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Day Drinkers (Sort of) Helped Stop Cholera in London · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Who doesn't love London? Who
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Speaker 1: doesn't love beer? Who doesn't love cholera? Record? Scratch? What? What?
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Speaker 1: What are we talking about? Well? First, who'd like to
0:41
Speaker 1: introduce our super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called me
0:46
Speaker 1: ben No, we're coming in hot And I think one
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Speaker 1: of those things is not like the other. I think
0:51
Speaker 1: you can love London and beer and not love color.
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Speaker 1: I think that's that's entirely a plausible scenario. Agreed, Agreed,
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Speaker 1: And this is also it's funny. We're talking about today's
1:03
Speaker 1: episode off air for a while, and one of the
1:07
Speaker 1: things that we noticed is that we've run into several
1:12
Speaker 1: stories about London and cholera. You may have heard our
1:16
Speaker 1: earlier episode on the Train of the Dead or the
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Speaker 1: so called Great Stink, But today we're we're returning to
1:25
Speaker 1: this period in time with a little bit of a
1:29
Speaker 1: different take. Now, if you you've listened to our previous
1:33
Speaker 1: episodes Ridiculous Historians, you know that in eighteen fifty four,
1:37
Speaker 1: there was an outbreak of cholera in London, specifically in
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Speaker 1: the Soho district. And previously we had introduced a physician
1:47
Speaker 1: with a name that was not associated with Game of
1:51
Speaker 1: Thrones at the time, doctor named John Snow. Yeah, this
1:54
Speaker 1: guy knows lots of stuff, unlike John Snow, who who
1:57
Speaker 1: knows nothing but also new some things, but also a
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Speaker 1: little bit dumb. John Snow is this fellow's name. It's true.
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Speaker 1: He was an epidemiologist, I guess, which you could refer
2:07
Speaker 1: to before that was even a thing. He sort of
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Speaker 1: like blaze the trail for that field, um, and he
2:12
Speaker 1: was very much responsible for figuring out why so many
2:18
Speaker 1: people in London and and the surrounding areas were getting
2:21
Speaker 1: so very sick. There was at the time this concept
2:26
Speaker 1: known as miasthma theory, the idea of bad air, you know,
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Speaker 1: and that that that these diseases and maladies were being
2:32
Speaker 1: spread through the air. Snow, through some trial and error
2:37
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, some crack medical detective work, figured
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Speaker 1: out that wasn't the case at all, and uh he
2:44
Speaker 1: traced it to the water. And one thing that really
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Speaker 1: helped him do that was isolating the beer drinkers from
2:53
Speaker 1: the people who were drinking like well water and then
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Speaker 1: the water that came from the pumps, which oftentimes was
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Speaker 1: directly pumped from the Thames River, which, as we know
3:03
Speaker 1: even today, it's not in the place you'd really even
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Speaker 1: want to take a dip let alone drink water from.
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Speaker 1: But um, that's the broad Strokes. Let's set up. Let's
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Speaker 1: backtrack a little bit. Um. We've had six worldwide cholera
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Speaker 1: epidemics from eighteen seventeen to nineteen twenty three, and during
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Speaker 1: one of the biggest outbreaks in London, the water and
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Speaker 1: the Thames got so bad that there was a political
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Speaker 1: cartoon that dubbed it a monster soup uh, and it
3:29
Speaker 1: was like one of those really you know, cool kind
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Speaker 1: of stylized political cartoons that had it full of like
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Speaker 1: all these like hydras and locknest monsters and chimeras and
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Speaker 1: Gorgon's and all that good stuff. And check out Mental
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Speaker 1: Flaws for an article about five infamous epidemics that we
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Speaker 1: hope to never see again where we pulled sminfo for
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Speaker 1: this episode. Flash to eighteen fifty four though, and also
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Speaker 1: check out Vintage News by Diana Rodesca. Uh. The eighteen
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Speaker 1: fifty four cholera outbreak of Broad Street, so during eighteen
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Speaker 1: fifty four, which is the third epidemic. Parts of London
4:07
Speaker 1: were bad when it came to cholera, very like To
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Speaker 1: be clear, it was in multiple areas of town, but
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Speaker 1: the biggest, worst part of the outbreak was in Soho.
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Speaker 1: In the space of just three days, a hundred and
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Speaker 1: twenty seven people died, and just a month later there
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Speaker 1: were five hundred plus people dead from cholera. And folks
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Speaker 1: again thought that it spread through my asthma, which is
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Speaker 1: the air being bad, specifically air rising from the soil
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Speaker 1: at night, you know. So you could say these people
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Speaker 1: are getting sick. Maybe they lived by a graveyard or
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Speaker 1: some other place where the soil might be considered tainted.
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Speaker 1: But the thing is, the Soho of that time was
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Speaker 1: not the Soho of today. It didn't have all the cool,
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Speaker 1: you know, gentrified stuff, the restaurants, the clubs, the have
5:00
Speaker 1: been diversions as they're called sometimes. Uh. Instead it was
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Speaker 1: a slum. It was a really tough place to live.
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Speaker 1: There were a lot of sanitation problems, not least of
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Speaker 1: which the fact that the wells from which the population
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Speaker 1: got their water were like right next to cess pits
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Speaker 1: and trash piles and they knew what cholera was, right.
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Speaker 1: They didn't know how it spread, but they knew its effects.
