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This-laughing-condition-was-100-FATAL · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: Today's story is a medical mystery that comes from the
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Speaker 1: remote forests of Papua New Guinea, and let's just say
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Speaker 1: the mystery illness is absolutely horrifying.
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Speaker 2: I mean, the symptoms alone.
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Speaker 1: Are straight nightmare fuel. But perhaps the worst part of
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Speaker 1: this mystery disease is how it was determined that it
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Speaker 1: was being spread, something that took a long time to
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Speaker 1: figure out.
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Speaker 2: But my goodness, the way this thing was being spread
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Speaker 2: is just you'll see.
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Speaker 1: But before we get into today's story, if you're a
0:29
Speaker 1: fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format,
0:32
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0:34
Speaker 1: we do, and we upload once a week. So if
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0:50
Speaker 1: let's get into today's story. On a sunny afternoon in
1:07
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen fifty three, a young woman named
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Speaker 1: A stood in the middle of a huge sugarcane grove
1:12
Speaker 1: in an isolated forest in Papula, New Guinea and around
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Speaker 1: her were all her relatives and neighbors, and they were
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Speaker 1: all there to mourn the loss of A's sister, whose
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Speaker 1: name was Tawn. She had passed away three days earlier
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Speaker 1: from a very mysterious illness that people in Ann's village
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Speaker 1: called kuru, And in their language, the word kuru meant trembling. Now,
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Speaker 1: keep in mind, this particular mystery illness that was called
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Speaker 1: kuru only affected the people in On and Ton's village.
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Speaker 1: This is like a hyper specific illness that only happened
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Speaker 1: inside of this little forest to these people. But On
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Speaker 1: and the rest of the people in her village had
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Speaker 1: seen this happen over and over and over again every year,
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Speaker 1: and so they knew what happened when you got kuru
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Speaker 1: because it was always the same. As soon as you
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Speaker 1: began to tremble, that was kind of like the first
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Speaker 1: sign one year or so. After that moment, you lose
2:02
Speaker 1: control of all the muscles in your body until you die.
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Speaker 1: And so in Ton's case, so On's sister, she had
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Speaker 1: watched this happen exactly as it did for everybody else
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Speaker 1: that ever got this illness. She started with the tremors,
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Speaker 1: and then before long she couldn't even stand up or
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Speaker 1: walk around. And then finally her sister lost control of
2:19
Speaker 1: the muscles in her throat and so she couldn't eat
2:21
Speaker 1: despite being hungry, and so ultimately she died of starvation,
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Speaker 1: which is like one of the worst ways to die.
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Speaker 1: It's incredibly slow and very very painful. And so ever,
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Speaker 1: since Ton's death three days earlier, the village had been
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Speaker 1: performing all these rituals and prayers in an attempt to
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Speaker 1: assist Ton's spirit on its way into the afterlife. And
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Speaker 1: this type of very involved funeral was absolutely customary in
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Speaker 1: An's culture. On and her family and all of these
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Speaker 1: villagers were members of the four A people who are
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Speaker 1: native to Papua New Guinea, which is an island just
2:51
Speaker 1: north of Australia.
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Speaker 2: And in nineteen fifty three.
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Speaker 1: When the story is taking place, the four A people
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Speaker 1: numbered about eleven thousand people. And remember they live in
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Speaker 1: a very isolated forest. They are basically cut off from
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Speaker 1: the world for the most part, but they were beginning
3:05
Speaker 1: to fear that they were going to go extinct because
3:08
Speaker 1: of Kuru. Every year the Forura people lost two hundred
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Speaker 1: people to Kuru, and for the most part, the victims
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Speaker 1: were women like disproportionately, so, which made it even more
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Speaker 1: likely that the Fora people would go extinct, because if
3:20
Speaker 1: you lose all the women, you can't have any more kids.
3:23
Speaker 1: And in fact, by nineteen fifty three, so many women
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Speaker 1: had died from kuru that by this point there were
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Speaker 1: three times as many men as there were women. In fact,
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Speaker 1: the leading cause of death for Fora women was kuru.
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Speaker 1: But the Fora people did not view koru as just
3:38
Speaker 1: an illness. They actually viewed it as a curse. In fact,
3:42
Speaker 1: that was completely accepted that that is exactly what it was.
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Speaker 2: This is not like getting the cold.
