August 30, 2025 • 31 mins
In today's Classic episode, Ben and Noel reluctantly sing the praises of poop research. You see, folks, before Lewis and Clark set out to explore the western side of the continent, they tried to prepare for every possible contingency — including medical conditions like constipation. Join the guys as they explore how a dangerous laxative didn’t just save members of the expedition, but also may have preserved their campsites for posterity.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Folks, it your pals at ridiculous history with a classic episode.
For all our travelers out there, all our nomadic friends.
You know, one of the worst things that happens when
you're on the road is when you have to use
the wash closet and you can't find one. The WC,
(00:21):
the WC, the water closet, the restroom. I'll tell you
add as they say in nautical parlance. Yes, familiar to
all the sailors. That'll make sense later in October. By
the way, folks, but I gotta tell you, guys, this
recently happened to me, not too long ago. I was
(00:41):
in a very crowded city for a world expo, like
the modern version of a World's Fair, and I swear
I walked more than three miles trying to find a toilet.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm glad you didn't poop your pants.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Ben, me too, Me too, and thank you. Noel. Are
we telling you this TMI information?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Well, well, we're talking about another example of walking very
long distances and not pooping one's pants, or perhaps maybe
a little pants were pooped in the case of Lewis
and Clark, the famous explorers expeditioners who took to the
western side of the continent, trying to prepare in advance
for every possible contingency, including constipation.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, they were worried about their continents on the continent.
They also were exploring North America at a time when
laxative technology just wasn't as sophisticated as it is today.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
You know, they were dealing with they were playing with
live fire in laxative form.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And weirdly enough, as we discovered this classic episode, the
use of their dangerous laxatives is part of the reason
why we know so much about their journey today.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Ah Man, let's get right to it.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Is your crew
(02:35):
of otherwise intrepid adventurers, soldiers and scouts falling prey to
the depredations of life on the edge of the map
or the challenges of the untamed wilds, leaving your men
with syphilis, constipation, scurvy, brain shut us, sticky ye, welshman's ear,
and they other tragic, painful conditions so common to modern explorers.
If so, fret not, good friends and neighbors, Doctor Benjamin
Rush has discovered a brilliant, innovative solution to all your ills.
(02:55):
Doctor Russia's world famous Billious Pills use a proprietary combination
of pure and to gently purge the body of excess
bile and contaminants that caused these dreadful, incommodious conditions. Hi,
I'm bett.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Who was that though?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Oh? That was an advertisement for doctor Benjamin Rush's Billius Pills, not.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Doctor Benjamin Bowlan's Billious Pills.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
No, No, he beat me. He beat me to this one. Noel,
to the gut punch, Yes, to the gut, to the thunderclap. Oh,
my goodness, gracious. So I think he left out a
key component in that ad though, Ben, Yeah, there was
a little bit of a pr spin there. Noel, what
was what was that key ingredient that got left out?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I think it was mercury?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Ben, I believe you are correct, my friend. We are
here a ridiculous history along with our super producer, Casey Pegram,
and I don't think we told Casey what this episode
is going to be about. No.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
I think I think from our pre pro conversations he
sort of gleaned that it was something to.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Do with mercury and poop and possibly exploration, Yes, possibly exploration,
Probably exploration, Definitely exploration. Can you take us back, Noel
where we headed? Who are our protagonist today?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Okay, Ben?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
For today's episode, we are in fact going to time
travel so that we can physically travel along with our
companions for the day Meriwether Lewis and William Clark otherwise
known as Lewis and Clark.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yes, And there's an amazing Superman spinoff television program called
Lewis and Clark that they were really capitalizing on people
having fond memories of this intrepid traveling duo. But this
is an eighteen oh four and that was more like
in nineteen ninety four, I want to say, so this
is the important pair. So we've got Lewis and Clark
who go out on a journey. It's sort of like
(04:44):
a Lord of the Rings esque journey to Mordore, only
it's to survey this land that President Jefferson, you know,
basically bought from Louisiana and in another creative title for
an event, the Louisiana Purchase, he purchased some land from.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Louisiana and they called it that.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
And so this journey started from Saint Louis and very
very slowly and deliberately made its way to the west.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Coast right the Rcific.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
They wanted to. They were tasked to find a passage
from the Missouri River to the Pacific, and they left,
as you said, May fourteenth, eighteen oh four. It took
them twenty eight months to complete the journey. They lucked out, though,
because almost everyone survived, which was amazing when you consider
that they were going through the untamed Why.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I think they only lost one person?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Just why? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
How'd he go?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
On August twentieth, Sergeant Charles Floyd died of what they
called at the time billius corlick.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Interesting, wasn't that word in the name of that pill
that that had disembodied?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yes, announcer gave.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Us the top of the show Billius pills. Today we
call billius corlicko r lic k. By the way, we
call that a ruptured appendix.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Really, so billius referring to bile. Correct, absolutely, And that's
what your appendix is kind of chock full of. And
it is a poisonous substance if leached out into the body, right.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Right, exactly. Billius is a word that can trace its
origin back to the old belief, in the old medical belief, Yes, exactly.
The four bodily humors would be black bile, yellow bile, phlegm,
and blood, So you might be phlegmatic, you might be bilious.
And when Lewis and Clark set off with their thirty
(06:39):
odd people, they wanted to really be boy scouts about it.
They needed to prepare as much as possible for any contingency,
and one of the things that they were very concerned
with was the possibility of growing sick like indigestion, diarrhea, constipation,
constipation mainly.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, that's the big one, because how how many months
was this journey again? Then twenty eight twenty eight months,
so you know, it would be almost impossible to bring
enough food that that would keep for that long, let
alone that you could actually carry through the completely untamed
wilderness that they were traveling through. So they had to
(07:20):
be prepared to have to catch their own food, which
would end up being like super kind of gamey stuff.
