Part One: The Bastard Who Invented Homeopathy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's absent my Machete's I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards,
the podcast where we talk about the worst people in
all of history. And today is a very sad day
because we've been kicked out of our regular recording studio
um by by an unnamed person and we forgot to
get the machete out. Uh, and I am very sad.

(00:22):
S s. Sophie As is my guest today, Mr Billy
Wayne David As. Hello, I'm it's not it's in the building,
so we're in the building. It's not like it's we
left it at home, which would be like that's a bummer,
that would be tragic. That's why that's the dedicated pot
cast machete. That makes sense. And then you guys, Robert
giving me the best gift. It's just it's a tactical
Can I say the brand? Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, gerber

(00:46):
I was very excited about that, which is a Portland's
USA made knife. It just now described the thing I've
already forgot exactly. Yeah. It's a it's designed as a
survival knife. So the hilt is made out of a
glass composite, which the purpose of that is so that
if you're in a in a vehicle that crashes, or
in an airplane that's crashed. It was originally designed for pilots.
You can cut your way out of the plane without

(01:06):
electrocuting yourself if you had a live wire um And
there's also a big glass breaking thing on the hill.
It's a solid knife. It just in It feels good
in the hand. Like a lot of these knives like this,
they're they're not. There's a lot of different kinds of knives.
And that's a metal stabbing knife, which is a special
kind of knife. Yeah, it's a knife that's meant for
going into what is essentially other knives. It's got that

(01:29):
thing that a good knife has where you're like, I
don't want someone to come at me now. And what
I what I like about that is because I don't
want to give someone a nice knife and not give
them a reason to use it. So once we get
the machete out of the room, I have something else
that I found. Well, I was up. I found a
VHS copy of Basic Instinct by Paul Verhoeven, the original

(01:51):
director's cut with a fake signature by Paul Verhoven. Inside
the cover of the VHS tape. I found it by
a trash pile. He's sincere he wrote that, he sincerely
wrote that he really did. And just so people know this,
this VHS copy is the wide screen letter box edition
that's critical includes the theatrical trailer too hot to be
shown in movie houses. And I figured, what we do

(02:13):
once we get a criterion collection, the Criterion collection it
really see it, see it the way it was meant
to be on a VHS that's been hanging out near
a down on a TV that's got in a box.
Still smells a little bit like trash, but it's in
incredible shape, really incredible shape considering what it is. And
did you fly from with it? Yes, I flew. I

(02:36):
flew with it because I knew that this was the
only acceptable thing for us to use in a game
of tennis. Now, Billy, I don't know how to play tennis,
but I know it involves two people with stick shaped
things batting an object in between them. So I figured
I'd use machette, you'd use the knife, and we'd have
us a game of tennis over this recording space. This
is like a white trash version. Yes, Sophie can be

(02:58):
the ump that it's not what it's called. But what
is it called in tennis? I think an umpire in tennis,
I don't know official. I don't think up is it.
So if he's going to look up what it's actually
called is if tennis has played with a copy of
Basic Instinct in two nine, it's like a judge involved
line Judge, I don't know. I'm okay with all this.

(03:21):
I don't know about tennis Empire, but it'll be fun
to hit. Now there's gonna be a lot of plastic
shards and we don't have by protection. Maybe it's an
official I've seen in three different they serve as the
oh no, oh no. I would like the title of
chief umpire, which is apparently a thing. Okay, So so
if he's going to be the chief Empire, Billy Wayne

(03:43):
will be taking on the role of Ratro Federer tennis
guy nailed, and I will be taking on the role
of Serena Williams. That's nailed it. That's a big shoes
to feel. Those are the only tennis players I can name.
And I was not sure about Federer. I thought there
was a fifty chance he always go to the agazy
that he hasn't played Andre Agassy. You're right, that's a name. Then, yeah,

(04:06):
he's bald. He kind of went with it. What is
the really angry name? John McEnroe. John McEnroe. He's pretty
funny too. I don't know any of these people. What
I do know is that we're gonna have a lot
of fun once we get our machete. I mean, I'm
just gonna hold a knife the whole show now, Billy Wayne,
because you're here as the guest, I think everyone can

(04:30):
know what that means, and it means that we're going
to talk about a fake doctor, or in this case,
a lot of fake doctors. Oh yeah, yeah, see today,
Billy Wayne, We're not just talking about a fake doctor.
Our subject this week might well be the king of
all fake doctors. Do you know the name Samuel Hanman. No,
I'm excited about. Well, he is the man who invented homeopathy. Okay, yeah,

(04:53):
that's where we're going. He's largely responsible for the birth
of what's called alternative medicine UM and surprising, I'm not
sure he qualifies as a bastard. So we're gonna get
into him part one and then part two. We will
definitely be talking about some bastards. Would he be Can
I predict he might be a bastard because he opened
a certain door for other bastards. Yeah, I think he meant. Well,

(05:17):
that's like it's like manslaughter of bastards, if that makes sense. Yeah,
you funked up, but not on purpose, but it's bad.
It's like those in the South, large chunks of the
South in Texas, and I think also in Louisiana. I
know they have they have a drive through liquor stores
and you're not supposed to drink and drive, but a
lot of people do because it's a drive through liquors.

(05:39):
Didn't get of your truck. Yeah, you don't even have
to get out of your truck. He's like the drive
through liquor store of medicine, where you can say, maybe
he just wanted to make the process of buying liquor
more convenient. But as a result, a lot of people
rammed pedestrians. They had to fix a lot of fences
because of that man. Where a lot of problems. Yes, okay,

(05:59):
I got you, I got Yeah, he's the no you
put a piece of tape over the straw, Yeah, exactly,
Then it's not an open container. Straw. We fixed it.
People may not know that, but you can buy Margarita's
in your car if there's tape over the straw. And
Dacories are the big one in Louisiana. Oh god, just

(06:19):
a thirty two I don't styrofoam cup full of peer
Grain alcohol, peer Grain alcohol and a slushy and then
they hand it to you with tape over it and
the right don't don't move that, don't do what you're
gonna do. Yeah, wink uh. It has always been my dream.

(06:41):
I don't think I'll ever move back to the South
because I hate the weather, but if I did, I
would love to operate a combination gun store drive through
liquor store. I mean, yeah, why not just push it
go all the way and you're like, well, if you
buy two dacories, you get a gun, and if you
buy two guns, you get four store or one for

(07:02):
you KEI it did you get tuned in? Your wife
gets one? And ideally we also opened a pharmacy, so
it's like a pill mill drive through liquor shop, gun store.
I mean that's one of Like. As my grandpa was
on his way out, he said, we were talking one
time and He's like, fight had it, dude, over again. Pharmacy.

(07:25):
That's what you own, pharmacy. And I was like, that
is a good point, Grandpa. That's a that's solid grandfather.
That is sounds like that's a good point. It's too
late for me. But one day, Billy Wayne, one day
you'll start that pharmacy. Pharmacy. So I guess we should
get into the story now. Christian Friedrich Samuel Hanman was

(07:46):
born on April tenth, seventeen fifty five, in the city
of Mason, which I'm probably mispronouncing. One of his modern
day followers says that it was quote so close to
midnight that there is debate as to the date. His
church apparently registered his birthday as the eleventh, but he
celebrated it on the tenth. This website, which is like
a homeopathic fan site for Samuel Hahneman, notes, as the

(08:07):
story of his life unfolds, this is a pertinent fact
to bear in mind because arguably it sets a pattern
that continued throughout. I actually have no idea what they
mean by this, but he's inconsistent that that. No. I
think they're positive. I think they're saying that, like the
authorities said, that like, this is his birthday, but he
like said it was a different day. He's like, I
know better, I know exactly. I think that's what they're

(08:29):
getting at. But it's very silly. Right now you're born here.
He's like, no, as I remember in the right, you
really fuck that up. I would celebrate both days. Oh yeah,
I mean I don't think people got presents back then.
I think they just got cholera. It's your birthday. Shoot
yourself to death. Classic German seventeen hundreds birthday. Samuel was

(08:50):
a weak and sickly child. He was christened on the
of the month, like two days after his birth, out
of the expectation that he would die soon and so
he needed a name before he went to heaven or hell.
I think babies went to hell at that point. But
alas Samuel grew stronger and gradually it became clear that
he would in fact survive being a baby. Samuel was
one year old when the Seven Year War broke out,

(09:12):
a slap fight between Prussia and Austria for Silesia, all
of which is basically considered Germany to Americans today. Uh.
This war had a disasterus impact on the porcelain and
cloth trades, and since Samuel's dad made his living as
a porcelain painter, the family finances took a real hit.
He was educated at home, which was not particularly uncommon
or any kind of statement at the time. That homeopathic

(09:34):
fan Girl website. I found on this note that Samuel's father,
Christian Quote, sometimes locked his son up with a problem
when he went to work, expecting him to have solved
it or to have some insight into it by the
time he got back. Now that's a that's a frugal babysitter.
Just get a problem in the lock him in a room.
What's the answer? Hell, I don't know. Yeah. Her A

(09:56):
depiction of it makes it seem like, oh, this is
like how you raise a genius baby. Uh yeah. I
found another depiction of this parenting practice in a nineteen
hundred biography of Samuel that does make it sound a
lot shadier. Yeah, it sounds like, Yeah, it's like a
he'll billy'll be like, well, you gotta TV, don't you.
We're gonna go watch it and we're gonna go turn
it up. Yeah, you hear noises, turn it up, put

(10:20):
him in from the shiney boss. It'll be good. Handman's father,
before going to the factory, used frequently to lock his
son in a room, close the shutters, and give him
a difficult sentence to ponder over of which he had
to give an account on his father's return. This contributed
to making the son an original thinker. I think that's
what Trump does every morning on Twitter, is he just

(10:41):
gives us a difficult sentence, and all day we're like,
what does that mean? What does that mean? Why did
he capitalize the letters? He cap That doesn't make any sense. Yeah,
he's just trying to raise us, like Samuel Hanman's father. Now,
once he was older and the family fortunes had recovered somewhat,
Samuel was allowed to go to the local elementary school.
His teacher, Johann Mueller, recognized him as a uniquely brilliant pupil.

