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Chocolate Syrup: From Medicine to Dessert · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Oh, do you have a
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Speaker 1: sweet tooth? Do you have an ailment? Do you feel
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Speaker 1: that your life could be a bit more hale, attle
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Speaker 1: bit more hearty? If so, this maybe the episode for you.
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Speaker 1: Shout out to our number one snake oil salesman, our
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Speaker 1: super producer, Mr Max Williams. Give him a hand, give
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Speaker 1: him a patent medicine. Max only sells the good stuff.
0:55
Speaker 1: He sells the good stuff. Yeah, I don't know what
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Speaker 1: what I think about being called a snake oil salesman
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Speaker 1: right here? Well, how about a prevor sweetness. How about
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Speaker 1: we call you the Ridiculous History candy man, Willie Wonka
1:09
Speaker 1: style candy man, not the horror film kidney man, purveyor
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Speaker 1: of quality remedies. I'll Tony Todd, the marvelous Tony Todd,
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Speaker 1: Tony Todd, classic character actors. Uh you know it was,
1:24
Speaker 1: of course, you know, Lieutenant Worf's little brother. Is that right? Okay,
1:28
Speaker 1: here's Max with the star treks. Uh, well we go there. Yeah,
1:52
Speaker 1: there's gotta be another another version of it. The Max
1:55
Speaker 1: you'll take care of that. I add some wooshes in there,
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Speaker 1: but no, it's true candy, right. We think of it
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Speaker 1: is sort of like a subtly for children, you know,
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Speaker 1: or whiney adults. I don't know any adults can like candy,
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Speaker 1: but we do think of it as a way to
2:08
Speaker 1: play kate small children or something that's sort of like,
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Speaker 1: you know, yeah, grow a little bit. You always talk
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Speaker 1: about you get older, you start to lose your sweet
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Speaker 1: tooth and get more of a sour tooth or like
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Speaker 1: you like grosser things when you get older. I think
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Speaker 1: it's just because your taste buds start to like die
2:22
Speaker 1: and you need to like jolt them with them, you know,
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Speaker 1: weird stuff like kimchi. Like you were in hard boiled eggs.
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Speaker 1: I didn't used to like them. I love him now,
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Speaker 1: Hey Ben, it's me No, yeah, you got me dead
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Speaker 1: to rights. I used to despise hard hard boiled eggs,
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Speaker 1: and now in my my twilight years, Um, I I
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Speaker 1: really like them quite a lot. Candy or you know,
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Speaker 1: the sweeter things in life. Culinarily speaking, used to be
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Speaker 1: a little bit more part of the pantheon of like
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Speaker 1: kind of quack science, you know. Um, early medicinal remedies
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Speaker 1: that may or may not have actually done the job,
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Speaker 1: some of which did do the job but tasted so
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Speaker 1: disc ust and you couldn't get anybody to choke it down,
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Speaker 1: so you needed to sweeten the deal a little bit, right,
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Speaker 1: A spoonful of chocolate helps the laudanum go down. Kidding.
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Speaker 1: Let's say your board and it's December, so you decide
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Speaker 1: that you're gonna thumb through the latest edition of the
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Speaker 1: Druggist Circular Chemical Gazette. This is a mail order catalog
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Speaker 1: of all the best products for your local pharmacy at
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Speaker 1: the time. And if you look through the many pages
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Speaker 1: advertising things like Michael Roy's glass syringes or Rshian Frank
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Speaker 1: and Co's lab coats, you'll also find Hershey's coco powder. It's,
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Speaker 1: according to the ad, perfectly soluble, warranted, absolutely pure. And
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Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't advertise things like a wonderful taste.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't say it's delicious with marshmallows and a drink
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Speaker 1: or anything like that. It reads like it's an ad
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Speaker 1: for medicine, which of course it kind of was, and
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Speaker 1: it's exactly what Mary Poppins is talking about with the
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Speaker 1: spoonful of sugar song. Mm hmmm. Yeah. We're pulling this
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Speaker 1: rundown from the Unlikely Medical History of Chocolate Syrup from
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Speaker 1: the Smithsonian by Mayo y Has from September six, seventeen,
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Speaker 1: and she set it up beautifully the scenario of like
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Speaker 1: thumbing through this addition and then seeing something that sort
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Speaker 1: of now would seem out of place amidst all the
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Speaker 1: other you know, tinctures and and syringes and uh and
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Speaker 1: all of that medical devices. Perhaps let's do a quick
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Speaker 1: backtrack to the history and the story of the miraculous
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Speaker 1: ca cow bean, which are grown which grow organically or
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Speaker 1: indigenously in Central and South America. They're actually considered fruits,
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Speaker 1: and the plants themselves create these cool looking paths, each
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Speaker 1: of which contain around forty beans, which are then dried
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Speaker 1: and roasted to create uh cocoa beans. The raw versions
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Speaker 1: are actually often used in kind of holistic stick medicine today. Um,
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Speaker 1: they offer kind of like you know, zippity doo dooc
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Speaker 1: kind of properties, like they give you a little lift,
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Speaker 1: you know, and also they purport to have other, you know,
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Speaker 1: kind of medicinal benefits. It's not exactly clear when people
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Speaker 1: started kind of getting a taste for them. But we
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Speaker 1: do know that the love of chocolate by the human
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Speaker 1: species goes back many, many thousands of years three thousand roughly,
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Speaker 1: uh as early as b c. E. And you would
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Speaker 1: see it in the remnants of the civilization of the
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Speaker 1: Olmes in Mexico. Yeah, and I was lucky enough to
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Speaker 1: spend some time at a modern day uh cocof farm
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Speaker 1: when I was knocking around Central America for various reasons.
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Speaker 1: Be surprised how how close the modern techniques can be
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Speaker 1: to the ancient techniques that we're going to discuss here. Uh.
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Speaker 1: This is, by the way, this is a strange story
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Speaker 1: about pocolate syrup. If you're wondering, when are you guys
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Speaker 1: gonna get to it, Let's set this up. For most
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Speaker 1: of the known history of what becomes modern chocolate, these beans,
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Speaker 1: we're probably consumed as a drink that was either made
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Speaker 1: from uh, made from a ground pulp of the beans,
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Speaker 1: or made from the beans themselves being fermented, roasted, and
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Speaker 1: then ground. This was not your grandmother's hot chocolate. It
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Speaker 1: wasn't sweet, it didn't have like milk or cream added.
