A Collection of Horrible Fates | Part 49

Ambient Songs:
By CoAg
https://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823

Intro Theme by Swift Junai:
https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lg
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjO

Writers and researchers: Jay Adams
https://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==

Jordan Gottschick https://www.youtube.com/@DerpsWithWolves/playlists

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of a
collection of Horrible fates. There is an old anecdote but
a doctor being asked what time period he would go
back to if he had a time machine. In response,
and quite tellingly, the doctor apparently immediately said something along
the lines of I certainly wouldn't go back before antibiotics.
And the final story in today's video demonstrates exactly why.

(00:21):
And if you're squeamish, you might want to skip this
one or at least that final story. You'll see what
I mean, and as always, viewer discretion as advised. For years,
an anonymous French civil servant raised a family and did

(00:42):
his tedious job to the best of his abilities, and
with an apparent IQ of just seventy five. The man
wasn't particularly bright, but he didn't seem to have a
legitimate mental disability either. By all accounts, he led a
relatively productive and fulfilling life. In fact, all things considered,
he did amazingly well. But unknownst to him, his family,
and his employer, he was absolutely singular in one particular area.

(01:04):
Even now, nearly two decades after the case came to light,
it challenges everything we know about intellect, consciousness, and what
it means to be human. The man's background is a
bit of a mystery. We don't know where when he
was born, where he lived and worked, or even his name,
because his personal and medical information were never released to
protect his and his family's privacy and identities. With that said,
we do know that he was married, that he and

(01:25):
his wife had two children, that he was relatively healthy,
and that he was a diligent and competent civil servant.
He seems to have led an unremarkable run in the
mill life on nearly every level, and he probably would
have continued on in much the same fashion had it
not been for mild pain and weakness he began experiencing
in his left leg sometime in two thousand and six. Initially,
the forty four year old did exactly what most of

(01:46):
us would do in similar situations. He ignored the discomfort
and hoped that it wouldn't get any worse and with
a little luck, it would eventually go away. And after all,
he didn't do anything to injure his like. But even so,
the symptoms continued for weeks, and the weeks eventually turned
into months. Pain and weakness didn't get much worse during
that time, but they didn't get much better either. So
shortly thereafter, maybe at his wife's insistence, the man with

(02:06):
the bullet and scheduled an appointment with a local doctor.
At their first meeting, the doctor asked about his medical
history in the current state of his health. Then, when
all the questions were of the way, he examined the
bothersome leg. Weirdly, though it seemed perfectly fine, and as
such the doctor had no idea what was causing the
annoying pain and weakness. So as a last resort, the
doctor decided to give the man a brain skin, because

(02:28):
at that point he suspected the condition might be neurological
in nature. When the results came back, however, the otherwise
relatively normal story took an insane unexpected turn. The radiologist,
to initially examine the results, assumed the MRI machine was
actually broken because it looked like the man's skull was
almost devoid of brain matter. If his medical training taught
him anything, it was that a man with so little

(02:50):
brain matter would be at the very least severely mentally disabled,
and more likely in a permanent vegetative state. However, since
the patient was an employed family man of seemingly normal intellect,
the machine and did another scan, fully expecting to get
far different results, but to his surprise, the results from
the second scan were identical to the first. At this point,
the radiologists and general practitioner reached out to a number

(03:12):
of specialists to see if they could interpret the results
and shed a little bit of light on the case.
It would turn out that the man's head was mostly
filled with fluid, and even more interestingly, his brain was
little more than a thin film of gray matter that
looked like it was clinging precariously to the inside of
his skull. He was determined to suffer from a condition
called hydrocephalus, or is its more commonly known water in

(03:32):
the brain or waterhead. Hydrocephalus is a relatively common but
potentially life threatening condition in which brain tissue erodes as
fluid accumulates and cavities called ventricles inside the skull, and
if the brain scan results were accurate, doctors concluded that
he must have had the condition for three or four decades.
This assessment was then confirmed by his childhood medical records,
which showed that he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus as an infant.

(03:55):
Back then, doctors attempted to treat the condition with a
stent that drained away some of the excess fluid, but
for some reason it was removed when he was fourteen
years old. After that, his brain seemed too steadily rode
as the fluid continued to accumulate inside his head. Amazingly,
doctor's estimate of the man lost at nearly ninety percent
of his brain between the ages of fourteen and forty four.