(11:04):
Alas for Samuel, his father pulled him out of school
at aged fifteen, reasoning that he'd spent more than enough
time learning and it was well passed time for him
to get a full time gig. In fairness to Christian,
you were legally an adult age fourteen in that part
of the world at that time, So Samuel really got
a whole extra year of childhood. Yeah, kind of luxury
childhood there, so that's good for him. Christian set his

(11:24):
son up with a job at a grocery store in Leipzig.
Samuel did the job for a while, but he grew
tired of it quickly and was convinced that the world
had something greater in store for him, so he ran
away from home the sort of. He actually just ran
away from his dad and his job and had his
mom hied him while he worked up the courage to
confront his father about the fact that he wanted to
go back to school. Where she hid him. I don't know,

(11:44):
it's not really specific about that. I'm guessing a closet
just like in the house still I think so, or
maybe yeah, they had some money so she might have
like rented him a room or something, Yeah, like a
storage place it Yeah, what an inn and like tell
the dad that he ran away. Yeah, I think it
was an issue of the way it's I've read it

(12:05):
is that like she hit him because she wasn't going
to go to bat for her kid against her father,
because you don't do that. I understand that Germany basically
Germany essentially Germany and um, but At the same time,
he didn't like he had to work up the courage
to like tell his dad, I don't want to work
at a grocery store. I want to finish school and
be an educated man. I understand now. It was more

(12:27):
of like, neither of us want to get whacked my
dad yet, because okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So eventually Samuel
did confront his father, and he was apparently successful in
convincing him that he should be allowed to go to
grammar school. She just sent him to a box and
ring because I just learned to take a punch, and
then you can tell him you're gonna have to let
your dad hit you. He's gonna hit you. He's gonna

(12:48):
hit you a lot, So just get used to just
learn how to take that. You talk to dad, he's
gonna throw a couple of punches, just just just to
keep him at himself. He enjoys it. It's it's you know,
you get back. He gets back from work, he's been
punched all day. He's going to throw a couple of pups.
Watches left. It's better than you think, huh. So, yeah,

(13:10):
Samuel went to a grammar school. He studied science and
languages and he wrote a dissertation on the structure of
the human hand. He was quite successful during this period,
and he earned himself admission into Leipzig University to pursue
a medical degree, but his course of studies was exhausting,
and he would later write that it convinced him young
people should not be allowed to go to school. Quote
from Samuel mental exertion and study are unnatural occupations for

(13:33):
young people whose bodily development is not yet complete, especially
for those who are endowed with sensitive feelings. This nearly
cost me my life during the period from fifteen to
twenty years old. I can't pretty progressive thinking man board
with that. I mean, that's just yeah, he's like, yeah,
fifteen to twenty, just throw him in the woods. We

(13:53):
should have a big field for him. I kind of
like that idea. I've always been a big advocate of
once kids get old enough to talk back, just driving
them into a field and leaving them there. I think
they get feral, and then we'd have they were they're
smarter than we think though. Yeah, you're right, it would
be like a hog problem and would happen way quicker
than we want to think it would. Yeah, yeah, No,

(14:15):
it's like the wild boars. Yeah, that's what would happen.
They'd grow tusk. You'd have to kill them with drones.
I guess there's no perfect solution to teenagers. No, no,
you just watch them and hope they don't team up. Yeah,
I hope they don't team up. The good thing is
they'll throw each other under the bus because they're so horny. Yeah, yeah,

(14:35):
that is that they're trying to suck the bus. It
is weird to think like that. Thank god they're horny. Thanks,
thank god they're too horny to be smart. Yes, we'd
have a problem with all that energy they got. Yeah,
we'd have to be like, well, we do wars. Yeah,
that's we just do a war every couple of years.
It is. That was a nicer era in warfare, back
when like most of them were just like, we gotta

(14:56):
do something with all these fucking teenagers. Yeah, they give them,
give them guns, Put the dumbest ones in the front,
and then let him walk towards each other. Let him
walk towards each other until they're tired, until we got
the best ones, the smart ones. Dune at age nineteen

(15:16):
and seventeen seventy four, a penniless. Samuel Hahnman left Masin
to go to Leipzig. He worked as a translator to
make in his meat. Depending on which source you read,
he was either incredibly good at this, a brilliant linguist
in great demand, or he was completely mediocre and he
barely succeeded in an avoiding object poverty. I found like
five different variations of how this period of his life went.
I don't know which is accurate, maybe none of them.

(15:38):
One thing they all seemed to agree on is that
during his years studying theoretical medicine, which was the degree
program track he was on, he became disillusioned with the
medical establishment, which is understandable of the medical establishment in
seventeen seventy four. Yeah, a lot of leeches, A lot
of leeches, a lot of poison. Yeah yeah, the cocaine.

(16:00):
That's a real medicine. Billy, right, I have some friends
that will agree with you. Good for what ail now.
The pro homeopathy biography of Hanman I found is written
by someone called Sheila. That's the only name she's given
on the site, and she's a British homeopath whose website
links back to a website about how autism isn't real.
So just so we're aware of this particular source. Um, yeah,

(16:23):
what is it autism? If it's not real? I think
it's a bacterial infection. I don't know. There's a bunch
of crazy theories about that. It's like the bleached people.
I do feel like she's one of the bleached people.
That makes sense. Yeah, that's the thing where I know better. Yeah,
quote from Sheila the Homeopath. He paid for his studies
by teaching German and French and by translating Greek in
English into German for better off students. Help came from

(16:46):
an anonymous benefactor in Mason, who paid for some of
the lectures. It is in Leipzig that the seeds of
Samuel's discontent with the medical profession of the time were
sown because he was not satisfied with some of the
lectures and attended them only selectively. He was also unhappy
with the lack of practical facilities. That's the positive homeopathy
version of this is that he just he he realizes

(17:06):
that medicine at the time is flawed, and he he
doesn't like attending all of his lectures, which you could
also write is just like him being a bad student
that was gonna say something it's hard to listen and
stuff like that it is, and then to be justified
with like, I just this, you guys are wrong. I'm
gonna fix medicine. I mean, I will say even a
stop clock is right every couple of centuries, and in

(17:27):
this case, ignoring mainstream medical lectures was was a good idea. Yeah,
but at the same time, like, don't you have to
learn what's wrong? But if you're learning what's wrong and
they're telling you what's right, that might not be good either.
I don't know. That's a weird This is a weird story. Yeah,
it's going to get confusing. Yeah, morally, the second part

(17:50):
is just going to be bastards all the way down.
So but but first we gotta get muddy waters and
not the good kind of muddy waters. He just feels
like I understand in that feeling. I mean in college,
because there was a part of me that like, a
lot of this feels like a scam. Yeah, like why
do I have to take bowling? Yeah? You know what

(18:11):
I mean, Like I was like, and then the business
side of my major mostly was a communications but the
business side was like just prepping everyone to work at
a corporation, and I was already like, oh, I don't
want to do that, And all my teachers are like,
what do you mean. That's with the money, that's how
you make mons. I'm gonna make my money. Yeah, Like,

(18:33):
I don't want people giving me I don't want to
have to depend on that, and you're making robots. Yeah,
it just made me so I understand what he's thinking.
We're like, oh, yeah, some of this, Like if I
was gonna be a like a scientist, this makes sense,
or a lawyer. But I learned more about business that
the ups store than any of you fuckers have taught me.
I learned more about business hanging out with my friends

(18:54):
who sold weed than I ever learned in college, and
more practical stuff about business, like how to replace the
air bag in your car's steering wheel with a bag
of marijuana. It's a good place to hide it. That's
a free tip for everybody out there still living in
one of the states where it's illegal. M Sofie, are
we allowed to give people tips on drug smuggling? Sophie

(19:18):
is making a gesture that I cannot interpret through it.
I'm just gonna plug my airs so she's just gonna
plug her Okay, also hide drugs up your butt. Both work.
Now back to uh, back to Samuel Hanman. Um So,
I just read kind of the pro Samuel Hanman as
the founder of the most valuable medical revelation in the