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Speaker 1: It was probably really really bitter. Historians still unsure about
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Speaker 1: whether the ancient Olmes we're using the straight up beans
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Speaker 1: or just the pulp, because Olmes kept no written history.
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Speaker 1: That is right, fellow ridiculous historians. The folks who first
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Speaker 1: used chocolate were feending for it well before they started
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Speaker 1: writing stuff down. So it makes me think that everybody
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Speaker 1: needs a little caffeine to get started, maybe even civilizations.
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Speaker 1: I also want shout out a great Great History article
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Speaker 1: History of Chocolate from eighteen. That's where you can get
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Speaker 1: a pretty solid overall view of this. Like you said, no,
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Speaker 1: we know that Old Max are often cited as the
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Speaker 1: first chocolate loving people's due to traces of something called
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Speaker 1: THEO bro mine. This is a stimulant that you'll find
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Speaker 1: in chocolate and and t and this THEO bromine, was
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Speaker 1: found by archaeologists in pots that you had just mentioned earlier.
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Speaker 1: And then we know there's a bit of a chain
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Speaker 1: of custody here. The Old Max past their knowledge of
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Speaker 1: this great to the very Bitter Drink to Mayan's in
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Speaker 1: Central America, and Mayan's kick it up a notch. They
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Speaker 1: don't just like this stuff, they revere it. It's the
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Speaker 1: best thing ever. It's like tickle me Elmo that was
7:48
Speaker 1: in Christmas several years ago. There written history has numerous
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Speaker 1: mentions of chocolate drinks used for celebrations and then also
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Speaker 1: even like consumed ritualistically, you make a transaction official. And
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Speaker 1: despite the fact that Mayan's loved, loved, loved chocolate, it
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Speaker 1: wasn't just for the one percent of the time. Pretty
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Speaker 1: much everybody could get access with it. In a lot
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Speaker 1: of households. If you're doing pretty well, you would have
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Speaker 1: some form of chocolate with every meal. It was combined
8:21
Speaker 1: at this point with chili, peppers, honey, or water. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
8:26
Speaker 1: sometimes you call it. Uh sometimes when you see chili
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Speaker 1: or cinnamon added to hot chocolate in the US today
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Speaker 1: will be called Mexican hot chocolate. Right, you guys had that?
8:36
Speaker 1: That's right? Oh, absolutely, Like I mean, even at certain
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Speaker 1: coffee places you can get like a Mexican mocha that
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Speaker 1: has like a bit of a cinnamon e spicy kind
8:44
Speaker 1: of chocolate additive to it. And I really dig that
8:46
Speaker 1: big fan of adding spice to the chocolate. The Aztecs
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Speaker 1: kind of took this whole cocao game up a notch.
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Speaker 1: They believed that this was um something that was passed
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Speaker 1: down to them by the gods themselves. These be means
9:00
Speaker 1: by the way of these pods, they look almost like
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Speaker 1: an almond kind of and the Aztecs really treated them
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Speaker 1: with the utmost of respect. They actually used them sometimes
9:09
Speaker 1: as as a form of currency. It was at the
9:12
Speaker 1: time something that they considered to be more valuable than gold.
9:16
Speaker 1: We know how much the Aztecs revered gold, right, that's
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Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Still not as much as the Spanish, but
9:23
Speaker 1: but you're right, you're absolutely right. It was used his currency.
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Speaker 1: Check out our earlier episodes, by the way, on other
9:29
Speaker 1: odd things used as currency in the past. So the
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Speaker 1: Aztecs were a little less democratic or egalitarian, and their
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Speaker 1: enjoyment of chocolate, when compared to the Mayan civilization, Aztec
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Speaker 1: chocolate was super upper class luxury, and if you were
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Speaker 1: lower class, it would be a special treat at big
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Speaker 1: celebrations like weddings. There was one guy we know in
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Speaker 1: the historical record who, rumor has it was chocolate's number
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Speaker 1: one fan probably in the world at this time, Montezuma
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Speaker 1: the second. This guy supposedly just drank, just housed gallons
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Speaker 1: of chocolate every day, both for general energy and for
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Speaker 1: amorous energy as an aphrodisiac. He also would save some
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Speaker 1: of these coco beans for members of his military that
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Speaker 1: he liked. All would say is this, It's good to
10:22
Speaker 1: be king. Pretty much nobody else knew about chocolate at
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Speaker 1: this point until Europeans began venturing into what we call
10:31
Speaker 1: the America's today towards kind of the end of the
10:34
Speaker 1: fifteenth century. And no, it's it's weird because the specifics
10:40
Speaker 1: are unclear. There are a couple of stories about how
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Speaker 1: it made its way to Europe, but we know that
10:45
Speaker 1: it first hit land in Spain. That's right. Um. We
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Speaker 1: have one version of the story that talks about Christopher
10:54
Speaker 1: Columbus discovering a cow beans after he essentially hijacked a
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Speaker 1: trade ship up on a journey to America, and he
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Speaker 1: brought the beans back with him to Spain. That was
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Speaker 1: in fifteen oh two, several years after he sailed first
11:09
Speaker 1: sailed the Ocean Blue. Another one of these accounts talks
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Speaker 1: about a Spanish car and quistador you may have heard
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Speaker 1: of named Hernan Cortez. Believe was he Cortes the Killer?