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Speaker 1: And this is where John Snow, who has already made
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Speaker 1: his name as an obstetrician. Uh he this is where
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Speaker 1: he comes in. He publishes this Treatise on the Mode
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Speaker 1: of Communication Cholera in eighteen forty nine, and he says, look,
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Speaker 1: it's not bad air, folks. The plague here is caused
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Speaker 1: by dirty drinking water. It's caused by pollution, it's caused
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Speaker 1: by sewage, and it always commences with disturbances of the
5:58
Speaker 1: functions of the alimentary can out. Everybody ignored him. Yeah,
6:02
Speaker 1: even his fellow physicians, the medical um community. I thought
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Speaker 1: that he was really overreaching, because, you know, it was
6:10
Speaker 1: sort of like the equivalent of like the idea of
6:12
Speaker 1: the humors, you know, back in the earliest days of
6:15
Speaker 1: of medical of medicine um, the idea of having too
6:18
Speaker 1: much bile or being like overloaded with one particular humor
6:22
Speaker 1: or another being like colocky or what has it been
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Speaker 1: not colloquy? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, um, the idea
6:29
Speaker 1: that your temperament would be in your you know, your
6:32
Speaker 1: health would be determined by the balance of these like
6:35
Speaker 1: ephemeral kind of like substances that existed in the body.
6:38
Speaker 1: And of course all that stuff has been debunked. Uh.
6:40
Speaker 1: It's very much akin to like leeching and bad blood.
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Speaker 1: You know, this is bad air and it was totally
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Speaker 1: accepted by the medical community. So that being the case
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Speaker 1: is miasthma theory, you know, being the that's what it is,
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Speaker 1: and then we can do about that. That's the funny
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Speaker 1: thing about it too, is like it's the theory that
6:56
Speaker 1: really doesn't have much recourse. You can't exactly suck the
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Speaker 1: b at air out of the sky and filter. They
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Speaker 1: didn't have that technology. At least, you know, John snow
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Speaker 1: had a theory of a thing that we could maybe avoid.
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Speaker 1: Let's just try it out. What do you say we
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Speaker 1: try to you know, drinke water from elsewhere, or like
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Speaker 1: boil the water or do something to to purify it.
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Speaker 1: At least he didn't get thrown in an asylum like
7:17
Speaker 1: the guy asked people to wash their hands shout outside exactly.
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Speaker 1: That's how things were in those days. These were very
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Speaker 1: you didn't want to upset the apple cart of science. Um,
7:27
Speaker 1: which is apparently an apple cart situation. Uh, so caller
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Speaker 1: albres continued in London and Newcastle and in eighteen fifty
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Speaker 1: three more than ten thousand people lost their lives due
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Speaker 1: to this outbreak due to this epidemic, and then again
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Speaker 1: in the summer of eighteen fifty four UH in Southwark,
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Speaker 1: London and Lambeth, which is south of the Thames, we
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Speaker 1: saw another devastating outbreak and then the big one hit
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Speaker 1: in Soho. But we set up the episode with August
7:52
Speaker 1: thirty one, seven people in three days were killed and
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Speaker 1: that people started to freak out and just flee this city.
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Speaker 1: And this was very similar behavior to what had happened
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Speaker 1: during the Bubonic plague in sixteen sixty six. There was
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Speaker 1: some you know, echoes of that and people were not
8:08
Speaker 1: sticking around to find out what happened next. Yeah, why
8:11
Speaker 1: would you. Three quarters of the population and left by
8:15
Speaker 1: September seven. We do have to point out John Snow. Dr.
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Speaker 1: Snow lives near Soho, so this is close to home
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Speaker 1: for him, you know what I mean. I think it's
8:25
Speaker 1: important to established he's not hanging out in some country
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Speaker 1: cottage expounding on things based on his own humors of
8:33
Speaker 1: the time. Look, this was a huge problem and this
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Speaker 1: kind of disease could be a great equalizer. It was
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Speaker 1: striking people based on their water sources. They would come
8:45
Speaker 1: to find in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, you know,
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Speaker 1: folks didn't have their tushies shout out, tushy, check out
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Speaker 1: our episode, or running water in homes. It would be
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Speaker 1: incredibly unusual. Instead, you have a communal pump, you'd have
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Speaker 1: a town well, and you would get the water that
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Speaker 1: you used for literally everything, washing, cooking, drinking water. Septic
9:09
Speaker 1: systems were super old. This is weird, but this for
9:13
Speaker 1: some reason, this used to fascinate me when I was
9:15
Speaker 1: a kid reading about this period of time. A lot
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Speaker 1: of untreated sewage or like animal waste crap from livestock
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Speaker 1: basically would either be thrown directly into the tims. Back
9:30
Speaker 1: in the day, it used to be instead of a
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Speaker 1: sewage system, there used to be this open sewer running
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Speaker 1: down the middle of streets and you would just throw
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Speaker 1: your stuff from there, and you would sometimes do it
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Speaker 1: from the second floor, so it wasn't a common to
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Speaker 1: get hit with a pile of filth. But they also
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Speaker 1: had these open pits called cesspools, and to make it worse,
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Speaker 1: water companies pulled in Nestley. They would go to the tims,
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Speaker 1: which was a free source of water. They would bottle
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Speaker 1: the water and then they would h sell it to
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Speaker 1: pubs and breweries and other businesses. Nobody was checking the sewage.
