December 9, 2021 • 34 mins
When you think of bed bugs, you probably think of dirty mattresses, irritating rashes and bites, and the dubious joy of calling an exterminator. However, in millennia past, people were convinced bed bugs, properly prepared, could cure everything from cataracts to the common cold. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I am Ben. That's our
one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams joined as
always with my Ride or Died, the one and only
Mr Noel Brown. Yeah. Today it's a little more Die
than Ride, just putting it out there. I got my
COVID booster yesterday, and I'm a little worse for the
(00:49):
wear today, but I'm powering through for the Ridiculous Historians
and for you Ben, and for you Max. Taking one
for the team here. I'm wrapped in a blanket like
a little little lady who lives in the shoe, and
hopefully you're blanket is bug free. Today's episode is about
bed bugs. Now, like many people growing up, I did
(01:09):
not have a ton of personal experiences with bed bugs.
I ran into them like there was this very strange,
somewhat ruthless mattress program at my boy Scout camps because
of the fear of bed bugs. I never actually saw
bed bugs, and I thought they might even be kind
of like a snipe and a snipe hunt. Until yeah,
(01:30):
until I lived in Central America, And in a couple
of the houses I stayed in, someone would take me
to the side, you know, some sometime during my first
day there, and they would say, hey, when you sleep,
make sure you sleep with your pants on tucked into
your socks. And I said why, and they just said,
just do it. It turns out it's because of bed bugs,
(01:53):
which were Yeah, bed bugs are in fact real. Um,
it's something if anyone you knows, grow grew up living
in New York City or spending time, you know, living
in apartments in New York City, might be aware of
as certainly something to look out for. These things that
they hop around to right like they can hop off
the bed onto you and vice versa. Um, they're almost
like lice. I don't know, how do we describe the
(02:15):
common American bedbug. Well, it's a insect. It's it's a
common pest. They're very small. They're on the order of
millimeters in size. It's like if they were a band
instead of being and you will know us by the
trail of the dead, they would be like and you
shall know us by the trail of the bites. Most
(02:36):
people don't see bed bugs easily unless they're definitely looking
for them, or unless they're a lot in one place,
But when you get the bites, it's hard to mistake
them for anything else. We're talking skin rashes, some people
have allergic symptoms, blisters. It's just overall unpleasant and it
can be really difficult to get rid of them. From
(02:56):
my understanding, that's right. The bed bug no officially as
Cimex lectularius. They're tiny, flat, parasitic blood sucking insects. They
feed on humans and animals while they sleep. They're the
opportunistic little buggers, aren't they. They're reddish brown, they don't
have any wings, and they roughly according to the c
(03:18):
D c UH they are the size of Lincoln's head
on a penny, and they can live with for several
months without any sustenance at all. So they like to
feed on bear skin typically, not like a bear skin rug,
like bare human skin where there's no hair, because it's
easier for them to get to. But like unlike ticks
and you know, lights and stuff, they are a little
(03:40):
easier to spot because they don't burrow into areas covered
in hair where you have a hard time seeing them
right exactly. They spend a lot of their lives in dark,
hidden locations. Think like cracks in the wall, think mattress.
Seems uh, there's something really interesting too. I don't know
how far we'll get with it today, but infestations are
pretty common. Man. There's another species that's found primarily in
(04:02):
the tropics, but that vampiric grifft, is the same all
the world over. For some reason, bedbug infestations have increased
since the nineteen nineties. Scientists still aren't sure why. All
we know is that the global bedbug population has reached
a record high, and everybody in the world today has
(04:23):
managed to agree on one thing in these our divisive times.
We hate bedbugs, right, It's true. I think we can
reckon unite on that front. Um. That didn't used to
be the case. Bed Bugs actually used to be considered
a potent form of medicine. That's right, medicine, and not
just from their bites, specifically from like collecting them, grinding
(04:47):
them up into some sort of powder or like a poultice,
and then consuming it to treat things ranging from flu
two fevers. Uh. It was even mixed with salt and
breast milk in order to create a topical substance to
treat things like pink i eye infections. Really really bizarre.
It was hugely popular and used for almost fifteen hundred years. Exactly, yeah,
(05:11):
we know. One of the earliest texts describing the medical
application of bedbugs comes from a collection called d Materia medica.
They were ground up the bed bugs, I mean not
this collection of texts and consumed as medicine for millennia.
During the fifteen hundreds, for instance, people would eat beans
(05:34):
that have been stuffed with bed bugs as a way
to cure malaria. Uh, spoiler, it's not the best malaria cure.
And then they would mix bedbugs with tortoise blood to
heels snake bites. People even thought the smell of bed
bugs could have a curative effect. It could reverse cataracts,
eliminate lethargy, cure earaches, and even get rid of kidney stones.
(05:59):
Experts today believe that this weird chapter of medicine peaked
in the seventeen hundreds when women were fed bedbugs in
order to ease their quote unquote symptoms of hysteria. And honestly,
we found that little tidbit through an unexpected source, Johnny B.
(06:20):
Pest Control dot Com. So thanks so much, use information
or specifically John Bozargan who wrote the article. But then why,
I'm sorry, why where where do they get this idea?
Where do they get this wild notion? Why bedbugs and
specifically some of the materials they mixed it with. It
(06:41):
just seems like a real stretch. Yeah, it's weird to
understand it. We have to understand the ancient enmity between
human civilization and these little critters. Uh, it looks like
according to some research from scientists at Charles University in
the Czech Republic, they did a genetic annals of the
bed bug and from their findings they estimate its origins
(07:05):
maybe date back two and forty five thousand years. If
that number holds up, then that means that bed bugs
could be older than modern humans are. And there's a
ton of evidence from other parts of the world that
shows us just how old this battle has been. Archaeologists
in the nine nineties found fossilized bedbugs at a three thousand,
(07:29):
five fifty year old site in Egypt. Their name checked
in ancient Greek plays. They're even mentioned in the Talmud.
It's nuts people have been like bed bugs have been
an irritating topic of conversation for a long long time.
