Latest / Ridiculous History / People Used To Straight Up Drink Gold

Transcript

People Used To Straight Up Drink Gold · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
0:31
Speaker 1: much for tuning in confession. This week has turned me
0:35
Speaker 1: into at least temporarily a t G I F person,
0:38
Speaker 1: which I never thought I would be. Who am I?
0:40
Speaker 1: My name is Ben? Which T G I F person?
0:42
Speaker 1: Aren't you been? Are you Steve Rkel? Or are you
0:44
Speaker 1: more of a Coral or maybe the Olsen Twins or
0:48
Speaker 1: a Balky? You're sort of a Balky esque figure. That's
0:52
Speaker 1: very kind of you. I know you like perfect strangers,
0:54
Speaker 1: is all I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, no, I I appreciate yourn.
0:57
Speaker 1: I appreciate that imntally. I love that. I love that
1:00
Speaker 1: theme song. That is one of my favorite uh theme
1:03
Speaker 1: songs of all sitcom time. Uh you know it's it's
1:08
Speaker 1: a banger, right, It's inspirational, downright inspirational. If you ask me,
1:12
Speaker 1: we're standing tall on the wings of our dreams. What
1:17
Speaker 1: does that even mean? Though it's a little confusing, how
1:19
Speaker 1: can you stand on wings and and do how to dream?
1:22
Speaker 1: To dreams? Have? It's a little The imagery plum mixes
1:25
Speaker 1: me a bit, but I do find the melodies soaring
1:27
Speaker 1: melody really gets me riled up in a good way. Yeah,
1:31
Speaker 1: not a sexual way though. Oh that's good to know.
1:33
Speaker 1: But you know, it's live your truth. Bro. Uh. Speaking
1:37
Speaker 1: of fantastic segways, of course, where would we be without
1:41
Speaker 1: our super producer, Casey Pegram Uh, Casey you are you
1:48
Speaker 1: a Perfect Strangers fan? Just sitcom wise? Like theme song
1:51
Speaker 1: wise baby? Oh yeah, it's it's it's. I think it's
1:53
Speaker 1: objectively one of the better theme songs from that decade,
1:56
Speaker 1: and that decade is is rife with great themes, so uh,
2:00
Speaker 1: quite an achievement to be one of the best. Yeah.
2:03
Speaker 1: Agreed not to get too in the leads about the
2:06
Speaker 1: sitcom themes, but I just the song craft of them
2:08
Speaker 1: was always really impressed me because you gotta pack like
2:11
Speaker 1: everything a three and a half minute song would have
2:13
Speaker 1: into like forty five seconds. There's even a bridge in
2:17
Speaker 1: the Perfect Strangers theme. Okay, I mean that's that's the
2:19
Speaker 1: last I'm gonna say on that topic, but really impressive songwriting.
2:22
Speaker 1: There's like some real time distortion happening in those themes,
2:26
Speaker 1: when it feels like, you know, minutes have past, but
2:28
Speaker 1: you've really only been there for thirty seconds. It's impressive.
2:31
Speaker 1: It's such a download of exposition. And the weird thing
2:34
Speaker 1: is you can hear the full versions, you know, online
2:37
Speaker 1: easily now. Uh, and they don't hold up. They're not
2:41
Speaker 1: They're not as catchy as the sitcom ones. I love.
2:44
Speaker 1: I love the exposition. We should do I propose we
2:47
Speaker 1: do an episode on sitcom themes in the future, because
2:51
Speaker 1: you know, I read somewhere that there's like a relatively
2:56
Speaker 1: small cadre of people who are responsible for most of
2:59
Speaker 1: the real bangers. Uh, you know, as a kid, and
3:03
Speaker 1: I know why. I was myopically fascinated with the Mr.