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Speaker 1: There was not like a big filter, not even a
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Speaker 1: primitive filtration system that they ran this through. So Dr
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Speaker 1: Snow reasonably says, you know, I think it might be
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Speaker 1: that we're dumping all of our trash in the river
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Speaker 1: or into these literal centuries old trash piles, and I
10:27
Speaker 1: think that might be bad for the water. And he
10:32
Speaker 1: was moting he had thought this for a while, and
10:34
Speaker 1: the opportunity to really try to prove his theory came
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Speaker 1: amid this great tragedy of this cholera outbreak. Yeah, and
10:43
Speaker 1: he he be opined on this. Uh in his journals
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Speaker 1: um he wrote, within two fifty yards of the spot
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Speaker 1: where Cambridge Street joins Broad Street, there were upwards a
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Speaker 1: five hundred fatal attacks of cholera in ten days. As
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Speaker 1: soon as I became acquainted with the city station, an
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Speaker 1: extant of this eruption of color, I suspected some contamination
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Speaker 1: of the water of the much frequented street pump in
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Speaker 1: Broad Street. Remember that the street pump, that is where
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Speaker 1: he traced it to, or at least that was the
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Speaker 1: most obvious culpri Yeah, and picture picture a increasingly sleepless
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Speaker 1: dr snow working around the clock. Scenes flashback and forth
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Speaker 1: of him tracing things around the town pump, him talking
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Speaker 1: to people, him hitting the bricks while there's the sound
11:45
Speaker 1: of a ticking clock. Well wait, we don't know about
11:50
Speaker 1: the sound design yet, Max, because second hands on clocks
11:54
Speaker 1: appeared in the fifteen century on German clocks, but they
11:58
Speaker 1: didn't really become common until the eight century. So there
12:05
Speaker 1: you go. Be fun at parties. Anyhow. The idea here
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Speaker 1: is that he was he was studying this the same
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Speaker 1: way like a like a civil engineer or a traffic
12:15
Speaker 1: engineer might sit at a light and study traffic, and
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Speaker 1: he was looking at public records. He found this strong correlation.
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Speaker 1: People who lived or worked near the pump, this one
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Speaker 1: in particular in Broad Street were more likely to use it,
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Speaker 1: and thus they were also more likely to contract cholera.
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Speaker 1: He established this correlation. He used a geographical grid to
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Speaker 1: chart deaths from the outbreak, and in each case he
12:43
Speaker 1: tried to determine conclusively whether they had access pump water
12:48
Speaker 1: or whether they were more likely to. And then he
12:51
Speaker 1: was eventually pretty quickly actually convinced that this pump was
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Speaker 1: the source of the epidemic. In soho, it's kind of
12:59
Speaker 1: like finding out the killer lives in your neighborhood. It's
13:03
Speaker 1: pretty cool though, because I mean he really did take
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Speaker 1: a strategic approach when all of these other you know,
13:08
Speaker 1: frankly quack physicians were just blaming you know, the magical
13:14
Speaker 1: bad air, um, the miasma or whatever, which also we've
13:17
Speaker 1: seen UM kind of lampooned in political cartoons like like
13:22
Speaker 1: almost like UM personifying the air as some sort of
13:25
Speaker 1: like spooky ghost or something like that, you know, with
13:27
Speaker 1: like evil tendril type fingers or whatever. I we've seen
13:31
Speaker 1: those before and previous episodes where we've talked about this subject.
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Speaker 1: But he traced it to that pump, and he was
13:37
Speaker 1: able to kind of, like you know, like I said,
13:38
Speaker 1: do some kind of slew thing. And he asked around,
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Speaker 1: and he found the proprietor of this uh little cafe
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Speaker 1: in that neighborhood who served water to our customers directly
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Speaker 1: from the Broad Street pump along with their meals, and
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Speaker 1: she personally knew of nine customers that had gotten cholera.
13:54
Speaker 1: This is kind of cute. There's a popular kind of
13:57
Speaker 1: a sweet drink at the time was called sure it Um.
14:01
Speaker 1: Not the sure but we know the delicious fruity, creamy
14:04
Speaker 1: ice cream type substitute. But this was a powder that
14:07
Speaker 1: you would put in water and it would get fizzy um.
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Speaker 1: And in the Broad Street area of Soho, the water
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Speaker 1: that was used for that very popular drink was from
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Speaker 1: the Ding Ding Ding Broad Street pump as well and snow. Really,
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Speaker 1: at this point, I'm starting to believe that this was
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Speaker 1: the source of the outbreak. So he started to look
14:27
Speaker 1: at different clusters around the neighborhood of of of outbreaks
14:31
Speaker 1: of cases and then you know, through process of elimination,
14:35
Speaker 1: determine whether or not they had drank water from that pump.
14:39
Speaker 1: And he actually started to collect and kola this data
14:42
Speaker 1: and what would ultimately become like a cholera map kind
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Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, yeah, and this is a brilliant move.