(19:41):
history of the world, that that's that angle on it.
I've found a very different account of this period in
his life and an article written for the American Council
on Science and Health a five oh one c three
established in nineteen to promote evidence based science and medicine.
Here's what they say. Although he tried to earn money
as a translator, making in meat was very difficult for him.
On the brink of starvation, he was introduced to an

(20:03):
opulent Transylvanian baron, Samuel Brookenhal, the head of the Madgeburg
Freemason's Lodge. Hanman was initiated into the lodge in hermann Stott, Transylvania,
in October seventeen seventy seven. He quickly came to esteem
the many tinerant teachers of mysteries who were indoctrinating the
lodges in such matters as alchemy and spiritism. In Samuel
Hanman his life and work. Richard Hale hinted at the

(20:24):
depth of Hanman's involvement in the Lodge. He advanced beyond
vitalism and the naturalism of Shelling, and hegel to spiritism
and for a while lost his way in occultism. In
Life and Letters of Samuel Hanman, Thomas Bradford gave a
much less guarded account of the time Hanman spent in
the service of har Brookeenthal. It was in these quiet,
scholarly days that Hanman acquired that extensive and diverse knowledge
of ancient literature and of occult sciences, which he afterwards

(20:47):
proved himself to be a master. So he learned magic. Yeah,
he learned magic. The homeopaths like to be like. No,
he just spent so much time in lectures that he
realized what was wrong with the medical establishment and then
the other version of the a is nah. He went
to work for a wizard in the learned magic. Yeah,
he went to like a secret society for powerful dudes

(21:09):
who also believe in some bullshit because they were they
were blessed with certain opportunities that other people were Instead
of realizing that, they thought they were fucking special and
new magic, and they like to dress up in the costumes.
Rituals are fun because they didn't have TV or a
lot of books. Rituals are fun, like the ritual of
batting this copy of base against That's why you're supposed

(21:30):
to find it magic. Magic it is you know what
else is magic? Billy Wayne m capitalism. Capitalism is like magic,
like magic. Uh. It transmutes a podcast that is free
into money for me. It's good. It's good. See, nobody

(21:53):
can explain that. Nobody knows how that works. Us service.
We're back and we're furious. I want we want the machete.
So easy episode. It just feels like our episode is
like it could be one thing and it's going to
be another thing. This is like a well you you

(22:16):
brought that VHS from I brought it from from the
city's name that we will bleep out, Oh you don't
want people to know where you live. It's a little
we would be quite about a little bit. It's not
all people where he lives. A solid point. You brought that.
Let's take that back across the country, across the country,
across the nation with this old VHS copy of Basic Instinct.

(22:37):
It's in great it's in great ship does have an odor,
but that's fine. And it has a fake signature that
might funny. Yeah, there's no way to know. Um, we're
still sulfur. We're still waiting for the podcast. I'm going
to go get it machete. Sophie's going to break in throom.
Do you need two knives? Yeah, you got it. We

(23:02):
got it. We're back, We're back, and we have just
we have liberated the podcasting God damn it. We are
a fucking duo are We liberated the podcasting machete from
an unnamed other podcast that was recording, which is very
bad to do normally, but when it was an emergency.

(23:25):
Now we have both the machete and the Billy Wayne
Davis dagger on the table. This thing is dope. We're
ready to play. By the way that that sheath has
a sharpener in it right in the middle. I mean,
so you take that, you take that strap out. You're
in the field, off the land. Use my little gerber now,
I use my little spider cat. Last night when we
were eating steak, but this would have immediately like you

(23:49):
could kill a wild cow with that. There were wild
cows all over the current. That could have been you
I'm so proud of us. I'm very proud of us.
That was a beautiful like tag team mothers on mission
that just went really well, really well. We we liberated
our machete for the from the fearsome name bleeped, and
uh it was great, very fearsome, very fearsome name bleeped,

(24:11):
very fearsome name bleeped. Anyway, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to
this podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So um, yeah, it was
a good mission, you guys. Yeah. So the evidence I
found makes it seem that, like Samuel Hahnman's, the kind

(24:32):
of ideas that would eventually turn into homeopathy were more
rooted in the occult stuff he learned when he was
with the Masons than the stuff he learned in actual
medical school. And the ironic thing is that this wasn't
really a bad thing. That's what I was going to
say that there is that part like he's like he's
learned the placebo effect of yeah, medicine and people's mental

(24:57):
capacity of stuff. Yeah, y. In the seventeen hundreds, medicine
was mostly dangerous nonsense. Um as this nineteen seventy right
up on homeopathy from the University of Washington makes pretty clear.
It's people dumber than Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies. We're
pretending to be doctors. Granny knew some ship the point

(25:19):
and a couple of herbs that did some things. That's
the point of exact. People dumber than Granny. People dumber
than Granny. Yeah, Granny was a drunk. Was a drunk.
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, medical therapy
consisted mainly in bleeding, purging, vomiting, the application of leeches
in the ingestion of an array of powerful chemical drugs.

(25:39):
Their combined effect was often greatly debilitating and toxic to patients.
The prevailing therapeutical confusion alternated in action, doing little while
waiting for the so called healing powers of nature to
take over, with aggressiveness plunging patients into acute anemias and
loss of bodily fluids through the use of so called
depleting methods inherited from earlier times. So that's medicine inherited, inherited. Yeah.

(26:04):
After four semesters in medical school in seventeen seventy seven,
Samuel will move to Vienna and spent three months working
with a doctor Kuarin the personal doctor for Impress Maria Theresia.
The good Doctor did not charge Samuel for his tutelage,
but sam was still chronically short of cash. Thankfully, Doctor
Kuarin introduced him to the Governor of Transylvania, who offered
him a gig as his family physician. At least that's

(26:24):
what she live the homeopath says. The University of Washington,
by contrast, claims his main job was working as the
governor's library assistant and organizing his coin collection. So again,
the homeopaths like, ah, he worked as the personal doctor
to the Governor of Transylvania, And the more historical sources
I found say that, like, no, he organized a coin collection.

(26:46):
So she is taking his whole She very takes him,
very seriously. She's a homeopath. Well she's doing what he's doing,
which is like, I know what you said, but I
know a little better. I know a little bit better. Yeah,
that's it's kind of he gets the game, she gets
the gig. She has some interesting takes on autism too
for you, but I don't want to know those. In

(27:07):
the seventeen seventy nine, Samuel grew tired of organizing coins.
He moved to er Langen and attended that university where
he finished his medical degree. After his graduation, hey, hey,
step ahead of most, step ahead of he did most
of the doctors that we talked about. He got a
medical he got the degree. So we're okay, you see
where this is getting murky. Time for him to move

(27:28):
to Mexico, jerking off in val after his graduation. Samuelill
spent the years between seventeen and seventy nine and seventeen
eighty five. Is a nomadic wanderer, moving more than a
dozen times to different towns and cities in Germany. He
grew interested in chemistry in Dessow, largely because he started
fucking the town apothecary's daughter. According to the University of Watching,
her name was chemistry, where her name was chemistry according

(27:51):
to the University of Washington quote. His gradual alienation from
contemporary medicine and medical practices emerged during his stay in
the town of Gern. He was severely critical of the
deplorable conditions in a nearby asylum for the insane. In
five he became a health officer for the city of Dresden,
where for long years he aroused only hostility and contempt
from physicians and apothecary. He's get away yeah and again,

(28:14):
and he's kind of in the right, like he sees
how fund up medicine isn't He gets piste at it.
That does seem to be true. That like at this
point as a working doctor, he's like, things are wrong. Yeah,
this is you're not They keep coming back. Yeah, that's
not what we want. Yeah, that's not what we want.
But lucky ones come back. The unlucky ones just die
in the hole that we put them in, in the
sick person hole. And he's like, well, I'm also the undertaker,

(28:36):
so I'm doing all right. Yeah. There were a lot
of those doctor undertakers. Doctor Undertaker and Dr Barber were
probably the two most common doctor mash up jobs. My
goal was to be a doctor bartender. I think that's
a good goal. It's a golf pro doctor. Golf pro doctor,
and be a good one. The reason for Hanmann's ostracization

(28:57):
from the medical mainstream community had a lot to do
with his first ration over how patients were treated by doctors.
The physicians of his day focused entirely on understanding the
nature of illness. Patients were treated more as collections of
symptoms than human beings, and Samuel became an advocate of
a more whole person focused approach to treating patients, which
he believed would yield better results. And he's not wrong.
He's not wrong. It's it's interesting because he's not he's

(29:20):
not wrong, and that that makes for a better experience
for the patient and that can have a positive impact
on treating them. Um. There's also an argument to be
made that like all these years of doctors just focusing
on the symptoms and like basically just like trying to
figure out why people were dying and then cutting them
up after they died was necessary to figure out how
to perform medicine more effectively, Like you kind of needed
those kind of crappy centuries. Um, so it's it's it's

