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The Laxative-laden Journey of Lewis and Clark · Ridiculous History

0:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, is your crew of otherwise intrepid adventurers, soldiers and
0:26
Speaker 1: scouts falling prey to the depredations of life On the
0:29
Speaker 1: edge of the map are the challenges of the untamed wilds,
0:31
Speaker 1: leaving your men with syphilis, constipation, scurvy, brain shutter stickyy,
0:35
Speaker 1: welshman's ear, and the other tragic, painful conditions so common
0:37
Speaker 1: to modern explorers. If so, fret not, good friends and neighbors.
0:40
Speaker 1: Dr Benjamin Russia has discovered a brilliant, innovative solution to
0:43
Speaker 1: all your ills. Dr Russia's world famous Billious pills use
0:47
Speaker 1: a proprietary combination of pure ingredients to gently purge the
0:51
Speaker 1: body of excess biling contaminants that caused these dreadful, incommodious conditions. Hi,
0:56
Speaker 1: I'm bett Who is that though? Oh? That was an
0:59
Speaker 1: average heisman for Dr Benjamin Rush's Billious Pill, not Dr
1:03
Speaker 1: Benjamin Boland's bills. No, No, he beat me. He beat
1:07
Speaker 1: me to this wind, to the gut punch, Yes, to
1:10
Speaker 1: the to the thunderclap. Oh, my goodness, gracious, So I
1:14
Speaker 1: think he left out a key component in that ad, though, Ben, Yeah,
1:18
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of a pr spin there.
1:20
Speaker 1: Nol what was What was that key ingredient that got
1:22
Speaker 1: left out? I think it was mercury. Ben, I believe
1:25
Speaker 1: you are correct, my friend. We are here a ridiculous
1:29
Speaker 1: history along with our super producer, Casey Pegram, and I
1:34
Speaker 1: don't think we told Casey what this episode is going
1:38
Speaker 1: to be about. No. I think I think from our
1:40
Speaker 1: pre pro conversations he sort of gleaned that it was
1:43
Speaker 1: something to do with mercury and poop and possibly exploration, yes,
1:48
Speaker 1: possibly exploration, Probably exploration, definitely exploration. Can you take us back, Noll,
1:54
Speaker 1: where where we headed? Who? Who are our protagonist today? Okay? Ben?
1:59
Speaker 1: For today episode, we are in fact going to time
2:02
Speaker 1: travel so that we can physically travel along with our
2:05
Speaker 1: companions for the day, Merryweather Lewis and William Clark otherwise
2:09
Speaker 1: known as Lewis and Clark. Yes. Yes, and there's an
2:12
Speaker 1: amazing Superman spinoff television program called Lowis and Clark that
2:17
Speaker 1: they were really capitalizing on people having fond memories of
2:20
Speaker 1: this intrepid traveling duo. Um, but this is an eighteen
2:24
Speaker 1: o four and that was more like in nineteen nine.
2:26
Speaker 1: I want to say, so this is the important pair. Um,
2:29
Speaker 1: So we've got Lewis and Clark who go out on
2:32
Speaker 1: a journey. It's sort of like a Lord of the
2:34
Speaker 1: Rings esque journey to more Door, only it's to survey
2:38
Speaker 1: this land that President Jefferson, you know, basically bought from Louisiana.
2:43
Speaker 1: And in another creative title for an event, the Louisiana Purchase,
2:47
Speaker 1: he purchased some land from Louisiana and they called it
2:51
Speaker 1: that um. And so this journey started from St. Louis
2:57
Speaker 1: and very very slowly and deliberately its way to the
3:02
Speaker 1: west coast right the Sacific. They wanted to. They were
3:05
Speaker 1: tasked to find a passage from the Missouri River to
3:08
Speaker 1: the Pacific, and they left as you said, Mayo, eighteen
3:12
Speaker 1: o four. It took them twenty eight months to complete
3:16
Speaker 1: the journey. They lucked out, though, because almost everyone survived,
3:21
Speaker 1: which was amazing when you consider that they were going
3:23
Speaker 1: through the untamed wise. I think they only lost one person.
3:27
Speaker 1: Just why, how? How did he go? On August, Sergeant
3:32
Speaker 1: Charles Floyd died of what they called at the time
3:37
Speaker 1: Billius Corlick. Interesting, wasn't that word in the name of
3:41
Speaker 1: that pill that that a disembodied U announcer gave us
3:45
Speaker 1: at the top of the show Billius pills. Today we
3:48
Speaker 1: call Billius corlick c h O r l I c K.