Even like people try to cast spells against bed bugs,
(07:52):
which I think is cool. There's there's this interesting thing though,
because you know, um, there's this this trope in a
lot of ancient medicine where where the assumption is one
can take something that is harmful and through certain rituals
or through certain you know, treatments, you can turn it
into something helpful. And I believe that's what happened with
(08:15):
bed bugs. There's a really great article on mental floss
by Brooke Borel called seven Infested Facts about bed bugs,
and on that we learned about the spells that the
ancient Egyptian pharaohs would try to have cast on the
little guys. We learned that the ancient Greeks would actually
try to lure the bugs out to um other flesh
by actually tempting them with a hair or a stag
(08:39):
feet in their beds, so essentially tying severed animal parts
to their bed frames and the hopes of the bed
bugs would jump onto them instead. In the eighteen hundreds
and nineteen hundreds, as we know, the problematic era for
using you know, carcinogenic chemicals to solve problems. We used
really really nasty sprays made of arsenic and mercury um
(09:01):
and um super toxic fume against like cyanide gas. So
we were really you know, meant business like, I don't
care if we kill ourselves in the process, as long
as we got rid of the bed bugs. Even baseball
bats was a thing like that's like taking it a
step further than the fly swatter. Uh. They were blowtorched,
drenched with gasoline, set on fire. Um. And according to
(09:22):
a recommendation from a book from the late eighteenth century
called The Complete Vermin Killer, washing bed frames with wormwood
and hella bore boiled in a quote, proper quantity of
urine was the way to go. Yep, boiling and urine. Uh,
that was considered a legitimate approach. And it feels kind
of scorched earth honestly. But let's get back to that question.
(09:52):
The medicine here, what made people believe bedbugs, whether their
odor or their corps, has had medicinal uses. Well, we
have to understand that for a long time, the world
of medicine was a guessing game that came out of
long standing natural traditions and also came out of spiritual beliefs. Right,
(10:13):
medicine and magic or spirituality were inextricably intertwined for a
very long time, and because people were trying new solutions,
almost everything was at one point or another and non
orthodox or out of the box solution. And well, yeah,
we've got a list of things that don't that you
(10:33):
wouldn't hear a doctor say today, But I assure you,
ridiculous historians, these were common real things. People used to think.
Yogurt would prevent you from becoming old. People used to think,
you know, a good a good dose a heroine would
help with your cough, opium with your asthma. Um, you
(10:54):
could wear a belt that would if you were impotent,
you could wear a belt that would give you electric shocks.
And if you're throat was sore, why not snarf down
some dog poop. True story. Oh no, thank you. Um,
you know, unless it definitely works and I'm totally game. Uh.
This was also wasn't this kind of the era of
John Harvey Kellogg. Um, you know, the founder of the
(11:14):
Kellogg Company, serial company. But he was known for his
unorthodox treatments, like I think he would give people yogurt enemas,
presumably because he thought it would do something good for
their you know, their health, and that that would have
been a later use of this kind of stuff. But
these remedies have been around, uh for a long time,
and even today if people use holistic remedies that some
(11:37):
from more traditional medical backgrounds might you know, look askance at.
But it's the power of belief is as a hell
of a thing, right, yeah, yeah, just like when my
GP told me that I could cure my malaise by
walking wider shins around a you tree during solstice, you know,
and I was like, Okay, I'll try asper In first,
(11:58):
but I appreciate the hustle. Yeah, you go to do
you go to? You go to Dr Merlin as well? I?
Uh yeah, I actually go to dr Acula. Um he sucks,
so if I love the way he holds his hand though, yes, yes,
thank you, thank you. Max more of it so we
we know that if you got sick in the actual
(12:21):
first century, like first century CE, you needed to be
less of a picky eater than normal because one cure
for the flu or what we would call the flu
now generally any bad fever. According to the physicians of
the time was this idea of mixing bed bugs was
STU seven if you're an adult, for if you're a child.
(12:44):
The quote is actually instructions for preparing kimisses of ye
bed which is what they called bed bugs yea, put
them in meat with beanies and what we did down
before the feat as a remedy for sweating sickness. That's again,
that's from that book we mentioned earlier. D Materia. Medicup
(13:07):
isn't sweating sickness malaria basically. I believe that's correct. Yeah,
I believe that's at least one term for malaria. For sure.
I feel like I've got sweating sickness right now, but
unfortunate don't have any bed buck lan. I'm just gonna
have to sleep it off. But it's true. I mean,
if you were not able to, you know, suck this
stuff down, you could be shamed by the local apothecary
um and that would be no good. He'd be ostracized
(13:29):
in the community for not taking your medicine. Um. Let's
say that you had something known as scabs of the
privy c the priv t s a k A. You know,
uh sensitive area uh scabs. Bed bugs were apparently quite effective. Also,
like we said, they were used for eye infections when
mixed with salt and uh and and quote women's milk.
(13:50):
For about thirty years, bedbugs have been like the mortal
enemies of of humans. If they were to be found
in a home today, it could absolutely cause some serious panicking.
Like you know, it's gross. It's like when you kid
comes home from school with lights it makes you feel
like you're dirty or something like that. It's got a
stigma around it in our society, paranoia, you know, like
(14:11):
like calling up what was that bugman's name, Uh, I'm
gonna call him Johnny, called Johnny B. Because this is
serious business. But you know, if you look back further
to ancient history, you really do see these physicians believed
in the power of these parasites, even while simultaneously, you know,
being fearing them in some way. They were considered this
(14:34):
kind of cure. All until in the last years of
BC that concept started to wayne. I guess my question is, like,
what odd choice just out of nowhere? Like it was
there there's no truth to any of this, So how
do they all of a sudden like, yeah, that's the one.
There's a there's tons of other bugs they could have used.
Why the bed bugs. Well, again, there is this there's
(14:57):
this trope you see in ancient medicine, this belief that
the one can take something that would ordinarily be dangerous
and with the proper preparations or rituals in the world
of ancient medicine, you could make it curative. The idea
that some variety of the poison, uh to put it
(15:19):
one way, could contain the antidote. Sure, it's like if
you take just a little bit of snake venom over
a period of time, it could potentially defend you against
snake bites. Or you can take a little bit of
like a virus into your body and you might feel
a little ill, especially while you're recording a podcast. And
it's a really good it's really good point backs. Yes,
(15:39):
we're not we're not so different, you and I. And
then I'm speaking to the ancient the ancient Greeks. Some
of these preparations that border on the insane. The series
one from a medical advice um poem in fact, called
the by the by the physician Quintus Serenus Saminikus, and
he said, shame not to drink the wall lice mixed
(16:03):
with wine wall lice. That's the first. I like that.
And garlic bruised together at noonday a specific time again
yeah uh huh. Moreover, a bruised wall louse with an egg.
Ee repine not for it to take this loathsome yet
full good I say, alright, yoda, Yeah, repine. Repine means
(16:28):
to feel, means to worry, to feel or express discontent.
So it's like fretting. So don't repine, which is weird
because it might sound a little close to recline. Lay back,
so it can be confirmed, which is to express an opinion, right,
or supine or lupine. Yeah, so we know that according
(16:50):
to plenty of the elder, who, by the way, was
a huge proponent a bedbug as medicine, your preparation would
depend upon the sickness you were trying to treat. Uh.