(29:44):
it's like, well, all we know about pregnant ladies and pregnancy.
The Nazis did all the experimentations, Like when we went
in and we're like, hey, we found those files and
we're like, hey, you shouldn't have done this, but we're
gonna here. That's that's a bit of a myth. There
were a couple of things that were found out by it,
but yeah, they like most of the not Like, there

(30:09):
was some useful stuff that was discovered in like the
horrible experiments that were carried on concentration camps, but the
vast majority of it was nonsense. Was just like injecting
dies into twins eyeballs to see if it changed the
other twins eye. Like for every legitimate thing they discovered, um,
there were like ten things that were like, yeah, we
didn't need to even test this. We all could have
told you you're not going to change one twin by

(30:31):
shooting poison into the other. But now we know, now
we know it is. It isn't they're bad guys, Yeah,
yeah we are. Yeah yeah, but we found a group
of us. Well do a whole Well, we'll have you
here for the episode of Nazi Doctors. It's gonna be
a fun episode of the show. Good God, Sophie's gonna

(30:52):
love it because we get to make a lot of
Sophie's choice jokes. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah sure sure. So.
In seventeen ninety, while working in Dresden, Hanman got up
to some work translating an old manuscript about Chinchona bark
also called China bark, which was known to be an

(31:13):
effective treatment from malarial fever. Unlike most treatments at the time,
Chinchona bark absolutely did work. The leading theory as to
why was that the substance was an astringent, But this
reasoning didn't smell right to Hanman. He had tried out
substances far more astringent than Shinchona bark on fever patients
and did not have any effect. Uh. The actual reason
that Jinchona bark worked on fevers is that it had

(31:34):
quinine in it, which is like an actual medicine and
of things that get people from hilaria. So like, obviously
Chinchona bark helps with malarial fever. Um. So they knew
that this thing worked, and they were right that had
helped with fevers. They just didn't know why the thing
in it. Yeah, And and Hanman was right in that
when he was like, no, no, no no, y'all's reasoning for
why this works is wrong. Um. And then he tried

(31:56):
to figure out the real reason why it worked and
became even more wrong, but in a weird way. To
try and figure out why Chinchona bark helped with malarial fever,
Hanman started experimenting on himself. He had a sizeable dose
of the bark and noted its effect on him, as
he wrote in his notes, quote, my feet, finger ends,
et cetera. At first became cold, I grew languid and drowsy.

(32:16):
Then my heart began to palpitate, and my pulse grew
hard and small and tolerable. Anxiety, trembling, prostration all throughout
all my limbs. Then pulsation in the head, redness of
my cheeks, thirst, and in short, all these symptoms which
are ordinarily characteristic of intermittent fever made their appearance, one
after the other, yet without the peculiar chili, shivering, rigor
briefly even those symptoms which are of regular occurrence, and

(32:37):
especially characteristic as the dulness of mind, the kind of rigidity,
and all the limbs, but above all the numb disagreeable
sensation which seems to have its seed, and the pero
steum over every bone in the body. All these made
their appearance. This paroxysm lasted two or three hours each time,
and recurred if I repeated this dose, not otherwise I
discontinued it and was in good health. So he has

(32:57):
like a really bad reaction to this ship kind of
like a fee that's his that's his interpretation of its Like, oh,
this taking this fever treatment feels like a fever to me.
So Hanman was struck by a revelation as a result
of this. If this bark cured fevers but also gave
him a fever when he took it while he was healthy,
maybe that meant sicknesses were cured by substances that acted

(33:20):
similarly to the illness they were treating. I can see
the logic. You can see the logic in that. You
can see like, it's not He's not a dumb person
at this stage in medical development for being like, oh,
maybe this is what's going on. Well, that's the steps
you would take, I guess, just to figure stuff out.
I can see how a smart person would be like, oh, ship,
I think I think I figured something out. And I
think I'm saying that because that's what I would do.

(33:42):
That's what And there's there actually is some not in
his particular conclusion of it, but like vaccines essentially worked
that way. He's he's wrong for the right reasons, I guess,
you could say, or like he's there are some things
in medicine that work, like what on men realizes here
his His main problem is that he generalizes way too much. Um,

(34:06):
that's humans, Yeah, that's humans exactly. Yes, but again, you see,
I have trouble. This guy's an imperfect person and we'll
get to some of his character flaws a little later
to um. But he's not a bastard. No, he's not.
He's not a bastard. He's doing his best in an
era where nobody knows anything about medicine. But he Yeah,
and he's one of the few people raising his eyebrow
to everything, being like, I don't know. You can think

(34:26):
y'all are wrong, and he's right, but he's wrong too.
I don't know the answer. Yeah, yeah, but that idea.
But he does eventually get to the point where he
feels like he knows the answer. So yeah. Hanman, based
on this single experiment, worked up a bold new theory
of medical science, which he summarized with the now infamous
line like here's like, okay, that's one of these is

(34:50):
more facts of homeopathy to get your thing, though, and
you do need something catching. It's like, uh, in order
to beat Donald Trump, a dottering ill old man, we
need another daughtering ill old man whose eye fills with
blood at random intervals. I don't think we need that one. Nope,
that's what's gonna happen. Billy, Wayne fucking hope, you're so wrong.

(35:13):
We've all decided glad you gave me that knife. I
think that that is well, no, I hope not. But
if you travel at all, like damn it like like
here's like it's like when we when when when Mitt
Romney and uh, a violent Christian extremist ran for president,

(35:37):
the only person to beat them was Barack Obama, who
was essentially uh not Mit Romney. Jesus, I sucked this
up entirely. M hmm. I I don't know. It's it's
like how Barack Obama and John McCain are the same person. Yeah, see,
it doesn't make any sense. Just this didn't work at
all for a woman, Okay, continue a woman. That's not

(36:01):
like caring like Sophie. That's that's love caring. Like that's
not homeopathy kind of homeopathy. Yeah. So, Handman's basic idea
was that medicines treated illness by causing similar symptoms and
the patient. And thus when you had when you dose
someone with something that made them sick and they were
already sick, the two sick because his was canceled each

(36:23):
other out. Now you may recognize this as the same
medical reasoning and that one episode where Mr Burns goes
to the doctor and they realized that he has all
of the diseases. Guy, your illnesses are perfect balance. That's
that's literally Hanman's like like revelation as a result of
making himself sick on Cinchona Bark, Oh yeah, you just

(36:46):
kill it. It's like his thing is like you faught
fire with fire. It's kind of like that the problem
came to him and you're on fire. He was like,
just give him some more him a little bit more fire,
that's going to give him. I mean that is kind
of hedy with wildfires, but not in the same way.
But not humans. But not a human fire. I do understand.
You do understand how that works. It's kind of like

(37:07):
the vaccine versus Yeah. Yeah, no, it is a vaccine
for fire's Yes, a little bit of fire. I'll cure
this fire. Yeah, we control it before it does it itself. Yeah,
that's that's problem with over generalizing. Yeah it is. Yeah,
because I did try to stop a kitchen fire once
by just lighting other parts of the kitchen on fire

(37:27):
and that did not work. That doesn't work. That doesn't work.
Or put um water on a grease fire. Do you
know that? Nope, But if you put grease on a
water fire that, if you've got water on fire, then
you are you are the city of Cleveland. Yes, yes,
you are. You guys cat your river. Every time I

(37:48):
make fun of Cleveland for the river being on fire
that like five times that it caught on fire, they
point out how clean it is today, and I'm like,
I'm sorry, Yeah, because all the stuff burned up is
the poison burned death the river us. He cleaned it.
I'm never gonna let Cleveland live that one down. They
don't care. They don't care, they don't They've been drunk
the whole time. I love Cleveland. It's fun. You can

(38:11):
mess anything up. They don't notice. She got mad. Sophie's
is a Cleveland stand No. I was just thinking about
the only thing that they got mad at Boz when
Lebron loved well, I'd be mad about that too. That's
the only thing they have. Yeah, well he left, he's
ours now, Well he's no one's beautiful. Lebron James belongs

(38:35):
to the world. He has a precious Jim. He was
a precious, is a precious Jim, possibly one of the
people least fit for this podcast. Yeah, he's so nice.
Every move he makes is great. Yeah, he's he's a
class act. He's Shack unlike Shack. No, he's like Shack.
Oh he's like Shack. Yeah. I like Shack. I like

(38:56):
Shack too. Shack's great. Shack is right, Dion, Chack is great.
But I mean he's definitely not as nice of a
person as Lebron James. I feel like now we're just
now we're just splitting very large, tall hairs. I don't
want to like continue with you continue the podcast. You
do host? I do? I do host a podcast. So

(39:19):
the logic of Hanman's idea that like cures like was
reinforced a few years later when Dr Edward Jenner invented
the first smallpox vaccine. This worked by, you know, essentially
introducing a small sample of the disease into a patient
to immunize them. Now, today we know that what Jenner
did with his vaccine is very different than what Hanman proposed,
but at the time, giving the information available, you could
be forgiven for taking Jenner's breakthrough is more evidence that