3:07
Speaker 1: Belvedere theme song and it's one of those that's doing
3:10
Speaker 1: what we're talking about where it just like explains the
3:12
Speaker 1: whole crazy situation. Also the nanny fran Dresser. If you're
3:17
Speaker 1: if you're hearing this, I'm on Twitter, so so what
3:22
Speaker 1: do you think? No one? Would that be an interesting
3:23
Speaker 1: idea for a future episode? Absolutely? And fran Um get
3:27
Speaker 1: at me too. I'm on Instagram. How now, Nold it's
3:31
Speaker 1: had a big old nanny crush, uh. And though it
3:34
Speaker 1: didn't age well with me personally, but when I was
3:37
Speaker 1: at a certain age at fran Dresser really got my
3:40
Speaker 1: dander up. Yeah, yeah, fran dresser and feelings I didn't
3:46
Speaker 1: understand at the time. But uh, but let's let's move
3:50
Speaker 1: on to today's episode. Uh. This is something that may
3:55
Speaker 1: also be a little bit difficult for many of us
3:58
Speaker 1: listening in the modern day to understand. And that is this,
4:03
Speaker 1: back in the day, just like now, people were trying
4:07
Speaker 1: to do everything they could to ensure that they lived
4:09
Speaker 1: as long as possible, and that they were healthy and
4:12
Speaker 1: virile and vital while they were alive. You can see
4:16
Speaker 1: it today and things like uh, anti aging creams of
4:19
Speaker 1: dubious efficacy. Uh. And and today's episode is about something
4:25
Speaker 1: even more dubious. People thought that they could improve their
4:31
Speaker 1: physical health by doing something incredibly strange. No, you want
4:34
Speaker 1: to do the honors on this one, Ben, and I
4:37
Speaker 1: think we can explain the topic of today's episode with
4:40
Speaker 1: a quote from Exodus nineteen, in which Moses ascended the
4:46
Speaker 1: mountain to meet with the Lord, and after receiving the
4:50
Speaker 1: ten commandments from his Lord, Moses came down from on
4:54
Speaker 1: high upon the mountain, where he saw the people worshiping
4:57
Speaker 1: a golden calf that they had made an idol, and
5:02
Speaker 1: Moses anger waxed hot. He took the golden calf, burned
5:06
Speaker 1: it in fire, grounded into powder, and sprinkled it to pond.
5:09
Speaker 1: The water Moses made the children of Israel drink of it.
5:14
Speaker 1: The powder Moses sprinkled upon the water was gold dust.
5:19
Speaker 1: As my dramatic reading. Ever, the day yea drinking gold
5:21
Speaker 1: drinking goal was a thing dates back to Biblical times. Um.
5:25
Speaker 1: Apparently there was some kind of notion that it was
5:28
Speaker 1: imbued with magical properties. I don't know, they weren't really doing,
5:33
Speaker 1: you know, clinical studies at the time. It had to
5:34
Speaker 1: have been based onto some sort of like hunch. I
5:37
Speaker 1: guess what do you think? Then it's strange because you know,
5:41
Speaker 1: gold has a really long history throughout human civilization as
5:46
Speaker 1: a therapeutic agent, similar in some ways to silver. First
5:51
Speaker 1: it was used as a metal, right, and then of
5:53
Speaker 1: course there's the dust reference in biblical times. Uh. And
5:56
Speaker 1: then it was used as a soluble salt made by
5:59
Speaker 1: alca missed. The predecessors of chemists, you know, you'll recognize
6:03
Speaker 1: them as the dudes who set out to like make
6:06
Speaker 1: the Philosopher's stone and then invented pesticides and things like that.
6:11
Speaker 1: They some of the more convinced that this substance gold
6:17
Speaker 1: could be Uh. By the way, I just have to
6:19
Speaker 1: point out it is element seventy nine on the periodic table,
6:23
Speaker 1: is it is it? F E? That's all right? Gold
6:26
Speaker 1: is an a A you A? You? That's right. Sodium
6:31
Speaker 1: is an a or nice? Yeah, you got me on
6:33
Speaker 1: the periodic table, and you know it's sure. It sounds
6:37
Speaker 1: a lot like this Moses story. I just really wanted
6:39
Speaker 1: an excuse to read in my my most Biblical of voices,
6:43
Speaker 1: was an example of like him kind of rubbing the
6:45
Speaker 1: children of Israel's noses in what they had done and
6:49
Speaker 1: making treating them like bad boys and girls because they
6:52
Speaker 1: know worshiped this idol um. But the notion that gold
6:57
Speaker 1: was this kind of magical elixir of lie if that would,
7:01
Speaker 1: you know, extend your life can be traced all the
7:03
Speaker 1: way back to China in b C. Yeah, this is
7:09
Speaker 1: where we see the first instance of someone preparing something
7:14
Speaker 1: like potable gold. Potable is just addressed up word meaning
7:19
Speaker 1: drinkable like potable water. You probably here in survival scenarios
7:22
Speaker 1: and also in Egypt, drinking gold water was thought to
7:26
Speaker 1: enhance your youth. Uh, in are you vetic medicine. Today
7:31
Speaker 1: in India, red collidal gold is still used for the
7:35
Speaker 1: same roughly the same thing, rejuvenation, revitalization. And it's strange because,
7:42
Speaker 1: you know, going back to alchemy, we look at the
7:45
Speaker 1: history of this. Making drinkable gold is something that alchemists
7:49
Speaker 1: were super obsessed with for a incredibly long time. Yea,
7:54
Speaker 1: alchemy in general, I mean gold making something out of
7:57
Speaker 1: nothing like turning you know, a non pre just metal
8:00
Speaker 1: into the most precious of metals that that was gold
8:03
Speaker 1: being chief amongst them. UM. So gold alchemists were pretty
8:07
Speaker 1: gold focused. But yeah, it's true. I mean, you know,
8:10
Speaker 1: back in in those ancient times when alchemists um were
8:14
Speaker 1: really looked at as as these you know, great kind
8:18
Speaker 1: of pillars of the community. They were almost like medicine
8:21
Speaker 1: men or or you know like physicians really UM, and
8:24
Speaker 1: they were trusted in and they were thought to be
8:27
Speaker 1: generating something that actually could cure what ails you. It's
8:31
Speaker 1: interesting you were talking about just a minute ago of
8:33
Speaker 1: the red colloidal gold that's used in India UM today.
