In this week's Classic episode: It's no secret that hospitals can be intimidating, scary places -- but the medical operations of the modern day can't hold a candle to the grisly procedures of the 1800s. Back then, even some of the best surgeons still had about a one in ten chance of their patients dying during or shortly after a procedure. And Robert Liston was no exception. Listen in to learn how this otherwise top-notch surgeon managed to kill not only his patient, but also his assistant and some guy just standing nearby all in the course of one procedure gone horribly wrong.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians. First off, our hearts go out to
anybody who has to endure a surgical procedure. Even in
the modern day, it can be dicey. This one takes
us back to the eighteen hundreds with a guy named
Robert Liston who was known as the This is a
(00:21):
quote fastest knife in the West End.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Right back then, even some of the best surgeons around
had pretty slim chances of their patients surviving these procedures.
Around one in ten of these patients dying during or
shortly after a surgery. And while Listen was no exception,
he was real zippy with his blade. Yeah, this is
(00:45):
the true story of a surgery with a three hundred
percent mortality rate. The surgeon the fastest knife in the
West End turns out to be not the best knife
in the area because he kills his patient, then he
kills his assistant, and he also kills some guy who
was just standing around.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yikes, let's throw the tape.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous History
is a production of iHeart Radio. Hello, thank you for
(01:43):
tuning in. Today's question, did you ever want to be
a doctor when you grew up. Are you Are you
a doctor listening now? If so, what kind I'd especially
love to hear from some surgeons.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hi, I'm pad Hi, I'm Noel.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And when I get blood drawn, I have to look
away and close my eyes and breathe slowly or else
I'll pass out because blood and the whole idea of
the human body weirds me out.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's the human body overall.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, no, just the stuff inside should stay inside, remaining inside.
I would prefer that to be the case. I don't
like cutting in movies, never liked it when people get cut.
So this story today was a bit of a stretch
for me in terms of my own personal constitution.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I see, that's what you're talking about this.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, we've also got our super producer, Casey Pegrim in
the house. Like, Casey, did you ever think of being
a doctor when you were a we tyke?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
No, that was never one of my kind of growing
up want to be things.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
How do you feel about the side of blood.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I'm okay with the side of blood in general. I
don't like the side of my own blood. So I
don't like getting blood taken, you know, all that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I'm not a fan of Oh you didn't ask me, Neil,
I think I have a feeling seem like a bit
of a fearless, iron gutted figure to me.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You always have, but no, do tell.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's very kind of you. I have a life fraught
with strange phobias that terrify me, like touching metal or
having to touch cardboard.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Oh blood is kind of metallic? Does that fall into
that category for you?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Only if I drink it? So usually.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Having to do survival training kind of stuff, it gets
you over that initial squig or squig pretty quickly. But
I don't go out of my way to get in
situations where I'm looking inside people or something, because if
I were to do that, then I would probably be
(03:47):
better suited to be a surgeon rather than a podcaster.
And today's episode is about surgery. There is some graphic stuff, Noel,
I'm gonna check in with you to make sure that
we don't go too far out of a comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I will be the bell Weather of woosery in this one.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
No, you're the canary in the cave bite of carnage.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yes, the coal mine cave. But yeah no, slight trigger warning.
If he didn't already catch the drift.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
This story's kind of gross. There's some gore, and we're.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Not going to be super descriptive about it because god knows,
I'll pass out on the floor right here in the
shipping container. But just a heads up. If this isn't
the kind of thing that you want to listen to,
then don't. It's fairly blunt. Yes, this is also darkly comic.
And to begin the story, we're going to need to
(04:37):
introduce you to a fellow named Robert Liston born on
the twenty eighth of October seventeen ninety four. He is
a Scottish surgeon and he was known for being a
bit of a showman. He's a bit cocky, kind of
a showboat, kind of a David Blaine stage magician vibe.
I don't know if that's something you want in a surgeon.
(05:00):
If a surgeon was a peacock, it would be this guy, yes,
who's bantam. Indeed, and as you know, I'm scared of
birds too. Yes, so this is a bird surgeon.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
A peacock surgeon is like my worst nightmare.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You're welcome for the nightmare that you're going to have
this weekend.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Oh so, Robert Liston, though, was one of the best,
most widely known surgeons of his time. He got his
education at the University of Edinburgh and became the first
Great Northern anatomist of Blackwell's magazine, and by eighteen eighteen
he was a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
(05:41):
And his legacy contains stuff that is primarily found in
the medical community, you know, like inside trade info, and
then stuff that made it into popular culture. Liston was
very very well known for the speed at which he
(06:01):
conducted surgery.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
He earned a fantastic nickname which was the fastest knife
in the West End, which is clever on a couple
of levels. It is. In fact, there's a little story
that's in a Mental Floss article called on the Table
with one of History's most infamous surgeons by a guy
named Matt Soniac that describes a particular surgery where Listen
(06:25):
actually asked one of his assistants to set a timer
so that he could show off how quickly he could
amputate a gentleman's leg. And I'm just gonna read your
quote because it's very visual and I love it. He goes,
the man grabs your leg and begins to cut just
below the knee. He continues to hold onto your leg
as one of his lackeys gets a tourniquet around it
to freeze cutting hand. He clasps the knife covered in
(06:46):
your blood in his teeth and picks up a saw.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
He cuts back and forth through the bone, drops the
severed part of the leg into a bucket filled with sawdust,
and shows you up to the applause of the men
sitting in the wings.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
They've time.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Did the whole bloody procedure, get it from first incision
to clipping the loose threads on the sutures at just
two and a half minutes. And that quote comes from
the journalist Matt Soniac who has this fantastic article about listen.