(39:41):
Hanman was on the right track. Mademan insufferable. He definitely was.
That happens after this point. Ah, he's been telling you all.
I figured it out. Who told you? Clearly? This is
the same thing. Damn it. Electrified by his study, Samuel
will Hanman began a series of experiments to develop what
he will eve would be a whole new and much
more valid school of medicine, since the underlying theory behind

(40:05):
it all was that light cures like he called his
new system homeopathy. On his first book on the subject,
he wrote, to obtain a quick and lasting cure, choose
for every attack or illness a substance that which can
produce a similar malady to the one it is to cure.
Modern day homeopaths still cite this experiment as one of
the greatest developments in the history of mankind. One modern
text book claims Chinchona bark was to Hanman what the

(40:26):
falling apple was to Newton and the swinging lamp to Galileo.
Hanman launched next into a series of bold experiments, both
on himself and on his children, his wife, and his students.
In his first book, Fragmented Deirebus, he asserted that he
had experienced a hundred and twenty two different symptoms from
ingesting chinchona bark, which suggested, uh it must have a
wide ranging medical application. Likewise, Samuel had listed a hundred

(40:48):
and seventy four known symptoms with the consumption of green peppers.
Um so I deal with health problems by it and
peppers hundred and seventy four them. Although you know this
is obviously not real medicine, but it also seems pretty harmless,
like eating eating green peppers isn't going to cure anything,
but it's not gonna make you worse. Unfortunately, the very

(41:11):
logic of light cures like led Hanman inevitably towards experiments
with literal poisons. Martin Gumper, one of his biographers, wrote,
day after day he tested medicines on himself and others.
He collected histories of cases of poisoning. His purpose was
to establish a physiological doctrine of medical remedies free from
all suppositions, based solely on experiments. Hanman sent his children
into the fields to collect hinbane, sumach and deadly nightshade.

(41:34):
They grew up like young priests of the Esclepion of
costs they felt the leaves, blossoms and tubers with small
but expert hands. Everyone was obliged to join in the work,
for there was no other way to succeed in his
titanic plan of rescuing the wealth of natural remedies from
the quagmire of textbooks and displaying it in the bright
light of experience. The family huddled together, and every free
moment of every one of them, from the oldest to
the youngest, was made of for the testing of medicines

(41:56):
and the gathering of the most precise information on their
observed effects. So he sends his kids out in the
field to grab poison and take it. So that's good.
That's how your kids. There are his kids, He owns them.
That's his He's a doctor. He's a doctor. It was
an exciting time for Hanman and his family. Unfortunately, which
ones are going to die. It was not an exciting

(42:17):
time for many of his patients. Uh. And I'm gonna
quote now from the A. C. S. H is right
up on homeopathy, having a masked, voluminous pseudo knowledge by
pairing many specific vile substances, in particular diseases who symptoms
most resembled the effects he attributed to those substances. Hanman
set up shop as the original homeopath. He would begin
his consultations by putting wearisomely. Numerous questions to the patient

(42:38):
their applies would contribute to his building a picture of
the patient's condition, a picture based exclusively on these replies,
the patient's appearance, and Hanman's supposedly God given intuition. For example,
if the patient had a gray pallor, was sweating profusely,
and said that he or she suffered from abdominal cramps,
Hanman would in effect look up gray pallors, sweating, and
abdominal cramps. In his tome, used cross references to narrow

(42:58):
down possible remedies, and us decide that strict nine, a
toxic alkaloid, was the I don't care for the patient's condition,
and it'll make it stop. It will make it, it
will it will stop a lot. Yes, it'll make it stop.
Strict nine causes sweating and horrific cramps itself, so it
seemed like a logical treatment for a patient exhibiting those
same symptoms. Unfortunately, giving literal poison to sick people is

(43:20):
likelier to kill them than cure them. That's that was okay, good,
that's what I thought, but I wasn't sure you were
going to say that. Yeah, that's where this is heading.
He kills a lot of people because of the poisons.
Because of the poisons, it turns out that's bad. Is
his defense. The you have to let me fail. If

(43:41):
I have succeeded in curing one patient, it's only because
I failed on nine. It's a numbers game. You kill
a hundred percent of the patients you don't treat. That
is That's what Wayne Gretzky said, Doctor Reverend Dr Wayne Gretzky.
That's his famous ah my headphones fell off. That can
only mean it's time for an ad plug. Billy waye okay,

(44:05):
before before, before we do the ad plug. You want
to touch tips here? I always want to touch with
our with our blades products. So good, we're back, Sophie.
You're making a strange face. What's up? I feel left out.

(44:25):
I don't have a weapon here here you get to
mind you have this? Why? Thank you? Billy welcome, pull
out my knife. I get the machettire thanks, Robert. Okay, alright, cool, alright,
let's let's touch tips and and commit recommit ourselves. To
the study of bastardry before we get back to this topic. Oh,
that's good, it's going to be great content for the

(44:47):
audio podcast we Metal on Metal. Yeah, everybody loves the
sound of metal on Metal almost as much as they
sent love the sound of Cody's time machine. That was
so crazy. That was horrible. It was disgusting. Now, Uh,
that's a metaphor for something disgusting. It's a literal of something.
Discovery Johnston made the most horrifying what he thought was

(45:12):
a sound effect for a time machine. It sounds like
sounded like cockroaches performing oral sex. Yeah, it wasn't. It
was like no terrible, speaking of terrible. Uh. Samuel Hahnman's
practice of giving poison to sick people uh worked out
terribly uh and killed a huge number of them. Quote.

(45:34):
For stomach pains. He regularly prescribed quart aouns doses of mercury.
He instructed one, so much mercury. That's like, that's like
twenty thermometers worth of mercury, and that's going to hurt you.
That is not going to help, not coming back. He
instructed one poor soul to take half an ounce of
sulfuric acid in the morning, another half ounce later that day.

(45:55):
I do not think they made it to the second.
If you get to the end of the day, take
a little more, take a little bar. If you make it.
You can just imagine that person making it through and
then just being like, all right, you gotta taken I
don't I don't want to do it again. That second
dose just falls right out through the whole made it through.

(46:17):
Oh God. Yeah. A purported healing system that Hanman asserted
God had revealed to him was having devilish effects on
his patients who were dropping like flies. Them with a
big pad of paper and just one Nope, no, that one. No,
it's not the solution. Not nope. And I'm guessing it
was like for heartburn or something. It's like, oh, your

(46:37):
heart's burning. Huh. I think I know what'll deal with this.
Burn your heart back. You want to burn your heart
back into alignment. To drink some fucking acid drink? Oh boy? Yeah?
So you know, was it bubbling? That's the carbonation some

(46:58):
doctors might have you know, realized from all of these
dead people, uh, that this theory of like curing like
maybe was not as universally applicable as Hanman thought. But
Samuel Hanman did not make that decision. Instead, he decided
that his theory just needed a little bit of alteration.
M you know, you don't need you don't want to,

(47:19):
You don't want to scrap a whole medical theory just
because you burn a couple of people to death with acid. Yeah,
he has looked up in his his healing poal was
a lot smaller than the dead body pie. And that
I mean that does mean you need to rejigger some things. Yeah,
math's wrong. The math's not right. We're going out here now.
To adjust his theory, Hanman turned back to his Masonic

(47:40):
and occult roots. He added a new stage to the treatment.
Instead of just dosing his patients with fatal poisons and
watching them die horribly, he began deluding said poisons to
a ridiculous extent. He'd start by adding ninety nine drops
of alcohol to one drop of the actual substance, and
then he would shake the mixture to potentialize it and
activate its magical power. Potentialize potentialize that they still do that.

(48:01):
You gotta shake this ship. Obviously, you don't shake. It
doesn't work. It's like one of those it's like one
of those uh five hour energies. Yeah, you gotta shake it,
gotta shake it. He would then delude it further, adding
drops of water to one drop of this one C mixture,
and that would create a two C mixture, and so
on down the line, until essentially nothing was left of

(48:22):
the original substance. Of course, this was placebo. It's just
a placebo. But to Hanman, he saw this instantly have
a massive positive effect about his patients, because it's way
better to give someone water than strict nine. Yes, yes,
I didn't go to I mean allegedly, I don't know
for a fact, but that's doing the medical school. I'm

(48:44):
not a doctor, but I think was suggested that to me. Yeah,
I think if you drink water, it'll make you feel better.
Aren't you both red doctors? We haven't. We haven't gone
to Haiti to bleach people. This is the bleach part that, yeah, understand,
But I want that sweet, sweet, I want that title

(49:04):
you take. Uh, just what if we make our own program?
How do we become accredited to give people fake medical degrees?
This is American? We're just like, Oh, I don't think
it's probably as hard as we think it is. Yeah,
we got to find someone who owns a small college
and then give us an honorary doctorate. You know who's

(49:25):
let's talk to Uh oh, what's his Liberty They're in trouble, right,
Liberty University. We just did an episode of I bet
we could get that. Yeah, they need some help right now,
they need some help right now. Let's get in bed
with the fallwells. Yeah, what could go wrong? No, well,
we'll get in the pool with the follow Oh yeah,
have you seen that stuff about the trainers? Yeah? Boy, yeah,

(49:47):
what what does his name? Want one? It's so, I'm
proudest of him. He did well, he did he did
very well. Every movie made. I was a boy. There's
a good solid man now. Uh so, obviously, Hanman starts
deluding his literal poison, and he notices massive improvements and

(50:08):
his surviving patients um dehydrated anymore. Yeah, it's great. Nor
are my insides liquefying? It's now to Hanman, this proved
he was on the right track. He added the aphorism
less is more to like cures like, and together these
two facts laid the cornerstone of homeopathic medicine. Yep, Hanman's diaries.