I believe they ended up eating a lot of dogs
on this trip.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, that was a thing.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
And this led them to having some pretty severe tummy troubles,
most specifically constipation.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So they packed these pills in large quantities.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yes, Yeah. The weird thing about the billious pills is
they were actually in effect anti bilious. Back then, a
patient was said to be bilious when supposed poor flow
of bile in their body gave them any number of
symptoms headache, lassitude, constipation. And doctor Rush had actually spoken
(08:07):
to Lewis, to Meriwether Lewis before they left, and he said,
if you see a sign of an approaching disease, if
you see one of these symptoms pop up, headaches, constipation,
just hand them one or two of these pills. But
they add that nickname right, thunderbolts.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Thunderbolt.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
See it sounds like some kind of like truck stop speed,
doesn't it? Like many mini thins or yellowjackets. Yellow jackets,
that's the one. But here here's the kicker though. It
contained something called calamel ten grams per serving, which the
active ingredient in calamel is in fact mercury mercurius chloride.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, and this calamel stuff had been used in medical
practice since the sixteen hundreds because it was actually a
milder form of mercury compound. The liquid medical mercury had
been applied externally in different ways since ancient times to
treat a variety of skin diseases and then, because it'd
(09:11):
been used so often externally, it evolved into an internal medicine, wasn't.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
The problem with mercury is that, sure, it does knock
out some conditions of the skin, for example, but it
also like poisons the person that's taking it.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Right, Right, Like the old haberdashers who would go crazy
from exposure to mercury.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Right, Yeah, like that guy that killed John Wilkes Booth
we did an episode on back in the day.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's right. Yeah, yeah, you know the guy castrated himself,
Thomas Corbett. Corbett, that's right, that's right. So we know
that mercury could actually treat some medical conditions. People used
it often to combat syphilis, for instance, But we also
know that this stuff had a range of terrible, terrible
(10:03):
side effects. If you took small doses of this mercurous
chloride over time, it would give you mercury poisoning. We
just didn't call it that at the time. You would
have a lot of saliva, your gums would get sore,
your teeth would loosen, your breath would smell like metal,
which is super gross, and you would have discolored stool.
(10:26):
But in large doses, this stuff acted very quickly as
a laxative.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, Yeah, it absolutely did.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And that is, of of course, the purposes that was
being employed for here with the Lewis and Clark team.
They took so much of it that they would spend
like an entire day. They would lose to multiple party
members just you know, purging spray and pray, that is
what I like to call it.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But thankfully there was.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
A popular kind of wisdom I guess surrounding camping that
you should dig your latrine a certain distance away from
your campsite. Oh yeah, as not to contaminate your food
or you know, just to keep things not gross.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It's a quality of life.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
It's especially if you got a dude like hovering over
this like hole in the ground just like expelling his
bowels just explosively.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Nobody wants to be around that. How do you remember
how far it was? What was the recommended distance?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I would think surely given the circumstances, they would have
like uped that whatever it may have been.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, it may have changed depending on their terrain, but
the rule of thumb nowadays is about one hundred yards
away as a minimum in a secluded area. They were
probably not that far away, because one hundred yards that's
a football field, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Well, and exactly like if you were in some kind
of small clearing, like in a wooded area, you might
not have that much space to work with.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, it was probably just far. It was at least
far enough away that you wouldn't be haunted by the
smell or the sounds, the horrible all the sounds, right,
the groans of anguish.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Human misery and like cartoonish splattering sounds.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Can you even imagine?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Ben? I can?
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And it bothers me?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It bothers me too? Does it bother you listeners?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Let's know, does it bother you? Casey?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, I'd say that bothers me? It's the case. It
is decided. It's an unpleasant thing to be around. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We took it to the highest authority in the land
as far as this podcast is concerned. The weird thing
about these pills is that it was a large enough
dose of mercury to actually kill a human being, but
it went through their bodies so fast.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And one end out of the other because it was
fast acting too. That was another part. That's why they
were called lightning pills. I imagine, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Exactly, And they had to be named after the sound,
you know, which just still bothers me a little bit null.
But here's here's something you're saying.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
It sounded like lightning when they evacuated Bowels.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, yeah, sounded like the clap of thunder, you know,
like is a storm coming in? Or is Lewis sick again?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
But here's something that hopefully made the pain of the
journey worth it for these for these intrepid explorers. For
a long time, archaeologists were attempting to trace the exact
path that Lewis and Clark took. And these guys stated
over six hundred different sites. So you might know the
(13:32):
general trend and you can see some stuff that they
have documented themselves, But if you want to find the
specific actual facts camp sites, you're looking at a needle
in the haystack situation, or so one would assume.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Or you could call it a pile of human excrement
in a hole in the ground situation.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
That's true, that's probably more accurate, more accurate.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Which honestly seems to me would be pretty difficult to
find as well.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
But find it. These intrepid archaeologists did, did they not?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Ben?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
They did all they did, and they did it with
the incidental help of doctor Benjamin Rush's Billius pills. Because
remember how just a moment ago we said that these
things are like sixty percent mercury, sixty percent mercurius chloride
or callamel. There was so much mercury running through these
poor guy's bodies that the mercury stayed in the ground
(14:27):
where their latrines were like an unusual cartoonish I'll say it,
disgusting amount of mercury.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And that is how, given the opportunity, archaeologists could differentiate
between the Lewis and Clark poop and the poop of
others who may have passed through a similar location.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
But Ben, they had to have had a vague idea.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
They couldn't just been, like, you know, going willy nilly
to every random campsite like this seems like an insane process.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
How did this go down?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
It's a good question, my friend.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
There's a writer for this Cargo Tribune named Maurice Postley
who walks us through a little bit of this. In
his journals. Meriwether Lewis refers to a camp site near
a place called Lolo Creek, which is just a few
miles south of Missoula, and he calls this place travelers Rest,
(15:20):
and they all thought. Everybody thought for a long time