So in two and a half minutes he has performed
(07:20):
an amputation. His style may have seemed really cavalier, but
we have to remember this is before so many of
the medical discoveries and technical improvements that we have today.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, I'm guessing they may have given they have ether
back then. That would have been something they at least
had at their disposal.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right ry imagine, But this is the age before widespread anesthesias.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
That's true. So maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I don't want to sound like an ignorant person here
when it come to sergiy, Like I said, it kind
of freaks me out.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
It's me look into it too heavily.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But one thing I know from this research is quite
often no one was given anything, and there was a
whole lot of just absolute screaming and horror and terror
fight down on this on this while assistants literally had
to hold the person down while the surgeon.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So speed was kind of the name of the game. Yes,
and no one was faster than Listen.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
There is even a story I read in the Gizmoto
article or on an Ion nine article that talked about
how sometimes people would flee the operating table like just
like lunging away with a snail trail of blood left
behind them. Yeah, because the other people lost their grip
the assistance. So yes, speed is key here.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
It not only minimizes the patient's pain, but it also
improves their odds of surviving the surgery. Liston is not
only very very fast, he's also very very good for
the time. If you went into Liston's operating theater, you
(08:54):
only had a one to ten chance of dying which
right down sounds terrible.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
It does sound pretty terrible, but let's compare the competition.
That rate of death was hovering around one and four.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, so you can see why you would want to
go to listen, right, Sometimes patients would camp out, would
literally sleep inside his waiting room for days waiting to
see him. Hey, can you imagine the scene be can
you imagine this smell?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
He tried to see every single one of his patients.
Although he was a little bit cocky, you know, he
had a good heart when it came to helping people.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Which is another reason that speed factored into it so importantly,
because you can't see people if you're you know, taking
your time with that old saw.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
We have to remember in this era, hospitals were very scary,
intimidating places. People walked in having made peace with their
creator thinking well, this might be this might be it
for me. I think it's just a cough, but we'll
see and listen understood that he thought he had a
responsibility for his patient feelings, so he wanted to have
(10:02):
a thorough knowledge of anatomy, pathology, all that slow jazz,
all the good stuff, and also be a good diagnoser
of symptoms, but he also wanted to be compassionate. So
it's very easy for us looking back to forget that
softer aspect of his persona. He did care about people.
(10:26):
He was crazy good, but he did care about people.
And it's kind of like Tony Stark in the Marvel
comics or the MCU, because you know, he's kind of arrogant,
he's a bit of a show off, but he's got
a heart of gold underneath that. Here's one example that's
very Tony Stark of him. Liston loved treating cases that
(10:48):
his fellow surgeons had dismissed. The surgeons say, well, there's
no way I'm going to do that because you'll die.
It's an incurable condition. Good day, sir, I said to you.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Good day. They would go to listen and you would say, oh,
they say they can't, it can't be done. They say
it can't be done. I will prove them wrong. Start
the tiebook exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So, I mean, it's it's interesting combination of compassion and
cocksure bravado for sure, and what ends up happening that
enters into the big part, the quite disturbing part of
our story is that very thing it's a combination of
all those factors kind of playing into a perfect storm.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Of horrible outcome. That's right.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Though he was good, he was not perfect, and sometimes,
like Icarus, his hubris was his downfall. Once, for example,
Liston was in such a hurry to amputate a leg
that he accidentally cut a patient's testicles off along with
the leg.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, like Icharis, he saw too close to the taint.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yes, his most famous story along these lines happens this way.
There's an operation, it's a Mills's operation, right, and he's
moving so so very fast that he takes off the
fingers of his surgical assistant. He's cutting through a leg,
(12:13):
and he cuts through his assistant's hands while they're holding
the patient down.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And again we have to remember this patient would have
been struggling. It was no small feet to you know,
restrain these folks. And I'm sure there were some restraints
involved too, like having them strapped down, But you can't
have somebody flopping around like a fish when you're trying
to saw through their leg. So not only did he
missque and slice the fingers, I think part of this
had to do with he would it aimed too high,
and he saw it through up the upper hip or
(12:39):
near the hip area, which is probably where the assistant
was gripping him to get you know, purchased to keep
him held down exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And the he already knows this stuff is happening quickly.
This is not ideal, so he's not going to stop
the surgery though. The show must go on. So he
switches instruments, you know, one thing into that to the
floor to a bucket, US on us or what have you.
And then while he's switching instruments. You can't see it here, folks,
(13:08):
but I am doing a pretty fantastic arms flailing impression here.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
He's switching instruments.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I'm still trying to figure out how this happens Stol,
because he must have been just throwing his arms wide.
There's a spectator standing nearby, just watching the surgery because
that's what people used to do, and he slashes the
spectator's coat with this bloody instrument, and this guy, the
guy's just the onlooker, freaks out.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
First of all, I'm not trying to, you know, throw
him under the bus here, but that spectator was probably
a little too much of a hovery look he lit,
he probably should have been keeping his distance a little
bit in the situation, so I'm gonna argue that he
sort of had that coming a little bit. But yeah,
he also like clearly was squeamish about the blood because
by this point, fingers are off on assistant squirting blood
(13:55):
out of like bloody nub stumps. Then the leg is off,
blood squirting out of there. Absolute pandemonium in the operating theater,
and the spectator, uh, you know, almost gets you know,
when I first read this, I saw sliced and coat
and I misread a sliced throat. Yeah, but no, he again,
this is like the stuff of legend. Almost hard to
(14:16):
confirm what exactly happened to this guy, but we've seen
it written in several places that he had an immediate
massive heart attack and died.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Right, Yeah, he died later that night of fright.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And the patient died because they got gangreen in the hospital.