3:51
Speaker 1: By the way, we call that a ruptured appendix. Really,
3:56
Speaker 1: so Billius referring to bile correct absolute, and that's what
4:00
Speaker 1: your appendix is kind of chock full of. And it
4:02
Speaker 1: is a poisonous substance if if leached out into the body,
4:07
Speaker 1: right right exactly. Bilious is a word that can trace
4:11
Speaker 1: its origin back to the old belief. In the old
4:14
Speaker 1: medical belief, humors, Yes, exactly, the four bodily humors would
4:19
Speaker 1: be black, bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. So you
4:22
Speaker 1: might be phlegmatic, you might be bilious. And when Lewis
4:27
Speaker 1: and Clark set off with their thirty odd people, they
4:29
Speaker 1: wanted to really be boy scouts about it. They needed
4:33
Speaker 1: to prepare as much as possible for any contingency, and
4:38
Speaker 1: one of the things that they were very concerned with
4:41
Speaker 1: was the possibility of growing sick like indigestion, diarrhea, constipation,
4:48
Speaker 1: constipation mainly right, that's the big one, because how how
4:51
Speaker 1: many months was this journey again months? So you know,
4:57
Speaker 1: it would be almost impossible to bring enough food that
5:00
Speaker 1: would not that would keep for that long let alone
5:02
Speaker 1: that you could actually carry through the completely untamed wilderness
5:06
Speaker 1: that they were traveling through. Um, so they had to
5:09
Speaker 1: be prepared to have to catch their own food, which
5:12
Speaker 1: would end up being like super kind of gamey stuff.
5:16
Speaker 1: I believe they ended up eating a lot of dogs
5:18
Speaker 1: on this trip. Yeah, that was a thing. And this
5:22
Speaker 1: led them to having some pretty severe tummy troubles, most
5:26
Speaker 1: specifically constipation. So they packed these pills in large quantities. Yes. Yeah.
5:34
Speaker 1: The weird thing about the Billious pills is they were
5:37
Speaker 1: actually in effect anti bilious. Back then, a patient was
5:41
Speaker 1: said to be billious when supposed poor flow of bile
5:46
Speaker 1: in their body gave them any number of symptoms headache, lassitude, constipation,
5:52
Speaker 1: and Dr Rush had actually spoken to Louis to merriwether
5:58
Speaker 1: Lewis before they left, and he said, if you see
6:02
Speaker 1: a sign of an approaching disease, if you see one
6:05
Speaker 1: of these symptoms pop up, headaches, constipation, just hand them
6:10
Speaker 1: one or two of these pills. But they had that nickname, right, Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts.
6:15
Speaker 1: It sounds like some kind of like truck stop speed.
6:17
Speaker 1: Doesn't like mans yellow jackets, yellow jackets, that's the one um.
6:22
Speaker 1: But here here's the kicker though. It contained something called
6:25
Speaker 1: calamel ten grams per serving um, which the active ingredient,
6:32
Speaker 1: and calamel is in fact mercury mercurous chloride. Yeah, and
6:39
Speaker 1: this calamel stuff had been used in medical practice since
6:43
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds because it was actually a milder form
6:49
Speaker 1: of a mercury compound. The liquid medical mercury had been
6:53
Speaker 1: applied externally in different ways since ancient times to treat
6:57
Speaker 1: a variety of skin diseases, and then because it's been
7:01
Speaker 1: used so often externally, it evolved into an internal medicine.
7:07
Speaker 1: But wasn't the problem with mercury is that, sure it
7:09
Speaker 1: does knock out some conditions of the skin, for example,
7:13
Speaker 1: but it also like poisons the person that's taking it, right, right,
7:18
Speaker 1: Like the the old haberdashers who would go crazy from
7:23
Speaker 1: exposure to mercury, right, Yeah, like that guy that killed
7:26
Speaker 1: John Wilkes booth. We did an episode on back in
7:28
Speaker 1: the right yea, yeah, you know the guy who gastrated himself,
7:32
Speaker 1: Thomas Corbett. Corbett, that's right, that's right. So we know
7:37
Speaker 1: that mercury could actually treat some medical conditions. People used
7:43
Speaker 1: it often to combat syphilis, for instance. But we also
7:48
Speaker 1: know that this stuff had a range of terrible, terrible
7:53
Speaker 1: side effects. If you took small doses of this mercurous
7:58
Speaker 1: chloride over time, it would give you mercury poisoning. We
8:02
Speaker 1: just didn't call it that at the time. You would
8:04
Speaker 1: have a lot of saliva, your gums would get sore,
8:07
Speaker 1: your teeth would loosen, your breath would smell like metal,
8:11
Speaker 1: which is super gross, and you would have discolored stool.