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Speaker 1: I think that was Cortes the killer of of Neil
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Speaker 1: Young uh song story fame, but he was introduced to chocolate,
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Speaker 1: supposedly by the Aztecs of that very same court of Montezuma,
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Speaker 1: and after he got back to Spain, cacao beans um
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Speaker 1: became a hot commodity. He at first wanted to keep
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Speaker 1: his his beans on the down low. He didn't want
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Speaker 1: to share because he's where Uh he knew that this
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Speaker 1: would be uh maybe more popular than he had uh
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Speaker 1: you know, he didn't bring it up for the class,
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Speaker 1: Let's just put it that way, So he wanted to
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Speaker 1: keep these for his personal supply. He kept at a
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Speaker 1: very well guarded secret. Another story claims that it was monks,
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Speaker 1: who often are the discoverers of interesting new and talk Sxicans,
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Speaker 1: who presented the Guatemalan Mayans to fill up the second
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Speaker 1: of Spain in four and in addition brought back cacao
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Speaker 1: beans to present as a gift. Yeah yeah, so there
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Speaker 1: are There are several possible origins right of how this
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Speaker 1: trade begins, some more plausible than others. But no matter
12:23
Speaker 1: what happened, chocolate did get to Spain, and by the
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Speaker 1: late fifteen hundreds, everybody in the Spanish court loved this stuff.
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Speaker 1: Spain began importing chocolate. In fift other countries started visiting
12:43
Speaker 1: parts of Central America, France, Italy, they start learning about
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Speaker 1: cacao and they bring chocolate back to their countries very
12:53
Speaker 1: very shortly afterwards, chocolate mania spreads across the European continent.
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Speaker 1: And you know, we have to point out there's a
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Speaker 1: problem that begins here that dogs the modern world of
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Speaker 1: chocolate today, which is that they started also building chocolate plantations,
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Speaker 1: and they enslaved thousands of people to work on those plantations.
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Speaker 1: But it went on, it went to what would become
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Speaker 1: the United States as well. These beans were typically ground
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Speaker 1: up and consumed throughout Europe, throughout the American colonies, but
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Speaker 1: Europeans weren't super down with the traditional bitter drink, so
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Speaker 1: they started adding their own stuff, kind of like the
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Speaker 1: Maya before them. They added cane, sugar, cinnamon, other just
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Speaker 1: spices and flavorings they had around at the time. It
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Speaker 1: was a very experimental era in the history of chocolate,
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Speaker 1: and they came up with eventually a sweet hot drink
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Speaker 1: that has a passing resemblance to the hot chocolate you
13:52
Speaker 1: would consume today. But doctors of the day, we're not
13:56
Speaker 1: warning people to you know, watch their sugar intake with
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Speaker 1: all that cane sugar and your cocoa. Nothing like that,
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Speaker 1: quite the opposite. In fact, medical authorities of the time
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Speaker 1: thought chocolate was darn close to a panacea. It could cure,
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Speaker 1: you know, if it makes you feel good, the reason
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Speaker 1: it went, surely it must be good for you as well, exactly.
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Speaker 1: I mean, that's what we were kind of talking about
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Speaker 1: from the start. It was really lumped in with a
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Speaker 1: lot of these other sort of dubious remedies, but it
14:22
Speaker 1: honestly was kind of starting to be treated as sort
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Speaker 1: of a cure all. Dianna Pucciarelli, who was a professor
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Speaker 1: of nutrition and dietetics at Ball State University, UM it's
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Speaker 1: been a lot of time researching the medicinal history of medicine,
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Speaker 1: and she says that at the time, quote at the time,
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Speaker 1: chocolate was touted for its medical properties and prescribed as
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Speaker 1: treatment for a range of diseases. The extra calories that
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Speaker 1: it had would get would help you gain weight, which
14:50
Speaker 1: was at the time, I guess, considered a good thing.
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Speaker 1: And also it had that caffeine like compounds in that
14:55
Speaker 1: that would give you a little bit of perk. She says,
14:57
Speaker 1: it didn't treat the actual illness, but I did drink
15:01
Speaker 1: the symptoms. So we have another kind of laundry list
15:07
Speaker 1: of first, in terms of how chocolate was used, so
15:10
Speaker 1: much like in Mesoamerica, chocolate was considered kind of a
15:13
Speaker 1: luxury at first for the wealthy upper class in Europe,
15:17
Speaker 1: that is until eight when a chemist from um Holland
15:22
Speaker 1: UH named Konrad Johannes von Hooton figured out a way
15:26
Speaker 1: to treat cocaw beans using something called alkaline salts that
15:31
Speaker 1: made a powdered chocolate that was water soluble. Remember that
15:34
Speaker 1: ad we talked about at the very top of the episode.
15:36
Speaker 1: That was a breakthrough. So it would allow you to
15:40
Speaker 1: mix it directly in with your your milk or water
15:44
Speaker 1: or whatever like the and create kind of like a
15:46
Speaker 1: delicious chocolate drink think Ovaltine, you know, or nest Lee's
15:50
Speaker 1: quick or something like that. Uh. And this became known
15:52
Speaker 1: as the Dutch processing. And you'll know today the Dutch
15:56
Speaker 1: are still very connected and associated with chocolate. M Yeah,
16:01
Speaker 1: and van Houton or his father possibly also invented the
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Speaker 1: cocoa press, and the cocoa press is hugely important. It
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Speaker 1: separates cocoa butter from the roasted beans to make cocoa
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Speaker 1: powder in an inexpensive way, and this can be spun
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Speaker 1: out to a number of other chocolate products. This processing
16:22
Speaker 1: and this chocolate press make chocolate affordable to everyone. It
16:27
Speaker 1: also opens the door to mass production, and that's why
16:31
Speaker 1: in eighteen seven we see people like J. S. Fry
16:34
Speaker 1: and Sons create the first chocolate bar molded from paste
16:38
Speaker 1: made from cocoa butter, chocolate, liquor, and sugar. Who added
16:44
Speaker 1: dried milk powder to chocolate to make milk chocolate. That
16:47
Speaker 1: honor goes to a Swiss guy named Daniel Peter in
16:50
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six, and a few years later he links
16:54
Speaker 1: up with a guy named on Re Nestlely to create
16:57
Speaker 1: the Nestlee Company, and that's how milk chocolate gets the
17:00
Speaker 1: mass market. But the entire time there is still this
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Speaker 1: sort of medicinal patina over the idea of consumption of chocolate,
17:11
Speaker 1: an association that reverberates, I would argue in the modern day.
17:15
Speaker 1: Quick note, though, for anyone who's ever wondered, there are
17:17
Speaker 1: no dumb questions in ridiculous history, coffee and chocolate are
17:23
Speaker 1: not related. We should we should just put that out there.