The assistant died because they ate gang green in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I think that it all kind of spread from that
original saw too, that may have been tainted and it
wasn't properly sterilized, which cats like you said, you're they're
throwing stuff into buckets.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
They're covered in blood.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It seems more like a butcher shop than a proper
you know, operating room. And yeah, that infection got into
the assistant's blood as well, and he also died from
the effects.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And this is what led the distinguished surgeon and anesthesiologist
Richard Gordon to call this the only operation in history
with a three hundred percent mortality rate.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
He is also the guy who coined the nickname the
fastest knife in the West End for Liston, So let's
not forget legacy wise, Liston was remembered you know, in
his community, in the medical community, which is a very
niche kind of close knit community with a lot of
esoteric knowledge that wouldn't mean much to anybody else. They
(15:35):
remembered him for a lot of important, you know deeds
and works to further.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
The medical profession.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
But of course, you know, most regular old folks are
going to remember much more the story where he accidentally
killed three people, yeah, by slicing through them with a
you know, infected blade.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well, he created the listed splint bulldog locking forceps. Those
are around today, and he also did play a role
in the administration of ether, so he made proper contributions.
But you know, if it bleeds, it leads, and so
now Liston is known outside of the medical community as
(16:16):
the surgeon with a three hundred percent mortality rate. Again,
that story is somewhat anecdotal, but it is illustrative, I
would argue of the problems with medical care and surgery
at the time. I mean, this is still before people
(16:36):
washed their hands when conducting surgery.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
He also published a couple of important medical texts, The
Elements of Surgery and Practical Surgery, and this is pretty interesting.
Near the end of his career, he made history when
he performed a surgery in Britain on a man named
Frederick Churchill in eighteen forty six who had a right
knee that had been giving him a lot of pain.
(17:00):
So nothing had worked for him, and the only option
was going to be amputation. But instead Listen didn't use
a knife. He actually pulled out a jar of ether,
as you said, and then that became something that dentists
and surgeons used as a surgical anesthetic from that point.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
On, right, And these are the days when people were
still saying maybe we should hypnotize patients. But he found
that ether worked as well, I don't want to let
this go. The importance of people washing their hands just
in general. There was a guy, a Hungarian doctor named
(17:42):
Ignaz Semmelweis, and he was the person who could have
saved so many lives, especially during childbirth and so on,
by the simple technique of washing one's hands.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, I believe he introduced that in eighteen forty seven
at the Algemin's crunken house.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
In far Deutsche Line.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
But doctors were upset and they didn't listen to him.
They said, this simulvis guy is making us look bad
because he's implying that we're giving these women and children fevers.
He also wasn't very tactful. He was kind of a
Larry David or Bernie Sanders figure, you know what I mean,
a bit of a curmudgeon. Anyway, Samuelweis eventually ends up
(18:27):
in a mental health facility, in an asylum. So wash
your hands is the conclusion of this. And hey, sometimes
speed isn't everything.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, come on, guys, slow down, smell the roses.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Speaking of the most vague summations I could make, I'm
going real fortune cookie caption here. Something interesting will happen
this week? Oh oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Okay, that one was making great.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Die gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Jonathan Strickland's aka quister is this may this may come
as a surprise this some people. But you're you're back again.
You're back at your old uh, your old shenanigans and tricks.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Huh.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
You just can't keep me out. You keep changing the locks.
I keep breaking in.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, as we know, I missed you guys. Oh hey,
that was vacation. It was really good.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Thank you for asking my ug misses. No, it was fantastic.
I highly recommend London in Paris. It was wonderful that.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
You went to the UK.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
I was there, Yes, yes, I was there doing some
interesting protests.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
We'll just leave it there.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, now I want to know is it like about Brexit?
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Okay, okay, let me tell you something. If you want
to take the chunnel from London to Paris, don't do
it when a dude has climbed up on top of
the train station because you ain't going nowhere.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Oh wow, were you the dude? No?
Speaker 5 (20:00):
No, I was in line, a very long line to
get on a train that was almost certainly not going
to leave.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Well, thank you for narrowly escaping disasterboard the channel to
come with us and play one of our most divisive games.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
Yes, the most cringe worthy segment in all the podcasting.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Is which was again, I feel like we have to
straighten out the historical record here.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Which was your idea?
Speaker 5 (20:26):
Yes it was I one day on a whim, suggested
that I present you with different scenarios and you have
to determine whether or not the scenario I'm presenting to
you is in fact a real one or if I
made it up seas. And so the way this works
is I will present the scenario and then the two
(20:49):
gentlemen will have three minutes to deliberate on whether or
not I'm telling the truth or I'm lying, and they
may ask questions of me if they follow an arbitrary
rule of my choosing, which I realized I did not
think of before I came in here. So in honor
of the topic, for you to be able to ask
a question, you must preface it with the phrase, doctor, doctor,
(21:11):
give me the news.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I got a bad case of cutting you.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Just the first part, just to give me the followed
by your question. And now I will read out the scenario.
When I am done, we will start the timer. So
get the Big Grandfather.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Clock ready, hmmm, I'm limbering up.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Doctor Hasty Lanyon was a bit of an eccentric surgeon.