that this camp was at the confluence of the Bitter
Root River and Lolo Creek about a mile and a
half away. But this all changed when a vapor analysis
verified this unusual amount of mercury there.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Ah, I was that much that a vapor analysis would
do it.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It was like in the air.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
It was crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
They were able to they were able to analyze the
soil pretty easily. And once they once they find that
one site and like, oh, this proves it. Let's see
if we can test other specific sites for traces of.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Murcery and maybe and maybe get to the source by
seeing how the concentrations change. Right, Yeah, exactly, you could
in theory, I guess, find that hole in the ground
by tracking like the concentration of mercury.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yes. And there's an interesting thing here that you and
I have talked about off air. We've been mentioning mercury
as a treatment for constipation, but it was also used
to treat an entirely different medical condition.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
They were getting this mercury from two different sources, the
Billius pills, which was kind of considered a cure all
but then they also had a cache of another type
of medication that was specifically designed to treat syphilis. Because
they were they basically kind of prepared for the fact
they were going to have a lot of what other
kind of sex was there at the time, unprotected sex
(16:51):
with some native women.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
There's an article in The Atlantic that came out in
twenty sixteen that it seems to dispel this belief. For
a while, people believe that syphilis actually came somehow from
the New World, but all the evidence indicates we still
don't know exactly where syphilis came from. And I think
(17:17):
you and I had always assumed that syphilis came with
the Europeans into the New World, which I know, we're
not supposed to use the term New World anymore, but
that's what they called it at the time. No, I know,
we're talking about Yeah, so the disease already had a
long history in Europe, but maybe the syphilis epidemic seemed
(17:39):
like a new disease at the time because it had
previously been mistaken for something else, you know, or maybe
it was a particularly virulent strain of syphilis.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
These travelers knew damn well that they were going to
be exposed to this condition, but they weren't not going
to let that stop them from, you know, having a
nice flaning with an attractive lady. And they took this
stuff to either. I guess it wasn't really it could
be a safeguard again, so I guess they just accepted
they were going.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
To get it.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Apparently they were just okay with that.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
They just resigned themselves with their their syphilitic fate, which
is no joke, right. Syphilis is the one that can
kind of like make you go insane over.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Time, right in the late stages.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, so they had syphilis and mercury poisoning.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I would imagine by the end of this journey, these
dudes were not well right and mentally right.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And let's see, it was even just in the first
year of the expedition. On October fifteenth, eighteen oh four,
Clark writes down that the party had arrived at a
place called the camp of the Arikara, and that quote,
their women were very fond of caressing our men and company,
and by March of eighteen oh five. He noted that
(18:52):
the men were quote generally healthy except venereal complaints, which
is very common amongst the natives here. The men from them,
so they were blaming the native population. But you know,
it was just out. It was apparently just crazy talk
for them to you know, not pursue these flings.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I mean, they had to occupy their time somehow, I guess, right.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So they were just on this cycle of unprotected sex,
syphilis and mercury, wild times, my friends, and eating dogs
and eating dogs and just laying some epic flatellations.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What I don't know about this.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
What the farts, the thunderclaps.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Oh that's different.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It was manifest destiny.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
O Ben' that's horrible. I love you so much.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
There is another thing too, about the times that they
spent on the on the old rugged trail. Apparently every
man got a ration of whiskey. They had barrels of whiskey,
and that was a really important part of their staying
sane in these intense circumstances. And one man I believe
was caught taking more than his fair share of skiing
(19:59):
and he we got fifty stripes on the back with
a cat O nine tails or some such you know,
bull whip.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Oh wow, they took that stuff really seriously.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, and you know that stuff left scars, oh big time.
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
But I mean that was like the height of punishment.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
And if they did that for just you know, taking
a little extra shot of whiskey, I can't imagine they
would have done for more severe crimes.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Right. And this is fascinating, I think, to both of
us because growing up here in the States, when you
hear about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you just hear
the bare bones, and it's sometimes it's a little romanticized.
You know. It's like these this noble group of people
who are the harbingers of Western civilization at this point,
(20:45):
trying to explore a great unknown, at least unknown to
Europeans land. And as so often happens in so many
stories like this, we skip over a lot of the
nitty gritty details. The epidemic of syphilis, the epidemic of diarrhea,
the mercury in the ground everywhere, the dog eating the
(21:07):
dog eating. No, No, that's very sexy at all. No,
that's not what you want to think about and think
about this.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
We're left with this image of conquering, you know, the
great outdoors, and you've got these trails named after Lewis
and Clark. And now we know that they went to
I think more than six hundred campsites throughout this journey,
and like travelers rest, because of these intrepid archaeologists and
their ability to analyze some of these sites for mercury content,
(21:35):
we know a little bit more about where these folks
passed through.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yes, and we have also learned that what you know,
neither of us are doctors. Casey is not a doctor either.
We've also learned the perils of mercury. Don't take it,
don't break the thermometer and play with it. Did you
ever do that as a kid. No, But I've seen
videos of it. Looks pretty cool. It's like the T
one thousand exactly. Yeah, but it's still not worth it.
(22:02):
It can do horrible things to It. Just happened in
today's episode to preserve for posterity the details of the
Lewis and Clark expedition. And one thing that's surprising is
although we hold the Lewis and Clark expedition in such
(22:23):
high regard today, it only became popular relatively recently. Like
fifty years ago or so.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Well, I think when these men return, they expected like
a hero's welcome right, and it just never really came.
And Meriwether Lewis, in fact, his death has been a
source of much speculation, but one very plausible one is
that he kind of spiraled into despair and self doubt
(22:52):
and that he ultimately took his own life in a
quite outlandish fashion.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Walk us through it.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, well so.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Thomas Jefferson himself had reported that Lewis's family had a
history of depression bipolar disorder specifically, and that he himself
Lewis had been suffering from this condition himself since he
was a child. And here's a quote from a great
article on history dot nd dot gov, where Jefferson says,
(23:21):
this Governor Lewis had from an early life been subject
to hypochondriac affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all
the nearer branches of the family of his name. It
was more immediately inherited by him from his father. While
he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times
sensible depressions of mind, but knowing their constitutional source, I
estimated their course by what I had seen in the family.
