November 7, 2018 • 12 mins
A vomitorium was a place where ancient Romans went to make themselves throw up after gorging themselves at a sumptuous banquet. Everybody knows that. Except that’s not true at all. Learn about what vomitoria were in this episode and impress your friends.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the shorty. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. We don't say last names on these because
we're crunched for time. Does that mean we need to
say welcome to the long form when it comes to
the other ones? All right, I think that's a great idea.
Change is good, But you have to roll your L
Welcome to the long for WHOA, I didn't know you
(00:24):
were so good at that. Wait, there's an L, N
and R in there. Let's see if I can do it.
Welcome to the long from How is that you look
like and sound like you're underwater and eating peanut butter? Uh?
Speaking of eating peanut butter, did you know that in
ancient Rome, if you ate a couple of gallons of
peanut butter, it was very acceptable to stroll on over
(00:47):
to a vomitorium and throw it up and stick a
feather down your throat, or have sorry, have some young
child stick a feather down your throat, or Bill murray
so you could so you could throw up and then
eat even more peanut butter. That's right, Chuck, that's an
indisputable fact of history. Not true. No, And you know
(01:08):
what something was bugging me researching this, I was like,
I feel like I've said something like on the podcast
before where I referenced this being correct and it wasn't.
I probably did. But I'm in pretty good company because
we've got this idea that that, yeah, in ancient Rome,
it was totally normal to go throw up basically binge
(01:30):
and purge, but purge in like a public area that's
designated to go purge. Um that that's been around for
at least since the nineteen twenties, and we can trace
it all the way back to Algius Huxley. Actually, who
who created this misconception? Yeah, I mean I thought this
was a true fact up until two days ago. Basically
(01:53):
everyone does. So don't feel bad again. You're in the
company of Algius Huxley. How you pren on that Huxley?
Not the first name Algius Algius? What do you pronounce
it as Deletrius? I think you're you're swapping the U
and the oh Aldus Aldus. I think it's Aldus. Oh,
(02:14):
I like Algius, all right, I've re christened him. Well,
he was a very alguous person. I don't know what
that word means. I just made it up, Okay, good,
because I was really embarrassed for a second. Yeah. So apparently, well,
let's go back to Rome to quote the Great Frank
Black and the Catholic song, uh vomitorius, which is the
(02:36):
pull of vomitory Um. There were these things in ancient Rome, apparently,
but it was just a very well, to my ear,
weird name for a very u now common thing. Yeah,
and they actually know who was the first two references
a guy named Macrobius back in the fourth century CE.
He just used it as a term to describe, based clear,
(03:00):
a passage into and out of, say like the Colosseum,
where people would be disgorged out at such a gross
word into like um. Like you've been to Colosseum, right
to the Colosseum, Yeah, okay, same here. It's an amazing place. Um,
and there's there's just a lot of walking space that's
(03:23):
actually really effectively designed. And one of the reasons why
it's so effectively designed is because of these passageways to
basically to your seat and then back out into the
main walkway around the perimeter inside the Colosseum. Those places
in and out between the two those are vomitoria. Yeah,
what's what do we call them today? It's a not
(03:45):
a portal but a portico maybe. No. I mean it's
just like it's like any modern stadium design. It's the
the hallway open thing that you walk through and then
you're like, now I'm in the stadium. What do you
call concourse? No? I think we should just go back
to calling the vomitoria. Yeah, I'm gonna say that next
(04:05):
time I go to a Falcons game. Hey, meet me
at the vomatory to pardon me? Can you direct me
to my vomatorium? I can't think of the word, and
it's really bugging me. I know what you're talking about,
and I want to say it's like portal too. I mean,
it is a portal. Maybe some people call them that,
but I think that's what they're called, like sports. Yeah,
(04:26):
so there were seventy six of these though around up
and down the coliseum. And apparently did you say how
many people that they could shuttle in and out of there? Yet? No?