He was nearly equal parts performer and doctor, and had
a flare for the macabre. He had studied, though probably
never directly, the work of Luigi Galvani, for whom the
Galvanic Response is named. Lanyon took to extremes, and in
northern England in the early eighteen hundreds demonstrated some rather
(21:51):
ghoulish applications of the technology upon cadavers that I am
assured were totally acquired legally. While there were no truly
reliable reports from those demonstrations, some reporters of questionable honesty
wrote of corpses pointing grimacing, twitching, and in one case
(22:11):
even sitting up and gasping in response to the electrical
impulses doctor Lanyon applied. Modern historians and doctors doubt the
veracity of those claims, but it seems that Hasty Lanyon
was at least well known for some pretty primitive corpse puppetry.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Start the timer, doctor, doctor, give me the news, yes,
mister Bilin. So this guy Hasty, m hmm. This guy
Hasty was primarily known for this, or it.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
Was how he became famous. Otherwise, he was a doctor
studied at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Medicine.
But apart from these are really the only records of
he doesn't have like a long storied career that exists
in any record, but there are records of these supposed demonstrations.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Hasty huh sounds made up to me. Sounds like hasty,
like he was a little too hasty.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Perhaps, Yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't
know why I feel optimistic about this, but I'm going
with true.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Wait what yeah, Oh, that's not.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
What I was getting at at all then, But you
know what, let's beate, let's debate that was that was
really only going on because the name is super sketchy, right,
sketchy sounding, I feel like that it's true.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Maybe you could ask maybe doctor doctor, give me the news.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yes, what did he do again? So he stuck electrodes
onto cadavers and zapped them and made them twitch around
a lot. He to give you a little more detail,
just because I said early eighteen hundreds. The time period
we're looking at is eighteen o eight, so that's about
three decades after Galvani, and also supposedly was one of
(23:54):
the inspirations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Oh that that, Yes,
surely that, which is probably in eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I feel like there's too much detail here. Now I'm
starting to doubt it. I'm gonna stick I'm gonna stick
with true.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
You're gonna stick with true. I'm gonna stick with true.
You're starting to doubt it. You're going to stick with true?
Yat of contradictions? Well you you were a man of
mind games.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You file quister, this creature. I'm out of practice with
the quister.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
That's true. He's been relaxing in the on the sam
It's true.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I did. I took a cruise.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
It was nice?
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Was it nice?
Speaker 5 (24:26):
It was not a nice It was in Paris, thank you.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
I did.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
In fact, there was a petisserie right across the street
from the apartment.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Guy, guy, guys, we have forty seconds. All right, what
did you say? You're gonna stick with true? I'm gonna
lock I'm gonna you want to lock it in?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
It's locking true three to one true.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
You guys gotta read more. Doctor Hasty Lanyon is a
character and doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde. I made it
up seas interestingly though interestingly though, I should say, first
of all, the inspiration suppose or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was
doctor Joseph Conrad Dipple, who was active in the seventeenth
(25:05):
century and was born in Bubba Bam Castle Frankenstein, and
then Giovanni Giovanni al Dippy, who was the nephew to
Luigi Galvani, actually did do demonstrations similar to what I described,
where supposedly corpses had opened up their eyes, pointed, punched
the air, kicked the air. But again, these were just
(25:28):
supposedly people would pass out looking at these demonstrations. I
don't know exactly how reliable those are either, But what
I gave you was total fiction.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, that's what I began to suspect when you had
too many already made details. Yep, that you were dare
I say hasty to provide?
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Well, I wanted to give you a chance. You've lost
the last few, and I thought, well, if I just
keep feeding them, they're surely they're going in. But nope, Nope,
you just had to go down.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
That road with me. No, it turns out we're hungry boys.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Well, and to be fair, it is similar to things
that have been reported. I was mostly I was mostly
hoping that you had read Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.
I was really I was like, this is a coin flip.
It may be that that had been turned to me.
And so you mean like the character and Doctor Jekyll
and Mister.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Hide, and I would say, whoopsies, it's been a long time.
But you know what, that gives us a new goal.
Maybe one day we can ask a question that just
completely blows up the scenario you've presented. If we did that,
would you ever be a situation you say?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Whoops?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
No, No, I know you too well, my old friend,
you would you would continue with with the charag Here's.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
Here's the problem is that if you ask me a
legitimate question about a legitimate historical fact and I don't
know the answer, I would be honored bound to say
I don't know the answer to that question. And that
means that I should probably do the same thing for
the fake ones, because otherwise, if you ask me a
question and I don't know the answer to that question,
(27:01):
and I tell you that, you're going to say, well,
this is obviously one of the true ones we win.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I was so close when you started giving out the details.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, that one's on me. Can't win them all, no,
but we can't win. Nice to win one. Actually, you
know you were.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
You were almost even with me.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
For a while. Part of the fun of this, though,
is eating crow from time to time. You know, very
Tom and Jerry to me. You know I like it.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So despite winning today's round, Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister,
thank you so much for dropping by. We're glad that
you made it out of the chunnel. Sure did you say, Durian,
what's that mean?
Speaker 5 (27:39):
It's nothing. Usually what you say if someone says thank you,
the common response is it's nothing, no big deal.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, like not a problem, no problem, no sweat, zero perspiration.
Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks as always
to our super producer Casey.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Pegram, Thanks to Gabe Lucier are fantabulous research, and thanks
to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
So what are some of the strange saw bone esque
stories of medical quackery or medical mishaps that you have heard?
What are your favorite ones? Share them with us and
your fellow listeners. Also shout out to the podcast saw Bones.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
That's a great show, yeah, on the Maximum Fun Network,
which we're huge fans of.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Justin McElroy as. That recalls one of the hosts of
that show.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I do believe you recall correctly.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
You can write us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot Com.
We're gonna stick with that one for the meantime. We
may have another one inching in pretty soon, but for
the time being, he's that one. You can also hit
us up on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, where
you know folks are posting memes, the Jonathan Strickland liquist
or even creeps his way in there from time to time.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
That is true. Don't think we don't see you getting tagged.