(04:16):
All of this then led to the real question, which
was how he'd been able to function at such a
normal level when he should have been severely mentally disabled.
The case first became relatively well known when it was
published in The Lancet in two thousand seven. In an
instant it seemed to prove that the human brain is
far more mysterious and misunderstood than conventional wisdom believed, and
at the time it seemed to disprove much of what
scientists and physicians thought they knew. But one thing that

(04:38):
so near and dear to all of us our consciousness.
For a long time, consciousness was thought to reside in
a specific location or locations deep inside the brain. But
the Frenchman's story seemed to disprove these and other theories,
because his brain was far smaller and more atvy than
anything anyone had ever seen, and yet he was a
conscious and productive being. Wasn't that much different than billions
of other humans with so called normal brain Yes, and

(05:01):
since his thin, atread brain worked almost exactly like theirs,
it now seemed far more likely that consciousness didn't reside
exclusively in any one particular area. However, here is where
the story diverges from the headlines often seen around the internet.
In twenty seventeen, a decade after the Frenchman's story first appeared,
doctors and researchers eventually discovered that he didn't lose ninety
percent of his brain like they had originally thought. Actually,

(05:23):
the volume of his brain meta remained relatively constant. It
just looked like the vast majority had e rode away
because his brain had been pushed outward and compressed against
his skull as fluid accumulated near the center. There were
so much fluid that his brain had compressed almost like
a sponge, the point of appearing as though ninety percent
of it was gone. And as for the pain and
weakness in the man's leg It's anyone's guess if it
had anything to do with his remarkably advanced case of hydrocephalus.

(05:46):
These days, the man's life as much the same as
it was when his condition came to light all the
way back in two thousand and six. The first known
victim of the bubonic plague was a hunter gatherer who
died and modern Latvia around five thousand years ago. After that,
deaths from it were relatively few and far in between,
at least they were until it should up been in

(06:07):
Central Europe in the spring of thirteen forty seven. It's
generally believed that the outbreak originated modern day Kyrgyzstan in
the late thirteen thirties, but just a decade later what
would become known as the Black Death may have claimed
as many as one hundred million lives in Europe, North Africa,
and Asia between thirteen forty seven and thirteen fifty one,
and of those, roughly half were in Europe, So to

(06:28):
put that into perspective, between thirty and sixty percent of
Europe's population was wiped out in less than five years.
The plague is caused by a bacteria that are carried
by fleas that live on rats, mice, and other furry vermin.
The bacteria are present in the host animal's bloodstream and
the fleas digestive system because the fleas consume the hosts blood.
The bacteria then spread when effective fleas move from one

(06:49):
host to another. Symptoms of it generally occur in newly
affected humans within three to seven days and include fever, chills, nausea, headaches,
and muscle soreness and fatigue. But it's the enlarged us
filled lymph notes that give the plague its name. These
most often appear in the neck, armpits, and groin, and
unlike other more general symptoms, they serve as unmistakable proof

(07:09):
that the suffer has the bebonic plague. And while the
bubonic plague is usually transmitted by fleas, it can also
be transmitted from human to human when an uninfected person
comes in to contact with respiratory droplets, pus, or other
bodily fluids from an infected person, and when a person
is finally infected. At the fatality rate is between thirty
and seventy five percent, and victims generally die between two

(07:29):
and seven days after symptoms first appear. The village of
Eam is located in the East Midlands, about one hundred
ninety miles northwest of London. England. Estimates vary, but its
population was somewhere between three hundred and fifty and eight
hundred and the mid sixteen hundreds, and while the Black
Death desciminated Europe three hundred years before, the Bebonic Plague
was still wreaking havoc in England at the time. This

(07:51):
was particularly true in London, where crowded slums and poor
sanitation created the perfect conditions for new outbreaks. As many
as one hundred thousand Londoners may have died are particularly
potent resurges that began in sixteen sixty five and ended
the following year. These days, cars can travel from London
to em in about four or five hours, but back
then the trip by horsebacker carriage took a week or more.

(08:12):
The residents of Iam knew what was going on in
London in the mid sixteen sixties, and they were aware
that the play could strike anywhere at any time, but
the village's relative isolation and distance from the city gave
some of them a false sense of security, like towns
and villages across the country. Though Iam relied heavily on
goods from the capital city, and in the otherwise pleasant
summer of sixteen sixty five, a tailor named Alexander Hadfield

(08:34):
ordered woolen cloth from a wholesaler in London. As the
story goes, a young man named George Vickers opened it
shortly after was delivered to Alexander Hadfield's shop. He apparently
opened the package after noticing was damp. He then unfolded
the moist cloth, shook it out, and casually hung it
near the fireplace to dry. But unbeknownst to him and
everyone else in the village, the fires warmth awakened a

(08:55):
number of infective fleas. The following morning, George Vickers had
sore muscles, a crippling headache, and a bad case of nausea. Initially,
his symptoms weren't necessarily cause for alarm. For all he
knew he may have eaten something that didn't agree with him.
He and his family realized it was something far more
serious when the first pus filled lymph note appeared, though
the next two days afterward were gut wrenching for George

(09:16):
Vickers and his family. His distraught wife and his step
sons watched helplessly as his condition rapidly deteriorated. The notes
got bigger and bigger, while George got weaker and weaker,
and to make matters worse, his family knew was only
amount of time before they became infected two within a
few hours. The whole village knew, but the drama unfolding
in the vicar's home. George Vickers would die three or

(09:37):
four days after opening the package from London. He was
the first plague victim of Ian, but he wouldn't be
the last. By then, the fleet had spread from person
to person and house to house. At the time, villagers
didn't really understand the precautions to take to contain the outbreak,
So George Vickers, two step sons, two of his neighbors,
and the tailor, Alexander Hatfield, contracted the disease and passed

