Man, Myth, Legend

Some things are too good to be true, and others turn out to be so much more than you expected. Today's tour through the Cabinet reveals one of each.

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 Curiosities, 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 the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. Medicine is science. Oftentimes it can take years
of research and trials for a new medication or procedure
to make it to patients. On a wider scale, yeah,
that doesn't stop people from hunting for miracle cures, those

(00:49):
one in a million treatments that bypassed the lengthy safety
tests mainstream drugs undergo. Before the nineteen o six Pure
Food and Drug Act, there were almost no regulations in
place to prevent doctors or snake oil salesman from peddling
whatever tinctures they thought might heal someone, and for hundreds
of years, the science behind medicine was well questionable. King

(01:12):
Charles the Second, for example, was no stranger to medical curiosity.
As a child, he'd been tutored by William Harvey, a
surgeon on the cutting edge of the field who had
been the first person to detail how the heart pumped
blood throughout the body. Charles studied many scientific subjects growing up,
including chemistry and physics, but when it came to medicine,

(01:32):
especially later in life, he rarely turned anything down. Due
to his poor health, in the weeks before his death,
Charles underwent all manner of treatments, including cupping, blood letting,
and something called the King's Drops. King's Drops were created
by Jonathan Goddard, a physician and surgeon who had developed
a unique formula for what he deemed a royal cure all.

(01:54):
It could help with fainting bladder stones, and it was
said to be a powerful stimulant as well. Nevertheless, Charles
wanted to know what he was putting into his body,
so he paid Goddard for the formula. The King learned
much about the drops chemical composition. Among its ingredients were
ivory dried vipers, and heartstorn, an ammonious solution made from

(02:16):
deer horns. Everything was ground up, liquefied, distilled, and filtered
through a complex process that eventually yielded an alcoholic solution.
But there was one ingredient that really pulled the whole
thing together. It's effecting this however, varied from person to person.
What was it that Goddard put in his drops? Human
skulls five pounds of them crushed into a fine powder,

(02:40):
But not just any skulls would do. Goddard sought out
the craniums of young men who had been killed violently,
like soldiers or recently executed criminals for lesser ailments. A
few drops were administered at a time. For more serious conditions, though,
such as a stroke or lethargy, forty to fifty draws
could be ingested at once. Unsurprisingly, this miracle cure didn't

(03:04):
cure much of anything, and it might have made the
King's health even worse. He died on February second of
sixteen eighty five, and it was believed at first that
he had been poisoned. Today experts are able to tell
that Charles most likely suffered from kidney disease, which led
to his passing. Whether the drops had contributed to it, however,
remains to be seen. It's likely they didn't help. Edward

(03:27):
Walpole had been a member of Parliament for the town
of King's Lynn in Norfolk when he took some of
Goddard's drops in sixteen sixty eight. Walpole died after suffering
a seizure shortly thereafter, but that didn't stop people from
believing in the drop's power, especially since they were chock
full of human skulls. Skulls had been used in medicinal
treatments from the sixteenth century all the way through the

(03:49):
eighteenth century. In fact, a German Man named Oswald Kral
developed a concoction in sixteen forty three that was meant
to cure epilepsy, and like Goddard, he preferred to use
skulls from men who had died under violent circumstances. But
corpse medicine, as it was called, extended beyond the bones
inside the head. Someone with a sore muscle might have

(04:09):
rubbed belly fat on the offending spot to alleviate the pain.
People drank blood because they believed it had restored if properties,
and the poor who couldn't afford expensive medicines, would attend
executions and pay for a cup of the red stuff,
freshly squeezed. Of course, other cultures who practiced corpse medicine,
like the Native Americans, were vilified and called all kinds

(04:33):
of slurs due to what the Europeans saw as uncivilized cannibalism.
The hypocrisy was strong back then, and some of those
stereotypes have lingered to this day. But times changed, and
with them, so did medicine. Scientific breakthroughs led to new
remedies like penicillin and vaccines for diseases such as smallpox.
People stopped eating and drinking skulls to feel better. After all,

(04:56):
any cures would have been psychosomatic anyway, you know, all
in their head. Ask anyone today about politics, and they'll

(05:18):
long wistfully for a simpler time, a time when senators,
congress people, and even presidents were more civilized in their disagreements.
But the fact is, the political landscape has always been
a hotbed of shady campaign tactics and even shadier players.
In eighteen sixty eight, the Detroit Free Press published heinous
insults about presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant. He was described

(05:42):
as and I quote, a drunkard, a man of vile habits,
and my favorite, as brainless as his saddle. Louis cass
isn't a name most people know today, but in eighteen
forty eight he ran against Zachary Taylor for presidents of
the United States. He also got on the wrong side
of a newspaper magnet name Horace Greeley, owner of the