Apparently fifty thousand people could get in and out of
this thing, uh and like to their seats within about
fifteen minutes. That's not bad, that's amazing. Can you imagine
(04:46):
the porschemoho I just sit there in time it by
looking at the sun, so many went blind right until
it finally happened. They'd have to replace the first in
every thirty seconds they were carting him away. Would be like,
I got thirty seconds. Uh, what is the name of
those things that's gonna buck me? I don't know. Uh.
(05:08):
Should we take a break and talk about Aldus Huxley again? Algius?
All right? Right after this? All right, so you set
(05:43):
us up with Algius Huxley. What in the world did this?
How could in the world could he have affected this?
I mean, I guess he just heard of it before,
and basically he mentions it in passing in a single line.
He wrote a comic novel um called Antick Hay about
post World War one decadent like upper upper class society
(06:06):
and um he just basically mentioned like a goth coming
into a vomitorium, and UM. I from the line I
saw it didn't even really seemed to be like he
was talking about the goth was gonna come throw up
or anything like that. Um. But that was the first
instance they could find if somebody using it not in
(06:28):
the way that Macrobius was was using it as that
portal thingy. Right, So so they think that he was
the first one to say this or put it down
and pen to paper. And you have to give him
a break because he just injected a tremendous amount of
LSD under his own eye before he started writing this, right,
So we're gonna excuse him. The next person who gets
(06:51):
zero excuse whatsoever is Lewis Mumford. And he was an historian,
he was a critic. He should have known better. He
did not do his which apparently had been reading al
Drus Huxley and just basically cited it as fact in
one of his books, The City in History. Yeah, and
he he full on to find it as uh, where
(07:11):
you over eat and you go and make yourself throw
up And he just made that up. Yeah, as a
fan of Huxley's I guess yeah, I guess so. I
don't think he ever took a drop of acet either.
He has zero excuse Lewis Mumford does. Uh. Well, here's
the thing though, and this is where it does get
kind of gross, because even though they did not originate
(07:33):
in ancient Rome, there are real vomitoriums, apparently in places
like Vietnam, and I look this up and I was
trying to find a picture and I did find one,
and it looks like where you would go to the
sink and wash up in a public bathroom. But it
has it looks like a tiny toilet bowl, like it's
(07:54):
got the shape of a toilet bowl on a you know,
like waist high. And then above this least this one
it had a little tiny toilet tank. Even it looks
like a miniature toilet except waiste high. So I saw
when that was like a big stainless steel sink with
like one of those like dishwasher like you have you
ever washed dishes for a living? That was the first job.
(08:16):
So you know, that's right. We talked about that, didn't
you read out like everybody? And the Chase Barbecue? I
didn't d out anybody. What are you talking about? What
was it? I worked at JJ's. I was a boy
and dishwasher, but they stuck their tennis shoe and like
the Brunswick stewards that. Yeah, but I didn't read amount
I should have, Okay. Yeah, So anyway, um, so you know,
like the dishwashing sink thing, the Fawcett it had like
(08:40):
one of those, so I guess you're expected to rinse
the sink out after you vomited into it. But the
way you know what you're doing and I saw your
picture too, um, is there's a sign, like a like
a road sign type graphic of of somebody throwing up. Yeah,
and that's how you know to use it. So it's
like it's like thick action became reality. Yeah, so like
(09:03):
it has someone kind of been over heaving out. Uh.
You know Graphic Spew great great band name, right, they're
sort of they opened up for Guar for a while.
Oh man, I'll bet actually I did see a band
called Vomitory. Um. Oh, I'm sure Graphic Spew though, man
a lie. But apparently all over ho Chi Minh City
(09:25):
you can find these things, and some of them even
have um like pictures of ancient Rome and stuff, I
guess as a nod to the false claim that they
started in ancient Rome. My head's about a pop and
what about Germany? That gets even grosser. So this article
on how stuff works says that they're puke pants. They're
(09:46):
known colloquially as a puke pants. Not true. The only
place I saw that on the internet is in this
how stuff Works article. But there are vomitoriums in Germany.