And we don't have to get too into the nitty
gritty grossness of this, but we do need to note
that pharmacopeia we mentioned, damn materia medica in a very
(17:12):
real way, became a precursor to Western pharmacology. It would
go on to influence medicine for like the next one thousand,
five hundred years, and that's why some of these kind
of whacky do bedbug medicine ideas continued to be practiced
in Europe for centuries. They even get mentioned in later
(17:35):
pharmacopeias like Treasury of Health. You would think that as
the centuries progressed, people would eventually say, hey, bedbugs can't
cure cataracts just due to their smell. But medicine did
not progress as steadily as some other human pursuits, so
these bedbug cures for things like vomiting, ear infections, even
snake bites would still be mentioned in later medical text
(18:00):
And we mentioned that trumped up pseudo medical condition quote
unquote female hysteria, which yeah, medicine held onto for far
too long. And so there was a religious aspect to
this in the Middle Ages. And we get this from
Lisa Sarahson, who was an Oregon State University historian who
(18:22):
was at the time of this interview writing a book
about the history of vermin and she said that in
earlier days, having bedbugs was seen as a sign of dirtiness, fine,
get it, but she says it was also seen sometimes
as a sign of holiness because the mortification of the
flesh was like an imitation of Christ, and people thought
(18:43):
that was kind of a good thing. Okay, all right,
I know it feels like a stretch, but this is
also the heyday of flagelence. So yeah, with the like
you're talking about where you like beat yourself over the
back that like hair shirt that was just like irritate
the wounds for the rest of the day. So we've seen,
you know, physicians talk about this being an effective way
(19:05):
of curing everything from the flu to bed wedding. In fact,
there was one particular physician that actually described it like this.
His name was Conrad gessner Um, and he said that
bedbugs bites and stings will quote provoke urine as a
diuretic and stop children's water that goes from them against
(19:28):
their wills. So it's another miracle cure for for bed
wedding because nobody wants to nobody wants to wake up
in a in a in a wetted bed. But we
do start to see the tide turn a little bit
against bed bugs as a cure because the focus began
to shift more to them as a sign of you know, uncleanliness, right, yeah,
(19:49):
a sign of being lower class. So back to back
to our story and uh Dr Sarason, who says that
nobody wanted bed bugs in their bedroom and common attitudes
towards parasites bedbugs in particular, began to change in the
seventeen hundreds as Europeans came into contact with people from
(20:10):
other parts of the world. They said, you know what,
we don't want to be around parasites, and so they
began using parasites as a way to dunk on any
people they didn't like. She points out that the English
of the time thought the Scots were riddled with lice,
and they started calling Scotland Liceland, which which is petty.
(20:34):
It's petty enough that it gives me a chuckle, though,
Are you kidding me? The English were just taking a
big old on Scotland. I've never seen that before in history.
I know, it's an unprecedented time and I feel like
we now we officially owe the people of Scotland an
episode all their own. We're with you, folks, and the
(20:55):
first exterminators that said they could explicitly get rid of
bedbug actually do come about in this time period in
the seventeen hundreds, and their recipes for how to get
rid of bedbugs were to be fair just as strange
sounding as the recipes people used in bed bug medicine.
(21:16):
One example from Atlas Obscura is this recipe that says, okay,
if you get rid of here's the way you get
rid of bedbugs. Use the smoke of cow dung and
rotting cucumber and ox scale combined with vinegar droppings from
a roasted cat with egg yolks and oil to form
an ointment that you can rub on to furniture. This
(21:37):
is like some double double toil and trouble kind of stuff,
like I have news, you know, wing of bats, roasted cat?
Whoever heard of that? I'm sorry, my my fever is
causing me to rhyme spontaneously. I just feel like this
is like, you know, the person who would be trying
this would have just tried to like dous like you know,
like wasn't there here that involved mixing at all with
(21:59):
urine like and stuff? Surely, yeah, so the room is
gonna have like human urine and out cow dung and
then rotting cucumbers that It's like, it is it a
worth what is it a worthwhile? Trade off? Is what
you're asking? I think, like, give me the bug bites
that a deal. Yeah, I don't want to smear myself
with you know, animal feces and you know, drinking ground
(22:22):
up you know, insects and stuff, and it's like, you know,
come on, yeah, but here's my question. Nowadays we talk
about things in terms of like staples, right, like what
are the staple ingredients that you would normally find in
the kitchen or household cleaners or whatever. And this makes
me wonder what the households staples of Middle Ages Europe. Were.
(22:44):
Were they like with someone like, oh yeah, roasty cat, Okay, yeah,
ox dung? How doy do are we out of ox dung?
I can't believe we just picked up some ox poop earlier.
This is well, they likely would have had a family
ox and they could have just gone and procure some
of it's dung from from you know, the barn area.
I assume the roasted cat is disturbing though. Yeah, I
(23:06):
don't like that. I want it at all. I think
I think it's three cat lovers. They don't like that.
I want it at all. I just got a six
pack of roasted cat. This is perfect. So anyhow, uh,
now we go across the pond when Europeans started to
(23:28):
traverse the Atlantic and mass they brought a bunch of
other stuff with them. They've been a lot of unintentionally.
They brought diseases, they brought bed bugs, they brought the rats,
the roaches that would always infest ships. And this is
not to say that these kinds of creatures did not
(23:49):
exist in other parts of the world. It's just it's
just known that their hygiene wasn't the same kind of
hygiene you would see how a modern cruise ship, for instance.
So the bedbug family does have a lot of species.
Were primarily talking about those two that we mentioned at
the top. But according to Robert Snetzinger, Professor emeritus of
(24:12):
entomology at Penn State University. According to him, experts still
aren't sure whether it was the infamous cimex lectilarious or
one of its related cousins that came with Europeans across
the Atlantic. But there's something interesting, there's a little mystery here.