8:37
Speaker 1: Also colloidal silver is sort of one of those is
8:40
Speaker 1: it isn't it snake oil or not kind of remedies
8:44
Speaker 1: that a lot of people swear by um. But yeah,
8:46
Speaker 1: back to alchemy, it was known, it was it was.
8:49
Speaker 1: It was common knowledge that the gold was not soluble
8:53
Speaker 1: in water. So the idea of making a drinkable gold,
8:57
Speaker 1: uh was kind of a you know, superpower move in
9:01
Speaker 1: and of itself and demonstrated some sort of mastery of
9:04
Speaker 1: I don't know, the dark arts the light arts. I
9:05
Speaker 1: guess an alchemist was more I guess into you know,
9:08
Speaker 1: magic for good. I guess right. You know, they labored
9:13
Speaker 1: under some stereotypes, you know what I mean, especially if
9:16
Speaker 1: they were the only people in the region who could read. Uh.
9:21
Speaker 1: Just like a lot of medical practitioners at the time.
9:24
Speaker 1: You know, an alchemist was in higher than average danger
9:29
Speaker 1: of being accused of witchcraft. In the eighth century a d.
9:34
Speaker 1: There's this Arabian alchemists. His name is Jabber Eben high On,
9:39
Speaker 1: or you'll hear him called Kerber sometimes. He made the
9:43
Speaker 1: biggest breakthrough in drinkable gold when he invented something called
9:47
Speaker 1: aqua reggiea. He combined hydrochloric and nitric acid. He created
9:52
Speaker 1: one of the few substances that can dissolve gold. So
9:56
Speaker 1: this is useful for a lot of things. Right, if
9:58
Speaker 1: we're being practical ole and a little bit mundane about it,
10:02
Speaker 1: you can use this substance to help you with gold extraction.
10:05
Speaker 1: You can use it to purify gold. But they wanted
10:09
Speaker 1: to use it for other things. They wanted to to
10:12
Speaker 1: use it for its perceived curative qualities. And since the
10:16
Speaker 1: eighth century a d in this part of the world,
10:19
Speaker 1: alchemists spent a thousand years maybe more, trying to figure
10:26
Speaker 1: out where else they could go with this. European alchemists
10:30
Speaker 1: have found these the secret written in a couple of
10:34
Speaker 1: books in the ninth and tenth centuries, and we know
10:37
Speaker 1: from other records some famous medieval alchemists had claimed that
10:43
Speaker 1: they had discovered an actual life elixir. And that's the
10:47
Speaker 1: thing we see a lot with alchemy. You'll see somebody
10:49
Speaker 1: who says like uh like, like Michael Scott, not from
10:53
Speaker 1: the office. But the alchemists, they'll they'll say that they've
10:56
Speaker 1: made something right, some big secret, but they they won't
11:00
Speaker 1: straight out tell you what it is or how they
11:02
Speaker 1: got it. Well, then help me with this. Ben. You know,
11:05
Speaker 1: I'm Mina was sort of joking about using magic for
11:08
Speaker 1: good or whatever, and you know, alchemy was not they
11:11
Speaker 1: would not have considered themselves to be manipulating any kind
11:14
Speaker 1: of supernatural forces. They were, you know, supposedly using a
11:19
Speaker 1: precursor to chemistry and you know, using science. But a
11:24
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff about transmutation and turning things into
11:27
Speaker 1: other things, there's some magical thinking that goes along with that,
11:31
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was bunk, right, I mean,
11:32
Speaker 1: just just to clarify the whole kind of trajectory of
11:35
Speaker 1: alchemy in general. Yeah, and we have to keep in
11:38
Speaker 1: mind that in these times, uh, science and spirituality were
11:45
Speaker 1: not considered naturally in opposition, you know what I mean.