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Speaker 1: Somebody did this to you, like a sorcerer somewhere, some
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Speaker 1: unnamed sorcerer that's like coming into the forest, is targeting
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Speaker 1: these women and cursing them with kuru.
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Speaker 2: And so the Fora.
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Speaker 1: People put on these really elaborate funerals, mostly to ward
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Speaker 1: off these dark magic sorcerers that were casting koru spells.
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Speaker 2: And so the Foura.
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Speaker 1: People believed that if they just nailed the funeral procedure
4:10
Speaker 1: for somebody who has just died from kuru, the kind
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Speaker 1: of three day long, all these rituals and prayers they
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Speaker 1: have to do, if the village is able to nail
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Speaker 1: it perfectly, then the deceased who's passed away from kuru.
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Speaker 2: So in this case on Sister.
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Speaker 1: Town, her spirit, as a result of this perfect funeral
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Speaker 1: would be able to kind of rise up and actually
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Speaker 1: seek revenge on the sorcerer who killed the person. And
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Speaker 1: so these funerals were basically like kind of taking the dead,
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Speaker 1: rising their spirit and sending them off to go kill
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Speaker 1: the sorcerer and so on and the rest of our villagers.
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Speaker 1: They went through this very elaborate process for on Sister Ton,
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Speaker 1: and at the end of it they did feel like
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Speaker 1: they had really nailed it, and so they felt confident
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Speaker 1: that Ton's spirit was going to rise up and get
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Speaker 1: her revenge.
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Speaker 2: A few weeks.
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Speaker 1: After on Sister's funeral, An was standing over in open
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Speaker 1: fire and she was cooking some pork and sweet potatoes,
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Speaker 1: and as she went to flip the meat over, she
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Speaker 1: reached her hand out and she noticed her hand was trembling,
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Speaker 1: which is the first sign of someone with kuru. Now,
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Speaker 1: On told herself that, oh, no, I don't have kuru.
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Speaker 1: It's just because I was working really hard today and
5:14
Speaker 1: I'm tired, Like that's all it is. But she knew
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Speaker 1: deep down she may have been cursed. On did her
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Speaker 1: best to kind of hide her trembling hands. However, after
5:23
Speaker 1: about a month from that first time she noticed her
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Speaker 1: hand shaking, she noticed she wasn't really able to stand
5:28
Speaker 1: up without kind of losing her balance because her legs
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Speaker 1: were starting to tremble. And finally, when she basically couldn't
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Speaker 1: even stand up without assistance. This is again, only one
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Speaker 1: month after that first tremble, she knew she had kuru,
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Speaker 1: and On already knew that there was absolutely nothing anybody
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Speaker 1: in her village could do to stop this from killing her.
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Speaker 2: Kuru was a one.
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Speaker 1: Hundred percent death sentence, and so if you got kuru,
5:52
Speaker 1: it's like the whole village just began prepping for your
5:55
Speaker 1: death because they had to be ready to do this big,
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Speaker 1: ritualistic funeral. And so imagine that you have this mystery
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Speaker 1: illness or curse or whatever you want to think it is,
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Speaker 1: and you're.
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Speaker 2: Just counting down the days until you die.
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Speaker 1: But for On, even though she had seen this happen
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Speaker 1: so many times before and just kind of knew there's
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Speaker 1: nothing she could do, she couldn't stand the idea of
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Speaker 1: having this horrible, slow painful death, and so she decided,
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Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to do something drastic that
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Speaker 1: basically nobody.
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Speaker 2: Else had done before, who had Kuru.
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Speaker 1: So for context, at this time, the four A people
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Speaker 1: had been totally isolated from other people in the world
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Speaker 1: for thousands of years.
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Speaker 2: They basically lived in this.
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Speaker 1: Little part of Papua New Guinea in the forest, and
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Speaker 1: nobody else contacted them.
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Speaker 2: They were totally isolated.
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Speaker 1: However, starting in the nineteen fifties, some Australian colonists and
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Speaker 1: researchers and police actually began kind of making their way
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Speaker 1: in and around the four A people's area. So they
6:49
Speaker 1: were making contact, albeit not necessarily direct contact. But the
6:53
Speaker 1: four A people were seeing basically white people wandering around
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Speaker 1: in and around their forest from time to time, and
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Speaker 1: it was always very shocking when they would see these
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Speaker 1: people because they dressed completely differently, they looked totally different.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's like two worlds totally colliding.