(24:32):
Loose Sorkin at the American Museum of Natural History says
that there's no native American word for bedbugs, no indication
of it. So this to him is compelling, if not
full proof, argument that bedbugs are a colonial thing, or
(24:53):
that's how they got to North America. I love solving
a good history mystery. It's all I can do to
stay alive. I gotta rhyme. I gotta keep the rhyme going. So,
as we said, these little guys are some of the
biggest opportunists of the inset community. And they absolutely thrived
in the New World. UM, particularly after the railroad happened,
(25:13):
because you know, they were just being transported all over
the place and they could find new homes in the
days before cars and planes. He had a salesman, uh
and business travelers that would you know, go door to
door selling their wares and all that, staying in these
uh kind of fleabag motels. That's probably where the name
came from. Uh. They were near train stations and they
essentially became these like hubs for the distribution of bed
(25:37):
bugs to people's actual homes. Yeah, it's exactly right. And
the prevalence of bedbugs as this rose, as they became
more common and uh unfortunately more familiar to people across
the US, the popularity of bedbug cures also went into
a steep decline. Lice and bedbugs were still kind of
(25:59):
homemade folksy attempts securing things like tumors and goiters in
the late eighteen hundreds, but the medical experts of the
day were less and less likely to treat this as
solid medicine. In fact, most bedbug research at this point
pivoted to figuring out the best ways to get rid
(26:20):
of these jokers, you know, smoke them out with pete fires,
sterilized furniture with boiling water this time, not you're in
and scattering plant ash, uh, fumigating with cyanide, which feels
a little extreme. Unfortunately, that type of treatment, which was
prevalent in the nineteen twenties, resulted in numerous deaths of humans,
(26:43):
not just bed bucks. Not again, according to Snetzinger, and
he discusses all that in his book which you can
get called The rat Catcher's Child, The History of the
Pest Control Industry. Once the nineteen forties came along, pesticides
like DDT where used, and they could kill typhus and
malaria carriers like mosquitoes. During World War Two, which is
(27:05):
very important. Um they also proved to be very useful
in the fight against bed bugs, and their numbers really
took a dive for about thirty years. Then we we
kind of came into what we would call the Golden
era for America's mattresses. Yes, there was a time where
you wouldn't see two mattress firm stores right across the
(27:26):
street from each other anywhere you go. Uh. I still
don't understand why that's the thing. Um, but it is
a total grifh. But the Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the
use of some of these chemicals for health and environmental reasons,
and other insecticides that were very useful in you know,
squashing down this bug epidemic. We're also banned things like
(27:49):
chloradine and diazignon. That happened in the nineteen eighties. So
what happens. You got these little resilience bed bugs starting
to kind of poke their heads up. A Um. It
has absolutely made a comeback. Yeah. Yeah, And people are
traveling internationally way more often in this period of history. Uh,
(28:12):
you know, excluding the pandemic times. The idea that these
parasites could heal people didn't completely go the way of
the Dodo. However. In two thousand two, the authors of
a book called Asked the Bugman, a pest management guide,
found an unexpected repository of ancient Greek medical knowledge in
(28:36):
the Midwest. They found that in some parts of Ohio,
even in two thousand and two, eating seven bed bugs
mixed with beans is was still considered a cure for
chills and fever. That's the exact number of bugs recommended
in the ancient day Materia medica. And it's it's interesting
(28:57):
because again, these q wars might seem really strange at
the very least, if not laughably gross, but that human
terror of bedbugs, it was kind of what drove them
to turn to bedbugs for relief. There had to be
some way in which these creatures presents and their biting
(29:18):
and they're tormenting made sense, so they had to find
some use for them. It just turned out, and we
can't say this pretty conclusively that a lot of these
treatments are not on trying to be diplomatic, they're not
on the level of modern medicine. This is not medical advice.
But what we can say for sure is go to
(29:41):
your doctor if you're concerned about some of these conditions.
And you know what, if your doctor tells you that
you need to do some weird stuff with bed bugs
to get better, then tell us about it, because we
would love to hear it. I want to hear you
know somebody's GPS say like, well, uh, I'd say, you
need about seven bed bugs to do the job. Here.
(30:03):
Grind him up with beans, I recommend Garbonzo, maybe a
little a little white northern being. And but really quickly
back to Thomas Muffett Um, who was a sixteenth century
medical enthusiast and writer. Um also apparently the source of
the Little Miss Muffett nursery rhyme, or at least the
inspiration for it. He had a quote that I think
(30:24):
is really telling about the exact thing we were talking about,
the attitude of how the idea of consuming something dangerous
you know, has its like you know, appeal right. He said,
by the conduct of nature, hath produced nothing that in
some part is not good for man. And therefore that
which the comedian god thought hurtful man's posterity hath found beneficial.
(30:47):
So there you go, and with Muffett, Muffett, and with Muffett,
I think we will call it a day. I believe
it's safe to say all three of us were very
surprised to learn that bed bugs were once considered a
go to source of medicine. But there are stories we
didn't get to that we might get to in the future. Uh.
(31:07):
The U. S. Army weaponized bed bugs, trying to use
them as bloodhounds in the field of war. It turns
out that bed bugs have uh sensitivity to certain colors,
and it is their time to shine because since the
nine nineties, these little guys have been on a roll. Uh. Max,
I believe maybe we do it this way. I believe
(31:29):
you said you had some personal experience in the trenches
of the bedbug war. Oh, oh, yes, I I see
you remembered I mentioned that. Yeah. I have never actually
personally had bedbugs, but you know, in my younger and
maybe dirtier days, I had something similar called carpet beetles
in my bed. Carpet beatles. Yeah sounds scary, dude, that
(31:50):
sounds bigger they are. Don't get them. Keep your stuff clean,
all right, Well, that is good advice. We'll have to
go offline maybe and learn a little bit about the
terrifying reign of carpet beatles in the meantime. Thank you
so much, One and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
(32:11):
Thanks to Casey pegro nol. Thank you so much for
hopping on. You know, I have good news. I hear
that the uh, the the booster blues as I call them,
are relatively short lived. So hopefully it'll be like a
twenty four hour bug, not a bed bug. Just oh
thank god. Well it started in the middle of the nights.
Hopefully I'm halfway there. Um, but I actually have a
(32:34):
pretty light day today, so I'm going to go cuttle
up and listen to some podcasts. Yeah, there's nothing like
listening to a good podcast. We're a little biased, but
this is the part where we thank you, fellow ridiculous historians.
We can't wait to hear your bedbug stories. We hope
nobody has bedbugs right now. And h please consult a
(32:56):
actual doctor for medical conditions. Please consult and actually germinator
for tips on getting rid of bedbugs. Don't boil poop
and you're in just yet. Thanks of please God, no,
please God no. Uh. Thanks of course to our number
one favorite bed bug of the show, Jonathan Strickland ak
(33:17):
the Quister. We have got to get him back on
the air. Indeed, indeed, um, he's our like human bedbug. No,
that's not nice. He's better than that. He's more of
a carpet beatle type figure. But thanks to him. Nonetheless,
Thanks Christo Hasciotis needs, Jeff Code here in spirit, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. H Gabelusier, the Homie, um who else?
(33:41):
So many people to think. I feel like I'm doing
an acceptance speech in awards, but I'd like to thank Kanye.
I'd like to thank myself. Um, I'd like to thank
uh yeah. Also shout out to Gabe. Big announcement, we'll
have this doing Gabe Joints on the show coming up.