11:48
Speaker 1: You would have Christian alchemists who were using what we
11:52
Speaker 1: would call something like science to prove their spiritual beliefs. Right,
11:57
Speaker 1: So there's some confirmation bias in their um. It's just
12:01
Speaker 1: a it's a very interesting evolution. If we fast forward
12:11
Speaker 1: to the century, we know those alchemists like Michael Scott.
12:16
Speaker 1: That's so funny to me. It's Michael Scott will one
12:18
Speaker 1: t for the record. Roger Bacon and a couple of
12:22
Speaker 1: others had already written about this drinkable gold which they
12:26
Speaker 1: called our room PoTA bill. And because of the because
12:33
Speaker 1: of all the different people who are working on this
12:35
Speaker 1: over the centuries. Uh, this drinkable gold got a reputation,
12:40
Speaker 1: kind of a snake oil reputation, like something you'd see
12:43
Speaker 1: in a medicine show. It was called a panacea that
12:46
Speaker 1: it could cure all diseases. That like, hey, if you
12:49
Speaker 1: had any affliction, you know, whether you've got like brain
12:53
Speaker 1: ghosts or you've got to fever, then just drink gold.
12:56
Speaker 1: Pesky brain ghosts. Man, I can't get rid of them.
13:00
Speaker 1: They follow me wherever I go, whispering sweet nothings to me. Um.
13:03
Speaker 1: So then there was this guy, um who as you
13:06
Speaker 1: loved this name. His name is Paracelsus. I don't know itself.
13:09
Speaker 1: Sounds like some sort of like stomach medicine. Uh so
13:12
Speaker 1: he seems legit just by his name alone. He really
13:15
Speaker 1: was a big force in kind of really spreading this
13:20
Speaker 1: notion of potable gold as this elixir of life that
13:24
Speaker 1: could cure anything that ailed you, you know, and also
13:28
Speaker 1: you know, keep your skin fresh and rejuvenated looking. Um
13:32
Speaker 1: probably do wonderful things for your hair as well, I imagine. Um.
13:35
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was used to treat fevers and all
13:38
Speaker 1: kinds of ailments, and uh, you know, indigestion and anything
13:42
Speaker 1: that you can think of, but actually caused more problems
13:47
Speaker 1: than it cured. There was this condition known as oric
13:50
Speaker 1: fever that um, surprise, surprise, you know, expose yourself to
13:55
Speaker 1: metal over a long period of time, you start to
13:58
Speaker 1: get this thing that causes you to sweat profusely and um.
14:05
Speaker 1: The way it's described in this article from BMJ dot
14:08
Speaker 1: com is uh, uh to have a very abundant flow
14:13
Speaker 1: of urine in addition to irritations and your gutty parts,
14:18
Speaker 1: and also could really cause I mean heavy met metals
14:21
Speaker 1: and your well, I mean it's not a heavy metal,
14:23
Speaker 1: but it's definitely not something that probably should be ingested
14:26
Speaker 1: in your body to that degree. And it would you know,
14:29
Speaker 1: understandably cause damage to your kidneys trying to filter it out. Uh.
14:33
Speaker 1: And also you would um, you know, drool a lot.
14:37
Speaker 1: It would mess with your with your production of saliva,
14:41
Speaker 1: and after a certain threshold you could even die. Deaths
14:46
Speaker 1: from gold intoxication were described. They were not uncommon, but
14:51
Speaker 1: still people thought, you know, that's that's sort of how
14:53
Speaker 1: a lot of medicine works. It can be what can
14:55
Speaker 1: be beneficial in small doses can be dangerous in large judoses,
15:01
Speaker 1: and people still praised this. Historically, Paracelsus introduced earlier, said Oxus,
15:09
Speaker 1: gold disupreme in the most important force. Gold. You can
15:13
Speaker 1: keep the body indistructible, drinkable gold with your all illnesses.