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Speaker 1: And generally speaking, On and the rest of the people
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Speaker 1: in her village, they did not like having these Australian
7:14
Speaker 1: people kind of wandering around. But On is thinking, you know,
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Speaker 1: the people in my village, the four A people, they
7:20
Speaker 1: have no solutions for me. So maybe these Australian people
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Speaker 1: that have kind of popped up, maybe they have some
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Speaker 1: answers about what I can do to stop myself from
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Speaker 1: dying from this horrible curse. Keep in mind, by going
7:33
Speaker 1: out and seeking help from these outsiders, it was like
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Speaker 1: On would be breaking a huge custom. This is so
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Speaker 1: taboo for the four A people, and very likely, even
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Speaker 1: if she was able to find a solution from these outsiders,
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Speaker 1: it's not clear if she would have been welcomed back
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Speaker 1: into her village, and so this is a truly desperate
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Speaker 1: measure she's taking, but she really felt like she had
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Speaker 1: no choice. So even as her body trembled from kuru,
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Speaker 1: On managed to stand up using a stick and she
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Speaker 1: began kind of hobbling her way quietly and discreetly out
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Speaker 1: of her village, something that she really never did. And eventually,
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Speaker 1: after hobbling her way out of sight of the four
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Speaker 1: A people, she began making her way through the woods
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Speaker 1: and she eventually came to a clearing where there was
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Speaker 1: this house, and it was obvious this is not a
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Speaker 1: house that the Fura people have built. This is somebody
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Speaker 1: from the outside who's built something kind of near where
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Speaker 1: they were living, and so On wandered up to this house,
8:25
Speaker 1: not really sure what to do, but she went up
8:27
Speaker 1: and knocked on the door, and a second later it
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Speaker 1: opened up, and it's this Australian anthropologist named Ronald Burnt,
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Speaker 1: who actually On had seen before. He had been coming
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Speaker 1: through her village a couple of times, attempting to interview
8:39
Speaker 1: people to learn more about the fora people. She knew
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Speaker 1: that nobody wanted to talk to him, but you know,
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Speaker 1: she had seen him before, and so she was relieved,
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Speaker 1: this is someone that I'm somewhat familiar with. And so
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Speaker 1: as Ronald is staring back at her, and Ronald's pretty
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Speaker 1: tall and skinny, he's got glasses on, he's dressed like
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Speaker 1: a typical Australian in the nineteen fifties, and he's looking
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Speaker 1: at On, and On begins to try to tell him
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Speaker 1: what's going on with her. And as she began to talk,
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Speaker 1: the words she was saying were coming out all garbled,
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Speaker 1: and she realized that the Koru curse was now affecting
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Speaker 1: her throat the muscles in her neck, and she was.
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Speaker 2: Not able to speak.
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Speaker 1: But as it happened, Ronald, who was very familiar with
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Speaker 1: the four A people. He could tell based on just
9:17
Speaker 1: the way she was acting and how desperate she looked
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Speaker 1: that very likely this woman was here because she believed
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Speaker 1: she had koru. And Ronald, who had learned about kuru
9:26
Speaker 1: after studying the four A people, he had done some
9:28
Speaker 1: research on it, and he believed it was entirely psychosomatic,
9:32
Speaker 1: that this was not an actual illness. Basically, he believed
9:35
Speaker 1: koru was a cute hysteria, that these four A people
9:39
Speaker 1: were just going crazy and convincing themselves that they had
9:42
Speaker 1: this illness. And I guess that kind of manifested their
9:45
Speaker 1: death a year later, and so Ronald interrupted on, who
9:48
Speaker 1: again is struggling to talk, and he was able to
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Speaker 1: communicate to her in her language that you do not
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Speaker 1: have koru. You are hysterical, this is in your head,
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Speaker 1: and you should go now. And then he shut the
9:58
Speaker 1: door on her and on her. She had no idea
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Speaker 1: what to do. She was embarrassed, she was terrified that
10:03
Speaker 1: maybe somebody from her village had seen her come out here,
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Speaker 1: and so just trembling and feeling so alone and so scared,
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Speaker 1: she turned around and just went back to her village.