(50:30):
If his less is more period included much alchemic and
astrologic symbol I'm sorry I'm quoting here from uh that
that right up? They all understand marketing. Oh yeah, yeah
to it like a degree that most people. I wonder
with Hanman though, I wonder if he's just this is
just kind of how science works when you know less,

(50:53):
everyone's dying from everyone's treatments because they're all bad. Like
we we laugh about him giving someone a quarter ounce
of mercury because that's debt terrible, but also like normal
doctors who weren't homeopaths, we're also giving people and we
know that you don't do that because of them. Yeah,
there is that. Yeah, So I think it's very possible
that Hanman is just he's making some clearly some logical

(51:14):
failures and being like, now when I deluded it, they
got better. That means deluding it makes the medicine stronger,
or it's like no, no that's not that's not quite it.
The stuff is killing them and you're giving them less stuff.
You just stopped poisoning them. He's like, or or what
less is more? Yeah? Or the saying yeah, so he

(51:36):
he started, you know, spending his nights shaking and mixing
and cooking up all sorts of magical cures for people.
Um and over time, Hanman grew to delude his medicines
more and more. In seventeen nine, while he was based
in a small town called Konnig Saluter, an outbreak of
scarlet fever hit the community. Hanman thought the symptoms of
the disease headaches and wide open eyelids with a dull,

(51:58):
staring look, were similar the effects he'd observed on his
friends and family when he dosed them with atropine. To
see what would happen. Following the theory of like curing like,
he dosed patients with atropine. Thankfully, it was an extremely
deluded one thirty two solution. Uh so you know what,
it was, basically water. I'm gonna quote from the University

(52:19):
of Washington here. The reason for deluding the drug was
Hanman's awareness that drugs were often responsible for aggregating existing
diseases or introducing new ones with contemporary dosages. Still believing
he was observing drug effects, he gradually gave his pure
drugs and greater delusions. Hanman rationalized this action by speculating
that an illness the body was enormously more sensitive to
drugs than in health. He's making a lot of logical

(52:40):
leaps here, it's interest. Yeah. And here's the question. Is
he also dosing himself? Yes, so he's just getting madder
and madder. Yeah, I I I do suspect that's having
an impact because he gave himself a lot of poisons. Yeah,
I'm sure kids affect the mind. You don't hear much
about his kids. Well, well, all that mercury. Yeah. Now,

(53:05):
he continued his tactic of deluding his medication until things
reach their current point of homeopathic absurdity. A modern homeopathic
treatment for the common cold would be a six C
solution of onion, white onion, because when you cut an onion,
your nose gets all stuffed up like it does when
you have a cold. Man. Yeah. Now, if you're wondering
how much actual onion is in a six C delution,
well I'm gonna quote from the A C s h

(53:27):
is right up again. A six C onion concentration would
result if one filled whimbley stadium to the roof with
water and added one drop of an onion mother tincture.
A twelve C onion concentration and a homeopathic pill is
equivalent to that which would result of one added a
single drop of onion mother tincture to a body of
water the size of the Atlantic Ocean. So he's just
he's just giving them water. Kind of depends on how

(53:49):
are you doing this. It's like an onion version of lacroix. Yeah,
it's like more concentrated or more diluted. Lacroixis a lot
stronger than homeopath. Is someone in the next stroom cutting onions, Like, no,
that's the medicine. That's the medicine. But we did make
it by having someone in the next room cut onions
and we took the smell of it and sprinkled it

(54:10):
on the water. They're actually getting into what is the
problem one of the modern problems with homeopathic medicine, But
that's gonna wait until part two. They don't always delude
it so much. Now. The ironic thing about all this
is that Hanman's nonsense medicine actually saved a huge number
of lives during this period of time. This is not
because his cure has worked, but it is because real
doctors in this period we're prescribing people poison. Most sicknesses

(54:33):
suffered by most people get better on their own after
enough time, if you just don't give people deadly poisons.
So Hanman's patients would start taking his nonsense water, they
would heal of their body's own accord, and they would
avoid going to a regular doctor who would have probably
tried to drill a hole in their brain to let
the ghosts out. In this way, completely by accident, Samuel
Hahnman did succeed in advancing the frontiers of medical science

(54:55):
in a major way. I want to quote from the
nineteen sixty three book The March of Medicine. However we
may judge Hanman's theory, one thing must be admitted. It
led to a decisive change in medical thought. Clear Headed
doctors realized that a minimum dose of an ineffectual substance
such as homeopaths used, was tantamount to giving no treatment.
If the sick recovered all the same, and this could
not be disputed, it must be a matter of self healing.

(55:17):
Homeopathic treatment, in other words, no treatment was often far better.
So basically doctors start realizing, like, Okay, this guy has
given people nothing. We know that. We know that like
his because we knew math, like you know Avogadro's number
and Shi at this point, we know this is just
water and his patients are doing better than ours. Maybe
we suck. Maybe we're bad at this, and we need

(55:38):
to really fundamentally change how we do medicine. And Hanman
was a big part of that realization. That's really nice. Yeah,
and then it's also like you think there's a period.
Really maybe if we send our patients to the ghost
we let out of their brain, that would help. Yeah,
that they try, we're doing. They send a lot of
patients to the ghosts that they let out of their
brain to it just seems like probably a step they

(56:01):
went through. Yeah, it wasn't an even march of progress.
That dude was the doctor and we let that ghost
out of his brain. Let's see what the doctor ghost now,
and he didn't give them poison. So the ghost doctor
was a better doctor than the actual doctors. Yeah, the
ghost doctor would absolutely be a better I would rather

(56:23):
go to a ghost doctor in this period than Hanman
or a regular doctor. The more and more I come
to these more and more I realized like, oh, it
makes sense, we've destroyed this planet. Yeah, we're not We're
not a smart species. Yeah, it's crazy. It took us
this more. Yeah. No, we've really made a lot of progress.
For as dumb as we are. It's kind of inspiring
when you think about it that way. We're doing all

(56:43):
right well. Real doctors took the apparent success of Hanman's
methods as a reason to revise their tactics. Samuel himself
continue to plow forward and develop his treatments into a
wide ranging belief system. Homeopathy was immediately popular with patients
for obvious reasons. Um from a report in the Anctional
Institutes of Health quote, the differences between orthodox medicine and
homeopathy could hardly be more vivid. From its beginning, homeopathy

(57:06):
always began with a long consultation lasting at least an hour,
in which all aspects of the patient's illness and life
were discussed. Homeopaths like to stress that they practice holistic
medicine and the appropriate treatment chosen. In contrast, during the
first half of the nineteenth century, when homeopathy was becoming established,
orthodox medicine was immersed in the belief that advances and
understanding disease could only come from a detailed correlation of

(57:27):
symptoms and signs of the sick patient. On the ward
and the findings that autopsy clinical pathological correlation. So these
orthodox tactics did lead to eventually a greater understanding of
health and illness um, but it also meant in the
immediate term that doctors are basically often we're just gonna
wait till you die and cut you open and then
and then we'll be better in the future, which patients

(57:49):
aren't big fans of. No, they like a doctor who
treats you as a person and not as just like
waiting to cut into your corpse and be like, you
took your car in a mechanic and he's like, ah,
I could, but I'm not going to ye. But when
it quits running, bring it to me. When your brakes
fail on the highway, I'll cut your car open afterwards,
and yeah, I'll tell you which why the bricks didn't work, Okay,

(58:13):
exactly what they didn't work. Yeah. So Hanman showed no
interest in detailed pathology, uh, none in conventional diagnosis and treatment.
He was only interested in the principles of homeopathic medicine,
which he used to name the illness. Classic Homeopathy was
therefore seen by its supporters as an attractively safe symptom, simple,
easy to understand, and centered on the patient as a
whole and not on pathological lesions. By eighteen o one,

(58:35):
Hanman had moved on yet again, back to a town
near Leipzig. His notebooks revealed the kind of problems most
of his patients came to him with insomnia, headaches, dizziness, constipation,
lack of appetite, backaches, menopause, menstruation. In other words, all
things that tended to resolve themselves. Life. Yeah, life. But
Samuel Hanman watched his patients improve after giving them water,

(58:55):
and he grew convinced that he had solved the problem
of sickness for all time. His fellow doctors were less
than convinced, and they were particularly frustrated with the fact
that high society, the aristocracy, and the very wealthy increasingly
embraced homeopathy over orthodox medicine. By eighteen o five, he
was widely recognized as a physician of note. In eighteen ten,
he published the organ On of Rational Healing, which would