(23:44):
This is really interesting because this idea of mental illness
having such stigma, it's still around today. I mean, it
hasn't gotten that much better. So back in these days
it certainly wouldn't have been something that you would have
talked about. But yeah, so he suffered from these great
highs and great lows, and the story of his demise.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Goes like this.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Oh, we shall also mentioned, just didnt reject that his
rediscovered letters show that he had written his will before
the journey, And he also attempted suicide on the expedition
but was restrained.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, a good good thing.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
He had his bros around him to kind of pull him,
pull him back from the letge I suppose.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
So what happened? How how did he pass away?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So the story goes like this.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
He had booked himself a room at an inn, a tavern,
and he shot himself, but that didn't take because I guess,
I don't know, maybe those little musket balls, those those
guns don't always discharge properly.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Maybe it just didn't. It wasn't a death blow.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And so he did it again and that didn't quite
take either, So he decided to go to sleep. He
went to sleep, and he woke up, you know, not dead,
and then he apparently ran out into the hallway and said, quote,
give me some water and heal my wounds. And all
the guests were freaking out, and he went back to
(25:03):
sleep and then woke up, and someone witnessed him quote
cutting himself from head to foot. So it took about
twelve hours of time, two bullets, a little bit of sleep,
and a blade for Lewis to finally die. And that
is like some tortures of the damned kind of stuff,
(25:24):
right there.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Good Lord.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Self inflicted is the belief, right. This was at the
Grinder's stand that's in on the Natchez trace, and I
believe he had one gun shot in the head, one
to the gut, and you know, as you said, he
ran out and scared the hell out of everyone. Nashville
newspaper had reported that his throat was cut. There is
(25:46):
one complicating factor here. Money that he had borrowed from
a guy named Major Gilbert Russell to complete the journey
was missing.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Uh oh. The plot thickens.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
The plot thickens and Thomas Jeffers and as you pointed out,
along with some modern historians, generally accepted the idea that
Lewis died of suicide, but there's still a debate. There's
still people who say it was homicide for one reason
or another.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
That is pretty fascinating. It does seem like the groundwork
was laid for him having already demonstrated suicidal tendencies. But
this whole missing money business, yeah, then muddies the water.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
So well, he might have spent it. Because the historian
Paul Russell Cutwright completely believes this was suicide, and he
has a pretty detailed takedown of the murder slash robbery theory.
He says Lewis had a lot of debt, he was
a heavy drinker, he may have been using morphine and opium.
(26:45):
He was running late preparing the expedition's journals for publishing.
He just couldn't get a romantic partner, and he was
on the outs with Thomas Jefferson. Their relationship was going downhill.
So he's saying that it's plaus that Lewis, given his
history right his own mental struggles. He's saying it's more
(27:06):
plausible that Lewis eventually took his own life.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, that's a real bummer, and that is surely a
downer way to end this episode. So I'm just going
to throw in one more thing to kind of like
change gas yea, yeah, like a palate clean a little
bit of a palakilans. And that is the fact or
the idea that Thomas Jefferson. One of the big things
he was super excited about them finding on this expedition
was like giant animals, yes, like mammoths, so American, right, yeah,
(27:32):
big time. And something called a megalonics or a megal
megal yeah, megalonics, which is like some kind of giant cat.
And he described it as as pre eminent over the
lion in size, as the mammoth is over the elephant.
And if you want to see a really cool exploration
of this as if it were real. There is a
(27:54):
comic book series called Manifest Destiny.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, I've read it. It's on issue thirty six right now.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Ongoing, but you can get the collected trades.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
What have you checked it out?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I've read like the first trade and it's really cool.
But it has some of these crazy creatures. Yeah, yeah,
it's a big part of it.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
In this comic they're finding well, i'll tell you this
without spoiling it. In this story in the graphic novel
slash comic book Manifest Destiny. The expedition does run into
megafauna just a generic term for large animals, but they
also keep finding these structures that look like the Gateway
arch there in Saint Louis, And you know what, if
(28:32):
you're a fan of good stories, we highly recommend that.
I'm so glad you mentioned this on air. I was
reading it. I was rereading it last night.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
No way, Yeah, in prep for the podcast.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Yeah, all that good historical data in there, because I
think there is some stuff in there that is historically accurate,
but it's largely a fictionalized version with some of these
more high.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
And lofty ideas of what this this unsettled wilderness might
be like. So pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, check it out. I like that. I like that.
A good comic recommendation.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
We do whatever we can. Have We made one before.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
We may have mentioned comics we like, but I don't
know if we out and out recommend it. One.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I pledge from this day fourth to always recommend a
comic on every episode.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Okay, now that's too much.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
No, No, as long as caveat as long as it
doesn't have to completely tie in with.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
The episode, and we're gonna do an episode on every
state and we're gonna complete it by the end of
this year.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Whoa, now, I don't know we can make it. Am
I promising too much?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
We're only coming out twice a week.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I alwayst forget. It's under promise, over delivered.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
So uh.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
There's also another comic called The Black Monday Murders. Has
nothing to do with today's episode, but you will thoroughly
enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And I'm a fan of Lock and Key, which you
loaned me. Yeah, yea, I've been trying to get my
way through it. But it's by Joe Hill, who is
Stephen King's son. Nothing really like anything Stephen King ever did,
though he's got his own thing.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah. Yeah, Joe Hill is a fantastic writer. You know what,
let us know what comic books do you like?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Historical or otherwise?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, and you can let us know right now as
you're listening to this episode. We have to do is
hop on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, especially our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians, or.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
You can write us a good old fashioned email at
Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. We'd love to thank super
producer Casey Pegram I would like to thank you Ben.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I'd like to thank you NOL, along with Alex Williams
who composed our track, our research associate Gabe, who does
just an amazing jobs right, and.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Big shout outs to Christopher and Eves, who have done
an incredible job. At this point, I still think we've
got a few of their ideas kicking around in the
cancer We'll make sure that we shout them out when
those happen.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And a shout out to doctor Benjamin Rush. I don't
know if you meant to be in the history books
this way, Doc, but congratulations. Nonetheless, Casey, can we get
an appropriate sound cue?