17:27
Speaker 1: I know, I always confused with that as a kid, right,
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Speaker 1: But well, they have similar properties, yeah, exactly, and they
17:34
Speaker 1: they'll do a similar job. They both are beans, they
17:37
Speaker 1: both are steeped and can be processed in similar ways,
17:40
Speaker 1: but they are not the same and they go really
17:42
Speaker 1: well together. Obviously, we like everybody who doesn't like a
17:45
Speaker 1: good mocha, you know, um, But that you're right, then
17:47
Speaker 1: that sort of connection of chocolate to the pharmacy, it
17:52
Speaker 1: really kind of does a double double duty in that
17:55
Speaker 1: it is a place where chocolate is used to obscure
17:59
Speaker 1: the taste of bitter medicines, you know, whatever it might be.
18:03
Speaker 1: A lot of medications were originally derived directly from plants,
18:07
Speaker 1: compounds done as alkaloids, which, um, they're just gross. They
18:11
Speaker 1: don't taste good there, they make your mouth kind of
18:13
Speaker 1: pucker up at first. This German chemist isolated these alkaloids
18:18
Speaker 1: um in the eighteen hundreds to create something uh known
18:22
Speaker 1: as morphine, very popular um pain killer. But in order
18:26
Speaker 1: to eat it, to take it, unless you don't want
18:29
Speaker 1: to take it intravenously, you would be able to mix
18:32
Speaker 1: it with a little bit of chocolate or like you know,
18:34
Speaker 1: like you said, spoonful of sugar, but chocolate was even better.
18:36
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly being a kid and getting prescribed certain
18:40
Speaker 1: medications that were like not over the counter, and there
18:44
Speaker 1: was this one in particular that just had this like
18:45
Speaker 1: maple syrup quality to it. I don't know exactly what
18:48
Speaker 1: it was, but I liked it. Um it was because
18:51
Speaker 1: of the way it tasted, So it obviously did quite
18:54
Speaker 1: a good job. But even today they flavor medicines for
18:58
Speaker 1: kids with like bubble gum and things like that. But
19:00
Speaker 1: this is kind of the beginning of that tradition, and
19:03
Speaker 1: it really solidified that connection between the pharmacy, which would
19:08
Speaker 1: go on to be the place where you'd have these
19:10
Speaker 1: soda counters, you know, these soda fountains at the pharmacists
19:13
Speaker 1: or the you know, apothecary or whatever, because they needed
19:17
Speaker 1: that extra business to stay afloat. So they had all
19:20
Speaker 1: this stuff already on hand, these these syrups, uh, and
19:23
Speaker 1: they were able and during the golden age of patent
19:27
Speaker 1: medicines and soda fountains really you know, take it to
19:31
Speaker 1: the next level and kind of define a new era
19:33
Speaker 1: of like what the pharmacy meant to the community. Also
19:36
Speaker 1: to jump in here. I was just curious the type
19:38
Speaker 1: than maple syrup flavored, and the top results are pepsi pancakes, whiskey, lube, condoms, cereal, vape,
19:48
Speaker 1: ice cream, and toothpaste. The maple syrups are pretty common
19:53
Speaker 1: flavoring too. There's a there's a whole science behind synthesizing flavors,
19:58
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, the reason juicy root is
20:00
Speaker 1: named juicy fruit. That flavor does not exist in nature,
20:04
Speaker 1: and the food scientists who created it tried to come
20:08
Speaker 1: up with some something that sounded better than its actual
20:11
Speaker 1: chemical name. There is no such thing as juicy fruit.
20:14
Speaker 1: But Dan gets a good gum if only it lasted
20:16
Speaker 1: longer anyway on a chocolate Yes, yeah, chocolate is a
20:22
Speaker 1: perfect cover for getting medicine into children and people who
20:27
Speaker 1: are very taste sensitive. We don't know exactly when pharmacists
20:32
Speaker 1: first put two and two together and started brewing cocoa
20:37
Speaker 1: powder and sugar to make chocolate syrup, but we know
20:41
Speaker 1: it had to be doing part to that invention of
20:43
Speaker 1: cocoa powder. And according to Parks, this still wasn't the
20:47
Speaker 1: kind of like smooth, decadent, quiet storm flavored chocolate you
20:53
Speaker 1: would experience today. Pharmacists had to mix cocoa powder with
20:57
Speaker 1: eight times more sugar than chocolate. There was a weird
21:01
Speaker 1: ratio at play here. You could probably argue that people
21:04
Speaker 1: didn't really like chocolate so much as that is like
21:06
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of sugar. Yeah, they like
21:08
Speaker 1: flavored sugar right, just so, and we know that chocolate syrup.
21:13
Speaker 1: In terms of popularity, it exploded in the second half
21:17
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds because of those patent medicines. You know,
21:20
Speaker 1: snake oil. Quick thing about patent medicines, they're named after
21:25
Speaker 1: the letters of patent. This was the thing the English
21:28
Speaker 1: crown would give to inventors of formulas that they thought
21:33
Speaker 1: were legit. And there's of course a little bit of
21:36
Speaker 1: corruption there. The first English medicine patent was awarded way
21:41
Speaker 1: back in the late sixteen hundreds, but over time the
21:45
Speaker 1: name or the term patent later started referring to any
21:49
Speaker 1: over the counter drugs, and American patent medicines that went
21:53
Speaker 1: by the same name usually had no no claim to this.
21:56
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how sometimes you'll see people appoint
22:00
Speaker 1: themselves a bishop or something. They're not Catholic, they're just like,
22:04
Speaker 1: you know, the Reverend Bishop so and so sort of
22:07
Speaker 1: because they decided that's what you could do with patent medicine.