Don't think we don't see you.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
You can also you can also find us on Instagram
and Twitter. We each have our own personal instagrams if
you want to see our various shenanigans.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
I'm Ben Bullen Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
I'm at John Strickland No, no, h We'll.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
See you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians. First off, our hearts go out to
anybody who has to endure a surgical procedure. Even in
the modern day, it can be dicey. This one takes
us back to the eighteen hundreds with a guy named
Robert Liston who was known as the This is a
(00:21):
quote fastest knife in the West End.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Right back then, even some of the best surgeons around
had pretty slim chances of their patients surviving these procedures.
Around one in ten of these patients dying during or
shortly after a surgery. And while Listen was no exception,
he was real zippy with his blade. Yeah, this is
(00:45):
the true story of a surgery with a three hundred
percent mortality rate. The surgeon the fastest knife in the
West End turns out to be not the best knife
in the area because he kills his patient, then he
kills his assistant, and he also kills some guy who
was just standing around.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yikes, let's throw the tape.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous History
is a production of iHeart Radio. Hello, thank you for
(01:43):
tuning in. Today's question, did you ever want to be
a doctor when you grew up. Are you Are you
a doctor listening now? If so, what kind I'd especially
love to hear from some surgeons.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hi, I'm pad Hi, I'm Noel.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And when I get blood drawn, I have to look
away and close my eyes and breathe slowly or else
I'll pass out because blood and the whole idea of
the human body weirds me out.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's the human body overall.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, no, just the stuff inside should stay inside, remaining inside.
I would prefer that to be the case. I don't
like cutting in movies, never liked it when people get cut.
So this story today was a bit of a stretch
for me in terms of my own personal constitution.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I see, that's what you're talking about this.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, we've also got our super producer, Casey Pegrim in
the house. Like, Casey, did you ever think of being
a doctor when you were a we tyke?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
No, that was never one of my kind of growing
up want to be things.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
How do you feel about the side of blood.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I'm okay with the side of blood in general. I
don't like the side of my own blood. So I
don't like getting blood taken, you know, all that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I'm not a fan of Oh you didn't ask me, Neil,
I think I have a feeling seem like a bit
of a fearless, iron gutted figure to me.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You always have, but no, do tell.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's very kind of you. I have a life fraught
with strange phobias that terrify me, like touching metal or
having to touch cardboard.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Oh blood is kind of metallic? Does that fall into
that category for you?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Only if I drink it? So usually.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Having to do survival training kind of stuff, it gets
you over that initial squig or squig pretty quickly. But
I don't go out of my way to get in
situations where I'm looking inside people or something, because if
I were to do that, then I would probably be
(03:47):
better suited to be a surgeon rather than a podcaster.
And today's episode is about surgery. There is some graphic stuff, Noel,
I'm gonna check in with you to make sure that
we don't go too far out of a comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I will be the bell Weather of woosery in this one.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
No, you're the canary in the cave bite of carnage.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yes, the coal mine cave. But yeah no, slight trigger warning.
If he didn't already catch the drift.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
This story's kind of gross. There's some gore, and we're.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Not going to be super descriptive about it because god knows,
I'll pass out on the floor right here in the
shipping container. But just a heads up. If this isn't
the kind of thing that you want to listen to,
then don't. It's fairly blunt. Yes, this is also darkly comic.
And to begin the story, we're going to need to
(04:37):
introduce you to a fellow named Robert Liston born on
the twenty eighth of October seventeen ninety four. He is
a Scottish surgeon and he was known for being a
bit of a showman. He's a bit cocky, kind of
a showboat, kind of a David Blaine stage magician vibe.
I don't know if that's something you want in a surgeon.
(05:00):
If a surgeon was a peacock, it would be this guy, yes,
who's bantam. Indeed, and as you know, I'm scared of
birds too. Yes, so this is a bird surgeon.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
A peacock surgeon is like my worst nightmare.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You're welcome for the nightmare that you're going to have
this weekend.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Oh so, Robert Liston, though, was one of the best,
most widely known surgeons of his time. He got his
education at the University of Edinburgh and became the first
Great Northern anatomist of Blackwell's magazine, and by eighteen eighteen
he was a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
(05:41):
And his legacy contains stuff that is primarily found in
the medical community, you know, like inside trade info, and
then stuff that made it into popular culture. Liston was
very very well known for the speed at which he
(06:01):
conducted surgery.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
He earned a fantastic nickname which was the fastest knife
in the West End, which is clever on a couple
of levels. It is. In fact, there's a little story
that's in a Mental Floss article called on the Table
with one of History's most infamous surgeons by a guy
named Matt Soniac that describes a particular surgery where Listen
(06:25):
actually asked one of his assistants to set a timer
so that he could show off how quickly he could
amputate a gentleman's leg. And I'm just gonna read your
quote because it's very visual and I love it. He goes,
the man grabs your leg and begins to cut just
below the knee. He continues to hold onto your leg
as one of his lackeys gets a tourniquet around it
to freeze cutting hand. He clasps the knife covered in
(06:46):
your blood in his teeth and picks up a saw.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
He cuts back and forth through the bone, drops the
severed part of the leg into a bucket filled with sawdust,
and shows you up to the applause of the men
sitting in the wings.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
They've time.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Did the whole bloody procedure, get it from first incision
to clipping the loose threads on the sutures at just
two and a half minutes. And that quote comes from
the journalist Matt Soniac who has this fantastic article about listen.
