Holmes, he can solve all these crimes.
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: But here's something that you might not know, because I
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: didn't know this going into the book. But Conan Doyle
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: absolutely hated Sherlock Holmes. Like he just could not stand
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: the character. He couldn't wait to kill him off. And
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: he was shocked when he did kill him off.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: But he admired Belle.
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: He admired Belle. But I think that the issue with
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: Sherlock Holmes was he wanted to be seen as a
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: more serious writer. And he felt like these detective stories
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: were not very serious. He couldn't understand why people enjoyed
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: them so much. And so eventually he kills off Sherlock
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: Holmes around the time that he also outs Joe Bell
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: as the inspiration. And so it's very much like Sherlock
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: Holmes is dead. Long live Sherlock Holmes. And there is
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: this media frenzy around Bell. And by the way, he
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: doesn't just out Bell, but he puts Bell's address in
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: the dedication. He doxes him. Why would he put his
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: address in there? It was so funny. So there's this
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: real media frenzy. And at that same time in Sleuth Town,
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: as you will see, There is this high profile murder
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: case that happens in Scotland. It involves a country mansion,
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: a murder dressed up like an accident. And it's just
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: this brilliant case. And it even has a ballistics expert
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: named Dr. Watson, I swear to God. And I read
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: a letter from Bell that said, my dear Watson. And
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: I thought, you know, it doesn't get any better as
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: a nonfiction writer than this.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: So how did Bell feel when he got outed and
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: his address was shared? Like, was Bell excited to now
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: be famous? Or yeah, what did he think?
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: So in 1892, Conan Doyle does an interview. This is
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: before he kills off Sherlock Holmes. And the journalist says
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: something to the effect of this is amazing. It all
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: has come from your imagination. And he says, well, you know,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: I had this professor who was really the inspiration for it.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: He does not name Bell at that point, but Bell
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: reads the interview. And he writes to Conan Doyle and
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: he says, am I the professor you're talking about? And
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: by the way, Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Dr. Jekyll
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: and Mr. Hyde, he also knew Bell. And when he
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: read Sherlock Holmes, he wrote to Conan Doyle and said,
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: but one thing bothers me. Could this be our old friend,
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: Joe Bell? So people who knew Bell recognized him in
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: the character. So Bell writes to his old student. His
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: student writes back. I've seen the letter. It says, yes,
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: it's to you, Shirley, that I owe Sherlock Holmes. And
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: they begin corresponding. And Conan Doyle asks permission to give
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: his name to the journalist. But he does warn Bell
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: that if he is outed as Sherlock Holmes, he will
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: start getting letters from people who want him to solve
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: crimes and all this kind of crazy. I mean, people
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: really thought that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: so Bell gives that permission. I think he's flattered at first.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: But later he became sort of, you know, dogged by
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: the comparisons. He found them reductive. And of course, Bell
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: wasn't Sherlock Holmes in a lot of ways. He was
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: a very empathetic person. He was a family man. He
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: had three children. So for me, I really wanted to
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: flesh out the man behind the myth. It wasn't just
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: about him as a footnote to Sherlock Holmes, but it
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: was him as a fascinating doctor. He helped reform nursing
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: up in Scotland. He was a good friend of Florence Nightingale.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: He was a proponent of women in medicine. He was
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: fascinating beyond those kinds of stories about Sherlock Holmes. But
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: of course, there is that great thread about him working
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: with Little John on these high-profile murder cases, which I
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: really enjoyed bringing to life. And you really do bring
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: these stories to life and you have a lot of
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: details about the cases and about the people. How hard
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: is it to research a topic like this, you know,
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: like what, 100, 150 years after it happened? Like where
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: do you get the information from? Is it in museums?
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Tell us your secrets.
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: It's the worst. You know what? It's like, you know,
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: it takes me four years to write these books usually.
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: And my dad is like, you got to write them faster.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I can't.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: You know, this is just, it's a process, you know,
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: it's just one of those things. I mean, luckily in 2026,
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: like a lot of stuff is digitalized. So that's, that's wonderful. Actually,
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: when I began this book and because I had just
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: gone through breast or I was still going through breast cancer,
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: I sent my research assistant, Dr. Kate, so up to Scotland.
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: She actually also transcribed Bell's diary for me because he
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: had terrible handwriting. I mean, illegible really. And she has
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: this superpower where she can read this 19th century handwriting.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: She did a brilliant job. Wow. But she went up
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: there to pull some documents for me. And at one point,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: she accidentally pulled a human specimen. And there was a
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: little bit of panic in the room because they didn't
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: know if she had qualifications to handle these objects. And
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: I said, I don't need the human specimens. I just
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: need the transcripts of the trials, et cetera. Just take
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: photos of that. But the point is that a lot
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: of what Henry Duncan Littlejohn worked on as a police surgeon,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: he actually kept, you know, the murder weapons. He kept
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: the ropes that hang to the murderers. He kept the specimens.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: And so all of that is up in Edinburgh, which
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: is fascinating. So they have a rich forensic collection up there.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: But there's letters. There's Bell's diary. Bell's diary had been
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: in private collection in the Bell family for over 100 years.
