Surely, You Chest

Let's get inventive today. Maybe it will be good for your health, and maybe not. You can decide.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to

(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Necessity is the mother of invention,
As the saying goes, so many inventions and products we
have today arose from a problem someone needed to solve,
and such was the case with French physician Renee, theofully

(00:49):
Hyacinthe Lenek, who desperately wanted to find a better way
to listen to a patient's heartbeat. Anyone who's ever been
to a doctor's office is familiar with Renee's iconic invention,
the stethoscope. The name comes from the Greek word stetho,
meaning chest and scope, which translates to examination. The stethoscope's
invention forever changed healthcare and is probably one of the

(01:12):
top inventions in medical history. The device amplifies internal sounds,
allowing for preliminary clues in evaluating the patient's health. For example,
a dull sound where a more resonant sound should be
might indicate a build up a fluid in the lungs,
or even a tumor. Healthcare professionals have used the stethoscope
to listen to everything internal, from hearts and lungs to

(01:33):
gastro intestinal exam and obstetrics. Before Renee's invention, though, doctors
had very few tools at their disposal to diagnose problems
with the hearts or lungs. They knew that diseases of
the heart and lungs were the number one cause of death,
but diagnosing them wasn't easy or always accurate. Renee was
just five when his mother passed away from tuberculosis in

(01:54):
six His father proved incompetent to care for his children,
and Renee and his brother were sent to live with
an uncle who worked as a dean of a medical university.
His mother's death had impacted him greatly, and young Renee
dove deeply into his studies. His first foray into the
profession came during the midst of counter revolutionary revolts. He

(02:15):
cared for patients and applied surgical dressings. In eighteen hundred,
he went to Paris, where he was accepted by a
very selective and elite school and studied anatomy and dissection
under some of France's most prestigious professionals in the medical field.
As a student, Renee became well known and regarded for
his studies in perian titus and tuberculosis. When he graduated

(02:36):
in eighteen o four, he continued his research at the
Society of School of Medicine in Paris, and after that
he became the personal physician to Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon's half brother.
His employment with a cardinal encourage Renee to work with
the poor and bring them better health care. During the
Napoleonic Wars, Renee took charge of award in a Paris
hospital reserve for wounded soldiers, and then in eighteen sixteen

(02:59):
he was appointed to the Necker Hospital in Paris, where
he worked as a physician. Now. It was there where
he noticed the problem. He'd grown critical of the way
most doctors listened to a patient's heartbeat, and worse, he
thought it was unsanitary for doctors to place their heads
on patient's chests, especially those with poor hygiene or lice.
His peers considered the bright young physician a rising star

(03:21):
in the medical field. Renee had become adept at percussion,
a method of tapping the chest and back with fingers
as part of the examination process, but on one particular afternoon,
he realized that he had a problem. He walked into
the room to see a young woman. She'd complained about
difficulty breathing, among other symptoms indicating a heart condition. One

(03:42):
look at her told him that the percussion method wasn't
going to be of any use. For several awkward moments,
doctor and patients stared at each other, and then the
idea came to him. It was a simple fact of acoustics.
He grabbed a few nearby papers and rolled them into
a tube much like a lute, and then he placed
one end over the young woman's heart and placed his

(04:04):
ear over the other. The sound of her heartbeat echoed
back to him even louder than he'd expected, and from
that moment on, Renee experimented with his invention, using pine
to make the first stethoscope, solving his problem. You see,
Renee had treated mostly men and was reluctant to place
his head so close to a female patient's breast, especially
a rather well endowed one. In short, embarrassment sparked the

(04:27):
stethoscope's invention. I guess you could say that Renee finally
got that problem off his chest. During World War One,
the Navy banned alcohol on ships, and while coffee and

(04:50):
cigarettes were still staples, morale sunk to a new low.
Officers needed something to lift spirits. They tried many foods
and drinks, although none seemed to do as well or
were as universally liked as alcohol, But that didn't stop
them from trying, and finally they found something that all
the men loved even more than their favorite liquor. The
men enjoyed it so much that keeping it on board

(05:11):
the ship proved difficult. To solve the problem, they transformed
a refrigerated barge into a makeshift factory. Years went by,
and one war led to another. Throughout World War two,
this favorite food came in handy for a different reason,
rescue missions. While some Navy ships had aircraft aboard, they
didn't have helicopters. For any serviceman or pilot who fell overboard,

(05:34):
time was of the essence, making matters worse for the sailor.
Carriers were difficult to slow down or even turn around.
The men aboard had found a solution, though trade they
offered smaller boats, like some of the easily maneuverable destroyers
food for rescuing them. Daniel W. Kluss recalled his time
as the sailor during World War Two aboard the USS Hancock,

(05:57):
one of the Navy's twenty four Essex class air craft carriers,
dubbed the Fighting Hannah for her service in several campaigns,
the ship had earned four battle stars. One of their
pilots went off the flight deck and the captain put
out a call to a nearby destroyer. While the pilot
would have been rescued sooner or later, Klaus believed it

(06:17):
was the initial offer of two hundred and fifty pounds
of this food that got the destroyer to respond so quickly.
In fact, the item is accredited with saving many of
the pilots lives. You see, smaller ships didn't have enough
room for this dish, so when they were called on
to rescue pilots, they usually could count on the food
as a reward for a timely response. This food became

(06:38):
so popular that Americans were rationed two key ingredients during
wartime to ensure that the troops had enough to make it.
The military spent one million dollars to keep the servicemen
in supply. Tragedy struck the USS Lexington in May of
ninety two. The ship was critically damaged during the Battle
of the Coral Sea. Over two hundred men lost their lives.

(07:00):
When the surviving men were told to abandon ship, it's
reported that some of the men broke into the galley
filled their helmets, then ate their fill before jumping overboard.
The food became so important during wartime that each branch
began to try to outdo the other in supplying their troops.
Cries went up petitioning Washington to subsidize factories to supply

(07:22):
the item to wounded soldiers in overseas hospitals, and while
the petitions didn't work, the military branches got creative. In
September of nineteen forty four, Marine Squadron Commander J. Hunter
Reinberg wanted to lift his men's morale. They were stationed
on the hot and tropical island of Paleliu in the
South Pacific. The island is best known for one of

(07:42):
the bloodiest battles during World War Two. The commander tried
to recreate the food with resources available on the island.
When his first attempt failed, he'd tried again, this time
making enough to satisfy his men. From then on, marine
pilots made it a practice to help with the recipe.
It took some ingenuity, but after mixing the ingredients into
cans and repositioning the AMMO cans away from the engine,

(08:05):
it worked. Soon aircraft bombers were using the planes to
make their favorite food by strapping buckets full of the
mix behind the rear gunner's compartment. From there, the engine
vibrations blended everything together as the pilots flew in high
altitudes over enemy territory. When not making the dish during combat,
the men frequently went on what they called test flights.

(08:26):
When Rheinberg's superior officer learned of these flights, he didn't
reprimand the commander. Instead, he just wanted in on the recipe.
Back home, there was a shortage of this food item.
Not to mention those two key ingredients to make it,
milk and sugar. So what food helped military morale? No,
it wasn't cookies. As the children saying goes ice cream,

(08:49):
you scream, We all scream for ice cream. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how

(09:11):
Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,