Speaker 3 (31:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Folks, it your pals at ridiculous history with a classic episode.
For all our travelers out there, all our nomadic friends.
You know, one of the worst things that happens when
you're on the road is when you have to use
the wash closet and you can't find one. The WC,
(00:21):
the WC, the water closet, the restroom. I'll tell you
add as they say in nautical parlance. Yes, familiar to
all the sailors. That'll make sense later in October. By
the way, folks, but I gotta tell you, guys, this
recently happened to me, not too long ago. I was
(00:41):
in a very crowded city for a world expo, like
the modern version of a World's Fair, and I swear
I walked more than three miles trying to find a toilet.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm glad you didn't poop your pants.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Ben, me too, Me too, and thank you. Noel. Are
we telling you this TMI information?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Well, well, we're talking about another example of walking very
long distances and not pooping one's pants, or perhaps maybe
a little pants were pooped in the case of Lewis
and Clark, the famous explorers expeditioners who took to the
western side of the continent, trying to prepare in advance
for every possible contingency, including constipation.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, they were worried about their continents on the continent.
They also were exploring North America at a time when
laxative technology just wasn't as sophisticated as it is today.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
You know, they were dealing with they were playing with
live fire in laxative form.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And weirdly enough, as we discovered this classic episode, the
use of their dangerous laxatives is part of the reason
why we know so much about their journey today.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Ah Man, let's get right to it.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Is your crew
(02:35):
of otherwise intrepid adventurers, soldiers and scouts falling prey to
the depredations of life on the edge of the map
or the challenges of the untamed wilds, leaving your men
with syphilis, constipation, scurvy, brain shut us, sticky ye, welshman's ear,
and they other tragic, painful conditions so common to modern explorers.
If so, fret not, good friends and neighbors, Doctor Benjamin
Rush has discovered a brilliant, innovative solution to all your ills.
(02:55):
Doctor Russia's world famous Billious Pills use a proprietary combination
of pure and to gently purge the body of excess
bile and contaminants that caused these dreadful, incommodious conditions. Hi,
I'm bett.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Who was that though?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Oh? That was an advertisement for doctor Benjamin Rush's Billius Pills, not.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Doctor Benjamin Bowlan's Billious Pills.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
No, No, he beat me. He beat me to this one. Noel,
to the gut punch, Yes, to the gut, to the thunderclap. Oh,
my goodness, gracious. So I think he left out a
key component in that ad though, Ben, Yeah, there was
a little bit of a pr spin there. Noel, what
was what was that key ingredient that got left out?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I think it was mercury?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Ben, I believe you are correct, my friend. We are
here a ridiculous history along with our super producer, Casey Pegram,
and I don't think we told Casey what this episode
is going to be about. No.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
I think I think from our pre pro conversations he
sort of gleaned that it was something to.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Do with mercury and poop and possibly exploration, Yes, possibly exploration,
Probably exploration, Definitely exploration. Can you take us back, Noel
where we headed? Who are our protagonist today?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Okay, Ben?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
For today's episode, we are in fact going to time
travel so that we can physically travel along with our
companions for the day Meriwether Lewis and William Clark otherwise
known as Lewis and Clark.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yes, And there's an amazing Superman spinoff television program called
Lewis and Clark that they were really capitalizing on people
having fond memories of this intrepid traveling duo. But this
is an eighteen oh four and that was more like
in nineteen ninety four, I want to say, so this
is the important pair. So we've got Lewis and Clark
who go out on a journey. It's sort of like
(04:44):
a Lord of the Rings esque journey to Mordore, only
it's to survey this land that President Jefferson, you know,
basically bought from Louisiana and in another creative title for
an event, the Louisiana Purchase, he purchased some land from.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Louisiana and they called it that.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
And so this journey started from Saint Louis and very
very slowly and deliberately made its way to the west.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Coast right the Rcific.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
They wanted to. They were tasked to find a passage
from the Missouri River to the Pacific, and they left,
as you said, May fourteenth, eighteen oh four. It took
them twenty eight months to complete the journey. They lucked out, though,
because almost everyone survived, which was amazing when you consider
that they were going through the untamed Why.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I think they only lost one person?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Just why? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
How'd he go?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
On August twentieth, Sergeant Charles Floyd died of what they
called at the time billius corlick.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Interesting, wasn't that word in the name of that pill
that that had disembodied?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yes, announcer gave.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Us the top of the show Billius pills. Today we
call billius corlicko r lic k. By the way, we
call that a ruptured appendix.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Really, so billius referring to bile. Correct, absolutely, And that's
what your appendix is kind of chock full of. And
it is a poisonous substance if leached out into the body, right.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Right, exactly. Billius is a word that can trace its
origin back to the old belief, in the old medical belief, Yes, exactly.
The four bodily humors would be black bile, yellow bile, phlegm,
and blood, So you might be phlegmatic, you might be bilious.
And when Lewis and Clark set off with their thirty
(06:39):
odd people, they wanted to really be boy scouts about it.
They needed to prepare as much as possible for any contingency,
and one of the things that they were very concerned
with was the possibility of growing sick like indigestion, diarrhea, constipation,
constipation mainly.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, that's the big one, because how how many months
was this journey again? Then twenty eight twenty eight months,
so you know, it would be almost impossible to bring
enough food that that would keep for that long, let
alone that you could actually carry through the completely untamed
wilderness that they were traveling through. So they had to
(07:20):
be prepared to have to catch their own food, which
would end up being like super kind of gamey stuff.