15:18
Speaker 1: It renews and restores. And it's weird because that's kind
15:22
Speaker 1: of like this ancient TV infomercial language, right, It's like,
15:27
Speaker 1: do you have double elbow exactly gold like bone broth
15:30
Speaker 1: or something. Totally nailed it. Yeah, by the way, you guys,
15:33
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't let this go. Uh. Paracelsus is
15:37
Speaker 1: full name was thus obviously if I can't even get
15:41
Speaker 1: through this is incredible. Philippius Aurolius, Theophrastus Bombastus von hon
15:47
Speaker 1: and I'm nice a k A street name Paracelsus and
15:52
Speaker 1: he was Swissed by the way, and that wow, Theophrastus Bombastus,
15:57
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I know, dropped the bet. I'll
16:00
Speaker 1: freestyle that. Uh. So we're setting this stage here to
16:06
Speaker 1: say that gold was used for a lot of things,
16:09
Speaker 1: and we've got numerous cases across the world of people
16:12
Speaker 1: saying gold is the cure for what ails you, regardless
16:16
Speaker 1: of what your symptoms might be. But as we've been foreshadowing,
16:20
Speaker 1: it really takes off as an anti aging trend. Uh.
16:24
Speaker 1: During the Middle Ages. This is also the time when
16:29
Speaker 1: Apothecary's a K predecessors of pharmacists, would sell things like
16:34
Speaker 1: scorpion oil and spider web alexers, which I love because
16:38
Speaker 1: it kind of reminds me of Skyrim, which is just
16:41
Speaker 1: a fantastic video game. Uh. And we know that, like
16:46
Speaker 1: we know that gold drinking has been a suggested practice
16:51
Speaker 1: and suggested to have medicinal application for thousands and thousands
16:55
Speaker 1: of years. And when we fast forward to the Elizabeth
16:58
Speaker 1: Bethan era, we know that the use of drinkable gold
17:02
Speaker 1: was well enough established in European culture of the time
17:06
Speaker 1: that even Shakespeare mentioned it. In Henry the Fourth Prince,
17:11
Speaker 1: Henry blames h claims the gold crown for his father's illness, saying,
17:18
Speaker 1: I spake unto this crown is having sense, and thus
17:21
Speaker 1: upbraided it the care on the depending half fed upon
17:25
Speaker 1: the body of my father. Therefore thou best of gold,
17:28
Speaker 1: art worst of gold are the less fine, and carrots
17:32
Speaker 1: is more precious, preserving life in medicine potable. And I
17:36
Speaker 1: was shaking my fist as you were doing that reading
17:38
Speaker 1: and just really really got to me. That was good. Um.
17:42
Speaker 1: What so he's saying, like, you know, the gold crown
17:48
Speaker 1: is what makes is what's making my father ill. But
17:52
Speaker 1: you know the real goal, the helpful gold is maybe
17:56
Speaker 1: less impressive in terms of carrots and appearance, but it
17:59
Speaker 1: is real medicine because you can drink it. Interesting. Okay,
18:03
Speaker 1: I see it now, I see it now, Ben, Thank
18:05
Speaker 1: you for walking me through that. That's interesting man. Okay.
18:08
Speaker 1: So let's not the present, I guess, but I think
18:12
Speaker 1: moving on to the sixteenth century when we have Henry
18:16
Speaker 1: the Second, whose mistress actually drank gold in order to
18:20
Speaker 1: stay youthful. Uh and and you know, attractive to her,
18:25
Speaker 1: not husband. What do what do you call? What does
18:29
Speaker 1: a mistress call her liaison, her lover? Maybe lover? Maybe? Um?
18:37
Speaker 1: I like, uh, maybe, I mean in the parlance of
18:41
Speaker 1: our day at sugar daddy. But I want something more
18:44
Speaker 1: classy for this because we're talking about aristocrats here. How
18:46
Speaker 1: about a zaddi. Okay, you know what, let's go with it. Yeah, okay, So, yeah,
18:52
Speaker 1: she wanted to stay you know, trim and fit for
18:54
Speaker 1: her zaddie. And there was a study that was published
18:58
Speaker 1: in the British Medical journal that actually chronicled this. But
19:02
Speaker 1: I think she she might have had a little too much,
19:05
Speaker 1: like you said, been a little little little dabbled you
19:08
Speaker 1: and according to U toxicology reports, this eventually led to
19:13
Speaker 1: her poisoning herself. Yeah, you're right, Noel, Diane de Poitiers Casey,
19:19
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna check with you on the French there. Yeah,
19:21
Speaker 1: that would be something like Dianda Potier Casey on the
19:24
Speaker 1: case and not that bad. Yes, So, Diane de Poitiers
19:30
Speaker 1: is one of the few confirmed cases of someone dying
19:36
Speaker 1: by drinking gold. She was as as you said, Noel.