8:16
Speaker 1: But in large doses, this stuff acted very quickly as
8:21
Speaker 1: a laxative. Right, Yeah, it absolutely did, and that is
8:24
Speaker 1: of course the purposes that was being employed for here
8:27
Speaker 1: with the Lewis and Clark team. Um, they took so
8:31
Speaker 1: much of it that they would spend like an entire
8:33
Speaker 1: day they would lose to multiple party members just you know, purging,
8:40
Speaker 1: spray and pray, that's what I like to call it. Yeah,
8:43
Speaker 1: that's a good one. But thankfully, there was a popular
8:47
Speaker 1: kind of wisdom, I guess, surrounding camping that you should
8:49
Speaker 1: dig your latrine a certain distance away from your campsite
8:53
Speaker 1: as not to contaminate your your food, or you know,
8:56
Speaker 1: just just keep things not gross. It's a quality of life,
9:00
Speaker 1: especially if you got a dude like hovering over this
9:02
Speaker 1: like a hole in the ground, just like expelling his
9:05
Speaker 1: bowels just explosively. Nobody wants to be around that. How
9:09
Speaker 1: if you remember how far it was, what was the
9:10
Speaker 1: recommended distance? I would just think surely, given the circumstances,
9:14
Speaker 1: they would have like up that whatever it may have been. Yeah,
9:17
Speaker 1: it may have changed depending on their terrain, but the
9:21
Speaker 1: rule of thumb nowadays is about a hundred yards away
9:25
Speaker 1: as a minimum in a secluded area. They were probably
9:29
Speaker 1: not that far away, because a hundred yards that's a
9:32
Speaker 1: football field, you know what I mean? Well, and exactly
9:34
Speaker 1: like if you were in some kind of small clearing,
9:37
Speaker 1: like in a wooded area, you might not have that
9:39
Speaker 1: much space to work with. Yeah, it was probably just far.
9:43
Speaker 1: It was at least far enough away that you wouldn't
9:46
Speaker 1: be haunted by the smell or the sounds. The horrible,
9:49
Speaker 1: horrible sounds, right, the groans of anguished human misery and
9:54
Speaker 1: like cartoonish splattering sounds. Can you even imagine? Ben? I can?
9:58
Speaker 1: And it bothers me? It bothers me too? Does it
10:00
Speaker 1: bother you listeners? Does it bother you? Casey? Yeah, I'd
10:03
Speaker 1: say that bothers me. It is decided it's an unpleasant
10:10
Speaker 1: thing to be around, right, We took it to the
10:12
Speaker 1: highest authority in the land as far as this podcast
10:16
Speaker 1: is concerned. The weird thing about these pills is that
10:25
Speaker 1: it was a large enough dose of mercury to actually
10:28
Speaker 1: kill a human being, but it went through their bodies
10:31
Speaker 1: so fast, and one end out of the other because
10:34
Speaker 1: it was fast acting too. That was another part. That's
10:36
Speaker 1: why they were called lightning pills, I imagine, right, yeah, exactly,
10:39
Speaker 1: And they had to be named after the sound, you know,
10:42
Speaker 1: which just still bothers me a little bit null. But
10:46
Speaker 1: here's here's something he's saying. It sounded like lightning when
10:48
Speaker 1: they evacuated their bowels. Yeah, yeah, it sounded that. It
10:53
Speaker 1: sounded like the clap of thunder, you know, like is
10:56
Speaker 1: a storm coming in? Or is Louis sick again? You know.