10:12
Speaker 1: Nine months later, Ann's condition had severely deteriorated. She basically
10:17
Speaker 1: was following exactly the process of every other person she
10:20
Speaker 1: had seen with Kuru. She had lost virtually all the
10:22
Speaker 1: control of her body. She could barely sip water. She
10:25
Speaker 1: was feeling absolutely horrible. I mean, she knew she was
10:28
Speaker 1: closing in on death, and she had not gone back
10:31
Speaker 1: out to try to get help from outsiders. That interaction
10:34
Speaker 1: with Ronald had kind of destroyed her hope, and so
10:36
Speaker 1: she did go back and just was kind of waiting
10:38
Speaker 1: to die, just like everybody else in her village did.
10:41
Speaker 2: But for on.
10:42
Speaker 1: The physical symptoms of Kuru that she was experiencing were
10:45
Speaker 1: undoubtedly terrible, but they were not as bad, at least
10:48
Speaker 1: on as the other side of Kuru. So, in addition
10:51
Speaker 1: to referring to this curse as kuru, which meant trembling,
10:54
Speaker 1: sometimes four A people would refer to this curse, this
10:58
Speaker 1: illness as the laughing death. And it's because during the
11:01
Speaker 1: terminal stage, so the end stage of Kuru, when you're
11:05
Speaker 1: just about to die, you just begin laughing. It doesn't
11:08
Speaker 1: matter what you're thinking about. This is not an actual laugh.
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Speaker 1: You're not thinking something's funny. It's like you could be
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Speaker 1: weeping and totally depressed because you know you're gonna die,
11:17
Speaker 1: but you keep hysterically laughing, which makes your whole body
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Speaker 1: sore from constantly laughing over and over again. And On
11:24
Speaker 1: was beginning to experience that she would be weeping and
11:27
Speaker 1: laughing at the same time.
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Speaker 2: And think about this.
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Speaker 1: Everybody else who's in the village, they know what this means,
11:33
Speaker 1: and so their preparations for her death are only getting
11:35
Speaker 1: more and more ramped up. They're getting ready for the
11:38
Speaker 1: big ritualistic funeral they're going to give to On and
11:40
Speaker 1: so On. As she's hysterically laughing, is fully aware that
11:44
Speaker 1: everybody's just waiting for her to die. And finally, just
11:47
Speaker 1: a few weeks after she had begun, the laughing side
11:50
Speaker 1: of kuru On would pass away, almost exactly one year
11:54
Speaker 1: from when she first noticed the trembling in her hand
11:56
Speaker 1: when she was cooking over that fire. If you don't
12:03
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12:18
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12:21
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12:24
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13:18
Speaker 1: Bollin's Medical Mysteries after Ann's death. More and more people
13:28
Speaker 1: just kept on getting kuu, and over the next seven
13:30
Speaker 1: years it was like clockwork. Two hundred plus four A
13:33
Speaker 1: people died from kuru every year and nobody had any
13:36
Speaker 1: idea how to stop it. It just became a part
13:39
Speaker 1: of their lives, and again they kept getting closer and
13:42
Speaker 1: closer to being extinct.
13:43
Speaker 2: It was this really terrifying time. Seven years after Ann's.
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Speaker 1: Death, So in nineteen sixty one, a medical anthropologist named
13:51
Speaker 1: Shirley Lindenbaum was sitting in her office at City University
13:55
Speaker 1: in New York reading over old scientific articles, and as
13:59
Speaker 1: she would just kind of flipped through them, she noticed
14:01
Speaker 1: there was an article from an Australian anthropologist named Ronald Burnt,
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Speaker 1: the same guy who had turned on away and told her, no,
14:08
Speaker 1: you don't have kurru.
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Speaker 2: That's not real.
14:10
Speaker 1: It's psychosomatic. And in this article Ronald outlined these symptoms,
14:14
Speaker 1: these symptoms that the four A people were exhibiting that
14:18
Speaker 1: obviously were not real. They had tremors, loss of muscle control,
14:21
Speaker 1: and huge mood swings. But Ronald was like, it's all
14:24
Speaker 1: in their head. It's not a real disease. But to Shirley,
14:27
Speaker 1: as she's reading this, she's thinking, why has Ronald decided
14:31
Speaker 1: this has to be psychosomatic?
14:33
Speaker 2: These symptoms seem.
14:34
Speaker 1: Like a real disease, like a neurological condition. Something must
14:38
Speaker 1: be attacking their brains causing them to have.
14:41
Speaker 2: These symptoms and then die.