22:10
Speaker 1: You slapped it on the bottle, made it look a
22:13
Speaker 1: little more Legit bought you some time with the Rubes
22:15
Speaker 1: before you had to ditch town when they found out,
22:18
Speaker 1: you know, your your curative armpit sweat extract wasn't wasn't
22:24
Speaker 1: doing all it said it would. There was a huge
22:27
Speaker 1: demand for patent medicine too during the time when chocolate
22:30
Speaker 1: syrup hit the market because of the public needed treatments,
22:35
Speaker 1: they needed cures for ailments, and medical knowledge, actual medical
22:39
Speaker 1: knowledge wasn't up to the task. Sadly, a lot of
22:43
Speaker 1: these cures didn't just not help you, they could also
22:47
Speaker 1: harm you because of the stuff they had in them,
22:50
Speaker 1: maybe pulverized fruit paste, the fermentive vegetables, but also stuff
22:55
Speaker 1: like straight up opioids. And it was legal to do
23:00
Speaker 1: this until nineteen fourteen. But the Harrison Narcotic Act, well,
23:04
Speaker 1: I mean we know that like the early versions of
23:06
Speaker 1: coca cola contained cocaine, you know, there was just very
23:09
Speaker 1: little oversight, uh and thinking. And then thanks to the
23:12
Speaker 1: Harrison Narcotics Act, we had a little bit of help,
23:15
Speaker 1: but give me that original recipe. I'm kidding. I probably
23:18
Speaker 1: have to stop drinking coca cola, which is a shame.
23:20
Speaker 1: It's my favorite sub soda. I feel so atlantic. So yeah,
23:24
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a I'm a diet cook, guys. I don't
23:25
Speaker 1: know why. It's just it's a different thing. It's not
23:27
Speaker 1: necessarily because the calories. I just like the way diet
23:29
Speaker 1: coked tastes and they like the burn of it. But
23:32
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Opium was kind of like they didn't
23:34
Speaker 1: fully understand, you know, the addictive properties yet of opium,
23:38
Speaker 1: and like, you know, who shouldn't have it, you know,
23:41
Speaker 1: whether like pregnant women shouldn't necessarily take it and things
23:43
Speaker 1: like that. They were giving it to young kids. There
23:46
Speaker 1: was a very popular one of those patent medicines called
23:49
Speaker 1: stickney and pores paragoric word before it's a good one, uh.
23:55
Speaker 1: And it was super popular and it was given it
23:58
Speaker 1: was a syrup and it was give in um for
24:00
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. But it was even given to
24:02
Speaker 1: like kids, colloquy infants. As you know, old is five
24:05
Speaker 1: days and the main active ingredient was opium. Yeah, yeah,
24:12
Speaker 1: the big oh, this is all absolutely true, and you know,
24:16
Speaker 1: it did change kids behavior, It seemed to calm them down.
24:21
Speaker 1: But to your point, it's fairly certain that people weren't
24:25
Speaker 1: aware of just how dangerous opioids could be. But it
24:30
Speaker 1: it did seem to be great for business because not
24:33
Speaker 1: only did it appear to work on a temporary basis,
24:36
Speaker 1: but it was also addictive, which meant once somebody was
24:39
Speaker 1: buying this stuff, they had a high likelihood to purchase
24:43
Speaker 1: more in the future. And then we've got factory mass production.
24:47
Speaker 1: This is the rise of easily swallowed pills. Before this,
24:54
Speaker 1: it was kind of a pain in the key. Start
24:56
Speaker 1: to make pills, you had to make them by hand,
24:59
Speaker 1: and to make a pill with a reliable dose, you
25:02
Speaker 1: had to mix it up. You had to cut the pills,
25:04
Speaker 1: roll the pills, dry them, and nCode them is one
25:07
Speaker 1: at a time. You know, it's it's tough to make these,
25:10
Speaker 1: and that's why before the rise of mass produced pill technology,
25:15
Speaker 1: medicines were usually in liquid or powder form, or one
25:19
Speaker 1: of my favorite old school ones, the poultice. God, poultices
25:24
Speaker 1: are so weird. It's like, just make a mix of
25:26
Speaker 1: junk and then put it on. Oh man, I come
25:29
Speaker 1: from a place where people are still putting poultices on folks.
25:33
Speaker 1: Story for another day. Druggists would do this since they
25:37
Speaker 1: weren't making pills. They would mix up these liquid remedies
25:41
Speaker 1: kind of to a formula in a bespoke way. They
25:45
Speaker 1: would make them to order. So they would take a
25:48
Speaker 1: base of sugary flavored syrups like chocolate syrup, for example,
25:53
Speaker 1: and then they would mix it into a beverage. Or
26:00
Speaker 1: you could take an additional powder and you could pour
26:02
Speaker 1: it directly into your refreshment of choice. The base of
26:05
Speaker 1: these drinks could be a lot of different stuff. It
26:09
Speaker 1: could be t it could be plain water, it could
26:12
Speaker 1: be a straight up shot of whiskey, which people also
26:15
Speaker 1: believed was super medicinal. And over time there was a
26:19
Speaker 1: new kid on the on the soda jerk, beverage block,
26:23
Speaker 1: carbonated water, carbonator water would become the base of choice,
26:28
Speaker 1: which is why I love old school soda places. I know,
26:37
Speaker 1: it's just fun. It's just like it's sparkly, you know,
26:40
Speaker 1: it gives you that burn, that bite that we talked about. Um,
26:43
Speaker 1: just a quick aside. Like I through the podcast stuff
26:46
Speaker 1: that we do, we end up running into some interesting folks.
26:49
Speaker 1: And I had a thing where we were doing a
26:51
Speaker 1: podcast with Dr Oz way back in the day, and
26:54
Speaker 1: um I get to set up as a little studio
26:55
Speaker 1: and he did an interview with this like well regarded urologist.