19:41
Speaker 1: She was the infamous mistress of King Henri the second
19:45
Speaker 1: of France, and she was a well taught, well rounded
19:50
Speaker 1: educated person. She studied music, hunting, languages, and she was
19:58
Speaker 1: given what I would say is is a pretty high
20:01
Speaker 1: end education for a young woman in the Renaissance era.
20:06
Speaker 1: Totally question though, for everyone and for history, why is
20:09
Speaker 1: the mistress got to be the infamous one? I mean,
20:11
Speaker 1: what about the king? Is he not to blame, you know,
20:14
Speaker 1: for cheating on his wife? What? Well? I don't understand
20:17
Speaker 1: why all the blame goes on the on the woman.
20:18
Speaker 1: That's just my hot take. Yeah, I have a low
20:21
Speaker 1: opinion of kings in general. You guys both know this
20:24
Speaker 1: about me. I would say, maybe she's infamous because of
20:28
Speaker 1: the manner of her death. I don't know. Yeah, I
20:30
Speaker 1: could well be. It's a good question. Infamous though I
20:32
Speaker 1: just think of his meaning, meaning he did something bastardly.
20:36
Speaker 1: This is more just kind of a sad product of
20:38
Speaker 1: her trying to stay in the good favor of her
20:41
Speaker 1: jerky king, you know, zaddie. Uh. She married someone thirty
20:48
Speaker 1: nine years her senior when she was fifteen. His name
20:53
Speaker 1: was Louis de Bres. He was the grandson of King
20:57
Speaker 1: Charles the seventh, and he had served in the court
21:00
Speaker 1: of King Francis one. And so this this marriage had
21:04
Speaker 1: to have I mean, maybe it was romantic, but we
21:07
Speaker 1: have to remember the idea of marrying for romantic love
21:11
Speaker 1: is sadly a relatively recent invention in history. Uh. This
21:16
Speaker 1: may have been a political move. She served as the
21:18
Speaker 1: lady of waiting to Queen Claude, and then her and
21:22
Speaker 1: her husband had two daughters before Louis passed away in
21:27
Speaker 1: fift thirty one, leaving Diane thirty two years old. She
21:31
Speaker 1: started wearing black and white, as you know, a symbol
21:35
Speaker 1: of mourning, and she would keep these colors for the
21:38
Speaker 1: rest of her life. So at this time, she's, as
21:46
Speaker 1: we said, thirty two years old, she's already renowned for
21:50
Speaker 1: her beauty. Imagine the sixteenth century version of a bunch
21:56
Speaker 1: of people coming up to a pretty person and saying,
21:58
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what's your secret. Maybe it's you, maybe
22:01
Speaker 1: it's Mabel Lee. Uh. In this case, it was gold.
22:04
Speaker 1: We'll get to this. Uh. She did become the mistress
22:08
Speaker 1: of Henry the Second. Their affairs believed to have begun
22:12
Speaker 1: when she was thirty five and when the king was sixteen.
22:17
Speaker 1: For a time she was the most powerful woman in France,
22:19
Speaker 1: even more powerful than the the legitimate queen. Then when
22:24
Speaker 1: on re passed away in fifteen fifty nine, Uh, Diane
22:30
Speaker 1: had a pretty precipitous fall from grace. She got banished
22:36
Speaker 1: and eventually she died at the age of sixty six.
22:43
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Contemporary reports said that she looked
22:47
Speaker 1: super young, like when she was fifty, she looked thirty.
22:51
Speaker 1: Things like that, and they everybody kind of believed that
22:54
Speaker 1: her secret was that she was drinking gold. Now, maybe
22:58
Speaker 1: that sounds like a caddie rumor courtiers spread, But in
23:02
Speaker 1: this case it turns out to be true. Right yeah.