14:43
Speaker 1: But when Shirley, just out of curiosity, began to do
14:46
Speaker 1: some additional research on the Kurou disease or whatever you
14:49
Speaker 1: want to call it, she discovered that there was basically
14:51
Speaker 1: no real research other than Ronald's about this weird illness.
14:56
Speaker 1: And so she decided, you know what, there's a gap
14:58
Speaker 1: in the research, and I'm gonna fill it. I'm going
15:00
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on with the four A
15:02
Speaker 1: people and this weird thing called kuru. So the following summer,
15:06
Speaker 1: when Shirley finally had some time, she left New York
15:09
Speaker 1: and flew to Papua New Guinea and she made her
15:11
Speaker 1: way into the forest to contact the Forura people, and
15:14
Speaker 1: eventually she reached some of these small villages that contained
15:17
Speaker 1: four A people, and the four A people, even if
15:20
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily embrace Shirley, many of them were open
15:23
Speaker 1: to at least speaking to her and talking about their culture,
15:26
Speaker 1: their customs, their history, and of course talking about Koru,
15:29
Speaker 1: this curse, and eventually Shirley made her way into this
15:32
Speaker 1: one particular fora village where she actually saw a white
15:36
Speaker 1: man just walking.
15:37
Speaker 2: Around in this village.
15:39
Speaker 1: So he really stood out, and so immediately Shirley walked
15:42
Speaker 1: up to this guy and he introduced himself as doctor
15:44
Speaker 1: Michael Alpers, and he told Shirley he had been living
15:47
Speaker 1: in these villages with the four A people for several
15:50
Speaker 1: months because he was studying Koru. He wanted to figure out,
15:53
Speaker 1: you know, what's actually causing it, because he also felt
15:56
Speaker 1: very skeptical at the idea that this is just psychosomatic
15:59
Speaker 1: that did not seemed very plausible. And so Shirley and
16:02
Speaker 1: doctor Alpers were totally aligned and they're like, hey, let's
16:05
Speaker 1: swap notes and do this together. And so Shirley began
16:08
Speaker 1: telling doctor Alpers about what she had learned so far,
16:11
Speaker 1: and she said that when she showed up in Papua
16:13
Speaker 1: New Guinea, she believed what this was, what kuu was,
16:17
Speaker 1: was a genetic brain disease, meaning it would be passed
16:20
Speaker 1: down from you know, parent to child and so on
16:22
Speaker 1: and so forth. But she quickly discovered that after conducting
16:26
Speaker 1: research and talking to the four a people in these villages,
16:29
Speaker 1: that that was not the case. This was not something
16:31
Speaker 1: that went from parent to child. Instead, kuru appeared to
16:34
Speaker 1: spread amongst tight knit social groups within these villages, which
16:39
Speaker 1: seemed to indicate this was actually a contagious disease, not
16:42
Speaker 1: a genetic one. And so she told doctor Alpers that
16:45
Speaker 1: now her working theory was that kuu was actually a
16:49
Speaker 1: contagious type of encephalitis, which is inflammation of the brain.
16:53
Speaker 1: But Shirley also said to doctor Alpers that that did
16:56
Speaker 1: not explain why so many victims of kuu were female.
17:00
Speaker 1: And Shirley also said to doctor Alpers that you know,
17:02
Speaker 1: I've been around loads of people with kuru and I
17:05
Speaker 1: don't have it, so how can it be contagious? Doctor
17:08
Speaker 1: Alpers agreed with everything Shirley was saying, and in fact
17:11
Speaker 1: had come to a similar conclusion himself, which meant he
17:14
Speaker 1: also had the same questions why only women and.
17:17
Speaker 2: Why wasn't he getting it?
17:18
Speaker 1: But he told Sureley that when he began trying to
17:21
Speaker 1: answer this question, he discovered that actually, in addition to
17:24
Speaker 1: lots of women getting kuru, also lots of kids got kuru,
17:29
Speaker 1: not necessarily parent to child, but also children in these
17:32
Speaker 1: villages seemed to be slightly more susceptible to getting Kuu
17:35
Speaker 1: than men, and in fact, doctor Alpers told Shirley that
17:38
Speaker 1: right now there was a twelve year old boy who
17:41
Speaker 1: was in the final stage of Kuru, so the laughing stage,
17:44
Speaker 1: the terminal stage, and because this boy's parents knew their
17:47
Speaker 1: son was going to die, they were so desperate and
17:50
Speaker 1: grief stricken that when doctor Alpers came by and offered
17:53
Speaker 1: to do an autopsy on their son when he passed
17:55
Speaker 1: to try to learn more, the parents agreed, even though
17:58
Speaker 1: that meant totally breaking four A custom.