I believe they ended up eating a lot of dogs
on this trip.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, that was a thing.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
And this led them to having some pretty severe tummy troubles,
most specifically constipation.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So they packed these pills in large quantities.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yes, Yeah. The weird thing about the billious pills is
they were actually in effect anti bilious. Back then, a
patient was said to be bilious when supposed poor flow
of bile in their body gave them any number of
symptoms headache, lassitude, constipation. And doctor Rush had actually spoken
(08:07):
to Lewis, to Meriwether Lewis before they left, and he said,
if you see a sign of an approaching disease, if
you see one of these symptoms pop up, headaches, constipation,
just hand them one or two of these pills. But
they add that nickname right, thunderbolts.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Thunderbolt.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
See it sounds like some kind of like truck stop speed,
doesn't it? Like many mini thins or yellowjackets. Yellow jackets,
that's the one. But here here's the kicker though. It
contained something called calamel ten grams per serving, which the
active ingredient in calamel is in fact mercury mercurius chloride.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, and this calamel stuff had been used in medical
practice since the sixteen hundreds because it was actually a
milder form of mercury compound. The liquid medical mercury had
been applied externally in different ways since ancient times to
treat a variety of skin diseases and then, because it'd
(09:11):
been used so often externally, it evolved into an internal medicine, wasn't.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
The problem with mercury is that, sure, it does knock
out some conditions of the skin, for example, but it
also like poisons the person that's taking it.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Right, Right, Like the old haberdashers who would go crazy
from exposure to mercury.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Right, Yeah, like that guy that killed John Wilkes Booth
we did an episode on back in the day.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's right. Yeah, yeah, you know the guy castrated himself,
Thomas Corbett. Corbett, that's right, that's right. So we know
that mercury could actually treat some medical conditions. People used
it often to combat syphilis, for instance, But we also
know that this stuff had a range of terrible, terrible
(10:03):
side effects. If you took small doses of this mercurous
chloride over time, it would give you mercury poisoning. We
just didn't call it that at the time. You would
have a lot of saliva, your gums would get sore,
your teeth would loosen, your breath would smell like metal,
which is super gross, and you would have discolored stool.
(10:26):
But in large doses, this stuff acted very quickly as
a laxative.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, Yeah, it absolutely did.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And that is, of of course, the purposes that was
being employed for here with the Lewis and Clark team.
They took so much of it that they would spend
like an entire day. They would lose to multiple party
members just you know, purging spray and pray, that is
what I like to call it.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But thankfully there was.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
A popular kind of wisdom I guess surrounding camping that
you should dig your latrine a certain distance away from
your campsite. Oh yeah, as not to contaminate your food
or you know, just to keep things not gross.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It's a quality of life.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
It's especially if you got a dude like hovering over
this like hole in the ground just like expelling his
bowels just explosively.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Nobody wants to be around that. How do you remember
how far it was? What was the recommended distance?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I would think surely given the circumstances, they would have
like uped that whatever it may have been.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, it may have changed depending on their terrain, but
the rule of thumb nowadays is about one hundred yards
away as a minimum in a secluded area. They were
probably not that far away, because one hundred yards that's
a football field, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Well, and exactly like if you were in some kind
of small clearing, like in a wooded area, you might
not have that much space to work with.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, it was probably just far. It was at least
far enough away that you wouldn't be haunted by the
smell or the sounds, the horrible all the sounds, right,
the groans of anguish.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Human misery and like cartoonish splattering sounds.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Can you even imagine?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Ben? I can?
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And it bothers me?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It bothers me too? Does it bother you listeners?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Let's know, does it bother you? Casey?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, I'd say that bothers me? It's the case. It
is decided. It's an unpleasant thing to be around. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We took it to the highest authority in the land
as far as this podcast is concerned. The weird thing
about these pills is that it was a large enough
dose of mercury to actually kill a human being, but
it went through their bodies so fast.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And one end out of the other because it was
fast acting too. That was another part. That's why they
were called lightning pills. I imagine, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Exactly, And they had to be named after the sound,
you know, which just still bothers me a little bit null.
But here's here's something you're saying.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
It sounded like lightning when they evacuated Bowels.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, yeah, sounded like the clap of thunder, you know,
like is a storm coming in? Or is Lewis sick again?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
But here's something that hopefully made the pain of the
journey worth it for these for these intrepid explorers. For
a long time, archaeologists were attempting to trace the exact
path that Lewis and Clark took. And these guys stated
over six hundred different sites. So you might know the
(13:32):
general trend and you can see some stuff that they
have documented themselves, But if you want to find the
specific actual facts camp sites, you're looking at a needle
in the haystack situation, or so one would assume.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Or you could call it a pile of human excrement
in a hole in the ground situation.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
That's true, that's probably more accurate, more accurate.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Which honestly seems to me would be pretty difficult to
find as well.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
But find it. These intrepid archaeologists did, did they not?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Ben?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
They did all they did, and they did it with
the incidental help of doctor Benjamin Rush's Billius pills. Because
remember how just a moment ago we said that these
things are like sixty percent mercury, sixty percent mercurius chloride
or callamel. There was so much mercury running through these
poor guy's bodies that the mercury stayed in the ground
(14:27):
where their latrines were like an unusual cartoonish I'll say it,
disgusting amount of mercury.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And that is how, given the opportunity, archaeologists could differentiate
between the Lewis and Clark poop and the poop of
others who may have passed through a similar location.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
But Ben, they had to have had a vague idea.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
They couldn't just been, like, you know, going willy nilly
to every random campsite like this seems like an insane process.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
How did this go down?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
It's a good question, my friend.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
There's a writer for this Cargo Tribune named Maurice Postley
who walks us through a little bit of this. In
his journals. Meriwether Lewis refers to a camp site near
a place called Lolo Creek, which is just a few
miles south of Missoula, and he calls this place travelers Rest,
(15:20):
and they all thought. Everybody thought for a long time