10:59
Speaker 1: But here's something that hopefully made the pain of the
11:04
Speaker 1: journey worth it for these for these intrepid explorers. For
11:09
Speaker 1: a long time, archaeologists were attempting to trace the exact
11:13
Speaker 1: path that Lewis and Clark took. And these guys stated
11:18
Speaker 1: over six hundred different sites, so you might know the
11:21
Speaker 1: general trend, and you can see some stuff that they
11:24
Speaker 1: have documented themselves. But if you want to find the
11:28
Speaker 1: specific actual facts camp sites, you're looking at a needle
11:33
Speaker 1: in the haystack situation, or so one would assume, or
11:36
Speaker 1: you could call it a pile of human excrement and
11:40
Speaker 1: a hole in the ground situation. That's true, that's probably
11:43
Speaker 1: more accurate, more accurate, which honestly seems to me would
11:46
Speaker 1: be pretty difficult to find as well. But find it
11:49
Speaker 1: these intrepid archaeologists did, did they not been? They did,
11:52
Speaker 1: know they did, and they did it with the incidental
11:56
Speaker 1: help of Dr Benjamin Rush's billious Because remember how just
12:01
Speaker 1: a moment ago we said that these things are like mercury,
12:06
Speaker 1: mercurius chloride, or call mill. There was so much mercury
12:10
Speaker 1: running through these poor guy's bodies that the mercury stayed
12:16
Speaker 1: in the ground where their latrines were like an unusual
12:20
Speaker 1: cartoon ish I'll say it, disgusting amount of mercury. And
12:24
Speaker 1: that is how, given the opportunity, archaeologists could differentiate between
12:30
Speaker 1: the Lewis and Clark poop and the poop of of
12:33
Speaker 1: others who may have passed through a similar location. But
12:36
Speaker 1: then They had to have had a vague idea. They
12:38
Speaker 1: couldn't have been like, you know, going willy nilly to
12:41
Speaker 1: every random campsite like this seems like an insane process.
12:44
Speaker 1: How how did this go down? It's a good question,
12:46
Speaker 1: my friend. Uh. There's a writer for the Chicago Tribune
12:50
Speaker 1: named Maurice Postley who walks us through a little bit
12:54
Speaker 1: of this. In his journals. Merryweather Lewis refers to a
13:00
Speaker 1: camp site near a place called Lolo Creek, which is
13:03
Speaker 1: just a few miles south of Missoula, and he calls
13:06
Speaker 1: his place travelers Rest. And they all thought. Everybody thought
13:11
Speaker 1: for a long time that this camp was at the
13:13
Speaker 1: confluence of the Bitter Root River and Lolo Creek, about
13:17
Speaker 1: a mile and a half away. But this all changed
13:21
Speaker 1: when a vapor analysis verified this unusual amount of mercury there.
13:28
Speaker 1: I was that much that a vapor analysis would do it.
13:31
Speaker 1: It was like in the air. It's crazy. They were
13:35
Speaker 1: able to They were able to analyze the soil pretty easily.
13:39
Speaker 1: And once they once they find that one site and like, oh,
13:44
Speaker 1: this proves it. Let's see if we can test other
13:47
Speaker 1: specific sites and traces of mercy and maybe and maybe
13:50
Speaker 1: get to the source by seeing how the concentrations change, right, Yeah, exactly,
13:55
Speaker 1: you could in theory, I guess, find that that hole
13:58
Speaker 1: in the ground um by tracking like the concentration of mercury. Yes,
14:03
Speaker 1: And there's an interesting thing here that you and I
14:06
Speaker 1: have talked about off air. We we've been mentioning mercury
14:10
Speaker 1: as a treatment for constipation, but it was also used
14:16
Speaker 1: to treat an entirely different medical condition. That's the thing.
14:19
Speaker 1: They were getting this mercury from from two different sources.
14:23
Speaker 1: That the Billiest pills, which was kind of considered a
14:25
Speaker 1: cure all, but then they also had a cash of
14:27
Speaker 1: another type of medication that was specifically designed to treat syphilis.