18:01
Speaker 2: So this was like major taboo decision.
18:04
Speaker 1: But again, the four A people are getting more and
18:06
Speaker 1: more desperate as they go closer and closer to the
18:09
Speaker 1: brink of extinction from Kuru. A few days later, doctor
18:12
Speaker 1: Alpers found Shirley and he told her that the twelve
18:15
Speaker 1: year old boy had passed away and so now it
18:18
Speaker 1: was time to conduct the autopsy, and so he led
18:20
Speaker 1: Shirley to a clearing in the woods that was kind
18:22
Speaker 1: of far away from the eyes of the villagers, and
18:25
Speaker 1: there was a makeshift autopsy table with this boy's body
18:27
Speaker 1: on it. And while Shirley really could not stand to
18:30
Speaker 1: watch this actually happen. She did go over after doctor
18:34
Speaker 1: Alpers had opened up the boy's skull, revealing his brain,
18:37
Speaker 1: and he yelled to her, Hey, you have to come
18:38
Speaker 1: over here and look at this. And so Shirley walked
18:41
Speaker 1: over and she looked down, and even though she had
18:43
Speaker 1: not seen a human brain before, right in front of her,
18:46
Speaker 1: she knew right away there's something terribly wrong with that brain.
18:50
Speaker 1: His brain was completely shriveled up and covered in holes,
18:55
Speaker 1: as if like a worm had drilled through his brain.
18:58
Speaker 1: And so Shirley and doctor Alper immediately knew this brain
19:02
Speaker 1: has to be sent off for further testing because something's
19:05
Speaker 1: happening here that's not psychosomatic. This is a real disease
19:09
Speaker 1: that is killing these people. About a year later, Shirley
19:12
Speaker 1: was back home in New York in her office when
19:15
Speaker 1: she received a letter from a research team at the
19:17
Speaker 1: United States National Institutes of Health or NIH for short.
19:21
Speaker 1: And the NIH is one of the largest medical research
19:24
Speaker 1: facilities in the world, and it was where Shirley and
19:26
Speaker 1: doctor Alpers had sent off that boy's brain for further study.
19:30
Speaker 1: And so by getting this letter, Shirley knew she was
19:32
Speaker 1: going to get information about whatever they discovered in this
19:36
Speaker 1: boy's brain, and so she ripped it open and pulled
19:38
Speaker 1: out the report and began reading. And the researchers said
19:41
Speaker 1: they had spent the last year, you know, studying this
19:44
Speaker 1: brain tissue.
19:45
Speaker 2: And while they still didn't really.
19:46
Speaker 1: Understand how kuu even happened and what caused it, you know,
19:50
Speaker 1: was it a virus or an infection, They didn't know,
19:52
Speaker 1: but they had discovered something about how kuru spread. During
19:57
Speaker 1: one of their experiments, the NIH researchers had injected some
20:00
Speaker 1: tissue from this boy's brain into a chimpanzee, and very
20:04
Speaker 1: quickly that chimpanzee developed kuru.
20:07
Speaker 2: And so this told the researchers that.
20:09
Speaker 1: Yes, kuru was contagious and it spread through infected brain tissue.
20:14
Speaker 1: But how one person's infected brain got into another person's
20:18
Speaker 1: brain was the big mystery.
20:20
Speaker 2: But at least they had found something.
20:21
Speaker 1: But as surely read this because she had done all
20:24
Speaker 1: that research. When she went into the forests of Papua
20:27
Speaker 1: New Guinea and spoke to all these four a people,
20:30
Speaker 1: she had learned a lot about what they did on
20:32
Speaker 1: a day to day basis, and you know, what their
20:34
Speaker 1: various customs and rituals were and she actually knew exactly
20:38
Speaker 1: how something like this could happen, something that only the
20:41
Speaker 1: four A people were doing. During her research in Papua
20:45
Speaker 1: New Guinea, Shirley had learned that for A people believe
20:48
Speaker 1: all humans have five distinct souls. There was that one
20:52
Speaker 1: soul that four A people believe they could basically summon
20:55
Speaker 1: up out of a deceased person that would then go
20:57
Speaker 1: avenge that person's death. About how all those people who
21:01
Speaker 1: died from kuru, you know, they believed that was a
21:03
Speaker 1: curse from some sorcerer, and so a big part of
21:06
Speaker 1: that funeral process was to call out that soul to
21:08
Speaker 1: go avenge their death, go find the sorcerer and kill them.