He is now the host of This Day in History Class,
(34:02):
so do check it out. We're super excited, We're super
proud of him. You've heard him on the show before,
so I can't wait to hear what you think about
his about his newest endeavor. Check it out. We'll see
you next time. Folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(34:24):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I am Ben. That's our
one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams joined as
always with my Ride or Died, the one and only
Mr Noel Brown. Yeah. Today it's a little more Die
than Ride, just putting it out there. I got my
COVID booster yesterday, and I'm a little worse for the
(00:49):
wear today, but I'm powering through for the Ridiculous Historians
and for you Ben, and for you Max. Taking one
for the team here. I'm wrapped in a blanket like
a little little lady who lives in the shoe, and
hopefully you're blanket is bug free. Today's episode is about
bed bugs. Now, like many people growing up, I did
(01:09):
not have a ton of personal experiences with bed bugs.
I ran into them like there was this very strange,
somewhat ruthless mattress program at my boy Scout camps because
of the fear of bed bugs. I never actually saw
bed bugs, and I thought they might even be kind
of like a snipe and a snipe hunt. Until yeah,
(01:30):
until I lived in Central America, And in a couple
of the houses I stayed in, someone would take me
to the side, you know, some sometime during my first
day there, and they would say, hey, when you sleep,
make sure you sleep with your pants on tucked into
your socks. And I said why, and they just said,
just do it. It turns out it's because of bed bugs,
(01:53):
which were Yeah, bed bugs are in fact real. Um,
it's something if anyone you knows, grow grew up living
in New York City or spending time, you know, living
in apartments in New York City, might be aware of
as certainly something to look out for. These things that
they hop around to right like they can hop off
the bed onto you and vice versa. Um, they're almost
like lice. I don't know, how do we describe the
(02:15):
common American bedbug. Well, it's a insect. It's it's a
common pest. They're very small. They're on the order of
millimeters in size. It's like if they were a band
instead of being and you will know us by the
trail of the dead, they would be like and you
shall know us by the trail of the bites. Most
(02:36):
people don't see bed bugs easily unless they're definitely looking
for them, or unless they're a lot in one place,
But when you get the bites, it's hard to mistake
them for anything else. We're talking skin rashes, some people
have allergic symptoms, blisters. It's just overall unpleasant and it
can be really difficult to get rid of them. From
(02:56):
my understanding, that's right. The bed bug no officially as
Cimex lectularius. They're tiny, flat, parasitic blood sucking insects. They
feed on humans and animals while they sleep. They're the
opportunistic little buggers, aren't they. They're reddish brown, they don't
have any wings, and they roughly according to the c
(03:18):
D c UH they are the size of Lincoln's head
on a penny, and they can live with for several
months without any sustenance at all. So they like to
feed on bear skin typically, not like a bear skin rug,
like bare human skin where there's no hair, because it's
easier for them to get to. But like unlike ticks
and you know, lights and stuff, they are a little
(03:40):
easier to spot because they don't burrow into areas covered
in hair where you have a hard time seeing them
right exactly. They spend a lot of their lives in dark,
hidden locations. Think like cracks in the wall, think mattress.
Seems uh, there's something really interesting too. I don't know
how far we'll get with it today, but infestations are
pretty common. Man. There's another species that's found primarily in
(04:02):
the tropics, but that vampiric grifft, is the same all
the world over. For some reason, bedbug infestations have increased
since the nineteen nineties. Scientists still aren't sure why. All
we know is that the global bedbug population has reached
a record high, and everybody in the world today has
(04:23):
managed to agree on one thing in these our divisive times.
We hate bedbugs, right, It's true. I think we can
reckon unite on that front. Um. That didn't used to
be the case. Bed Bugs actually used to be considered
a potent form of medicine. That's right, medicine, and not
just from their bites, specifically from like collecting them, grinding
(04:47):
them up into some sort of powder or like a poultice,
and then consuming it to treat things ranging from flu
two fevers. Uh. It was even mixed with salt and
breast milk in order to create a topical substance to
treat things like pink i eye infections. Really really bizarre.
It was hugely popular and used for almost fifteen hundred years. Exactly, yeah,
(05:11):
we know. One of the earliest texts describing the medical
application of bedbugs comes from a collection called d Materia medica.
They were ground up the bed bugs, I mean not
this collection of texts and consumed as medicine for millennia.
During the fifteen hundreds, for instance, people would eat beans
(05:34):
that have been stuffed with bed bugs as a way
to cure malaria. Uh, spoiler, it's not the best malaria cure.
And then they would mix bedbugs with tortoise blood to
heels snake bites. People even thought the smell of bed
bugs could have a curative effect. It could reverse cataracts,
eliminate lethargy, cure earaches, and even get rid of kidney stones.
(05:59):
Experts today believe that this weird chapter of medicine peaked
in the seventeen hundreds when women were fed bedbugs in
order to ease their quote unquote symptoms of hysteria. And honestly,
we found that little tidbit through an unexpected source, Johnny B.
(06:20):
Pest Control dot Com. So thanks so much, use information
or specifically John Bozargan who wrote the article. But then why,
I'm sorry, why where where do they get this idea?
Where do they get this wild notion? Why bedbugs and
specifically some of the materials they mixed it with. It
(06:41):
just seems like a real stretch. Yeah, it's weird to
understand it. We have to understand the ancient enmity between
human civilization and these little critters. Uh, it looks like
according to some research from scientists at Charles University in
the Czech Republic, they did a genetic annals of the
bed bug and from their findings they estimate its origins
(07:05):
maybe date back two and forty five thousand years. If
that number holds up, then that means that bed bugs
could be older than modern humans are. And there's a
ton of evidence from other parts of the world that
shows us just how old this battle has been. Archaeologists
in the nine nineties found fossilized bedbugs at a three thousand,
(07:29):
five fifty year old site in Egypt. Their name checked
in ancient Greek plays. They're even mentioned in the Talmud.
It's nuts people have been like bed bugs have been
an irritating topic of conversation for a long long time.
Even like people try to cast spells against bed bugs,
(07:52):
which I think is cool. There's there's this interesting thing though,
because you know, um, there's this this trope in a
lot of ancient medicine where where the assumption is one
can take something that is harmful and through certain rituals
or through certain you know, treatments, you can turn it
into something helpful. And I believe that's what happened with
(08:15):
bed bugs. There's a really great article on mental floss
by Brooke Borel called seven Infested Facts about bed bugs,
and on that we learned about the spells that the
ancient Egyptian pharaohs would try to have cast on the
little guys. We learned that the ancient Greeks would actually
try to lure the bugs out to um other flesh
by actually tempting them with a hair or a stag
(08:39):
feet in their beds, so essentially tying severed animal parts
to their bed frames and the hopes of the bed
bugs would jump onto them instead. In the eighteen hundreds
and nineteen hundreds, as we know, the problematic era for
using you know, carcinogenic chemicals to solve problems. We used
really really nasty sprays made of arsenic and mercury um
(09:01):
and um super toxic fume against like cyanide gas. So
we were really you know, meant business like, I don't
care if we kill ourselves in the process, as long
as we got rid of the bed bugs. Even baseball
bats was a thing like that's like taking it a
step further than the fly swatter. Uh. They were blowtorched,
drenched with gasoline, set on fire. Um. And according to
(09:22):
a recommendation from a book from the late eighteenth century
called The Complete Vermin Killer, washing bed frames with wormwood
and hella bore boiled in a quote, proper quantity of
urine was the way to go. Yep, boiling and urine. Uh,
that was considered a legitimate approach. And it feels kind
of scorched earth honestly. But let's get back to that question.