14:32
Speaker 1: Because they were they basically kind of prepared for the
14:35
Speaker 1: fact they were going to have a lot of what
14:37
Speaker 1: other kind of sex was there at the time, unprotected
14:39
Speaker 1: sex with um, some Native women. There's an article in
14:44
Speaker 1: The Atlantic that came out in twenty sixteen that it
14:49
Speaker 1: seems to dispel this belief for a while. People believe
14:53
Speaker 1: that syphilis actually came somehow from the New World, but
14:59
Speaker 1: all the other and syndicates, we still don't know exactly
15:03
Speaker 1: where syphilis came from. And I think you and I
15:07
Speaker 1: had always assumed that syphilis came with the Europeans into
15:12
Speaker 1: the New World, which I know we're not supposed to
15:14
Speaker 1: use the term New World anymore, but that's what they
15:16
Speaker 1: called it at the time. We know we're talking about Yeah,
15:19
Speaker 1: so the disease already had a long history in Europe,
15:25
Speaker 1: but maybe the syphilis epidemic seemed like a new disease
15:29
Speaker 1: at the time because it had previously been mistaken for
15:33
Speaker 1: something else, you know, or maybe it was a particularly
15:36
Speaker 1: virulent strain of syphilis, whatever the case may bee. Um,
15:40
Speaker 1: these travelers knew damn well that they were going to
15:43
Speaker 1: be exposed to this condition, but they weren't gonna let
15:46
Speaker 1: that stop them from, you know, having a nice fling
15:49
Speaker 1: with with an attractive lady. Um, and they took this
15:53
Speaker 1: stuff to either. I guess it wasn't really it could
15:56
Speaker 1: be a safeguard against I guess they just accept that
15:58
Speaker 1: they were going to get it. Apparently just resign themselves
16:02
Speaker 1: their their syphilitic faith, which is no joke, right. Syphilis
16:05
Speaker 1: is the one that like can kind of like make
16:07
Speaker 1: you go insane over time, right in the late stages.
16:10
Speaker 1: So they had syphilis and mercury poisoning. I would imagine
16:13
Speaker 1: by the end of this journey, these dudes, we're not
16:16
Speaker 1: well right and mentally right. And let's see, it was
16:21
Speaker 1: even just in the first year of the expedition. On
16:24
Speaker 1: October fIF eighteen o four, Clark writes down that the
16:29
Speaker 1: party had arrived at a place called the camp of
16:31
Speaker 1: the Aracarra, and that quote, their women were very fond
16:35
Speaker 1: of caressing our men and company. And by March of
16:40
Speaker 1: eighteen o five he noted that the men were quote
16:43
Speaker 1: generally healthy, except venereal complaints, which is very common amongst
16:48
Speaker 1: the natives here. The men catch it from them, So
16:51
Speaker 1: they were blaming the native population. But you know, it
16:54
Speaker 1: was just out. It was apparently just crazy talk for
16:58
Speaker 1: them to you know, not pursue these flings. I mean,
17:01
Speaker 1: they had to occupy their time somehow, I guess, right.
17:04
Speaker 1: So they were just on this cycle of unprotected sex,
17:08
Speaker 1: syphilis and mercury, wild times, my friend, and eating dogs
17:12
Speaker 1: and eating dogs and just laying some epic flagellations. What
17:18
Speaker 1: I don't know about this what the farts, the thunderclaps,
17:22
Speaker 1: Oh that's different. It was man of fart destiny like
17:24
Speaker 1: ow Ben that's that's horrible. I love you so much.