26:59
Speaker 1: I can't remember guy's name, but the story was his
27:01
Speaker 1: father owned a soda jerk kind of count counter in
27:05
Speaker 1: Long Island, like in around around this time, or it was, no,
27:08
Speaker 1: it wasn't around this I was a little later, but
27:09
Speaker 1: this this was the beginning of what became the golden
27:12
Speaker 1: era of kind of soda counters, like in the you know,
27:15
Speaker 1: thirties and forties and all that. And he talked about
27:18
Speaker 1: this drink called an egg cream, and an egg cream
27:22
Speaker 1: contains neither egg nor cream. It's just straight up whole milk,
27:26
Speaker 1: soda water, carbonated water, and chocolate syrup. And this this
27:31
Speaker 1: dude made one for everyone that was there helping out,
27:33
Speaker 1: and it was it was quite good. But I just
27:35
Speaker 1: love the idea of like a thing with a name
27:37
Speaker 1: that that is absolutely misleading. Yeah, and soda water at
27:42
Speaker 1: this time was considered to be a medicinal drink in
27:47
Speaker 1: its own right, and a lot of people love love
27:51
Speaker 1: sparkling water. You know, a lot of people say, hey,
27:53
Speaker 1: I want to drink water, but I wanted that's That's
27:58
Speaker 1: probably the best way to explain this stuff. These carbonated
28:01
Speaker 1: beverages mimic the mineral rich water that you could find
28:06
Speaker 1: bubbling up in natural springs across the world. We actually
28:10
Speaker 1: have some natural springs here in Georgia. In our old
28:15
Speaker 1: office there is a cistern that collects water from a
28:19
Speaker 1: natural spring that has been driven underground. It's also the
28:22
Speaker 1: reason the main street in our neighborhood is named pont
28:26
Speaker 1: stelay On, which is a hilarious story. I'm glad to
28:29
Speaker 1: tell any ridiculous historians who want to write in and
28:32
Speaker 1: learn more. But soda water becomes widespread around the turn
28:37
Speaker 1: of the century thanks to a guy named Jacob Bower,
28:42
Speaker 1: no relation to the guy from four. He invents the
28:47
Speaker 1: process that allows you to sell tanks of pressurized carbon dioxide.
28:53
Speaker 1: And now we know, thanks to author Darcy O'Neill and
28:55
Speaker 1: his book Fixed the Pumps, we know that this stuff
28:58
Speaker 1: was amazing to the public. It was part health drink,
29:01
Speaker 1: it was part a sweet treat, and so it started
29:05
Speaker 1: spreading everywhere. It went to soda fountains, right that's where
29:08
Speaker 1: you would take your date. That's where you would take
29:09
Speaker 1: your kids if they were good. Totally one stickball or something.
29:13
Speaker 1: And syrups became even more popular and and it's international
29:18
Speaker 1: to obviously, you know, if anyone's ever had an Italian
29:20
Speaker 1: cream soda or something like that, like this was this
29:23
Speaker 1: was a technological advancement. It's weird to say the idea
29:27
Speaker 1: of shooting pressurized air essentially into water and making it
29:31
Speaker 1: bubble was a thing that led to entire sectors of industry.
29:36
Speaker 1: Think about how much money, like soda companies made it
29:39
Speaker 1: sell soft drinks. You know, this is all because of
29:42
Speaker 1: some guy that figured out, we can just like infuse
29:45
Speaker 1: this water with like bubbles and it'll be fun and
29:48
Speaker 1: tickle your notes. Gosh, if you want to see some
29:50
Speaker 1: uh some really funny animations about great inventors and little
29:56
Speaker 1: known inventors, then check out Stuff of Genius. It's this old,
30:00
Speaker 1: old video series I used to right back in the day,
30:02
Speaker 1: and it holds up. It's a lot of fun. But
30:05
Speaker 1: I want to say the soda craze didn't always lead
30:08
Speaker 1: to good things. Coca Cola, if you're listening, I still
30:11
Speaker 1: do not forgive you for the creation of the Italian
30:14
Speaker 1: soda Beverly, which is just double plus on good Max.
30:20
Speaker 1: You're nodding, you've been to the Coca Cola Museum yourself.
30:25
Speaker 1: Can you I haven't had it? Can you guys describe it?
30:27
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an taste. Have you read about
30:31
Speaker 1: war crimes, Like, imagine one of those in your mouth,
30:34
Speaker 1: and then there's a hint of orange in the air
30:37
Speaker 1: as the buildings burn Beverly. It's what I envisioned poison
30:41
Speaker 1: literally tastes like you don't die from drinking it, right,
30:47
Speaker 1: and people drink this on purpose for fun. Yet maybe
30:52
Speaker 1: I think it still exists as a joke. Maybe it's
30:54
Speaker 1: like a digestive It's similar to like drinking for Net
30:58
Speaker 1: without the albumount a fan not a fense. Have you guys,
31:01
Speaker 1: we've talked about this. I believe on that you guys
31:03
Speaker 1: ever had Malord. This's like Chicago Cent. Yeah? Is it
31:06
Speaker 1: kind of like that? Because Lord as a as a
31:09
Speaker 1: medicinal appare tea or digestive quality with a hint of citrus.
31:13
Speaker 1: So what you're describing to me sounds kind of like
31:15
Speaker 1: My Lord without the alcohol. Yeah, it's well, I would
31:19
Speaker 1: say the difference is MA Lord is drinkable anyway. Alright,
31:27
Speaker 1: So alright, let's put it this way. It is not
31:30
Speaker 1: a crime to sell the Lord or Beverly somehow, we'd
31:34
Speaker 1: have to look at the laws in Italy, but it
31:36
Speaker 1: is very popular teach their own anyway. Yes, there's this
31:41
Speaker 1: panopoly of flavoring that arises at this time. Vanilla, lemon, ginger,
31:47
Speaker 1: of course, our Boy chocolate. By the late eighteen hundreds,
31:52
Speaker 1: you would be hard pressed to look at any mail
31:55
Speaker 1: order pharmacist publication that did not have some kind of
31:59
Speaker 1: mention and of chocolate syrup. It was expected that you
32:02
Speaker 1: would have that, the same way it's expected nowadays that
32:05
Speaker 1: a burger joint will also sell French fries. And drug
32:09
Speaker 1: stores almost always had soda shops. These soda fountains became
32:13
Speaker 1: a huge side business because people might not always need
32:18
Speaker 1: the medicines you have in stock, but they'll always want
32:21
Speaker 1: a sweet carbonated treat, and you can sell it if
32:26
Speaker 1: you're a drug store owner, as some kind of curative thing.
32:31
Speaker 1: And it's true you can make kids take medicine if
32:34
Speaker 1: they feel like they're drinking something sweet, chocolate e tasty.