14:50
Speaker 1: You're also seeing some testing for the people who we're
14:55
Speaker 1: totally fine, who didn't drink from this particular pump and
15:00
Speaker 1: checking whether or not they also avoided cholera. This is
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Speaker 1: a very important part of the test, and this is
15:06
Speaker 1: where we find the ridiculous thing. This helped Snow rule
15:13
Speaker 1: out possible sources of contagions. He found some examples of
15:19
Speaker 1: people who didn't have cholera. One was a workhouse, which
15:25
Speaker 1: is basically a prison. At this point. The workhouse in
15:29
Speaker 1: the Soho area adjacent to it had over five in mates,
15:34
Speaker 1: but almost no colliary cases. Snow discovers it's because the
15:39
Speaker 1: workhouse has its own well and it brings in water
15:43
Speaker 1: from outside of the area. There's also and this is
15:48
Speaker 1: this is the funny part. This is the ridiculous part. Max.
15:52
Speaker 1: If you were waiting, fellow, ridiculous stories. If you're waiting,
15:56
Speaker 1: Snow also found there's a brewery on Broad Street, which
15:59
Speaker 1: should like ground zero for colliery cases. But the guys
16:04
Speaker 1: who work at this brewery don't get cholera because they're
16:08
Speaker 1: drinking so much malt liquor. It's it's because according to
16:14
Speaker 1: the owner of the brewery, a guy named Mr. Huggins,
16:17
Speaker 1: he said, look, my guys drink the liquor they make,
16:21
Speaker 1: or they drink water from the breweries. Well, we don't
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Speaker 1: go drink that Broad Street pump water. And none of
16:27
Speaker 1: them at cholera because they were day drinking. To jump
16:31
Speaker 1: in here. I mean, this is actually a very um
16:34
Speaker 1: common trend, and it's around this time period, especially earlier.
16:37
Speaker 1: Like my dad has a book about the Founding Fathers
16:41
Speaker 1: and their alcohol youth. It's like, you know, copious, like
16:45
Speaker 1: John Adams woke up in the morning and the first
16:48
Speaker 1: thing he did was drink too hard ciders. Like he's
16:50
Speaker 1: in bed drinking these hard ciders because it's like, you know,
16:53
Speaker 1: for a very long time, drinking the water would kill you,
16:58
Speaker 1: as we're seeing literally in the story, but even like
17:00
Speaker 1: centuries before that. So I mean, I just find it funny,
17:03
Speaker 1: like it's part of history. I feel like we don't
17:05
Speaker 1: really ever talk about, but it's pretty entertaining it It's funny,
17:08
Speaker 1: and people got the job done. It's like we joke
17:10
Speaker 1: about like mad Men era, like you know, uh, Madison
17:13
Speaker 1: Avenue executives and stuff in the fifties and sixties, like
17:17
Speaker 1: drinking highballs all day long. But it goes back way
17:19
Speaker 1: farther than that, and people knew how to hold their
17:22
Speaker 1: booze and get stuff done. Apparently, it would seem I mean,
17:25
Speaker 1: and I will say as a as a restaurant manager,
17:27
Speaker 1: for a number of years. I've been through a number
17:29
Speaker 1: of breweries and guess what, they're still drinking the beer
17:32
Speaker 1: and the berries. This is not something that's changed, right,
17:35
Speaker 1: There's there's this other thing. Um, you know, we we
17:38
Speaker 1: should point this out. There's always fascinating me too, in
17:43
Speaker 1: this period of time when water would sometimes we considered
17:48
Speaker 1: unsafe and you would drink of for minute beverage. But
17:50
Speaker 1: in this period, in this period of time, the average
17:53
Speaker 1: person wasn't drinking like distilled liquor, like brandy or something.
17:57
Speaker 1: It was going to be wine or need or beer.
18:03
Speaker 1: It is fascinating though. I love Let's give a shout
18:06
Speaker 1: out once again to Max's brother Alex for his famous
18:11
Speaker 1: eggnog recipe, which shows you just how boozy George Washington
18:15
Speaker 1: in particular was. Yeah, and I mean, you know, it's
18:17
Speaker 1: a good point. Like all of this stuff was relatively
18:20
Speaker 1: lower alcohol by volume than liquor, so it wasn't like
18:23
Speaker 1: they were waking up and pounding shots or something like that.
18:26
Speaker 1: This is something that you could maintain on. And I
18:28
Speaker 1: just got back from a trip to Germany and that's
18:32
Speaker 1: still the way they drink there. Everybody's people drinking kinds
18:37
Speaker 1: of beer for breakfast, you know, but it's like low
18:40
Speaker 1: a b V and you can maintain that. Me personally,
18:44
Speaker 1: beer makes me super sleepy, not really drunk, It just
18:48
Speaker 1: makes because to the amount you have to drink of
18:50
Speaker 1: it to get a buzz for me just puts me down.
18:53
Speaker 1: I feel like I've eaten three loaves of bread. So
18:56
Speaker 1: I just that part of it doesn't click for me.