23:05
Speaker 1: I mean, at the very least, she wasn't getting accused
23:07
Speaker 1: of like bathing in virgin's blood or anything like thoughts,
23:10
Speaker 1: you know, uh, because this is something that you know
23:13
Speaker 1: was available. This was a pretty relatively known um concoction
23:18
Speaker 1: that you could get in all of a lot of
23:21
Speaker 1: the apothecaries, uh in the French court um because they
23:25
Speaker 1: actually believe that gold harnessed the power of the sun
23:29
Speaker 1: um uh and a lot of that comes from those
23:32
Speaker 1: kind of alchemical notions of of of power in the substance.
23:38
Speaker 1: Wasn't that what they called it? Bend? And they called
23:39
Speaker 1: gold the substance. I like it. I it might, I
23:42
Speaker 1: might just like the way you say it, But I say,
23:44
Speaker 1: we'll go with it. Can you do it one more time?
23:47
Speaker 1: The substance? It's kind of like articling my ears. That's beautiful. Now.
23:51
Speaker 1: Of course, given the time frame, and given how much
23:54
Speaker 1: time has passed between our podcast and and this, uh,
24:00
Speaker 1: this poor woman's death, you would reasonably assume that this
24:05
Speaker 1: would remain a rumor or an anecdote. However, we have
24:10
Speaker 1: the benefit of some forensic science. You see, three scientists
24:15
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight actually solved the case of
24:20
Speaker 1: Diane's death, and they did it in a somewhat grizzly way.
24:24
Speaker 1: I don't know, what do you think, little grizzily? I mean,
24:27
Speaker 1: you know, it definitely involves some digging up of corpses.
24:31
Speaker 1: You know enough time at past they were obviously just bones,
24:34
Speaker 1: and they did just that in two thousand and eight. Uh,
24:37
Speaker 1: this group of scientists unearthed the bones of Poitiers de
24:41
Speaker 1: Poitiers and they were able to confirm that they were
24:44
Speaker 1: in fact hers because the they matched up her jaw
24:47
Speaker 1: bone to a portrait of her, and also one of
24:52
Speaker 1: her leg bones had a perfect clean break from a
24:57
Speaker 1: documented uh, writing accident, which is pretty interesting that that's
25:02
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good detective work there. And then they
25:06
Speaker 1: actually had access to some of her hair, uh, from
25:10
Speaker 1: a collection of her own hair that she kept. Knew
25:16
Speaker 1: the palatial country home where she was exiled to it
25:20
Speaker 1: sounds terrible, the Chateau Dayonnay, which was given to her
25:23
Speaker 1: by Henri and Um. She was allowed to live out
25:26
Speaker 1: her days there when Katherine de medici Um, who was
25:30
Speaker 1: On's wife banished his mistress, and in measuring those hair samples,
25:38
Speaker 1: they were able to find that it contained gold levels
25:42
Speaker 1: five hundred times above normal tolerance. Is also a lot
25:47
Speaker 1: of mercury traces in there um, which apparently was another
25:51
Speaker 1: ingredient of this potion. So not uh, well, knowing what
25:54
Speaker 1: we know now, ben, uh, pretty terrible combination there. Oh yeah,
26:00
Speaker 1: I mean just imagine five hundred times. Also, shout out
26:05
Speaker 1: to everybody who's currently thinking of the etymology of matt
26:09
Speaker 1: as a hatter. You mentioned haberdashers and mercury. So the
26:13
Speaker 1: scientists team up with a guy who usually works in
26:16
Speaker 1: hospital morgues and they conclusively identify Diane de Poitier's body
26:21
Speaker 1: as you said, uh, and then they were able to
26:26
Speaker 1: measure those chemical levels in her hair. And they also
26:30
Speaker 1: noted that there is a scientific basis for the reason
26:34
Speaker 1: that people might have said that she looked unusually young,
26:37
Speaker 1: because this level of gold consumption can give you white
26:42
Speaker 1: skin from anemia, it could give your fragile hair, bones
26:46
Speaker 1: and teeth, and this is exactly the state she was
26:49
Speaker 1: in when she passed away. We're getting some of this
26:51
Speaker 1: from an excellent article and the Telegraph, and you know,
26:55
Speaker 1: as you said she had been banished at Chateau before
26:58
Speaker 1: she passed away. She was sixty six. It was fifteen
27:01
Speaker 1: sixty six. She was originally buried in a really nice chapel,
27:07
Speaker 1: but during the French Revolution her grave was desecrated. They
27:12
Speaker 1: threw her in a in a you know, a common
27:15
Speaker 1: or popper's grave, and that's why it took a pit. Yes,
27:19
Speaker 1: that's wild. I gotta say, ben, Given the time, and uh, obviously,
27:26
Speaker 1: you know, people life expectancy was not what it is today.