32:39
Speaker 1: And in fact, it was still largely kind of at
32:42
Speaker 1: this point still seen as connected the soda world, you know,
32:46
Speaker 1: as connected to that kind of medicine delivery situation. In
32:50
Speaker 1: eighteen nine seven book called the Standard Manual of Soda
32:54
Speaker 1: and Other Beverages. But a real, real interesting fellow wrote
32:58
Speaker 1: that said that the best method for administering castor oil,
33:02
Speaker 1: for example, was to draw a glass of sasporella soda
33:05
Speaker 1: in the usual manner and pour in the requisite amount
33:07
Speaker 1: of oil. Sasp by the way, is of course a
33:10
Speaker 1: similar drink to to root here. So even when cocola
33:13
Speaker 1: kind of get got it in the game, as we
33:15
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, their original secret recipe did have cocaine in it,
33:19
Speaker 1: so it was touted as this kind of like healthy, invigorating,
33:24
Speaker 1: you know, pep provider uh to you know, rejuvenate the
33:28
Speaker 1: brain and the body. Right, And it felt like it
33:30
Speaker 1: did right. Uh. You know. Again, as I said earlier,
33:33
Speaker 1: Elon musk has uh when he was in the process
33:38
Speaker 1: of attempting to acquire twitter uh, he said his next
33:41
Speaker 1: step was to buy coca cola and put the cocaine
33:44
Speaker 1: back in. No word yet on whether that is serious,
33:47
Speaker 1: but we'll see. At this time around the turn of
33:52
Speaker 1: the century, this is when we see people increasingly viewing
33:56
Speaker 1: chocolate syrup not as a treatment, not as a facilitation
34:00
Speaker 1: for the administration of medicine, but as a treat in
34:04
Speaker 1: its own right, and you start seeing it pop up
34:08
Speaker 1: in ice cream desserts, and pharmacists would keep ice cream
34:12
Speaker 1: and soda counters around just to help their bottom line,
34:16
Speaker 1: to be honest, until they realized what a hit it was.
34:19
Speaker 1: And it seems that Uncle Sam may have indirectly helped
34:23
Speaker 1: with chocolate syrups crossover from the world of medicine to
34:27
Speaker 1: the world of delicious no keep it in. So there
34:33
Speaker 1: were there were a lot of concerns now in the
34:36
Speaker 1: world of patent medicine, in the world of these things
34:39
Speaker 1: that purported to be panaceas but ended up damaging people's health,
34:44
Speaker 1: and this led to the passage of something called the
34:47
Speaker 1: nine SI Pure Food and Drug Act. This said you
34:51
Speaker 1: had to tell people what was in this medicine you
34:55
Speaker 1: were selling them. Pretty reasonable. Imagine that what a novel idea.
34:59
Speaker 1: But this would have been like a precursor to the
35:01
Speaker 1: proper f D a like that wouldn't have been established
35:04
Speaker 1: for another decade or so, if I'm not mistaken right.
35:07
Speaker 1: It basically began in nineteen o six, at least the predecessor.
35:11
Speaker 1: It didn't get called the f DA until But yeah, yeah,
35:16
Speaker 1: this this is the origin point. I think it was
35:19
Speaker 1: even like, yeah, it was. It was back when agencies
35:22
Speaker 1: sort of were they didn't have their own fiefdoms. They
35:25
Speaker 1: were sort of like piggybacking on top of each other.
35:27
Speaker 1: He had like the Patent Office and the U S
35:29
Speaker 1: Agricultural Division that were sort of like lumped in together,
35:33
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what sprang forth to become the
35:36
Speaker 1: f d A. But no, nineteen and six Pure Food
35:39
Speaker 1: and Drugs Act is in fact, big time the precursor
35:42
Speaker 1: to proper oversight by a governmental body of these things
35:45
Speaker 1: and and much more specific agents that have to come
35:48
Speaker 1: in and clinical trials and testing and all that things.
35:51
Speaker 1: This is like ground zero for that version of the timeline.
35:56
Speaker 1: And because of this occurring in step with the amp
36:00
Speaker 1: down on fake patent medicines, people started realizing, oh, hey,
36:04
Speaker 1: the chocolate isn't actually doing anything necessarily bad or immediately
36:10
Speaker 1: good for me. It's just it tastes good, and I
36:14
Speaker 1: like the good things in life, said the American public.
36:17
Speaker 1: Around this same time, other types of chocolate, we're starting
36:21
Speaker 1: to get some to get a little shine of their
36:24
Speaker 1: own in the public eye. And that's because the industrial
36:27
Speaker 1: revolution made it much easier to turn cocw pods into cocoa.
36:32
Speaker 1: So prices started to plummet. And back to p c Arelli,
36:36
Speaker 1: she says, the price of manufacturing drops, the price of
36:39
Speaker 1: sugar drops, and then boom, we have chocolate bars. I
36:43
Speaker 1: added the boom, but I think uh Prelli would approve.
36:47
Speaker 1: We had a couple of those industrious Dutch and Swiss
36:51
Speaker 1: innovators that kind of created the early versions of like
36:53
Speaker 1: these chocolate bars and systems that allowed them to do
36:56
Speaker 1: like the coco press and all that. But this is
36:58
Speaker 1: scale right here, my friends, what they call that. So
37:01
Speaker 1: this was what allowed you know, mass production. And then
37:04
Speaker 1: you have Hersh's in figuring out how to really market
37:08
Speaker 1: pre mix chocolate syrup in order to use for all
37:11
Speaker 1: kinds of different stuff. And it initially came in a can,
37:14
Speaker 1: meaning that it would be shelf stable, uh so that
37:17
Speaker 1: the druggist wouldn't have to mix up new batches. But
37:20
Speaker 1: then in the thirties, hers She's and other chocolate companies
37:22
Speaker 1: like Bosco's started to market it for home use. Because
37:26
Speaker 1: initially had been something only in the domain of the
37:28
Speaker 1: of the druggist, and the rest is history. You know,
37:31
Speaker 1: you put it on your ice cream, mix it up
37:33
Speaker 1: with your chocolate milk. I mean, marketing is is a
37:36
Speaker 1: hell of a drug in and of itself. I mean
37:37
Speaker 1: that's where all of these perceived uses sort of came from. Yep.