that this camp was at the confluence of the Bitter
Root River and Lolo Creek about a mile and a
half away. But this all changed when a vapor analysis
verified this unusual amount of mercury there.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Ah, I was that much that a vapor analysis would
do it.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It was like in the air.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
It was crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
They were able to they were able to analyze the
soil pretty easily. And once they once they find that
one site and like, oh, this proves it. Let's see
if we can test other specific sites for traces of.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Murcery and maybe and maybe get to the source by
seeing how the concentrations change. Right, Yeah, exactly, you could
in theory, I guess, find that hole in the ground
by tracking like the concentration of mercury.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yes. And there's an interesting thing here that you and
I have talked about off air. We've been mentioning mercury
as a treatment for constipation, but it was also used
to treat an entirely different medical condition.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
They were getting this mercury from two different sources, the
Billius pills, which was kind of considered a cure all
but then they also had a cache of another type
of medication that was specifically designed to treat syphilis. Because
they were they basically kind of prepared for the fact
they were going to have a lot of what other
kind of sex was there at the time, unprotected sex
(16:51):
with some native women.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
There's an article in The Atlantic that came out in
twenty sixteen that it seems to dispel this belief. For
a while, people believe that syphilis actually came somehow from
the New World, but all the evidence indicates we still
don't know exactly where syphilis came from. And I think
(17:17):
you and I had always assumed that syphilis came with
the Europeans into the New World, which I know, we're
not supposed to use the term New World anymore, but
that's what they called it at the time. No, I know,
we're talking about Yeah, so the disease already had a
long history in Europe, but maybe the syphilis epidemic seemed
(17:39):
like a new disease at the time because it had
previously been mistaken for something else, you know, or maybe
it was a particularly virulent strain of syphilis.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
These travelers knew damn well that they were going to
be exposed to this condition, but they weren't not going
to let that stop them from, you know, having a
nice flaning with an attractive lady. And they took this
stuff to either. I guess it wasn't really it could
be a safeguard again, so I guess they just accepted
they were going.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
To get it.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Apparently they were just okay with that.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
They just resigned themselves with their their syphilitic fate, which
is no joke, right. Syphilis is the one that can
kind of like make you go insane over.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Time, right in the late stages.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, so they had syphilis and mercury poisoning.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I would imagine by the end of this journey, these
dudes were not well right and mentally right.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And let's see, it was even just in the first
year of the expedition. On October fifteenth, eighteen oh four,
Clark writes down that the party had arrived at a
place called the camp of the Arikara, and that quote,
their women were very fond of caressing our men and company,
and by March of eighteen oh five. He noted that
(18:52):
the men were quote generally healthy except venereal complaints, which
is very common amongst the natives here. The men from them,
so they were blaming the native population. But you know,
it was just out. It was apparently just crazy talk
for them to you know, not pursue these flings.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I mean, they had to occupy their time somehow, I guess, right.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So they were just on this cycle of unprotected sex,
syphilis and mercury, wild times, my friends, and eating dogs
and eating dogs and just laying some epic flatellations.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What I don't know about this.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
What the farts, the thunderclaps.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Oh that's different.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It was manifest destiny.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
O Ben' that's horrible. I love you so much.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
There is another thing too, about the times that they
spent on the on the old rugged trail. Apparently every
man got a ration of whiskey. They had barrels of whiskey,
and that was a really important part of their staying
sane in these intense circumstances. And one man I believe
was caught taking more than his fair share of skiing
(19:59):
and he we got fifty stripes on the back with
a cat O nine tails or some such you know,
bull whip.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Oh wow, they took that stuff really seriously.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, and you know that stuff left scars, oh big time.
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
But I mean that was like the height of punishment.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
And if they did that for just you know, taking
a little extra shot of whiskey, I can't imagine they
would have done for more severe crimes.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Right. And this is fascinating, I think, to both of
us because growing up here in the States, when you
hear about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you just hear
the bare bones, and it's sometimes it's a little romanticized.
You know. It's like these this noble group of people
who are the harbingers of Western civilization at this point,
(20:45):
trying to explore a great unknown, at least unknown to
Europeans land. And as so often happens in so many
stories like this, we skip over a lot of the
nitty gritty details. The epidemic of syphilis, the epidemic of diarrhea,
the mercury in the ground everywhere, the dog eating the
(21:07):
dog eating. No, No, that's very sexy at all. No,
that's not what you want to think about and think
about this.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
We're left with this image of conquering, you know, the
great outdoors, and you've got these trails named after Lewis
and Clark. And now we know that they went to
I think more than six hundred campsites throughout this journey,
and like travelers rest, because of these intrepid archaeologists and
their ability to analyze some of these sites for mercury content,
(21:35):
we know a little bit more about where these folks
passed through.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yes, and we have also learned that what you know,
neither of us are doctors. Casey is not a doctor either.
We've also learned the perils of mercury. Don't take it,
don't break the thermometer and play with it. Did you
ever do that as a kid. No, But I've seen
videos of it. Looks pretty cool. It's like the T
one thousand exactly. Yeah, but it's still not worth it.
(22:02):
It can do horrible things to It. Just happened in
today's episode to preserve for posterity the details of the
Lewis and Clark expedition. And one thing that's surprising is
although we hold the Lewis and Clark expedition in such
(22:23):
high regard today, it only became popular relatively recently. Like
fifty years ago or so.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Well, I think when these men return, they expected like
a hero's welcome right, and it just never really came.
And Meriwether Lewis, in fact, his death has been a
source of much speculation, but one very plausible one is
that he kind of spiraled into despair and self doubt
(22:52):
and that he ultimately took his own life in a
quite outlandish fashion.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Walk us through it.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, well so.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Thomas Jefferson himself had reported that Lewis's family had a
history of depression bipolar disorder specifically, and that he himself
Lewis had been suffering from this condition himself since he
was a child. And here's a quote from a great
article on history dot nd dot gov, where Jefferson says,
(23:21):
this Governor Lewis had from an early life been subject
to hypochondriac affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all
the nearer branches of the family of his name. It
was more immediately inherited by him from his father. While
he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times
sensible depressions of mind, but knowing their constitutional source, I
estimated their course by what I had seen in the family.