21:12
Speaker 2: But that was just one soul. There were four others.
21:15
Speaker 1: And of these four others, there was one called the Quila,
21:18
Speaker 1: which was the most dangerous. Quila meant flesh in the
21:22
Speaker 1: four A people's language, and this soul was like a
21:25
Speaker 1: manifestation of death and decay, because that's what our flesh does.
21:29
Speaker 2: It just kind of gradually dies all the time.
21:31
Speaker 1: And so they looked at the flesh as being a
21:33
Speaker 1: really bad thing, and so.
21:35
Speaker 2: They believed after someone died, their.
21:37
Speaker 1: Flesh needed to be stored properly, otherwise it would pollute
21:42
Speaker 1: the air and cause more death and decay for other
21:45
Speaker 1: people that were still alive. And the safest place, according
21:48
Speaker 1: to the four A people, for the quila to be
21:51
Speaker 1: stored so human flesh was inside of a woman's body.
21:55
Speaker 1: And the reason for this is four A people believe
21:57
Speaker 1: women's bodies are much more resilient than men, and so
22:00
Speaker 1: if anybody could stand holding quila inside of them, it
22:04
Speaker 1: would be the women. But there was a very specific
22:07
Speaker 1: process that the Fora women had to follow in order
22:10
Speaker 1: to kind of put this quila inside of themselves, and
22:13
Speaker 1: multiple Fora women had explained this totally bizarre process to
22:18
Speaker 1: Sureley when she was out there talking to the people
22:20
Speaker 1: in the village.
22:21
Speaker 2: The way it worked is, a few.
22:22
Speaker 1: Days after a FORA member has passed away, this huge
22:26
Speaker 1: feast is prepared, except the feast only consists of the quila. Basically,
22:31
Speaker 1: the person who is dead is chopped up and prepared
22:35
Speaker 1: by the women like their entire body gets consumed. Now
22:38
Speaker 1: keep in mind, anybody hearing about this who's not a
22:41
Speaker 1: member of the Fora people would be like, oh my god,
22:44
Speaker 1: that's horrible. But to for A people, this ritualistic cannibalism
22:49
Speaker 1: was actually an.
22:50
Speaker 2: Act of love.
22:51
Speaker 1: The idea was, by having these women consume the quila,
22:54
Speaker 1: consuming the dead person, you're protecting the living because you
22:57
Speaker 1: don't want the quila out and about polluting the air,
23:00
Speaker 1: and you are respecting the dead. But remember, Koru got
23:04
Speaker 1: spread through infected brain tissue, and it just so happened
23:08
Speaker 1: that during these funeral feasts, when they were consuming the quila,
23:12
Speaker 1: the brain of the deceased person was an absolute delicacy,
23:16
Speaker 1: and so the brain was reserved for close female relatives
23:19
Speaker 1: of the deceased person. And so during On's sister's funeral,
23:23
Speaker 1: so when Ton passed, what do you think? On eight?
23:25
Speaker 1: She ate Ton's brain And then also critically, Shirley had
23:30
Speaker 1: learned that a lot of these women who were given
23:32
Speaker 1: the brain this delicacy, during these funerals, they would often
23:35
Speaker 1: sneak little pieces of the brain and hand it out
23:38
Speaker 1: to kids as like a little treat.
23:40
Speaker 2: They would take the brain and eat it.
23:41
Speaker 1: You know, nobody knew that's why the kids were also
23:44
Speaker 1: getting kuru. And so a few years after this incredible
23:47
Speaker 1: discovery by Shirley about how kuru was being passed along
23:51
Speaker 1: the Australian colonial government banned the practice of ritualistic cannibalism
23:56
Speaker 1: in Papua New Guinea. Basically, they were telling the four
23:58
Speaker 1: A people to stop eating the dead, it's what's killing you.