So in two and a half minutes he has performed
(07:20):
an amputation. His style may have seemed really cavalier, but
we have to remember this is before so many of
the medical discoveries and technical improvements that we have today.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, I'm guessing they may have given they have ether
back then. That would have been something they at least
had at their disposal.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right ry imagine, But this is the age before widespread anesthesias.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
That's true. So maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I don't want to sound like an ignorant person here
when it come to sergiy, Like I said, it kind
of freaks me out.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
It's me look into it too heavily.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But one thing I know from this research is quite
often no one was given anything, and there was a
whole lot of just absolute screaming and horror and terror
fight down on this on this while assistants literally had
to hold the person down while the surgeon.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So speed was kind of the name of the game. Yes,
and no one was faster than Listen.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
There is even a story I read in the Gizmoto
article or on an Ion nine article that talked about
how sometimes people would flee the operating table like just
like lunging away with a snail trail of blood left
behind them. Yeah, because the other people lost their grip
the assistance. So yes, speed is key here.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
It not only minimizes the patient's pain, but it also
improves their odds of surviving the surgery. Liston is not
only very very fast, he's also very very good for
the time. If you went into Liston's operating theater, you
(08:54):
only had a one to ten chance of dying which
right down sounds terrible.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
It does sound pretty terrible, but let's compare the competition.
That rate of death was hovering around one and four.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, so you can see why you would want to
go to listen, right, Sometimes patients would camp out, would
literally sleep inside his waiting room for days waiting to
see him. Hey, can you imagine the scene be can
you imagine this smell?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
He tried to see every single one of his patients.
Although he was a little bit cocky, you know, he
had a good heart when it came to helping people.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Which is another reason that speed factored into it so importantly,
because you can't see people if you're you know, taking
your time with that old saw.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
We have to remember in this era, hospitals were very scary,
intimidating places. People walked in having made peace with their
creator thinking well, this might be this might be it
for me. I think it's just a cough, but we'll
see and listen understood that he thought he had a
responsibility for his patient feelings, so he wanted to have
(10:02):
a thorough knowledge of anatomy, pathology, all that slow jazz,
all the good stuff, and also be a good diagnoser
of symptoms, but he also wanted to be compassionate. So
it's very easy for us looking back to forget that
softer aspect of his persona. He did care about people.
(10:26):
He was crazy good, but he did care about people.
And it's kind of like Tony Stark in the Marvel
comics or the MCU, because you know, he's kind of arrogant,
he's a bit of a show off, but he's got
a heart of gold underneath that. Here's one example that's
very Tony Stark of him. Liston loved treating cases that
(10:48):
his fellow surgeons had dismissed. The surgeons say, well, there's
no way I'm going to do that because you'll die.
It's an incurable condition. Good day, sir, I said to you.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Good day. They would go to listen and you would say, oh,
they say they can't, it can't be done. They say
it can't be done. I will prove them wrong. Start
the tiebook exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So, I mean, it's it's interesting combination of compassion and
cocksure bravado for sure, and what ends up happening that
enters into the big part, the quite disturbing part of
our story is that very thing it's a combination of
all those factors kind of playing into a perfect storm.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Of horrible outcome. That's right.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Though he was good, he was not perfect, and sometimes,
like Icarus, his hubris was his downfall. Once, for example,
Liston was in such a hurry to amputate a leg
that he accidentally cut a patient's testicles off along with
the leg.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, like Icharis, he saw too close to the taint.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yes, his most famous story along these lines happens this way.
There's an operation, it's a Mills's operation, right, and he's
moving so so very fast that he takes off the
fingers of his surgical assistant. He's cutting through a leg,
(12:13):
and he cuts through his assistant's hands while they're holding
the patient down.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And again we have to remember this patient would have
been struggling. It was no small feet to you know,
restrain these folks. And I'm sure there were some restraints
involved too, like having them strapped down, But you can't
have somebody flopping around like a fish when you're trying
to saw through their leg. So not only did he
missque and slice the fingers, I think part of this
had to do with he would it aimed too high,
and he saw it through up the upper hip or
(12:39):
near the hip area, which is probably where the assistant
was gripping him to get you know, purchased to keep
him held down exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And the he already knows this stuff is happening quickly.
This is not ideal, so he's not going to stop
the surgery though. The show must go on. So he
switches instruments, you know, one thing into that to the
floor to a bucket, US on us or what have you.
And then while he's switching instruments. You can't see it here, folks,
(13:08):
but I am doing a pretty fantastic arms flailing impression here.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
He's switching instruments.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I'm still trying to figure out how this happens Stol,
because he must have been just throwing his arms wide.
There's a spectator standing nearby, just watching the surgery because
that's what people used to do, and he slashes the
spectator's coat with this bloody instrument, and this guy, the
guy's just the onlooker, freaks out.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
First of all, I'm not trying to, you know, throw
him under the bus here, but that spectator was probably
a little too much of a hovery look he lit,
he probably should have been keeping his distance a little
bit in the situation, so I'm gonna argue that he
sort of had that coming a little bit. But yeah,
he also like clearly was squeamish about the blood because
by this point, fingers are off on assistant squirting blood
(13:55):
out of like bloody nub stumps. Then the leg is off,
blood squirting out of there. Absolute pandemonium in the operating theater,
and the spectator, uh, you know, almost gets you know,
when I first read this, I saw sliced and coat
and I misread a sliced throat. Yeah, but no, he again,
this is like the stuff of legend. Almost hard to
(14:16):
confirm what exactly happened to this guy, but we've seen
it written in several places that he had an immediate
massive heart attack and died.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Right, Yeah, he died later that night of fright.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And the patient died because they got gangreen in the hospital.
