Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: How Robert "The Fastest Knife In The West End" Liston Conducted A Surgery With A 300% Mortality Rate

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CLASSIC: How Robert "The Fastest Knife In The West End" Liston Conducted A Surgery With A 300% Mortality Rate · Ridiculous History

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