There's a place called Hoffbrow House in Munich. It's a
beer hall that's known to have I've been there. Oh really,
I've been to the Hot Boy House. Did you see
the vomitorium? No, sorry, the puke pan. I did all
(10:10):
my puking in the potted plants. Oh there, you god,
I think that's that's ghosh, man, that's like wearing white
after labor day. No, so there is one at the
Hot Boy House. Supposedly, that's what I saw on trip Advisor.
So our article claiming that in German frat houses that
first of all, I didn't know Germany had fraternitys. That's
got to be this. This whole thing just stinks of conception. Yeah.
(10:31):
Well their source was antique dash Photos whatever that is.
It's a Crystal Lynx site. I think. So. At the
very least we know that in Germany there are designated
puke places, and anyone who's I mean, I guess. I mean,
first of all, you shouldn't be drinking so much that
you regularly throw up anyway, that's point number one. But uh,
(10:53):
if you've ever been in a bathroom stall and walked
in like Oh boy, I gotta pee and it's just
got vomit every where. It's one of the worst experiences
you can have as a human. Yeah, especially if you
don't have to pee but have to pooph We'll forget it.
It's like Trainspotting. What is I never saw that movie?
What happens? Then? Well, there's a scene where he goes
to throw up some heroine that he had ingested so
(11:16):
he can shoot it. Man. It's like it's a sort
of a dreamy sequence of the bathroom is labeled as
the worst bathroom in Scotland, and it's nasty, and he
pukes in there and then reaches in and eventually you
and McGregor goes all the way into the toilet and
swims around. So it's it's a fantasy sequence. It does
sound a little dreamy, you know, everyone's fantasy about going
(11:39):
into a poop puke infested toilet and swimming And I'm
missing out not having seen train Spotting. Yeah, it's a classic. Okay,
well I'll go check it out. All right, you got
anything else on this gross? I'm ready to move on. Yeah,
I am to everybody. We're moving on. If you want
to get in touch with us. You can go onto
our website Stuff you Should Know dot com, look for
our social meds inked, and then send us an email
(12:01):
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
Hey, and welcome to the shorty. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. We don't say last names on these because
we're crunched for time. Does that mean we need to
say welcome to the long form when it comes to
the other ones? All right, I think that's a great idea.
Change is good, But you have to roll your L
Welcome to the long for WHOA, I didn't know you
(00:24):
were so good at that. Wait, there's an L, N
and R in there. Let's see if I can do it.
Welcome to the long from How is that you look
like and sound like you're underwater and eating peanut butter? Uh?
Speaking of eating peanut butter, did you know that in
ancient Rome, if you ate a couple of gallons of
peanut butter, it was very acceptable to stroll on over
(00:47):
to a vomitorium and throw it up and stick a
feather down your throat, or have sorry, have some young
child stick a feather down your throat, or Bill murray
so you could so you could throw up and then
eat even more peanut butter. That's right, Chuck, that's an
indisputable fact of history. Not true. No, And you know
(01:08):
what something was bugging me researching this, I was like,
I feel like I've said something like on the podcast
before where I referenced this being correct and it wasn't.
I probably did. But I'm in pretty good company because
we've got this idea that that, yeah, in ancient Rome,
it was totally normal to go throw up basically binge
(01:30):
and purge, but purge in like a public area that's
designated to go purge. Um that that's been around for
at least since the nineteen twenties, and we can trace
it all the way back to Algius Huxley. Actually, who
who created this misconception? Yeah, I mean I thought this
was a true fact up until two days ago. Basically
(01:53):
everyone does. So don't feel bad again. You're in the
company of Algius Huxley. How you pren on that Huxley?