(09:52):
The medicine here, what made people believe bedbugs, whether their
odor or their corps, has had medicinal uses. Well, we
have to understand that for a long time, the world
of medicine was a guessing game that came out of
long standing natural traditions and also came out of spiritual beliefs. Right,
(10:13):
medicine and magic or spirituality were inextricably intertwined for a
very long time, and because people were trying new solutions,
almost everything was at one point or another and non
orthodox or out of the box solution. And well, yeah,
we've got a list of things that don't that you
(10:33):
wouldn't hear a doctor say today, But I assure you,
ridiculous historians, these were common real things. People used to think.
Yogurt would prevent you from becoming old. People used to think,
you know, a good a good dose a heroine would
help with your cough, opium with your asthma. Um, you
(10:54):
could wear a belt that would if you were impotent,
you could wear a belt that would give you electric shocks.
And if you're throat was sore, why not snarf down
some dog poop. True story. Oh no, thank you. Um,
you know, unless it definitely works and I'm totally game. Uh.
This was also wasn't this kind of the era of
John Harvey Kellogg. Um, you know, the founder of the
(11:14):
Kellogg Company, serial company. But he was known for his
unorthodox treatments, like I think he would give people yogurt enemas,
presumably because he thought it would do something good for
their you know, their health, and that that would have
been a later use of this kind of stuff. But
these remedies have been around, uh for a long time,
and even today if people use holistic remedies that some
(11:37):
from more traditional medical backgrounds might you know, look askance at.
But it's the power of belief is as a hell
of a thing, right, yeah, yeah, just like when my
GP told me that I could cure my malaise by
walking wider shins around a you tree during solstice, you know,
and I was like, Okay, I'll try asper In first,
(11:58):
but I appreciate the hustle. Yeah, you go to do
you go to? You go to Dr Merlin as well? I?
Uh yeah, I actually go to dr Acula. Um he sucks,
so if I love the way he holds his hand though, yes, yes,
thank you, thank you. Max more of it so we
we know that if you got sick in the actual
(12:21):
first century, like first century CE, you needed to be
less of a picky eater than normal because one cure
for the flu or what we would call the flu
now generally any bad fever. According to the physicians of
the time was this idea of mixing bed bugs was
STU seven if you're an adult, for if you're a child.
(12:44):
The quote is actually instructions for preparing kimisses of ye
bed which is what they called bed bugs yea, put
them in meat with beanies and what we did down
before the feat as a remedy for sweating sickness. That's again,
that's from that book we mentioned earlier. D Materia. Medicup
(13:07):
isn't sweating sickness malaria basically. I believe that's correct. Yeah,
I believe that's at least one term for malaria. For sure.
I feel like I've got sweating sickness right now, but
unfortunate don't have any bed buck lan. I'm just gonna
have to sleep it off. But it's true. I mean,
if you were not able to, you know, suck this
stuff down, you could be shamed by the local apothecary
um and that would be no good. He'd be ostracized
(13:29):
in the community for not taking your medicine. Um. Let's
say that you had something known as scabs of the
privy c the priv t s a k A. You know,
uh sensitive area uh scabs. Bed bugs were apparently quite effective. Also,
like we said, they were used for eye infections when
mixed with salt and uh and and quote women's milk.
(13:50):
For about thirty years, bedbugs have been like the mortal
enemies of of humans. If they were to be found
in a home today, it could absolutely cause some serious panicking.
Like you know, it's gross. It's like when you kid
comes home from school with lights it makes you feel
like you're dirty or something like that. It's got a
stigma around it in our society, paranoia, you know, like
(14:11):
like calling up what was that bugman's name, Uh, I'm
gonna call him Johnny, called Johnny B. Because this is
serious business. But you know, if you look back further
to ancient history, you really do see these physicians believed
in the power of these parasites, even while simultaneously, you know,
being fearing them in some way. They were considered this
(14:34):
kind of cure. All until in the last years of
BC that concept started to wayne. I guess my question is, like,
what odd choice just out of nowhere? Like it was
there there's no truth to any of this, So how
do they all of a sudden like, yeah, that's the one.
There's a there's tons of other bugs they could have used.
Why the bed bugs. Well, again, there is this there's
(14:57):
this trope you see in ancient medicine, this belief that
the one can take something that would ordinarily be dangerous
and with the proper preparations or rituals in the world
of ancient medicine, you could make it curative. The idea
that some variety of the poison, uh to put it
(15:19):
one way, could contain the antidote. Sure, it's like if
you take just a little bit of snake venom over
a period of time, it could potentially defend you against
snake bites. Or you can take a little bit of
like a virus into your body and you might feel
a little ill, especially while you're recording a podcast. And
it's a really good it's really good point backs. Yes,
(15:39):
we're not we're not so different, you and I. And
then I'm speaking to the ancient the ancient Greeks. Some
of these preparations that border on the insane. The series
one from a medical advice um poem in fact, called
the by the by the physician Quintus Serenus Saminikus, and
he said, shame not to drink the wall lice mixed
(16:03):
with wine wall lice. That's the first. I like that.
And garlic bruised together at noonday a specific time again
yeah uh huh. Moreover, a bruised wall louse with an egg.
Ee repine not for it to take this loathsome yet
full good I say, alright, yoda, Yeah, repine. Repine means
(16:28):
to feel, means to worry, to feel or express discontent.
So it's like fretting. So don't repine, which is weird
because it might sound a little close to recline. Lay back,
so it can be confirmed, which is to express an opinion, right,
or supine or lupine. Yeah, so we know that according
(16:50):
to plenty of the elder, who, by the way, was
a huge proponent a bedbug as medicine, your preparation would
depend upon the sickness you were trying to treat. Uh.