18:58
Speaker 1: But it is kind of a built in safe hard
19:00
Speaker 1: to keep people from getting like way too rowdy. Because
19:03
Speaker 1: I noticed I didn't notice any bar fights while I
19:05
Speaker 1: was there. I didn't notice anybody like slashed or puking
19:07
Speaker 1: in the streets. I think it is a much more
19:10
Speaker 1: of a cultural part of their existence. Uh, and they
19:13
Speaker 1: know how to handle it better. Yeah. Last time I
19:16
Speaker 1: was in Germany, I one thing that startled me was
19:21
Speaker 1: he had to get used to the casual drinking. But
19:24
Speaker 1: you make a great point. I didn't see a ton
19:26
Speaker 1: of people slashed. I did see a guy pushing a
19:29
Speaker 1: baby carriage, and you know it's one of those like
19:32
Speaker 1: I call him action carriages where they've got like the
19:35
Speaker 1: big back two wheels, the one in the front. Since
19:38
Speaker 1: the tripod designer Delta design, they have these cup holders,
19:41
Speaker 1: and this guy was pushing this off the off the
19:44
Speaker 1: train and then he lifted up, Uh, he's coming out
19:48
Speaker 1: of the stage. He lifted up the holder and he
19:50
Speaker 1: had like a tall boy of some beer, which I'm
19:53
Speaker 1: assuming is very nice, and it seemed it seemed fine.
19:57
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's true. Lest we paint these factory workers
20:02
Speaker 1: or these brewery workers as some kind of like raging,
20:06
Speaker 1: wet brained alcoholics, we do have to point out yet
20:09
Speaker 1: it's a benefit for them because it's just a side
20:13
Speaker 1: benefit of where they work. You know, if they worked
20:14
Speaker 1: at a ham factory, they probably eat a lot of ham.
20:18
Speaker 1: It also wasn't a case of them just being completely
20:22
Speaker 1: dooped to the moon every day. It's just like you
20:26
Speaker 1: guys said, it's a more casual thing for them. But
20:30
Speaker 1: they didn't have cholera. And Snow goes to this other
20:33
Speaker 1: factory that is near the pump, and this one's at
20:37
Speaker 1: thirty seven Broad Street, and he finds out sixteen workers
20:42
Speaker 1: there died from cholera. Also, the factory was known to
20:47
Speaker 1: keep two tubs of water on hand for employees to
20:51
Speaker 1: drink at work, and that water was ding ding ding
20:55
Speaker 1: from the Broad Street pump. That's right. Then we have
20:57
Speaker 1: another case of an aunt and her knee who died
21:01
Speaker 1: because of cholera. And this was one that really perplexed
21:04
Speaker 1: Snow because the aunt did not live near Soho at all,
21:09
Speaker 1: nor did her niece, and there was no direct connection
21:13
Speaker 1: to the deadly pump, the deadly Broad Street pump. But
21:18
Speaker 1: he did some interviews like he like he was wont
21:21
Speaker 1: to do, and he talked to the woman's son who
21:24
Speaker 1: said his mother had lived in the Broad Street area
21:26
Speaker 1: at one point and liked the water so much that
21:30
Speaker 1: she had bottled it up and and saved it and
21:34
Speaker 1: like you know, had like a stockpile of it in
21:37
Speaker 1: her home. Let's be honest, what's that flavor coming from?
21:40
Speaker 1: Good Lord, it's coming from the poop, It's coming from
21:44
Speaker 1: coming from stuff, animal blood. If it's if it do
21:48
Speaker 1: you know what? It could be anything? It could be
21:52
Speaker 1: like a foot. It could just be a foot that's
21:55
Speaker 1: slowly rotting. She might just be in the foot flavored water. Yeah,
22:00
Speaker 1: it's possible. It Satia staro. And just to clarify, she
22:03
Speaker 1: she had had stockpiled some of it, but also was
22:06
Speaker 1: having like she had it delivered to her. I guess
22:07
Speaker 1: it's some kind of service. Um, that's pretty posh. Don't
22:12
Speaker 1: you think she would have had to spend a little
22:14
Speaker 1: extra to get special delivery of water from across town?
22:18
Speaker 1: That is so weird. The privilege here seems seems a
22:22
Speaker 1: little weird, right for modern example, It's almost like saying, uh,
22:26
Speaker 1: we've traced the latest clamydia outbreak too. Uh, sun basket
22:32
Speaker 1: the delivery service, but not Hello Fresh with sponsors, no show. Yeah,
22:38
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean it's and and it's it's it's
22:41
Speaker 1: sad because they died literally the next day. They were
22:44
Speaker 1: able to trace the pumping of the water that they
22:47
Speaker 1: drank to August thirty one, which was the day of
22:51
Speaker 1: the outbreak. Uh. And she and her niece would would
22:55
Speaker 1: take the air on the verandah and share a glass
23:00
Speaker 1: of cool water for refreshment, and then they died the
23:05
Speaker 1: very next day. Yeah. And Snow is a heroic scientist,
23:11
Speaker 1: just just so you know, folks, because he is still
23:16
Speaker 1: at this point proving a theory. By this point, he
23:20
Speaker 1: is more than certain that cholera is coming from the
23:25
Speaker 1: well water. But what happens next in September eighteen fifty
23:29
Speaker 1: four completely cements his understanding. He uses a microscope and
23:35
Speaker 1: takes a sample of water from the Broad Street pump
23:39
Speaker 1: and in it he sees white, flaculent particles. He goes
23:45
Speaker 1: to the board of Guardians over at St. James Parish
23:48
Speaker 1: and says, look, I know this might sound crazy, but
23:52
Speaker 1: you've got to disable this pump, remove the handle, shut
23:56
Speaker 1: it down. They're killing people. And the folks of the
23:59
Speaker 1: parish aren't totally buying his story. But again, so many
24:03
Speaker 1: people are contracting cholera and dying that they're desperate enough
24:08
Speaker 1: to try anything. So the handle gets removed on September eight,
24:14
Speaker 1: and people can't draw water from the pump. It doesn't work.