(59:16):
be published in five editions during his lifetime. Leipzig University,
his alma mater, hired him to give lectures from eighteen
twelve to eighteen twenty one, he taught six month courses
on the principles of homeopathy. Curious young minds from all
over Europe flocked to Hanman's classroom to learn from the master.
By this point, he'd grown utterly convinced of his own brilliance,
to the point where he told one group of students,

(59:36):
he who does not walk on exactly the same line
with me, who diverges if would be but the breath
of a straw to the right of the left is
an apples state and a traitor. And with him, I
have nothing to do. Oh goody good. He doesn't get
more better in his old age, No, yeah, yeah, it's
it's this is kind of where he gets to be

(59:57):
a little bit more problematic. Everyone's telling him how great
is yeah yeah, And you know, in fairness to him,
compared to the poison, doctors held goods, not given people
poison is a good move as a doctor. I wish
I had been a doctor, that it would have been
so much easier. Yeah, machettison could have really taken off
that a just cut off a digit, Just cut off

(01:00:18):
a finger. Oh he's trying to give you acid. I'm
just gonna cut your finger. Just give me Which finger
do you hate? Yeah, you have, We all have one.
We love. Everybody's got an evil finger. Which finger? That's
the core of machettison? God, all right, it's time for ads, Sophie.
Sophie is saying it's time for ads. If you like
cutting your finger off, try these products service. We're back.

(01:00:49):
You tried, though, Billy in one. At age sixty six,
Samuel Hanman was granted unlimited privileges by a nearby duchess,
allowing him to live in luxury while he took a
partial retirement to the develop his theories six and held
a long fucking life. That means it's old now. Yeah,
he lives forever essentially. Yeah uh. He continued to be

(01:01:11):
the center of the homeopathic field, directing the establishment of
a homeopathic journal and watching his new homeopathic schools were
established by his former students. While homeopathy spread over the continent.
Samuel Hanman continued to work until in eight he presented
his greatest discovery since his first breakthrough. The father of
homeopathy had finally found the root of all chronic illnesses. No,

(01:01:32):
the itch really, yeah, he decided it was scabies. That's
not that's I can tell you from experience that's not
the it's not the root of illness, and stayed in
some shady hotels and stuff. Yeah now, Hanman termed it
sora and claimed that scabies basically acted as the soil
from which all diseases sprung. Modern homeopaths are very much

(01:01:54):
divided on whether or not this last great theory of
Hanman's was a misstep or the key to a proper
homeopathic treatment. Actual doctors recognized that scaby is to actually
caused by tiny microsoftic mites and has nothing to do
with same multiple sclerosis after chro. But I'm sure during
that time it was a huge problem. Scabies is everywhere, everywhere.

(01:02:15):
Everybody's got scabies. Who comes in with something else wrong
must be the scabies causn't it. It's like people that
that do hardcore drugs always also smoke pot. Yeah, that's
the same, exactly that logic. Yes, yeah, got you now. Uh.
In eighteen thirty five, Hunman married a thirty five year
old French socialite. She'd originally been one of his patients.

(01:02:38):
Year old. I mean even the old horny dudes existed,
old horny dudes, and he is apparently great at it. Uh. Yeah,
she'd originally been one of his patients, which I'm sure
presented no ethical dilemma. His family, particularly his surviving children,
were horrified when they now very elderly scientist left for
France with his young new wife. Oddly enough, that year

(01:03:00):
eighteen thirty five was also the your homeopathy faced its
first effective rebuttal, using what we would recognize today as
actual science. But he didn't like that. You know, I
don't even know what he thought about it, because it's
not like there weren't like online journals and stuff that's
happened far away from him. I don't know. He was busy,
he was he was busy. Oh you guys got a
problem with I don't care. I'll make sure you ain't.

(01:03:21):
Got no escaping. French homeopathy had taken off among the
great and good in the Kingdom of Bavaria. In Nuremberg,
to homeopathic doctors did a brisk business treating the nobility
with nonsense water. This irritated a fellow named Friedrich Wilhelm
von Hoven, the city's chief public health official and the
head of the hospitals. He wrote a critique of homeopathy
under a pseudonym. According to the n I h quote.

(01:03:44):
Von Hoven accused homeopathy of lacking any scientific foundation. He
suggested that homeopathic drugs were not real medicines at all.
An alleged homeopathic cures were either due to dietetic regimes
and the healing powers of nature, or showed the power
of belief. He called for an objective comparative assessment by
impartial experts. If, as he aspected, homeopathic treatment proved ineffective,
the government would need to take drastic measures to protect

(01:04:04):
the lives of deceived patients. A little bit of both.
In between. It seems like everyone is very reactionary to
the I mean, nothing's changed that not humans are, but
they can't. They have a hard time going in between.
It's interesting, it is interesting. It's it's a common problem
with people. UM. Johan Jacob Reuter, Nuremberg's homeopathic doctor UH,

(01:04:29):
defended his discipline by claiming that even children, lunatics, and
animals had been cured by homeopathic solutions. He challenged von
Hoven to try something comparisons like the children, lunatics, and
animals and animals the three kinds of people you know. Uh.
He challenged von Hoven to try some homeopathic medicine a

(01:04:50):
thirty C dilution of salt and see if he didn't
feel something. This test or challenge sparked dozens of physicians
and pharmacists in Nuremberg to take him up on his
offer and now on some sweet yeah, now, now I
kind of want some joblins. Uh. So suddenly all these
physitions started doing tests on themselves with deluted salt water,
and eventually they hit upon the idea of conducting a

(01:05:11):
single large scale test and Clint instead of all doing
individual tests. Quote. Following a widely publicized invitation to anyone
who was interested, more than a hundred twenty citizens met
in a local tavern. The minimum numbers needed to proceed
had been fixed at fifty. The design of the proposed
trial was explained to detail in front of everyone. A
hundred vials were numbered, thoroughly shuffled, and then split up
into random into two lots of fifty. One lot was

(01:05:31):
filled with distilled snow water, the other with ordinary salt
and a homeopathic C thirty dilution of distilled snow water
prepared just as Reuter had demanded. A grain of salt
was dissolved and a hundred drops that distilled snow water
and the resulting solution was deluted twenty nine times at
a ratio of one to one hundred. So this is
like a double line experiment. You get your control, you
get your your your test group um and a list

(01:05:53):
was made of which subjects had received which substances. The
subjects themselves were kept in the dark about what they'd received.
So this is believed to be the first double blind
study conducted in the history of medicine. This is what
it's done to try and see if homeopathy worked. Like
Hanman advanced the frontiers of medical science more than almost
any other single person, completely by accident. Yeah, completely by accident.

(01:06:17):
It's kind of cool, but contrarian being like I think
I don't think this is right. Yeah, I think I'm
the only one who knows anything. And well that's what
I was gonna say too. Is like a lot of
it seems like a lot even to this day. Arrogance. Yeah,
takes us away farther and helps us in some degree,

(01:06:38):
But we heard ourselves pretty hard till we get there.
There's a lot of Ye. There's actually a lot of
interesting writings on the evolution of over confidence and like
why over confidence occurs in species and stuff, and like
how if you're if you've got two species, two different
animals competing over resource, and one of them believes irrationally
that it will win any fight, and so it always
tries to grab the thing. Like, sometimes it will get

(01:07:01):
in fights, and sometimes it will lose those fights, but
more often than not, the less confident thing would just
be like, I don't want to I don't want to
fight with you. But the dog that goes for the
treat first gets the treat most often, or yeah, whoever
throws the first punch. And with human beings, that means
sometimes we build arsenals of nuclear weapons capable of annihilating
all life on Earth and hand them to dottering old men. Uh.

(01:07:22):
And it also means sometimes we look up at the
moon and go, yeah, I bet we could fling a
guy into that. Let's go up there, let's figure that
ship out. Yeah we can do it. Fuck it. I mean,
if my car goes this fan, that's just a bigger
gas tank. Yeah that's that. That happened in Huntsville, Alabama.
That's where that's where they build those rocks. Yeah, so

(01:07:44):
keep making fun of the South. Yeah, we fucking landed
on the goddamn moon. That's where all the ness shit
is because nobody else is that fucking crazy. No, well
that's a lot of it too. Yeah, is there a
lot of rednecks going like, but I know how to
do this. I can get us up there. That's really
like the core history, and that's why, like all the

(01:08:04):
great test pilots come from like Ohio or something like
flat boring places where it's like, oh, yeah, I've been
rolling around in a car trying to get myself killed
for years. Might as well do it for science. Yeah,
and I can fly alright, fuck, yeah, I'll be the
first one. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, I'll go on
board this. You're any Chuck Yeager, he's still very, very

(01:08:28):
very confident in old age. We're like, well, god, how
cocky was he when he was little? How could you
not be being Chuck Yeager? Though? I think you accomplished
a couple of things, and then you're just like, oh,
I can do anything I want. And who's that Chuck Air?
Oh yeah, go ahead, bigarette, just let him. Yeah you
can smoke in the majorney Ward. So obviously the double
blind this first double blind study showed that it didn't