17:27
Speaker 1: There is another thing too, about the times that they
17:30
Speaker 1: spent on the on the old Rugged trail. Apparently every
17:34
Speaker 1: man got a ration of whiskey. Um, they had barrels
17:38
Speaker 1: of whiskey, and that was a really important part of
17:40
Speaker 1: their staying sane in these intense circumstances. And one man
17:45
Speaker 1: I believe was caught taking more than his fair share
17:48
Speaker 1: of and he got fifty stripes on the back, um
17:52
Speaker 1: with a cat of nine tails or some such you know,
17:55
Speaker 1: bull whip. Oh wow. And that they took that stuff
17:58
Speaker 1: really seriously, and you know that stuff left scars, oh
18:01
Speaker 1: big time. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean that was like
18:03
Speaker 1: the height of of punishment. And if they did that
18:05
Speaker 1: for just you know, taking a little extra shot of whiskey,
18:08
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what they would have done for more
18:10
Speaker 1: severe crimes. Right. And this is fascinating, I think, to
18:14
Speaker 1: both of us because growing up here in the States,
18:18
Speaker 1: when you hear about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you
18:22
Speaker 1: just hear the bare bones, and it's sometimes it's a
18:25
Speaker 1: little romanticized. You know, It's like these this noble group
18:29
Speaker 1: of people who are the harbingers of Western civilization at
18:34
Speaker 1: this point, trying to explore a great unknown, at least
18:38
Speaker 1: unknown to Europeans land and so, as so often happens
18:43
Speaker 1: in so many stories like this, we skip over a
18:46
Speaker 1: lot of the nitty gritty details. The epidemic of syphilis,
18:51
Speaker 1: the epidemic of diarrhea, the mercury in the ground everywhere,
18:56
Speaker 1: the dog eating the dog eating. No, no no, that's very
18:59
Speaker 1: sexy at all. No, that's not what you want to
19:01
Speaker 1: think about. What you think about this. We're left with
19:04
Speaker 1: this image of conquering, you know, the great outdoors, and
19:08
Speaker 1: you've got these trails named after Lewis and Clark. And
19:10
Speaker 1: now we know that they went to I think more
19:13
Speaker 1: than six hundred campsites throughout this journey, and like Traveler's Rest,
19:18
Speaker 1: because of these intrepid archaeologists and their ability to analyze
19:23
Speaker 1: some of these sites for its mercury content, we know
19:25
Speaker 1: a little bit more about where these folks passed through. Yes,
19:30
Speaker 1: and we have also learned that, what you know, neither
19:33
Speaker 1: of us are doctors. Casey is not a doctor either.
19:36
Speaker 1: We've also learned uh the perils of mercury. Don't take it,
19:41
Speaker 1: don't break the thermometer and play with it. Did you
19:43
Speaker 1: ever do that as you kid? You know what? I've
19:45
Speaker 1: seen videos of it looks pretty cool. It's like the
19:47
Speaker 1: T one thousand exactly. Yeah, but it's still not worth it.
19:51
Speaker 1: You can do horrible things to it. Just happened in
19:54
Speaker 1: today's episode to preserve for posterity the details of the
20:00
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark expedition. And one thing that's surprising is
20:09
Speaker 1: although we we hold the Lewis and Clark expedition in
20:12
Speaker 1: such high regard today, it only became popular relatively recently,
20:17
Speaker 1: like fifty years ago or so. Well. I think when
20:20
Speaker 1: these men returned, they expected like a hero's welcome, right,
20:25
Speaker 1: and it just never really came. And Merryweather Lewis. In fact,
20:30
Speaker 1: his death has been a source of much speculation, but
20:34
Speaker 1: one very plausible one is that he kind of spiraled
20:38
Speaker 1: into despair and self doubt uh and that he ultimately
20:43
Speaker 1: took his own life in in a quite outlandish fashion.
20:47
Speaker 1: UM walk us through. Yeah, well so. Thomas Jefferson himself
20:51
Speaker 1: had reported that Lewis's family had a history of depression
20:56
Speaker 1: bipolar disorder, specifically UM, and that he himself Lewis had
21:01
Speaker 1: been suffering from this condition himself since he was a child.
21:05
Speaker 1: And here's a quote from a great article on history
21:07
Speaker 1: dot n D dot gov, where Jefferson says, this Governor
21:12
Speaker 1: Lewis had from an early life been subject to hypochondriac affections.
21:16
Speaker 1: It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches
21:19
Speaker 1: of the family of his name. It was more immediately
21:21
Speaker 1: inherited by him from his father. While he lived with
21:24
Speaker 1: me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind,
21:28
Speaker 1: but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by
21:31
Speaker 1: what I had seen in the family. This is really
21:34
Speaker 1: interesting because this idea of mental illness can having such stigma.
21:38
Speaker 1: It's still around today. I mean, it hasn't gotten that
21:40
Speaker 1: much better. So back in these days it certainly wouldn't
21:42
Speaker 1: have been something that you would have talked about. But um, yeah,
21:45
Speaker 1: So he suffered from these you know, great highs and
21:48
Speaker 1: great lows, and the story of his demise goes like this.
21:52
Speaker 1: Oh sh also mentioned just to in reject that he
21:56
Speaker 1: is rediscovered letters show that he had written his will
21:59
Speaker 1: but for the journey, and he also attempted suicide on
22:03
Speaker 1: the expedition but was restrained. Yeah. Good, A good thing.
22:07
Speaker 1: He had his bros around him to kind of hold him,
22:09
Speaker 1: pull him back from the letage, I suppose. So what happened?