Not the first name Algius Algius? What do you pronounce
it as Deletrius? I think you're you're swapping the U
and the oh Aldus Aldus. I think it's Aldus. Oh,
(02:14):
I like Algius, all right, I've re christened him. Well,
he was a very alguous person. I don't know what
that word means. I just made it up, Okay, good,
because I was really embarrassed for a second. Yeah. So apparently, well,
let's go back to Rome to quote the Great Frank
Black and the Catholic song, uh vomitorius, which is the
(02:36):
pull of vomitory Um. There were these things in ancient Rome, apparently,
but it was just a very well, to my ear,
weird name for a very u now common thing. Yeah,
and they actually know who was the first two references
a guy named Macrobius back in the fourth century CE.
He just used it as a term to describe, based clear,
(03:00):
a passage into and out of, say like the Colosseum,
where people would be disgorged out at such a gross
word into like um. Like you've been to Colosseum, right
to the Colosseum, Yeah, okay, same here. It's an amazing place. Um,
and there's there's just a lot of walking space that's
(03:23):
actually really effectively designed. And one of the reasons why
it's so effectively designed is because of these passageways to
basically to your seat and then back out into the
main walkway around the perimeter inside the Colosseum. Those places
in and out between the two those are vomitoria. Yeah,
what's what do we call them today? It's a not
(03:45):
a portal but a portico maybe. No. I mean it's
just like it's like any modern stadium design. It's the
the hallway open thing that you walk through and then
you're like, now I'm in the stadium. What do you
call concourse? No? I think we should just go back
to calling the vomitoria. Yeah, I'm gonna say that next
(04:05):
time I go to a Falcons game. Hey, meet me
at the vomatory to pardon me? Can you direct me
to my vomatorium? I can't think of the word, and
it's really bugging me. I know what you're talking about,
and I want to say it's like portal too. I mean,
it is a portal. Maybe some people call them that,
but I think that's what they're called, like sports. Yeah,
(04:26):
so there were seventy six of these though around up
and down the coliseum. And apparently did you say how
many people that they could shuttle in and out of there? Yet? No?
Apparently fifty thousand people could get in and out of
this thing, uh and like to their seats within about
fifteen minutes. That's not bad, that's amazing. Can you imagine
(04:46):
the porschemoho I just sit there in time it by
looking at the sun, so many went blind right until
it finally happened. They'd have to replace the first in
every thirty seconds they were carting him away. Would be like,
I got thirty seconds. Uh, what is the name of
those things that's gonna buck me? I don't know. Uh.
(05:08):
Should we take a break and talk about Aldus Huxley again? Algius?
All right? Right after this? All right, so you set
(05:43):
us up with Algius Huxley. What in the world did this?
How could in the world could he have affected this?
I mean, I guess he just heard of it before,
and basically he mentions it in passing in a single line.
He wrote a comic novel um called Antick Hay about
post World War one decadent like upper upper class society
(06:06):
and um he just basically mentioned like a goth coming
into a vomitorium, and UM. I from the line I
saw it didn't even really seemed to be like he
was talking about the goth was gonna come throw up
or anything like that. Um. But that was the first
instance they could find if somebody using it not in
(06:28):
the way that Macrobius was was using it as that
portal thingy. Right, So so they think that he was
the first one to say this or put it down
and pen to paper. And you have to give him
a break because he just injected a tremendous amount of
LSD under his own eye before he started writing this, right,
So we're gonna excuse him. The next person who gets
(06:51):
zero excuse whatsoever is Lewis Mumford. And he was an historian,
he was a critic. He should have known better. He
did not do his which apparently had been reading al
Drus Huxley and just basically cited it as fact in
one of his books, The City in History. Yeah, and
he he full on to find it as uh, where
(07:11):
you over eat and you go and make yourself throw
up And he just made that up. Yeah, as a
fan of Huxley's I guess yeah, I guess so. I
don't think he ever took a drop of acet either.