The assistant died because they ate gang green in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I think that it all kind of spread from that
original saw too, that may have been tainted and it
wasn't properly sterilized, which cats like you said, you're they're
throwing stuff into buckets.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
They're covered in blood.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It seems more like a butcher shop than a proper
you know, operating room. And yeah, that infection got into
the assistant's blood as well, and he also died from
the effects.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And this is what led the distinguished surgeon and anesthesiologist
Richard Gordon to call this the only operation in history
with a three hundred percent mortality rate.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
He is also the guy who coined the nickname the
fastest knife in the West End for Liston, So let's
not forget legacy wise, Liston was remembered you know, in
his community, in the medical community, which is a very
niche kind of close knit community with a lot of
esoteric knowledge that wouldn't mean much to anybody else. They
(15:35):
remembered him for a lot of important, you know deeds
and works to further.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
The medical profession.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
But of course, you know, most regular old folks are
going to remember much more the story where he accidentally
killed three people, yeah, by slicing through them with a
you know, infected blade.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well, he created the listed splint bulldog locking forceps. Those
are around today, and he also did play a role
in the administration of ether, so he made proper contributions.
But you know, if it bleeds, it leads, and so
now Liston is known outside of the medical community as
(16:16):
the surgeon with a three hundred percent mortality rate. Again,
that story is somewhat anecdotal, but it is illustrative, I
would argue of the problems with medical care and surgery
at the time. I mean, this is still before people
(16:36):
washed their hands when conducting surgery.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
He also published a couple of important medical texts, The
Elements of Surgery and Practical Surgery, and this is pretty interesting.
Near the end of his career, he made history when
he performed a surgery in Britain on a man named
Frederick Churchill in eighteen forty six who had a right
knee that had been giving him a lot of pain.
(17:00):
So nothing had worked for him, and the only option
was going to be amputation. But instead Listen didn't use
a knife. He actually pulled out a jar of ether,
as you said, and then that became something that dentists
and surgeons used as a surgical anesthetic from that point.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
On, right, And these are the days when people were
still saying maybe we should hypnotize patients. But he found
that ether worked as well, I don't want to let
this go. The importance of people washing their hands just
in general. There was a guy, a Hungarian doctor named
(17:42):
Ignaz Semmelweis, and he was the person who could have
saved so many lives, especially during childbirth and so on,
by the simple technique of washing one's hands.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, I believe he introduced that in eighteen forty seven
at the Algemin's crunken house.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
In far Deutsche Line.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
But doctors were upset and they didn't listen to him.
They said, this simulvis guy is making us look bad
because he's implying that we're giving these women and children fevers.
He also wasn't very tactful. He was kind of a
Larry David or Bernie Sanders figure, you know what I mean,
a bit of a curmudgeon. Anyway, Samuelweis eventually ends up
(18:27):
in a mental health facility, in an asylum. So wash
your hands is the conclusion of this. And hey, sometimes
speed isn't everything.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, come on, guys, slow down, smell the roses.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Speaking of the most vague summations I could make, I'm
going real fortune cookie caption here. Something interesting will happen
this week? Oh oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Okay, that one was making great.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Die gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Jonathan Strickland's aka quister is this may this may come
as a surprise this some people. But you're you're back again.
You're back at your old uh, your old shenanigans and tricks.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Huh.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
You just can't keep me out. You keep changing the locks.
I keep breaking in.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, as we know, I missed you guys. Oh hey,
that was vacation. It was really good.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Thank you for asking my ug misses. No, it was fantastic.
I highly recommend London in Paris. It was wonderful that.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
You went to the UK.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
I was there, Yes, yes, I was there doing some
interesting protests.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
We'll just leave it there.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, now I want to know is it like about Brexit?
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Okay, okay, let me tell you something. If you want
to take the chunnel from London to Paris, don't do
it when a dude has climbed up on top of
the train station because you ain't going nowhere.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Oh wow, were you the dude? No?
Speaker 5 (20:00):
No, I was in line, a very long line to
get on a train that was almost certainly not going
to leave.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Well, thank you for narrowly escaping disasterboard the channel to
come with us and play one of our most divisive games.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
Yes, the most cringe worthy segment in all the podcasting.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Is which was again, I feel like we have to
straighten out the historical record here.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Which was your idea?
Speaker 5 (20:26):
Yes it was I one day on a whim, suggested
that I present you with different scenarios and you have
to determine whether or not the scenario I'm presenting to
you is in fact a real one or if I
made it up seas. And so the way this works
is I will present the scenario and then the two
(20:49):
gentlemen will have three minutes to deliberate on whether or
not I'm telling the truth or I'm lying, and they
may ask questions of me if they follow an arbitrary
rule of my choosing, which I realized I did not
think of before I came in here. So in honor
of the topic, for you to be able to ask
a question, you must preface it with the phrase, doctor, doctor,
(21:11):
give me the news.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I got a bad case of cutting you.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Just the first part, just to give me the followed
by your question. And now I will read out the scenario.
When I am done, we will start the timer. So
get the Big Grandfather.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Clock ready, hmmm, I'm limbering up.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Doctor Hasty Lanyon was a bit of an eccentric surgeon.
He was nearly equal parts performer and doctor, and had
a flare for the macabre. He had studied, though probably
never directly, the work of Luigi Galvani, for whom the
Galvanic Response is named. Lanyon took to extremes, and in
northern England in the early eighteen hundreds demonstrated some rather
(21:51):
ghoulish applications of the technology upon cadavers that I am
assured were totally acquired legally. While there were no truly
reliable reports from those demonstrations, some reporters of questionable honesty
wrote of corpses pointing grimacing, twitching, and in one case
(22:11):
even sitting up and gasping in response to the electrical
impulses doctor Lanyon applied. Modern historians and doctors doubt the
veracity of those claims, but it seems that Hasty Lanyon
was at least well known for some pretty primitive corpse puppetry.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Start the timer, doctor, doctor, give me the news, yes,
mister Bilin. So this guy Hasty, m hmm. This guy
Hasty was primarily known for this, or it.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
Was how he became famous. Otherwise, he was a doctor
studied at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Medicine.