And we don't have to get too into the nitty
gritty grossness of this, but we do need to note
that pharmacopeia we mentioned, damn materia medica in a very
(17:12):
real way, became a precursor to Western pharmacology. It would
go on to influence medicine for like the next one thousand,
five hundred years, and that's why some of these kind
of whacky do bedbug medicine ideas continued to be practiced
in Europe for centuries. They even get mentioned in later
(17:35):
pharmacopeias like Treasury of Health. You would think that as
the centuries progressed, people would eventually say, hey, bedbugs can't
cure cataracts just due to their smell. But medicine did
not progress as steadily as some other human pursuits, so
these bedbug cures for things like vomiting, ear infections, even
snake bites would still be mentioned in later medical text
(18:00):
And we mentioned that trumped up pseudo medical condition quote
unquote female hysteria, which yeah, medicine held onto for far
too long. And so there was a religious aspect to
this in the Middle Ages. And we get this from
Lisa Sarahson, who was an Oregon State University historian who
(18:22):
was at the time of this interview writing a book
about the history of vermin and she said that in
earlier days, having bedbugs was seen as a sign of dirtiness, fine,
get it, but she says it was also seen sometimes
as a sign of holiness because the mortification of the
flesh was like an imitation of Christ, and people thought
(18:43):
that was kind of a good thing. Okay, all right,
I know it feels like a stretch, but this is
also the heyday of flagelence. So yeah, with the like
you're talking about where you like beat yourself over the
back that like hair shirt that was just like irritate
the wounds for the rest of the day. So we've seen,
you know, physicians talk about this being an effective way
(19:05):
of curing everything from the flu to bed wedding. In fact,
there was one particular physician that actually described it like this.
His name was Conrad gessner Um, and he said that
bedbugs bites and stings will quote provoke urine as a
diuretic and stop children's water that goes from them against
(19:28):
their wills. So it's another miracle cure for for bed
wedding because nobody wants to nobody wants to wake up
in a in a in a wetted bed. But we
do start to see the tide turn a little bit
against bed bugs as a cure because the focus began
to shift more to them as a sign of you know, uncleanliness, right, yeah,
(19:49):
a sign of being lower class. So back to back
to our story and uh Dr Sarason, who says that
nobody wanted bed bugs in their bedroom and common attitudes
towards parasites bedbugs in particular, began to change in the
seventeen hundreds as Europeans came into contact with people from
(20:10):
other parts of the world. They said, you know what,
we don't want to be around parasites, and so they
began using parasites as a way to dunk on any
people they didn't like. She points out that the English
of the time thought the Scots were riddled with lice,
and they started calling Scotland Liceland, which which is petty.
(20:34):
It's petty enough that it gives me a chuckle, though,
Are you kidding me? The English were just taking a
big old on Scotland. I've never seen that before in history.
I know, it's an unprecedented time and I feel like
we now we officially owe the people of Scotland an
episode all their own. We're with you, folks, and the
(20:55):
first exterminators that said they could explicitly get rid of
bedbug actually do come about in this time period in
the seventeen hundreds, and their recipes for how to get
rid of bedbugs were to be fair just as strange
sounding as the recipes people used in bed bug medicine.
(21:16):
One example from Atlas Obscura is this recipe that says, okay,
if you get rid of here's the way you get
rid of bedbugs. Use the smoke of cow dung and
rotting cucumber and ox scale combined with vinegar droppings from
a roasted cat with egg yolks and oil to form
an ointment that you can rub on to furniture. This
(21:37):
is like some double double toil and trouble kind of stuff,
like I have news, you know, wing of bats, roasted cat?
Whoever heard of that? I'm sorry, my my fever is
causing me to rhyme spontaneously. I just feel like this
is like, you know, the person who would be trying
this would have just tried to like dous like you know,
like wasn't there here that involved mixing at all with
(21:59):
urine like and stuff? Surely, yeah, so the room is
gonna have like human urine and out cow dung and
then rotting cucumbers that It's like, it is it a
worth what is it a worthwhile? Trade off? Is what
you're asking? I think, like, give me the bug bites
that a deal. Yeah, I don't want to smear myself
with you know, animal feces and you know, drinking ground
(22:22):
up you know, insects and stuff, and it's like, you know,
come on, yeah, but here's my question. Nowadays we talk
about things in terms of like staples, right, like what
are the staple ingredients that you would normally find in
the kitchen or household cleaners or whatever. And this makes
me wonder what the households staples of Middle Ages Europe. Were.
(22:44):
Were they like with someone like, oh yeah, roasty cat, Okay, yeah,
ox dung? How doy do are we out of ox dung?
I can't believe we just picked up some ox poop earlier.
This is well, they likely would have had a family
ox and they could have just gone and procure some
of it's dung from from you know, the barn area.
I assume the roasted cat is disturbing though. Yeah, I
(23:06):
don't like that. I want it at all. I think
I think it's three cat lovers. They don't like that.
I want it at all. I just got a six
pack of roasted cat. This is perfect. So anyhow, uh,
now we go across the pond when Europeans started to
(23:28):
traverse the Atlantic and mass they brought a bunch of
other stuff with them. They've been a lot of unintentionally.
They brought diseases, they brought bed bugs, they brought the rats,
the roaches that would always infest ships. And this is
not to say that these kinds of creatures did not
(23:49):
exist in other parts of the world. It's just it's
just known that their hygiene wasn't the same kind of
hygiene you would see how a modern cruise ship, for instance.
So the bedbug family does have a lot of species.
Were primarily talking about those two that we mentioned at
the top. But according to Robert Snetzinger, Professor emeritus of
(24:12):
entomology at Penn State University. According to him, experts still
aren't sure whether it was the infamous cimex lectilarious or
one of its related cousins that came with Europeans across
the Atlantic. But there's something interesting, there's a little mystery here.