He has zero excuse Lewis Mumford does. Uh. Well, here's
the thing though, and this is where it does get
kind of gross, because even though they did not originate
(07:33):
in ancient Rome, there are real vomitoriums, apparently in places
like Vietnam, and I look this up and I was
trying to find a picture and I did find one,
and it looks like where you would go to the
sink and wash up in a public bathroom. But it
has it looks like a tiny toilet bowl, like it's
(07:54):
got the shape of a toilet bowl on a you know,
like waist high. And then above this least this one
it had a little tiny toilet tank. Even it looks
like a miniature toilet except waiste high. So I saw
when that was like a big stainless steel sink with
like one of those like dishwasher like you have you
ever washed dishes for a living? That was the first job.
(08:16):
So you know, that's right. We talked about that, didn't
you read out like everybody? And the Chase Barbecue? I
didn't d out anybody. What are you talking about? What
was it? I worked at JJ's. I was a boy
and dishwasher, but they stuck their tennis shoe and like
the Brunswick stewards that. Yeah, but I didn't read amount
I should have, Okay. Yeah, So anyway, um, so you know,
like the dishwashing sink thing, the Fawcett it had like
(08:40):
one of those, so I guess you're expected to rinse
the sink out after you vomited into it. But the
way you know what you're doing and I saw your
picture too, um, is there's a sign, like a like
a road sign type graphic of of somebody throwing up. Yeah,
and that's how you know to use it. So it's
like it's like thick action became reality. Yeah, so like
(09:03):
it has someone kind of been over heaving out. Uh.
You know Graphic Spew great great band name, right, they're
sort of they opened up for Guar for a while.
Oh man, I'll bet actually I did see a band
called Vomitory. Um. Oh, I'm sure Graphic Spew though, man
a lie. But apparently all over ho Chi Minh City
(09:25):
you can find these things, and some of them even
have um like pictures of ancient Rome and stuff, I
guess as a nod to the false claim that they
started in ancient Rome. My head's about a pop and
what about Germany? That gets even grosser. So this article
on how stuff works says that they're puke pants. They're
(09:46):
known colloquially as a puke pants. Not true. The only
place I saw that on the internet is in this
how stuff Works article. But there are vomitoriums in Germany.
There's a place called Hoffbrow House in Munich. It's a
beer hall that's known to have I've been there. Oh really,
I've been to the Hot Boy House. Did you see
the vomitorium? No, sorry, the puke pan. I did all
(10:10):
my puking in the potted plants. Oh there, you god,
I think that's that's ghosh, man, that's like wearing white
after labor day. No, so there is one at the
Hot Boy House. Supposedly, that's what I saw on trip Advisor.
So our article claiming that in German frat houses that
first of all, I didn't know Germany had fraternitys. That's
got to be this. This whole thing just stinks of conception. Yeah.
(10:31):
Well their source was antique dash Photos whatever that is.
It's a Crystal Lynx site. I think. So. At the
very least we know that in Germany there are designated
puke places, and anyone who's I mean, I guess. I mean,
first of all, you shouldn't be drinking so much that
you regularly throw up anyway, that's point number one. But uh,
(10:53):
if you've ever been in a bathroom stall and walked
in like Oh boy, I gotta pee and it's just
got vomit every where. It's one of the worst experiences
you can have as a human. Yeah, especially if you
don't have to pee but have to pooph We'll forget it.
It's like Trainspotting. What is I never saw that movie?
What happens? Then? Well, there's a scene where he goes
to throw up some heroine that he had ingested so
(11:16):
he can shoot it. Man. It's like it's a sort
of a dreamy sequence of the bathroom is labeled as
the worst bathroom in Scotland, and it's nasty, and he
pukes in there and then reaches in and eventually you
and McGregor goes all the way into the toilet and
swims around. So it's it's a fantasy sequence. It does
sound a little dreamy, you know, everyone's fantasy about going
(11:39):
into a poop puke infested toilet and swimming And I'm
missing out not having seen train Spotting. Yeah, it's a classic. Okay,
well I'll go check it out. All right, you got
anything else on this gross? I'm ready to move on. Yeah,
I am to everybody. We're moving on. If you want
to get in touch with us. You can go onto
our website Stuff you Should Know dot com, look for
our social meds inked, and then send us an email
(12:01):
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
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