37:43
Speaker 1: And the rest is delectable and dietarily dangerous history. Pardon my, yes,
37:51
Speaker 1: I'm ridiculous. You will see a lot of claims nowadays
37:54
Speaker 1: about health benefits for chocolate. One that really stood out
37:58
Speaker 1: to me was a two thousand six study that said
38:01
Speaker 1: eating a little bit of chocolate could have a similar
38:03
Speaker 1: effect to taking aspirin. Oh also shout out to our
38:08
Speaker 1: friends in ancient meso America. The old Max might be
38:11
Speaker 1: interested to know that, and also made Zuma the second
38:15
Speaker 1: would be interested to know that THEO bromine has been
38:19
Speaker 1: marketed in the modern day as an alternative to erectile
38:23
Speaker 1: dysfunction drugs like viagra. Still, despite all that, you asked
38:27
Speaker 1: the average person, They're gonna say, chocolate is a treat,
38:31
Speaker 1: not a treatmant and and they would they would be right.
38:35
Speaker 1: It's uh. The big dog by far of the confection
38:39
Speaker 1: market in the United States. The confection market overall is
38:43
Speaker 1: thirty five billion dollars worth a scratch today in US dollars,
38:48
Speaker 1: not in cacao beans and chocolate is like the vast
38:53
Speaker 1: majority of that thirty five billion. Yeah, and you know,
38:57
Speaker 1: we we've mentioned this kind of throughout, but to this
39:00
Speaker 1: a the idea of flavoring medicines and even like that
39:03
Speaker 1: that that really brittle, weird toothpaste they use the dentist
39:06
Speaker 1: four kids and picky adults is important because if you're
39:10
Speaker 1: not gonna take something for the most part, if it's
39:13
Speaker 1: really really gross, or you know, you just can't get
39:17
Speaker 1: the stuff down. And some people are really freaked out
39:19
Speaker 1: by needles, and we'll go to any lengths to avoid
39:22
Speaker 1: getting something and checked intravenously. So these days you have
39:25
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, bubble gum flavoring that's really huge, with
39:28
Speaker 1: a mox of sillin like an antibiotics, cherry flavored coughs
39:32
Speaker 1: syrup of course, you know the famous grape. All of
39:35
Speaker 1: that are a big part still of the medical industry
39:39
Speaker 1: in terms of like over the counter and prescription strengths,
39:42
Speaker 1: vitamin gummies, they're delicious, million percent they are. They're just good.
39:46
Speaker 1: They're just good. I love a vitamin gummy. I'll eat them.
39:49
Speaker 1: I will o D on Vitamin C just from popping
39:51
Speaker 1: too many of those shaped the shaped like the little tangerine.
39:57
Speaker 1: You know. Sections of Flynn Still vitamins also have flavoring.
40:01
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's really common. Yeah. Well, I think Ben,
40:04
Speaker 1: you and I both had You and I both have
40:06
Speaker 1: had occasion in the past through work stuff to go
40:09
Speaker 1: to some flavor labs. And I think you went to
40:11
Speaker 1: like Dorito's, Frito's or one of the Frito lay maybe,
40:15
Speaker 1: and I got to go to Curreg Dr Pepper and
40:18
Speaker 1: we both got to see in real time like the
40:21
Speaker 1: flavor labs, which is like you know, white Coat, you know,
40:25
Speaker 1: it's really interesting and it is like so much R
40:27
Speaker 1: and D goes into making things taste like other things. Um. So,
40:32
Speaker 1: just to wrap it up with a little mentioned from
40:34
Speaker 1: this wonderful Smithsonian mag article that we've referenced a couple
40:38
Speaker 1: of times, Mary Poppins was was definitely right. The spoonful
40:42
Speaker 1: of sugar or chocolate or bubblegum or whatever, flint stone
40:46
Speaker 1: stable flavor really does help the medicine go so good.
40:49
Speaker 1: On you, Julie Andrews, remaining relevant to this day. I
40:52
Speaker 1: also want to shout out the hard working flavor scientists.
40:57
Speaker 1: If you want some further reading, there's a really fun
41:02
Speaker 1: story about what I call the banana conspiracy. Have you
41:06
Speaker 1: ever noticed how banana flavored candy doesn't taste like the
41:09
Speaker 1: bananas in your produce section. It's because they're different things,
41:14
Speaker 1: the cavendish versus the gross. Michelle, Do check it out
41:18
Speaker 1: when you've a chance. In the meantime, thanks as always
41:21
Speaker 1: to by far the sweetest part of our show. He
41:24
Speaker 1: helps the ridiculous medicine go down, Mr Max Williams. Thanks
41:28
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams, who composed our banging Bob at the
41:31
Speaker 1: beginning and the end. And thanks to Jonathan Strickland a k.
41:37
Speaker 1: The Quister, who in another life is selling patent medicine
41:41
Speaker 1: out of a covered wagon. Right now, that's a horse
41:44
Speaker 1: of a different color right there, he reminds. He always
41:46
Speaker 1: reminds me of the the Odds character. Um, maybe it's
41:50
Speaker 1: because he's bald. I don't know something about the vibe.
41:53
Speaker 1: But Jonathan for Sir Jonathan for President of of Snake
41:56
Speaker 1: Oil Salesman Hughes. Thanks Christophrosciots. Here it's spirit Um, Eve's
42:01
Speaker 1: Jeff Codes, Max Williams, Alex Williams, all the all the
42:04
Speaker 1: hits uh into you, Ben for um being a good
42:09
Speaker 1: buddy and a and a chocolate loving traveling companion on
42:12
Speaker 1: this historical journey. Thanks so much, No one last thing.
42:16
Speaker 1: We'll be back, of course, more ridiculous history. But in
42:18
Speaker 1: the meantime, why not learn about the ridiculous aspects of crime, romance,
42:23
Speaker 1: and the modern day news. You can check all of
42:26
Speaker 1: these out on our expanding Ridiculous Universe slate. Ridiculous Crime,
42:31
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Romance, Ridiculous News, available today wherever you find your
42:36
Speaker 1: favorite shows. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
42:46
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
42:49
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.