But apart from these are really the only records of
he doesn't have like a long storied career that exists
in any record, but there are records of these supposed demonstrations.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Hasty huh sounds made up to me. Sounds like hasty,
like he was a little too hasty.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Perhaps, Yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't
know why I feel optimistic about this, but I'm going
with true.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Wait what yeah, Oh, that's not.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
What I was getting at at all then, But you
know what, let's beate, let's debate that was that was
really only going on because the name is super sketchy, right,
sketchy sounding, I feel like that it's true.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Maybe you could ask maybe doctor doctor, give me the news.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yes, what did he do again? So he stuck electrodes
onto cadavers and zapped them and made them twitch around
a lot. He to give you a little more detail,
just because I said early eighteen hundreds. The time period
we're looking at is eighteen o eight, so that's about
three decades after Galvani, and also supposedly was one of
(23:54):
the inspirations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Oh that that, Yes,
surely that, which is probably in eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I feel like there's too much detail here. Now I'm
starting to doubt it. I'm gonna stick I'm gonna stick
with true.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
You're gonna stick with true. I'm gonna stick with true.
You're starting to doubt it. You're going to stick with true?
Yat of contradictions? Well you you were a man of
mind games.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You file quister, this creature. I'm out of practice with
the quister.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
That's true. He's been relaxing in the on the sam
It's true.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I did. I took a cruise.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
It was nice?
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Was it nice?
Speaker 5 (24:26):
It was not a nice It was in Paris, thank you.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
I did.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
In fact, there was a petisserie right across the street
from the apartment.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Guy, guy, guys, we have forty seconds. All right, what
did you say? You're gonna stick with true? I'm gonna
lock I'm gonna you want to lock it in?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
It's locking true three to one true.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
You guys gotta read more. Doctor Hasty Lanyon is a
character and doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde. I made it
up seas interestingly though interestingly though, I should say, first
of all, the inspiration suppose or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was
doctor Joseph Conrad Dipple, who was active in the seventeenth
(25:05):
century and was born in Bubba Bam Castle Frankenstein, and
then Giovanni Giovanni al Dippy, who was the nephew to
Luigi Galvani, actually did do demonstrations similar to what I described,
where supposedly corpses had opened up their eyes, pointed, punched
the air, kicked the air. But again, these were just
(25:28):
supposedly people would pass out looking at these demonstrations. I
don't know exactly how reliable those are either, But what
I gave you was total fiction.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, that's what I began to suspect when you had
too many already made details. Yep, that you were dare
I say hasty to provide?
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Well, I wanted to give you a chance. You've lost
the last few, and I thought, well, if I just
keep feeding them, they're surely they're going in. But nope, Nope,
you just had to go down.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
That road with me. No, it turns out we're hungry boys.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Well, and to be fair, it is similar to things
that have been reported. I was mostly I was mostly
hoping that you had read Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.
I was really I was like, this is a coin flip.
It may be that that had been turned to me.
And so you mean like the character and Doctor Jekyll
and Mister.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Hide, and I would say, whoopsies, it's been a long time.
But you know what, that gives us a new goal.
Maybe one day we can ask a question that just
completely blows up the scenario you've presented. If we did that,
would you ever be a situation you say?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Whoops?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
No, No, I know you too well, my old friend,
you would you would continue with with the charag Here's.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
Here's the problem is that if you ask me a
legitimate question about a legitimate historical fact and I don't
know the answer, I would be honored bound to say
I don't know the answer to that question. And that
means that I should probably do the same thing for
the fake ones, because otherwise, if you ask me a
question and I don't know the answer to that question,
(27:01):
and I tell you that, you're going to say, well,
this is obviously one of the true ones we win.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I was so close when you started giving out the details.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, that one's on me. Can't win them all, no,
but we can't win. Nice to win one. Actually, you
know you were.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
You were almost even with me.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
For a while. Part of the fun of this, though,
is eating crow from time to time. You know, very
Tom and Jerry to me. You know I like it.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So despite winning today's round, Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister,
thank you so much for dropping by. We're glad that
you made it out of the chunnel. Sure did you say, Durian,
what's that mean?
Speaker 5 (27:39):
It's nothing. Usually what you say if someone says thank you,
the common response is it's nothing, no big deal.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, like not a problem, no problem, no sweat, zero perspiration.
Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks as always
to our super producer Casey.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Pegram, Thanks to Gabe Lucier are fantabulous research, and thanks
to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
So what are some of the strange saw bone esque
stories of medical quackery or medical mishaps that you have heard?
What are your favorite ones? Share them with us and
your fellow listeners. Also shout out to the podcast saw Bones.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
That's a great show, yeah, on the Maximum Fun Network,
which we're huge fans of.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Justin McElroy as. That recalls one of the hosts of
that show.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I do believe you recall correctly.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
You can write us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot Com.
We're gonna stick with that one for the meantime. We
may have another one inching in pretty soon, but for
the time being, he's that one. You can also hit
us up on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, where
you know folks are posting memes, the Jonathan Strickland liquist
or even creeps his way in there from time to time.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
That is true. Don't think we don't see you getting tagged.
Don't think we don't see you.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
You can also you can also find us on Instagram
and Twitter. We each have our own personal instagrams if
you want to see our various shenanigans.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
I'm Ben Bullen Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
I'm at John Strickland No, no, h We'll.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
See you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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