24:19
Speaker 1: It's such an easy, foolproof solution. And at this point,
24:24
Speaker 1: which yeah, and then cases dropped. Cases almost immediately drops.
24:29
Speaker 1: So let's get some fanfare. Noise Todctor John snow, wait wait,
24:34
Speaker 1: cut it, cut it, no, no, Max, cut it. Because
24:37
Speaker 1: the despite the fact that he was absolutely correct about this,
24:41
Speaker 1: public officials were still like, this guy's a crackpot. Well,
24:45
Speaker 1: that's the thing. He had to fight to the nail
24:47
Speaker 1: to even get them to listen to him at all,
24:49
Speaker 1: even in the slightest and he was the whole time risking,
24:53
Speaker 1: you know, professional uh annihilation essentially because he was, you know,
24:58
Speaker 1: pushing the He was the to his figure pushing the
25:01
Speaker 1: rock up the hill. Everyone was pointing at him and
25:03
Speaker 1: laughing and saying, why are you doing that, idiot? And
25:06
Speaker 1: so yeah, even though they did the thing that he suggested,
25:10
Speaker 1: um and the cases dropped precipitously, still wasn't enough. They
25:14
Speaker 1: refused to do anything to actually address the problem. How
25:19
Speaker 1: about that sounds familiar. It's like, oh, yeah, well, well,
25:21
Speaker 1: well we'll pinch off this one source, but we're not
25:25
Speaker 1: actually gonna go beyond that any further. So they refused
25:28
Speaker 1: to clean up all of these open sewers and cesspools,
25:30
Speaker 1: and the Board of Public Health put out a report
25:33
Speaker 1: saying literally that they saw no reason to take on
25:37
Speaker 1: Snow's beliefs um and they called what he was putting
25:41
Speaker 1: out their mere conjectures. Actually the word they used was
25:51
Speaker 1: suggestions cord, which feels like there's a Michael Scott somewhere
25:56
Speaker 1: in the parish or on the board of Uh. Yeah,
26:01
Speaker 1: they still they still insisted on attributing the cholera to
26:05
Speaker 1: mi asthma or bad air. But over the years, Snow's
26:10
Speaker 1: theory begins to gain traction because he is correct, and
26:16
Speaker 1: people would take his research and later use it to
26:21
Speaker 1: gain a new perspective, a new understanding of how to
26:24
Speaker 1: protect themselves from cholera. But there's one question he didn't answer.
26:29
Speaker 1: There's one thing that left him baffled. He could not
26:34
Speaker 1: prove where the contamination originated, Like, how did the okay,
26:39
Speaker 1: if it comes from the pump, how did the water
26:42
Speaker 1: get dirty in the first place? We joked about foot
26:44
Speaker 1: water or um let's be honest, we're all we're all
26:48
Speaker 1: mature people here. We can say it poop water. And
26:54
Speaker 1: and there was the the officials said, there's no way
26:57
Speaker 1: sewage from our town pipes leaked to the pump. And
27:01
Speaker 1: Snow said, I can't figure out whether the sew had
27:04
Speaker 1: just coming from open sewers. Maybe they're drains that are
27:08
Speaker 1: just going straight into the groundwater, maybe they're cesspools. But
27:13
Speaker 1: someone did solve the mystery, and they did it because
27:18
Speaker 1: they wanted to prove John Snow wrong. Let's be Reverend
27:22
Speaker 1: Henry Whitehead, last name, all one word. He said, the
27:26
Speaker 1: outbreak was not caused by tainted water. It was caused
27:30
Speaker 1: by wait for it, god, divine intervention. And so he
27:40
Speaker 1: investigated this, he couldn't find any proof and is published
27:44
Speaker 1: reports in fact confirm what John Snow said. And then
27:50
Speaker 1: John Snow was able to use Reverend Whitehead's research to
27:54
Speaker 1: learn something pretty interesting, because you see, Whitehead was conducting
27:58
Speaker 1: interviews of his own. That's right. He interviewed a woman
28:01
Speaker 1: who lived at forty Broad Street whose child had gotten
28:05
Speaker 1: cholera from a different source. Right. But since there weren't
28:09
Speaker 1: really any regulations as to you know, where sewage was
28:14
Speaker 1: supposed to go and and where one might wash, you know,
28:18
Speaker 1: soiled clothes, this mother would wash. You know, this is
28:22
Speaker 1: not the days of disposable diapers. This is the days
28:25
Speaker 1: of cloth diapers that you would reuse because no one
28:27
Speaker 1: could afford anything like that that that you to use
28:30
Speaker 1: to just use a sing a single use garment. That's absurd,
28:33
Speaker 1: because it was so they would be washed and this
28:36
Speaker 1: particular cholera uh stricken child's dirty diaper. And sorry' all
28:41
Speaker 1: meant to point out that it gets a little grocer
28:43
Speaker 1: from here. We're washed in a body of water that
28:47
Speaker 1: ran off into into the the thamps, which was directly
28:52
Speaker 1: um feeding that um that Broad Street pump. Yeah, so
28:58
Speaker 1: he said, this is what caused that horrific cholera outbreak,
29:01
Speaker 1: and about a year later a magazine of the time
29:05
Speaker 1: called the build publishers Reverend Whitehead's findings, and then they
29:11
Speaker 1: issue a challenge to the powers that be of Soho,
29:15
Speaker 1: and they say, closed that cesspool, repair the sewers and drains,
29:19
Speaker 1: because in spite of and there's a good point, in
29:23
Speaker 1: spite of the late numerous deaths, so they say, we
29:26
Speaker 1: have all the materials for a fresh epidemic or a
29:29
Speaker 1: fresh edemic. They did not use that portmanteau, but missed opportunity.