(23:44):
This is really interesting because this idea of mental illness
having such stigma, it's still around today. I mean, it
hasn't gotten that much better. So back in these days
it certainly wouldn't have been something that you would have
talked about. But yeah, so he suffered from these great
highs and great lows, and the story of his demise.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Goes like this.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Oh, we shall also mentioned, just didnt reject that his
rediscovered letters show that he had written his will before
the journey, And he also attempted suicide on the expedition
but was restrained.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, a good good thing.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
He had his bros around him to kind of pull him,
pull him back from the letge I suppose.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
So what happened? How how did he pass away?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So the story goes like this.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
He had booked himself a room at an inn, a tavern,
and he shot himself, but that didn't take because I guess,
I don't know, maybe those little musket balls, those those
guns don't always discharge properly.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Maybe it just didn't. It wasn't a death blow.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And so he did it again and that didn't quite
take either, So he decided to go to sleep. He
went to sleep, and he woke up, you know, not dead,
and then he apparently ran out into the hallway and said, quote,
give me some water and heal my wounds. And all
the guests were freaking out, and he went back to
(25:03):
sleep and then woke up, and someone witnessed him quote
cutting himself from head to foot. So it took about
twelve hours of time, two bullets, a little bit of sleep,
and a blade for Lewis to finally die. And that
is like some tortures of the damned kind of stuff,
(25:24):
right there.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Good Lord.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Self inflicted is the belief, right. This was at the
Grinder's stand that's in on the Natchez trace, and I
believe he had one gun shot in the head, one
to the gut, and you know, as you said, he
ran out and scared the hell out of everyone. Nashville
newspaper had reported that his throat was cut. There is
(25:46):
one complicating factor here. Money that he had borrowed from
a guy named Major Gilbert Russell to complete the journey
was missing.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Uh oh. The plot thickens.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
The plot thickens and Thomas Jeffers and as you pointed out,
along with some modern historians, generally accepted the idea that
Lewis died of suicide, but there's still a debate. There's
still people who say it was homicide for one reason
or another.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
That is pretty fascinating. It does seem like the groundwork
was laid for him having already demonstrated suicidal tendencies. But
this whole missing money business, yeah, then muddies the water.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
So well, he might have spent it. Because the historian
Paul Russell Cutwright completely believes this was suicide, and he
has a pretty detailed takedown of the murder slash robbery theory.
He says Lewis had a lot of debt, he was
a heavy drinker, he may have been using morphine and opium.
(26:45):
He was running late preparing the expedition's journals for publishing.
He just couldn't get a romantic partner, and he was
on the outs with Thomas Jefferson. Their relationship was going downhill.
So he's saying that it's plaus that Lewis, given his
history right his own mental struggles. He's saying it's more
(27:06):
plausible that Lewis eventually took his own life.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, that's a real bummer, and that is surely a
downer way to end this episode. So I'm just going
to throw in one more thing to kind of like
change gas yea, yeah, like a palate clean a little
bit of a palakilans. And that is the fact or
the idea that Thomas Jefferson. One of the big things
he was super excited about them finding on this expedition
was like giant animals, yes, like mammoths, so American, right, yeah,
(27:32):
big time. And something called a megalonics or a megal
megal yeah, megalonics, which is like some kind of giant cat.
And he described it as as pre eminent over the
lion in size, as the mammoth is over the elephant.
And if you want to see a really cool exploration
of this as if it were real. There is a
(27:54):
comic book series called Manifest Destiny.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, I've read it. It's on issue thirty six right now.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Ongoing, but you can get the collected trades.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
What have you checked it out?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I've read like the first trade and it's really cool.
But it has some of these crazy creatures. Yeah, yeah,
it's a big part of it.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
In this comic they're finding well, i'll tell you this
without spoiling it. In this story in the graphic novel
slash comic book Manifest Destiny. The expedition does run into
megafauna just a generic term for large animals, but they
also keep finding these structures that look like the Gateway
arch there in Saint Louis, And you know what, if
(28:32):
you're a fan of good stories, we highly recommend that.
I'm so glad you mentioned this on air. I was
reading it. I was rereading it last night.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
No way, Yeah, in prep for the podcast.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Yeah, all that good historical data in there, because I
think there is some stuff in there that is historically accurate,
but it's largely a fictionalized version with some of these
more high.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
And lofty ideas of what this this unsettled wilderness might
be like. So pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, check it out. I like that. I like that.
A good comic recommendation.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
We do whatever we can. Have We made one before.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
We may have mentioned comics we like, but I don't
know if we out and out recommend it. One.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I pledge from this day fourth to always recommend a
comic on every episode.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Okay, now that's too much.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
No, No, as long as caveat as long as it
doesn't have to completely tie in with.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
The episode, and we're gonna do an episode on every
state and we're gonna complete it by the end of
this year.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Whoa, now, I don't know we can make it. Am
I promising too much?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
We're only coming out twice a week.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I alwayst forget. It's under promise, over delivered.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
So uh.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
There's also another comic called The Black Monday Murders. Has
nothing to do with today's episode, but you will thoroughly
enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And I'm a fan of Lock and Key, which you
loaned me. Yeah, yea, I've been trying to get my
way through it. But it's by Joe Hill, who is
Stephen King's son. Nothing really like anything Stephen King ever did,
though he's got his own thing.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah. Yeah, Joe Hill is a fantastic writer. You know what,
let us know what comic books do you like?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Historical or otherwise?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, and you can let us know right now as
you're listening to this episode. We have to do is
hop on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, especially our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians, or.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
You can write us a good old fashioned email at
Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. We'd love to thank super
producer Casey Pegram I would like to thank you Ben.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I'd like to thank you NOL, along with Alex Williams
who composed our track, our research associate Gabe, who does
just an amazing jobs right, and.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Big shout outs to Christopher and Eves, who have done
an incredible job. At this point, I still think we've
got a few of their ideas kicking around in the
cancer We'll make sure that we shout them out when
those happen.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And a shout out to doctor Benjamin Rush. I don't
know if you meant to be in the history books
this way, Doc, but congratulations. Nonetheless, Casey, can we get
an appropriate sound cue?
Speaker 3 (31:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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