24:02
Speaker 1: And the Forura people, who were very desperate to stop
24:05
Speaker 1: being killed by kuru, they took to it, stopped eating
24:08
Speaker 1: each other, and so kuru was virtually eradicated, and the
24:12
Speaker 1: Fora population, instead of sliding towards extinction, actually began to
24:16
Speaker 1: grow really fast, and today the total population has at
24:20
Speaker 1: least doubled. And also, just to close this out, one
24:23
Speaker 1: final note is it took until nineteen ninety to actually
24:26
Speaker 1: figure out what was going on inside of these people's
24:29
Speaker 1: bodies when they had kuru, because back in the sixties,
24:32
Speaker 1: when they figured out how not to get kuru, nobody
24:35
Speaker 1: understood what was even happening. It was just like, don't
24:38
Speaker 1: eat other people and you'll be okay. But that's all
24:40
Speaker 1: they knew. And while the process in the human body
24:43
Speaker 1: that caused kuru remained a mystery for many decades, after
24:47
Speaker 1: Shirley's big discovery in the nineteen nineties, researchers did finally
24:51
Speaker 1: figure out what's actually going on. Basically, somebody with kuru
24:55
Speaker 1: has these proteins in their brain called preons that fold
24:59
Speaker 1: wrong into the wrong shape and then cannot function properly.
25:02
Speaker 1: This loss of protein function rapidly kills brain cells, which
25:06
Speaker 1: in turn shrivels up the brain and causes all those
25:09
Speaker 1: holes all over it. Okay, here is the clip from
25:15
Speaker 1: our newest episode of Mister Ballin's Medical Mysteries.
25:18
Speaker 2: Enjoy.
25:20
Speaker 1: A forty year old man stood next to his teenage
25:22
Speaker 1: daughter in a hospital room, clutching her hand as she
25:25
Speaker 1: laid there, unconscious on a gurney. A flurry of doctors
25:28
Speaker 1: and nurses moved all around them, securing an oxygen mask
25:31
Speaker 1: over the girl's nose and jabbing her arms with needles.
25:35
Speaker 1: The father couldn't believe this was really happening. Just an
25:38
Speaker 1: hour ago, he'd come home to find his daughter passed
25:41
Speaker 1: out on the floor of the kitchen. Her face and
25:43
Speaker 1: neck were totally beat red. He didn't know what had happened,
25:46
Speaker 1: but his best guess was that maybe she had accidentally
25:49
Speaker 1: overheated the oven while making food, and then when she
25:52
Speaker 1: opened up the oven door, a rush of heat came
25:54
Speaker 1: out and it burned her. He didn't know what else
25:57
Speaker 1: could make her look so sunburned on such a cloudy
26:00
Speaker 1: December day. A nurse put her arms on the father's
26:03
Speaker 1: shoulders and told him he needed to step aside, So
26:06
Speaker 1: the father squeezed his daughter's hand one more time, then
26:09
Speaker 1: let the nurse guide him out of the hospital room.
26:12
Speaker 1: The nurse told the father that his daughter's kidneys were failing.
26:15
Speaker 1: They were going to rush her to the intensive care
26:17
Speaker 1: unit for emergency dialysis. The father blinked, trying to process
26:22
Speaker 1: what the nurse had just told him. He didn't understand
26:25
Speaker 1: how his daughter's burned skin could lead to kidney failure.
26:28
Speaker 1: People died from that. He watched helplessly as the medical
26:32
Speaker 1: team wheeled his daughter's gurney out of the room and
26:34
Speaker 1: down the hallway, and as they disappeared through a set
26:37
Speaker 1: of double doors, it hit him that he might have
26:40
Speaker 1: just seen his little girl alive for the last time.
26:43
Speaker 1: The father prayed that her doctors could figure out what
26:46
Speaker 1: was wrong with her before it was too late.
26:53
Speaker 2: So that's going to do it.
26:54
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's story, well guess what. We just
26:57
Speaker 1: released a new binge of more men Medical Mysteries on
27:01
Speaker 1: Mister Ballin's Medical Mysteries, which is a podcast under the
27:04
Speaker 1: Ballin Studio's umbrella. All you gotta do is go look
27:07
Speaker 1: up mister Ballin's Medical Mysteries on any platform.
27:10
Speaker 2: It's free.
27:10
Speaker 1: There's loads of episodes you can listen to right now
27:13
Speaker 1: that sound an awful lot like this one, So go
27:15
Speaker 1: check it out.
27:16
Speaker 2: Mister Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Until next time, Thank you so much.
27:20
Speaker 2: See ya, Wait, don't go anywhere.
27:22
Speaker 1: If you're looking for more strange, dark and mysterious videos,
27:25
Speaker 1: click here