22:12
Speaker 1: How how did he pass away? So the story goes
22:15
Speaker 1: like this, Um, he had booked himself a room at
22:19
Speaker 1: an end a tavern and he shot himself. Um, but
22:22
Speaker 1: that didn't take because I guess I don't know, maybe
22:25
Speaker 1: those little musket balls, those those guns don't always discharge properly.
22:29
Speaker 1: Maybe it just didn't didn't wasn't a death blow. And
22:31
Speaker 1: so he did it again and that didn't quite take either.
22:35
Speaker 1: So he decided to go to sleep. He went to sleep,
22:39
Speaker 1: and he woke up, um, you know, not dead. And
22:42
Speaker 1: then he apparently ran out into the hallway and said, quote,
22:46
Speaker 1: give me some water and heal my wounds, and all
22:50
Speaker 1: the guests were freaking out, and he went back to
22:52
Speaker 1: sleep and then woke up and someone witnessed him quote
22:57
Speaker 1: cutting himself from head to foot. So it took about
23:01
Speaker 1: twelve hours of time, two bullets, a little bit asleep,
23:06
Speaker 1: and um a blade for Louis to finally die. And
23:10
Speaker 1: that is like some tortures of the damned kind of
23:13
Speaker 1: stuff right there. Because Lord self inflicted is the belief right.
23:17
Speaker 1: This was at the Grinder's stand. It's in on the
23:19
Speaker 1: Natchez trace, and I believe he had one gun shot
23:23
Speaker 1: in the head, one to the gut, and you know,
23:28
Speaker 1: as said, he ran out and scared the hell out
23:30
Speaker 1: of everyone. Uh. Nashville newspaper had reported that his throat
23:34
Speaker 1: was cut. There is one complicating factor here. Money that
23:39
Speaker 1: he had borrowed from a guy named Major Gilbert Russell
23:42
Speaker 1: to complete the journey was missing. Oh, the plot thickens.
23:46
Speaker 1: The plot thickens. And Thomas Jefferson, as you pointed out,
23:51
Speaker 1: along with some modern historians, generally accepted the idea that
23:55
Speaker 1: Lewis died of suicide. But there's still a debate. There's
23:59
Speaker 1: still people who say it was homicide for one reason
24:03
Speaker 1: or another. That is pretty fascinating. Um, it does seem
24:06
Speaker 1: like the groundwork was laid for him, having already demonstrated
24:10
Speaker 1: suicidal tendencies. But this whole missing money business and the
24:13
Speaker 1: muddies the water. So he might have spent it because
24:16
Speaker 1: there Uh. The historian Paul Russell cut right, completely believes
24:21
Speaker 1: this was suicide, and he has a pretty detailed takedown
24:25
Speaker 1: in the murder slash robbery theory. He says Louis had
24:29
Speaker 1: a lot of debt. He was a heavy drinker. He
24:31
Speaker 1: may have been using morphine and opium. Uh, he was
24:35
Speaker 1: running late preparing the expeditions journals for publishing. He just
24:40
Speaker 1: couldn't get a romantic partner, and he was on the
24:44
Speaker 1: outs with Thomas Jefferson. The relationship was going downhill. So
24:48
Speaker 1: he's saying that it's plausible that Lewis, given his history
24:52
Speaker 1: right his his own mental struggles. He's saying it's more
24:55
Speaker 1: plausible that Louis eventually took his own life. Well, that's
24:58
Speaker 1: a real bummer, and that is a surely a down
25:00
Speaker 1: our way to end this episode. Um So I'm just
25:03
Speaker 1: gonna throw in one more thing to kind of like
25:05
Speaker 1: change like a palate clan, a little bit of palicillanser.