(24:32):
Loose Sorkin at the American Museum of Natural History says
that there's no native American word for bedbugs, no indication
of it. So this to him is compelling, if not
full proof, argument that bedbugs are a colonial thing, or
(24:53):
that's how they got to North America. I love solving
a good history mystery. It's all I can do to
stay alive. I gotta rhyme. I gotta keep the rhyme going. So,
as we said, these little guys are some of the
biggest opportunists of the inset community. And they absolutely thrived
in the New World. UM, particularly after the railroad happened,
(25:13):
because you know, they were just being transported all over
the place and they could find new homes in the
days before cars and planes. He had a salesman, uh
and business travelers that would you know, go door to
door selling their wares and all that, staying in these
uh kind of fleabag motels. That's probably where the name
came from. Uh. They were near train stations and they
essentially became these like hubs for the distribution of bed
(25:37):
bugs to people's actual homes. Yeah, it's exactly right. And
the prevalence of bedbugs as this rose, as they became
more common and uh unfortunately more familiar to people across
the US, the popularity of bedbug cures also went into
a steep decline. Lice and bedbugs were still kind of
(25:59):
homemade folksy attempts securing things like tumors and goiters in
the late eighteen hundreds, but the medical experts of the
day were less and less likely to treat this as
solid medicine. In fact, most bedbug research at this point
pivoted to figuring out the best ways to get rid
(26:20):
of these jokers, you know, smoke them out with pete fires,
sterilized furniture with boiling water this time, not you're in
and scattering plant ash, uh, fumigating with cyanide, which feels
a little extreme. Unfortunately, that type of treatment, which was
prevalent in the nineteen twenties, resulted in numerous deaths of humans,
(26:43):
not just bed bucks. Not again, according to Snetzinger, and
he discusses all that in his book which you can
get called The rat Catcher's Child, The History of the
Pest Control Industry. Once the nineteen forties came along, pesticides
like DDT where used, and they could kill typhus and
malaria carriers like mosquitoes. During World War Two, which is
(27:05):
very important. Um they also proved to be very useful
in the fight against bed bugs, and their numbers really
took a dive for about thirty years. Then we we
kind of came into what we would call the Golden
era for America's mattresses. Yes, there was a time where
you wouldn't see two mattress firm stores right across the
(27:26):
street from each other anywhere you go. Uh. I still
don't understand why that's the thing. Um, but it is
a total grifh. But the Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the
use of some of these chemicals for health and environmental reasons,
and other insecticides that were very useful in you know,
squashing down this bug epidemic. We're also banned things like
(27:49):
chloradine and diazignon. That happened in the nineteen eighties. So
what happens. You got these little resilience bed bugs starting
to kind of poke their heads up. A Um. It
has absolutely made a comeback. Yeah. Yeah, And people are
traveling internationally way more often in this period of history. Uh,
(28:12):
you know, excluding the pandemic times. The idea that these
parasites could heal people didn't completely go the way of
the Dodo. However. In two thousand two, the authors of
a book called Asked the Bugman, a pest management guide,
found an unexpected repository of ancient Greek medical knowledge in
(28:36):
the Midwest. They found that in some parts of Ohio,
even in two thousand and two, eating seven bed bugs
mixed with beans is was still considered a cure for
chills and fever. That's the exact number of bugs recommended
in the ancient day Materia medica. And it's it's interesting
(28:57):
because again, these q wars might seem really strange at
the very least, if not laughably gross, but that human
terror of bedbugs, it was kind of what drove them
to turn to bedbugs for relief. There had to be
some way in which these creatures presents and their biting
(29:18):
and they're tormenting made sense, so they had to find
some use for them. It just turned out, and we
can't say this pretty conclusively that a lot of these
treatments are not on trying to be diplomatic, they're not
on the level of modern medicine. This is not medical advice.
But what we can say for sure is go to
(29:41):
your doctor if you're concerned about some of these conditions.
And you know what, if your doctor tells you that
you need to do some weird stuff with bed bugs
to get better, then tell us about it, because we
would love to hear it. I want to hear you
know somebody's GPS say like, well, uh, I'd say, you
need about seven bed bugs to do the job. Here.
(30:03):
Grind him up with beans, I recommend Garbonzo, maybe a
little a little white northern being. And but really quickly
back to Thomas Muffett Um, who was a sixteenth century
medical enthusiast and writer. Um also apparently the source of
the Little Miss Muffett nursery rhyme, or at least the
inspiration for it. He had a quote that I think
(30:24):
is really telling about the exact thing we were talking about,
the attitude of how the idea of consuming something dangerous
you know, has its like you know, appeal right. He said,
by the conduct of nature, hath produced nothing that in
some part is not good for man. And therefore that
which the comedian god thought hurtful man's posterity hath found beneficial.
(30:47):
So there you go, and with Muffett, Muffett, and with Muffett,
I think we will call it a day. I believe
it's safe to say all three of us were very
surprised to learn that bed bugs were once considered a
go to source of medicine. But there are stories we
didn't get to that we might get to in the future. Uh.
(31:07):
The U. S. Army weaponized bed bugs, trying to use
them as bloodhounds in the field of war. It turns
out that bed bugs have uh sensitivity to certain colors,
and it is their time to shine because since the
nine nineties, these little guys have been on a roll. Uh. Max,
I believe maybe we do it this way. I believe
(31:29):
you said you had some personal experience in the trenches
of the bedbug war. Oh, oh, yes, I I see
you remembered I mentioned that. Yeah. I have never actually
personally had bedbugs, but you know, in my younger and
maybe dirtier days, I had something similar called carpet beetles
in my bed. Carpet beatles. Yeah sounds scary, dude, that
(31:50):
sounds bigger they are. Don't get them. Keep your stuff clean,
all right, Well, that is good advice. We'll have to
go offline maybe and learn a little bit about the
terrifying reign of carpet beatles in the meantime. Thank you
so much, One and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
(32:11):
Thanks to Casey pegro nol. Thank you so much for
hopping on. You know, I have good news. I hear
that the uh, the the booster blues as I call them,
are relatively short lived. So hopefully it'll be like a
twenty four hour bug, not a bed bug. Just oh
thank god. Well it started in the middle of the nights.
Hopefully I'm halfway there. Um, but I actually have a
(32:34):
pretty light day today, so I'm going to go cuttle
up and listen to some podcasts. Yeah, there's nothing like
listening to a good podcast. We're a little biased, but
this is the part where we thank you, fellow ridiculous historians.
We can't wait to hear your bedbug stories. We hope
nobody has bedbugs right now. And h please consult a
(32:56):
actual doctor for medical conditions. Please consult and actually germinator
for tips on getting rid of bedbugs. Don't boil poop
and you're in just yet. Thanks of please God, no,
please God no. Uh. Thanks of course to our number
one favorite bed bug of the show, Jonathan Strickland ak
(33:17):
the Quister. We have got to get him back on
the air. Indeed, indeed, um, he's our like human bedbug. No,
that's not nice. He's better than that. He's more of
a carpet beatle type figure. But thanks to him. Nonetheless,
Thanks Christo Hasciotis needs, Jeff Code here in spirit, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. H Gabelusier, the Homie, um who else?
(33:41):
So many people to think. I feel like I'm doing
an acceptance speech in awards, but I'd like to thank Kanye.
I'd like to thank myself. Um, I'd like to thank
uh yeah. Also shout out to Gabe. Big announcement, we'll
have this doing Gabe Joints on the show coming up.
He is now the host of This Day in History Class,
(34:02):
so do check it out. We're super excited, We're super
proud of him. You've heard him on the show before,
so I can't wait to hear what you think about
his about his newest endeavor. Check it out. We'll see
you next time. Folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(34:24):
visit the I Heart Radio 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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