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

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