(06:02):
New York Tribune. In fact, Greeley once referred to the
Democratic candidate as that potbellied, mutton headed cucumber sold casts.
Suffice it to say, cast did not farewell in the election,
but one man put all others to shame when it
came to outlandish political behavior. We might look back on
his actions today as reason for disqualification, but if anything,

(06:25):
they only made him more popular. His name was Dan Sickles,
born in New York City in eighteen nineteen. He was
raised by his mother and father, who worked as a
patent lawyer and politician. It's no wonder Dan followed in
his footsteps later in life, earning a law degree and
getting himself elected to the New York State Assembly in
eighteen forty seven. It was around this time when sickles

(06:48):
questionable behavior started to gain him notoriety. He joined up
with Tammany Hall, a cutthroat political organization that had controlled
New York for decades. Though he was considered an ally,
there were a few times when he found himself on
the receiving end of their wrath. Once he was giving
a speech when a gang of rivals physically removed him

(07:08):
from the stage and threw him down a spiral staircase.
On another occasion, he fled through an open window and
down a fire escape to get away from their assault.
When he was thirty two years old, Sickles married a
girl named Teresa Baggioli, who was no more than fifteen
at the time. Both her family and Sickles protested to
their nuptials, but it didn't matter. The two were wed,

(07:29):
and the assemblyman continued to work his way up the
New York political ladder. After a series of positions in
both New York and London, Sickles returned home in eighteen
fifty six and was elected to the New York State Senate. Now,
while he was pursuing his career, the newly elected senator
was also pursuing extracurricular activities outside of his marriage, but

(07:50):
kind of got him censured by the New York State
Assembly around eighteen fifty nine. However, even though Sickles was
allowed to covert with whoever he saw fit, that didn't
mean his wife was afforded the same luxuries. He found
out that she was having an affair with another man
and confronted her lover in broad daylight, Sickles shot him dead.
The man he killed happened to be Philip Barton Key,

(08:12):
the second U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
and the son of National anthem composer Francis Scott Key.
Sickles turned himself in and hired a team of lawyers
for his defense. It took over two weeks of testimony,
but in the end Sickles was acquitted. He submitted a
plea of temporary insanity. For the first time in the

(08:32):
history of the U. S. Court system, the jury believed him.
Rather than run for re election in the Senate, Sickles
sought to rehabilitate his image by building up an army
of volunteer soldiers in New York. The Civil War had
just started and the Union was in need of recruits.
His efforts earned him the rank of colonel, despite having
no military background whatsoever. He eventually graduated to brigadier general,

(08:56):
and his conduct throughout most of the war earned him
high marks. For one, Sickles never turned over the runaway
slaves who found their way to his camp. In fact,
he employed a lot of them to work as servants.
The men who were able to fight were trained as soldiers,
but he was also a man who hated to be
told what to do. During the Battle of Gettysburg, for example,
he defied a direct order from his commander to hold

(09:18):
his current position. He instead sought higher ground. His cavalier
nature nearly led to defeat for the Union Army, and
perhaps were sick cost him his leg, which was destroyed
by a cannon ball and had to be amputated. Sickles
donated the shattered bone from his leg to the Army
Medical Museum in Washington, d c. He even visited it

(09:39):
each year on the anniversary of the battle, sometimes bringing
his dates there to see it. After the war, he
returned to New York and led the committee on creating
the city's most iconic park, Central Park. Post war, Sickles, however,
might have been even more brazen than his younger self.
In eighteen sixty nine, he took position as u s
ambassador to Spain, where he and Queen Isabel the Second

(10:02):
began a toward affair, one that ended with Sickles marrying
one of her attendants instead. The whole ordeal led to
his eventual resignation from the position, and finally, in nineteen twelve,
he was arrested yet again, not for killing anyone. This
time he'd been accused of stealing almost thirty thousand dollars
from a Civil War monuments commissioned fund that he had

(10:24):
been put in charge of, And, just as he'd done
with his murder trial fifty years earlier, Sickles got away
scott free. He had apparently built up enough goodwill with
friends and supporters to have the money paid back in full.
Sickles died two years later in New York City at
the age of ninety four. For a man who survived
being tossed down a flight of stairs, tried for murder,

(10:46):
and losing his leg to a cannonball, he survived much
longer than most of his generation. As the artist David
Hockney once said, I prefer living in color. Well, a
few people live more colorfully than Daniel E. Sickles. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(11:09):
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 Manky in partnership with how
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

(11:30):
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.