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: I don't know why they didn't let anybody have access
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: to it beforehand. I guess they probably wanted enough time
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: to pass between his passing and maybe the diary being
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: used for a project. But I was really lucky to
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: get access to that and to really dig into the
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: man behind the myth. But it's not easy putting all
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: of this together. And one of the things that really
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: helped me was his partnership with Little John, who I
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: feel like is just as much a character in this
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: book as Bell is. And I almost called it sleuth hounds.
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: But it really, you know, Bell gives Conan Doyle the method.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: Little John gives him the world because Little John also
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: taught Conan Doyle. And Conan Doyle doesn't out Little John
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: as an inspiration. I also wonder if that's because he
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: was the police surgeon, had this official role, and maybe
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: he felt like this would be a little bit too
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: much for his old professors. So, yeah, it's always a process, though,
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: writing these books. It's never easy, but that's what I
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: do as a historian. But my dad thinks I spend
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: way too much time in the archives. But that's the thing.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: have fun.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: You're talking to the wrong person.
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: He wants the books faster.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: He's the queen of over-research.
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's what makes me special.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You got to be comfortable when you
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: come out with it finally, right? You know, you got
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: to make sure that, you know, everything you're saying. I
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: say a lot of times, you know, with the rise
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: of AI, of course, which is a big threat to
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: writers now, you know, I talk about how what historians do,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: we still work with handwritten material that hasn't been scraped.
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: And So, for instance, with The Facemaker, which is about
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Harold Gillies, it opens with this soldier who has his
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: face blown off during the Battle of the Somme, and
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: I came across his diary. And if you asked AI
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: to create an outline of a book about Harold Gillies
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: before my book existed... they would have completely left him out. Now,
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: of course, they would tell you about him because my
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: book has been scraped by AI. But so this is
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: the problem with that technology, especially when you're creating something.
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: But historians still very much work with the handwritten material.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: And what we do is analyze... You know, and contextualize.
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: And the other thing is actually you guys might find
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: this interesting. Medical historians aren't really interested typically in retrospective diagnosis. So,
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: for instance, you might say Abraham Lincoln perhaps had Marfan's.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: You know, a lot of people have said that about
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: him because of his height and his weight and that
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: kind of gaunt look.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: Sorry, what's Marfan's?
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: You know, it's like a connective tissue disorder. Howard Stern
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: has it. So people tend to be really tall and
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: kind of gaunt. And there was a discussion about whether
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: maybe Abraham Lincoln had it or Henry VIII having diabetes,
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: for instance. Mm-hmm. And that's all interesting, but here's the
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: point that medical historians make, which is that what we
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: know today isn't what we're going to know tomorrow, okay?
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: And we're always changing our views. And so there is
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: no such thing as a pure science, like a pure fact, right?
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: We're always reassessing how we understand the world. So for
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: medical historians, what interests us most is how people contextualize
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: and understood their experience of illness in the past, not
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: what we might in 2026 think that they were suffering from,
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: that they had no clue they were suffering from that.
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: Because if we bring that lens, that 2026 lens, onto
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: the past, what will happen in 100 years if that
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: lens changes again? Does it really tell us a truth
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: about the past? I mean, the best we can say
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: is how people understood that experience themselves. So when Joseph
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: Lister comes along and says, you need to wash your hands.
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: And we can't understand why people were resistant to that. Well,
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: you have to also understand that they didn't understand germs existed.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: And washing your hands didn't make sense if they were
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: going to get dirty with the next patient. Why would
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: you wash your hands? You have to get into that mindset.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: And that's why, you know, we should never laugh at
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: the past, even though, I mean, I do laugh at
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: the past. You know, there's plenty of weird stories like
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: Robert Liston, the fastest knife in the West End, who
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: accidentally removed somebody's testicle. And, you know, there's definitely like
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: some odd moments, you know, in medical history. But the
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: point is that they were doing the best with the
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: information that was available at the time as we are.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: And so I always ask audiences, what will we think
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: is is absurd in a hundred years about today. And
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: what's gonna get eliminated? I always point to chemo. I
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: hope that we move to a place very soon where
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: chemo is not sort of the dominant way of treating cancer.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: There's all kinds of therapies that are on the horizon.
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: We're gonna look back at it like it was barbaric,
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: like the days of pre-anesthetic surgery. That's my hope at least. So,
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: you know, we're always evolving. What we know today isn't
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: what we know tomorrow. And that's why scientists and doctors
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: should study the history of science and medicine, because that
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: is a very powerful message, I think.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: That was amazing.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like we should end there because that was perfect.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: That was awesome. Okay. All right.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: This has been so much fun for me. Lindsay, I
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: hope we have you on the show again. I absolutely
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: loved your book. I highly recommend it to everybody. Thanks
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: so much for coming to chat with us. Thank you
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: so much for having me on.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a
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• 55:28
  Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing
• 55:32
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• 55:33
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