(01:08:51):
the homeopathic medicine didn't do anything. So the first blind
study worked. Yeah, it worked. Uh so Yeah, in eighteen
thirty five, a bunch of dudes at a bar succeeded
improving homeopathy was nonsense. But as I've said a number
of times on this show, proof has never convinced anyone
of anything. Yeah, homeopathy is the oldest European example of
what we now call c a M or complimentary and

(01:09:11):
alternative medicine. That's a nice term used by professionals today
to avoid hurting the feelings of people who truly believe
crystals are going to heal their arthritis. The whole reason
a field of fundamentally unscientific ideas is treated this way
traces back to Samuel Hahnman. Before his rise to prominence,
medicine outside the mainstream without data behind it was just
called quackery. Going to quote next from an article in
the Royal Society of Medicine. Most of these pre eighteen

(01:09:34):
fifty quacks tend to specialize. Some were bone setters, Others
claim to cure of anereal disease without the use of mercury.
A doctor Taylor of Beverly and Gloucester arranged to attend
regularly at three public houses, to which patients only had
to send in their urine, and he would tell at
once whether they were curable or not. There were self
siled Oculus, who is specialized in the treatment of cataract
and curious of cancer without operation. One of the latter,

(01:09:55):
calling himself the High German Doctor Simon, invited you to
visit his house and see for yourself answer of the
armpit of five pieces of twelve and one half ounces
weight which he claimed to have removed. Most of these
regulars were uneducated or even illiterate, and only a minority
were full time healers, usually at regular jobs such as blacksmith, ferrier, grocer, butcher, cheesemonger, cobbler,

(01:10:15):
cutter or mechanic. They often claimed patronage of the Great
and Good Dr Scott's Billius and liver pills were used
by the Dukes of Devonshire, Northumberland and Wellington, Anglesey and Hastings,
and the Earls of Pembrooke, Essex and Oxford, while Dr
Lampert at thirty six High Street, Boro, London, claimed to
visit the world to do. In the West Indies, the
Isles of Scilly London, Nottingham, Derby, Norwich, Lincoln, Boston, Gloucester,

(01:10:38):
wolfer Hampton, Litchfield, a bunch of British names, and forbidden
measure almost every other town in the Kingdom. These are
regulars had one thing in common. They had little if
any interest in understanding of orthodox medicine in their time.
I got time for fancy book learning. I'm doing magic
and it's not always bad. Like the doctors who are like, oh,
we can cure your VD without using mercury, Like they

(01:11:00):
could hear people's STDs, but they weren't making it worse
with mercury. You know that, you know what sucks worse
than mercury. Yeah, And we're like, oh God, he would
put mercy in your hole. Don't do that. Just yeah.
So things changed in the early nineteenth century, largely as
a result of Samuel's work. Homeopathy gave quacks an ideology

(01:11:22):
and a school of medicine to stand alongside. While old
fashioned quacks would rarely visit the same town twice because
they were fundamentally frauds, homeopaths would continue to practice in
the same area for years, even decades. People at the
time recognize this change. Quote an orthodox practitioner remarked the
old fashioned quack with his farrago of receipts, who seldom
visited the same neighborhood, but at very long intervals in
order to avoid recognition. This class a practitioner is fast

(01:11:44):
coming to a close. It was being replaced by literate
and educated empirics who read books. This remark signal the
emergence of a new form of unorthodox medicine, which formed
the basis of what is today called complimentary alternative medicine.
This is where we get gooped from. You know, it
used to be you were like a fringe medical person.
You wouldn't you wouldn't stick around in town. You'd sell
your snake on and get out. Because of Hanuman, these

(01:12:06):
people established themselves. Is like no, no no, no, We're going
to like set up offices and try to do like
we see ourselves as legitimate practitioners and that is all
really humans need is like a different subconsciously, we're like,
it's like the marijuana doctor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like
the marijuana doctors. Samuel Hanman and his wife lived out

(01:12:27):
there last year's as popular socialites in France. The only
hiccup in his golden ears came when his wife was
charged for practicing medicine without a license, but this does
not seem to have led to a significant penalty. He
died a millionaire in eighteen forty three at the age
of eighty nine, So good life for him. God, Yes, yeah,
that's a long ass way to live, because he drank

(01:12:47):
all that water, stay and hydrated. He was rated, extremely hydrated,
the most hydrated man in this eighteen hundreds. Now. Hanman
went to his grave believing that his decision to dose
himself with china bark was a moment for human science
on par with Newton being hit by an apple, and
in some ways that is true. His violent reaction to
quinine has forever altered the progress of medical science. Over

(01:13:09):
the years, several medical professionals have tried, unsuccessfully to recreate
his findings. One doctor who did so, representing the Board
of Health, wrote, Chinchona, even in the preparation advocated by Hanman,
did not cause fever in either healthy people or animals.
This is a little weird, right. No one has ever
been able to recreate the effects of Hanman's first groundbreaking experiment.
But during my research I did come across one fascinating

(01:13:32):
theory that might just explain this mystery. And Kiason on
how homeopathy was really started. I've found an article by
Dr William me Thomas, a Melbourne based physician and medical historian.
He notes that quinine, the active ingredient in chinchona, is
only toxic and higher doses than Hanman took. However, there
are some people who are allergic to quina and the
symptoms are startlingly similar to what Hanman himself reported. It

(01:13:55):
can be concluded then that Hanman might have suffered from
an allergy to quinine, which means that the fundamental foundation
of homeopathy, like the idea that like cures like, is
based on the fact that Dr Hanman had a rare
allergic reaction to quinine when he took this bark, which
is just the most human yeah element of this whole thing. Yeah,
it's it's it's very understandable. Yeah wow. Now, Billy Wayne

(01:14:21):
side of of of who he's led in the Pandora's box,
that is what part two is going to be excited about.
Who comes in here because Samuel Hanman an imperfect person
you can criticize in some ways, not really a bastard, No,
not really a bastard, just just a dude who made
some logical leaps that were not justified by the actual evidence,
but that are understandable in the context at the time,

(01:14:43):
and then really just kind of took some uh confirmation
bias after that, a lot of confirmation bias, young French wife.
You know that's distracting. Yep, then it would be very distracted.
In part two, we are going to talk about some
of the actual bastards, the horrible harvest in corpses that
is Samuel Henman's modern day legacy, So a lot of

(01:15:05):
dead babies. In part two, of course, there is yeah, yeah, Now,
Billy Wayne, I feel like the right way to break
up this game of tennis we're gonna play. I think
we should go to five total points, and I think
we should do the first two points at the end
of this episode, and we will have the last three,
assuming there's any pieces of this VHS state left. Yes,

(01:15:28):
thank you, Sophie. So if he knows that when you
grab a machette, you do it by the blade, that is,
don't hurt Anderson. Please all right, Sophie, are you ready
to ref Yeah? Okay, I thought it was Oh, I'm
gonna serve first. Okay, Now, I don't know how to
play tennis. I don't think. I don't think this is

(01:15:48):
how to play tennis. Let's see, all right, I do
know one thing, which is that I was supposed to
say zero serving zero, Right, that's how it starts. Right, No,
it's isn't it? Love? Love is no? Love is zero?
Isn't it? It's it's it's I don't find I'm gonna
throw the copy of basic instinct Well, I'm gonna try
to hit it at you, hit it, hit it back,

(01:16:12):
all right, all right, all right, just get out of
the way. I think what does that count as? I
think that was a point? Hit the back, all right,
Oh all right, it's it's one one. Your's this guy?
I'm not good? Alright, alright, yeah, oh yeah, that was

(01:16:40):
a good one. That was. It's holding up pretty well.
You gotta give a credit. Alright, mm hmm, all right,
it's it's too too. We're tied. We're tied, and the
deep the v of basic instincts holding up surprising pretty well.
Let's take it out of its case. See how we're
Oh no, it's been cut so much is it in there?

(01:17:01):
It's now in there. Yeah. I think we actually wedged
it into the paper. That's awesome. Nice job guys, Nice
job Paul Barrovan, great director. Billy you want to plug
your plug doubles? Yes, b w D tour dot com
slash tours all my live dates. Um, I'm coming to Atlanta, Seattle,
Portland's Eugene, Cincinnati, Huntington, West Virginia, uh Birmingham, Alabama. See

(01:17:29):
Billy Wayne live. Come see us a variety of bladed instruments,
I'm sure, um, and continue listening to this podcast and
also find it on the internet behind the Bastards dot
com or at Bastards pod on Twitter and Instagram. There's
also another podcast that exists by t shirts on public.
What's that podcast called? Oh, it's called the Worst Year

(01:17:49):
Ever and it's about politics. Wow, that sounds so dumb
dumb dum dum dum dum dum dum. Anyway, tune in
on Thursday to see who wins the game of what
is definitely not tennis, not tennis, not at all. No, No,
Anderson's were harmed in the making of this podcast. I'd

(01:18:11):
just say I can't guarantee I can How do we
like this thing? No? Robert, we're not likeing on first

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: The Bastard Who Invented Homeopathy