29:35
Speaker 1: And it's still it still took it still took a
29:39
Speaker 1: long time, like we're talking most we're talking spans of
29:43
Speaker 1: years before public officials did make those recommended improvements in
29:48
Speaker 1: that color infected kid who was an innocent did turn
29:52
Speaker 1: out to be the vector for the spread there in Soho.
29:56
Speaker 1: And all in all, the contamination OUs more than six deaths,
30:02
Speaker 1: but there would have been many more deaths were it
30:05
Speaker 1: not for John Snow's investigation, and were it not for
30:10
Speaker 1: the delightfully boozy fact brewery workers that he was able
30:16
Speaker 1: to he was able to use to kind of correlate
30:19
Speaker 1: the spread of this pump water and the spread of
30:24
Speaker 1: this contagion. There's a great Wired article. Uh, Noel Maximum,
30:30
Speaker 1: we both we all looked at this. Uh there's a
30:32
Speaker 1: great Wired article where you can read more in depth
30:37
Speaker 1: about his mapping process and about how he was able
30:42
Speaker 1: to convince the local authorities to finally like, can you
30:47
Speaker 1: imagine you have the They treated him a little like
30:50
Speaker 1: a crackpot. They were like, all right, well, doc, we'll
30:53
Speaker 1: take the handles off. But that's it, you know, we'll
30:57
Speaker 1: see what happens. So he was really fighting the hour
31:00
Speaker 1: for a while. So shout out to Randy Alfred over
31:02
Speaker 1: at Wired for that one. Like we said that he
31:04
Speaker 1: did leave a legacy. I mean, it's twenty twenty two,
31:06
Speaker 1: we're talking about him today, right absolutely. I mean the
31:09
Speaker 1: idea of sanitation is key, you know, to having a
31:13
Speaker 1: functional society where people aren't you know, falling out from illness.
31:18
Speaker 1: I mean, and again we know we're living in the
31:20
Speaker 1: midst of a pandemic right now, I mean, hopefully the
31:23
Speaker 1: back end of one, but yet there it is. I mean,
31:26
Speaker 1: we certainly had to adopt very quickly some very specific
31:30
Speaker 1: sanitation regulations in terms of you know, showing vaccination and
31:33
Speaker 1: wearing masks and all of that stuff, and it is
31:35
Speaker 1: in the service of the public good. Uh. And you
31:39
Speaker 1: know the COVID nineteen pandemic obviously killed thousands and thousands
31:42
Speaker 1: of people. Um, so you gotta take that stuff seriously.
31:45
Speaker 1: At the very least, public health officials did take it seriously.
31:50
Speaker 1: And I would argue that's largely because of the legacy
31:53
Speaker 1: of Dr John Snow. Yeah, agreed. If you go to
32:00
Speaker 1: the site of the original pump and soho today, you'll
32:03
Speaker 1: see something interesting. You'll see a plaque and you'll see
32:06
Speaker 1: a pump without a handle. That's on purpose. It is
32:10
Speaker 1: a monument to John Snow. The exact pump location is
32:15
Speaker 1: a little bit different. The street it's on is named
32:18
Speaker 1: Broadwick Street now, and you'll see a colored sidewalk slab.
32:23
Speaker 1: And you know what that slab is right outside, folks,
32:27
Speaker 1: the john Snow Pub where you can drop in and
32:30
Speaker 1: have a guarantee Colera free time. They did not make
32:37
Speaker 1: that guarantee. I just made that guarantee. But I feel
32:39
Speaker 1: like that's a safe one to make, right. I think
32:41
Speaker 1: it's a safe guarantee to make on their behalf. Then
32:45
Speaker 1: the beer and water collar free. But you know, as
32:49
Speaker 1: we know I mean today, I mean, you know, things
32:50
Speaker 1: like kombucha and you know, probiotics and all of that,
32:54
Speaker 1: and these kinds of drinks are known to be good
32:56
Speaker 1: for your health and um, you know, cultivating good gut
32:59
Speaker 1: back tierria that can help you fight disease. So the
33:02
Speaker 1: beer situation, while it also had to do with the
33:05
Speaker 1: fact that the water was different and that it was
33:07
Speaker 1: you know, treated, the actual fermented angle of it is
33:12
Speaker 1: something that has carried on today and it's still very
33:14
Speaker 1: popular necessarily associated with like okay, drink beer for your health,
33:17
Speaker 1: but fermented beverages are known to to do something very
33:21
Speaker 1: positive for people's you know, day to day health. Outside
33:24
Speaker 1: of Germany. I think in Germany should beer for your health?
33:29
Speaker 1: Uh brust But yeah, it's it's a fascinating story. And
33:34
Speaker 1: there is a study from the Journal of the Royal
33:37
Speaker 1: Society of Medicine that's not to not too out of date.
33:41
Speaker 1: It's from eleven and this study is called simply Alcohol
33:48
Speaker 1: and Cholera by Janet S. Guthrie and DARRYL oho Yan.