25:08
Speaker 1: And that is the fact that or the idea that
25:10
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson. One of the big things he was super
25:13
Speaker 1: excited about them finding on this expedition was like giant animals, Yes,
25:19
Speaker 1: like Mammoth's American right, yeah, big time. And uh, something
25:23
Speaker 1: called a megalonics or a mega megal Yeah, megalonics, which
25:28
Speaker 1: is like some kind of giant cat And he described
25:32
Speaker 1: it as as pre eminent over the lion in size
25:35
Speaker 1: as the mammoth is over the elephant. And if you
25:38
Speaker 1: want to see a really cool exploration of this as
25:41
Speaker 1: if it were real, there is a comic book series
25:44
Speaker 1: called Manifest Destiny. I've read it. It's on issue thirty
25:48
Speaker 1: six right now, that's ongoing, but you can get the
25:50
Speaker 1: Collected Trades or what have you. Check it out. I've
25:52
Speaker 1: read like the first Trade and it's really cool. But
25:55
Speaker 1: it has some of these crazy creatures. Yeah, it's a
25:58
Speaker 1: big part of it. In this comic they're finding, um well,
26:02
Speaker 1: i'll tell you this without spoiling it. In in this
26:04
Speaker 1: story in the graphic novel slash comic book Manifest Destiny,
26:09
Speaker 1: the expedition does run into mega fauno just the generic
26:13
Speaker 1: term for large animals. But they also keep finding these
26:16
Speaker 1: structures that look like the Gateway arch there in St. Louis.
26:20
Speaker 1: And you know what if if you're a fan of
26:23
Speaker 1: good stories, we highly recommend that. I'm so glad you
26:25
Speaker 1: mentioned this on Aara he was reading it. I was
26:27
Speaker 1: rereading it last night and prep for the podcast. All
26:31
Speaker 1: that good historical data in there, because I think there
26:35
Speaker 1: is some stuff in there that is historically accurate, but
26:37
Speaker 1: it's largely a fictionalized version with some of these more
26:40
Speaker 1: high and lofty ideas of what this this unsettled wilderness
26:44
Speaker 1: might be like. So pretty cool stuff. Yeah, check it out.
26:48
Speaker 1: I like that we I like that we made a
26:50
Speaker 1: good comic recommendation. We do whatever we can have we
26:53
Speaker 1: made one before. Um, we may have mentioned comics were like,
26:57
Speaker 1: but I don't know if we out not recommended one.
26:59
Speaker 1: I pledge from this day fourth to always recommend a
27:02
Speaker 1: comic on every episode. Okay, no, that's too much. No, no,
27:05
Speaker 1: as long as caveat, as long as it doesn't have
27:08
Speaker 1: to completely tie in with the episode. And we're gonna
27:12
Speaker 1: do an episode on every state and we're gonna complete
27:16
Speaker 1: it by the end of this year. WHOA, No, I
27:19
Speaker 1: don't think we can. We're only coming out twice a week.
27:23
Speaker 1: I at least forget. It's under promise over deliver. So
27:28
Speaker 1: there's also another commy called The Black Monday Murders. Has
27:30
Speaker 1: nothing to do with today's episode, but you will thoroughly
27:35
Speaker 1: enjoy it. And I'm a fan of Lock and Key,
27:37
Speaker 1: which you loaned me trying to get my way through it.
27:40
Speaker 1: But it's by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King's son.
27:43
Speaker 1: Nothing really like anything Stephen King ever did, though he's
27:45
Speaker 1: got his own thing. Yeah. Yeah, Joe Hill is a
27:48
Speaker 1: fantastic gregor. You know what, let us know what comic
27:50
Speaker 1: books do you like, historical or otherwise? Yeah, and you
27:54
Speaker 1: can let us know right now as you're listening to
27:56
Speaker 1: this episode. You have to do is hop on Instagram,
27:58
Speaker 1: Twitter or face look especially our Facebook community page Ridiculous Historians,
28:04
Speaker 1: or you can write us a good old fashioned email
28:05
Speaker 1: at ridiculous at how stuff works dot com. M We'd
28:08
Speaker 1: love to thank super producer and Casey Pegraham. I'd like
28:10
Speaker 1: to thank you Ben. I'd like to thank you Noel,
28:13
Speaker 1: along with Alex Williams who composed our track, our research
28:17
Speaker 1: associate Gabe who does just an amazing jobs, right, and
28:20
Speaker 1: big shout outs to Christopher and Eves who have done
28:22
Speaker 1: an incredible job. At this point, I still think we've
28:24
Speaker 1: got a few of their ideas kicking around on the cancer.
28:26
Speaker 1: We'll make sure that we shout them out when those happen.
28:30
Speaker 1: And uh a shout out to Dr Benjamin rush Uh.
28:35
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're meant to be in the
28:37
Speaker 1: history books this way, Doc, but congratulations. Nonetheless, Casey, can
28:41
Speaker 1: we get an appropriate sound cue