27:30
Speaker 1: Sixty six seems pretty ripe old age, doesn't it. I
27:35
Speaker 1: wonder how long she would have lived if she had
27:37
Speaker 1: not been, you know, slow poisoning herself over decades and decades.
27:43
Speaker 1: That's a good question, and I believe it's one that
27:46
Speaker 1: we will have to endeavor to answer another day. But
27:51
Speaker 1: it's so crazy. Dare I say it's ridiculous? People are
27:54
Speaker 1: out here drinking gold. No, man, I'll tell you one thing.
27:57
Speaker 1: We do know though, that youthful complexion that supposedly gave her,
28:00
Speaker 1: which essentially was just being like super pale, was the
28:04
Speaker 1: result of anemia. So you know, there are a better way?
28:08
Speaker 1: Is there are better remedies to to keep that youthful
28:11
Speaker 1: glow than to drink toxic chemicals. I think that's the
28:15
Speaker 1: takeaway from today's episode. Yeah, and and in Gold's defense,
28:18
Speaker 1: it has been used pharmaceutically in the treatment of rheumatism.
28:22
Speaker 1: So you want to say it's not all complete woo
28:26
Speaker 1: or pseudo science, But um, I don't know, man. You know,
28:30
Speaker 1: as you know my aversion to metals, I I can't
28:35
Speaker 1: imagine drinking gold. It's like for me, it's like how
28:41
Speaker 1: you would imagine if you had to get in bed
28:46
Speaker 1: and your bed had thirteen parrots in it every night
28:49
Speaker 1: under the covers. And I'm so triggered right now, I
28:51
Speaker 1: can't even my skin is literally crawling. Oh man, I
28:56
Speaker 1: wouldn't you know. I like some birds, and I wouldn't
28:58
Speaker 1: even hop in that hot up in that bed. But
29:01
Speaker 1: luckily we have the benefits of the modern day, both
29:04
Speaker 1: in our understanding about the science and chemistry involved in
29:08
Speaker 1: drinking or ingesting gold. We also have the benefit of
29:12
Speaker 1: ornithology and knowing the parents do not belong in beds. Uh.
29:16
Speaker 1: And as always, I feel like, just to be safe,
29:20
Speaker 1: we should say this, guys, we are not medical professionals,
29:25
Speaker 1: do not we haven't told anybody to drink gold, but
29:28
Speaker 1: please please be mindful of it. You know, what is
29:32
Speaker 1: it a hot take? If I say don't drink gold?
29:34
Speaker 1: Is that a hot take? Oh? No, no, Ben, don't
29:37
Speaker 1: drink gold. Don't put foreign objects in your nose, and
29:42
Speaker 1: don't dig too deep with those Q tips. Guys. Come on,
29:46
Speaker 1: I know it says you're not supposed to put him
29:47
Speaker 1: in your ears, but we all do so. At least
29:49
Speaker 1: exercise a little bit of restraint when you're jabbing around
29:52
Speaker 1: in there. My p s A for the day. There
29:55
Speaker 1: we go. Yes, the more, you know, because we love
29:59
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and we love when you tune
30:01
Speaker 1: into the show, and you need your ears to do
30:04
Speaker 1: that most times. So this is another one for the
30:07
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History Books. Thanks as always to our super producer,
30:13
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, Thanks of course to our research associate Gabe Lousia.
30:19
Speaker 1: Massive thanks to Christopher Haciotas who is here in spirit
30:23
Speaker 1: with us as always watching over us like a Mufasa
30:26
Speaker 1: in the sky. Uh. And then thanks to Jonathan Strickland
30:29
Speaker 1: then his his dastardly alter ego, the Quister, who I
30:32
Speaker 1: believe will be joining us one of these days for
30:35
Speaker 1: a Quister Core edition. We canna call him the Course,
30:39
Speaker 1: the Corsster. No, uh uh coren Ster. Maybe that extra syllable.
30:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, yeah, we are long overdue for
30:51
Speaker 1: a Quister appearance. Uh, you know, just be behind the
30:54
Speaker 1: curtain here, folks. Uh. The three of us were talking
30:57
Speaker 1: off air and we kind of missed the guy, but
31:00
Speaker 1: no one tell them that. Definitely not. We'll see you
31:03
Speaker 1: next time. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
31:16
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
31:19
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.