33:52
Speaker 1: The idea is what they did is they used gin.
33:56
Speaker 1: So this is not a one to one in comparison
33:58
Speaker 1: with the brewery, but they found and cholera did not
34:02
Speaker 1: survive more than one hour in any solution that's gin, uh,
34:09
Speaker 1: and it survived. Like they go through gin, red wine
34:13
Speaker 1: and ethanol and they look at the I guess the
34:16
Speaker 1: alcohol percentages in the mixture. So that study is fascinating
34:24
Speaker 1: to to read if you are if you want to
34:27
Speaker 1: get a little more in the weeds. But there is Yeah,
34:29
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of science to it. And just
34:31
Speaker 1: like you said, no, I think we could do an
34:34
Speaker 1: entire episode maybe on probiotics. The probiotics are live micro
34:40
Speaker 1: organisms that are supposed to, you know, help you when
34:43
Speaker 1: you consume them. Do you get they were drinking raw water?
34:46
Speaker 1: I haven't. I'm just asking out of curiosity, the same
34:48
Speaker 1: as raw milk. Isn't that illegal from like a water cow?
34:52
Speaker 1: It's from a manity, I got you, It's just raw water.
34:54
Speaker 1: It's uh like I got an older article. I saw
34:57
Speaker 1: a daily show a little litt bit about it. But
34:59
Speaker 1: I space look just like someone went out to a
35:01
Speaker 1: creak and got a bunch of water and now sells
35:03
Speaker 1: it for like for a to and a half gallon thing.
35:07
Speaker 1: Oh that's weird. Yeah, No, I've I've when I'm like
35:11
Speaker 1: living in the wild, or's something I've drank from creeks
35:14
Speaker 1: or streams? But would you pay forty dollars for a
35:18
Speaker 1: jug of raw water in your part? Wait? Us dollars? Yes?
35:25
Speaker 1: How did that change at all? Well? It could have
35:28
Speaker 1: been some other kind of currency, you know, it could
35:31
Speaker 1: have been it was forty roubles man, sign me up anyhow,
35:36
Speaker 1: walk down the street from that joke. This one was
35:39
Speaker 1: a blast, and we hope that we hope that you
35:42
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode of Folks. We also hope that you
35:45
Speaker 1: take some time to check out some of our earlier
35:47
Speaker 1: episodes on London. There's always something weird going on there.
35:52
Speaker 1: If you want a particularly grizzly story about London and street,
36:00
Speaker 1: then go over to our show Stuff They Don't Want
36:03
Speaker 1: You to Know and check out was Benjamin Franklin a
36:06
Speaker 1: serial killer? Not gonna spoil the answer, but that was
36:10
Speaker 1: a wild drive, don't you think? No? It was? I mean, yeah,
36:13
Speaker 1: he definitely was up to some some weird stuff, but
36:16
Speaker 1: no spoilers here. Check it out, and also check out
36:19
Speaker 1: our previous episode on the Great Stink of London and
36:21
Speaker 1: check out our sister podcast Stuff you Missed in History Class?
36:24
Speaker 1: Who've also delved into some of this London sanitation nonsense.
36:29
Speaker 1: And Uh, in the meantime, why not to find us
36:32
Speaker 1: on the internet. Uh, we are on Facebook at Ridiculous Historians,
36:38
Speaker 1: as any of our Facebook group. You can also find
36:40
Speaker 1: us on Instagram as a show or as human people.
36:43
Speaker 1: I am at how now Noel Brown exclusively on Instagram,
36:46
Speaker 1: But then I believe you're in two internet locales under
36:49
Speaker 1: this persona. Yes, you can find me folks on Instagram,
36:54
Speaker 1: where in a burst of creativity, I have calling myself
36:56
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36:59
Speaker 1: If you pop on over there and befriend me, then
37:03
Speaker 1: you will get behind the scenes looks at some of
37:05
Speaker 1: the stuff I'm working on, research I'm doing, and my
37:08
Speaker 1: various strange non work or semi work related adventures. For instance,
37:14
Speaker 1: over on Instagram, check out my reels. I have just
37:17
Speaker 1: discovered a very strange subterranean passage here in Atlanta, and
37:23
Speaker 1: it goes far beyond the footprint of the building. I'm
37:26
Speaker 1: quite excited about it. I'm going back. I want to
37:29
Speaker 1: see how far the tunnel goes. So that might be
37:31
Speaker 1: the end of me. We'll see. But in the meantime,
37:34
Speaker 1: you can also follow me on Twitter if you're not
37:35
Speaker 1: on Instagram and client, that's happen bull in hs W.
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Speaker 1: And while you are there on Twitter, why not follow
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Speaker 1: our good pal Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can find
37:45
Speaker 1: me exclusively on Twitter at at L Underscore Max Williams.
37:49
Speaker 1: So you will mostly see me retweeting about Star Trek,
37:52
Speaker 1: which was a very exciting day yesterday. Oh yeah, the
37:56
Speaker 1: new series premiered. Oh no, it didn't premiere, It was
37:59
Speaker 1: just on now. P card trailer which was not very
38:01
Speaker 1: exciting for me and my eight year old self came
38:03
Speaker 1: out and then But mostly you just find me trolling
38:06
Speaker 1: Ben because you know, let's be honestly deserves it. Yeah,
38:09
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