(09:57):
away shortly thereafter. From there, the plague gathered momentum and
ravaged the village the summer and into the fall. In
some cases, entire families were wiped out, and nobody knew
if the outbreak would last weeks, months, or years. Now,
as the story goes, at the time, a man named
William Mompessen was the village priest, and he realized that
drastic measures would have to be taken. He then enlisted

(10:20):
the help of the previous village priest, and although the
men didn't know exactly what caused the outbreak, they suspected
it had something to do with the package from London.
They also saw it as their godly duty to slow
the spread of the disease in the village and prevent
it from spreading two nearby towns and villages, so they
eventually agreed on a number of measures, the most drastic
and crucial of which was a strict, self imposed quarantine

(10:40):
that they knew would condemn a significant portion of the
village to death. But thankfully, after being told, the townsbook
agreed to the quarantine and to a number of additional measures. First,
they promised to stay in their homes as much as
possible and to bury their dead on their own property
without the outside help. This was a huge concession because
as people of faith, they believed the dead deserved to
be buried in consecrated or in other words, sacred ground.

(11:02):
The villagers also agreed to stop worshiping inside the church
because the two priests convinced them that it wasn't wise
to congregate indoors. As these measures were being taken. The
Earl of Devonshire spent tons of money supporting IM throughout
the outbreak, but understandably, their reliance on outside goods actually
increased during the ordeal because the havoc the plague was causing. Also, understandably,
suppliers were wary about trading with the villagers, and so

(11:25):
they came up with a system in which goods could
be ordered, received and paid for without the buyers and
sellers coming into contact with one another. The two priests
eventually proposed a special commercial zone outside the village known
as the Boundary Stone. Villagers would then leave lists of
the items they needed and the money to pay for them,
and it holds the bindouts of vinegar which acted as
a disinfectant. After they returned to the village. Merchants would

(11:46):
go to the Boundary Stone area, retrieve the list, take
the money, and go back to their own villages to
fulfill the orders. They then returned to the Boundary Stone
and leave the items for the villagers to pick up
when they were gone. Thanks to this simple and efficient system,
the village prevented the blue from spreading to the nearby
towns and villages, some of which were less than a
mile away. The number of new cases then dropped drastically

(12:07):
in the winter of sixteen sixty five, and in fact
only forty two deaths were recorded between September and December.
This was in contrast to the brutal summer, when the
monthly death counts were far higher. If the trend continued,
they held out hope that the village might even be
plague free by the falling spring. Unfortunately, with that said,
plague outbreaks typically weaken during the winter months because dropping
temperatures killed large numbers of fleas, so the plague were

(12:30):
turned with a vengeance that spring and ravaged the village
into the summer. However, strangely, some of the residents who
came into contact with care of fleas and plague victims
remained unaffected or made full recoveries after relatively short sicknesses.
In one case, a young wife and mother named Elizabeth
escaped infection despite living with, caring for, and single handedly
bearing her husband and six children over an unthinkably harrowing

(12:52):
two week period. According to legend, residents of the nearby
stony Middleton on a hill a mile away washed as
the poor young woman dragged her face from the house
and buried them in the yard one by one. In
the end, the outbreak and em lasted fourteen months and
claimed between two hundred and fifty and two hundred and
seventy three lives from nearly eighty different families. The last
death occurred on November first, sixteen sixty six, when a

(13:14):
farm worker named Abraham Mortons to come to the disease. Sadly,
he was one of eighteen Mortons listed as plague victims
in the village. As for those who didn't die, centuries later,
scientists discovered that most of the survivors had a special
gene that protected them from the bacteria, and in fact,
the gene still exists in the descendants of the villagers
who survived the plague. However, pathologists generally agree that the

(13:36):
villagers and priests selfless action saved hundreds or maybe even
thousands of lives outside em, As with most stories, occurred
hundreds of years ago, though some skeptical historians think the
story may have been embellished. But if even some of
the stories are true, the village's selfless and groundbreaking response
the outbreak was nothing short of remarkable, especially considering how
little they knew about infectious diseases. But in any case,

(13:58):
in the aftermath, additional outbreak occurred throughout England and Europe
for more than a century. A few were even reported
in the early eighteen hundreds, and in total, as many
as fifteen million more lives may have been lost in
China and India during the Third Plague pandemic that lasted
from eighteen fifty five to nineteen sixty. Even today, the
plague is still endemic to many countries, including Madagascar and

(14:18):
the Democratic Republic of Congo, and while very uncommon in
more developed countries, they're not immune either, like for example,
one case of Buboni plague death was even reported in
New Mexico in twenty twenty. The room smelled of sweat,
blood and cigar smoke, and it was packed wall to
wall with young men on wooden benches that circled the room.

(14:40):
At its center was doctor Robert Liston, who stood a
head taller than most of the men around him. His
next patient was wide eyed and barely able to hold
still from the paint, and he was being dragged to
the table to be strapped down and held on too tightly.
There was no anesthesia in those days, and so often
the only pain relief came in the form of just
a bottle of brandy. Robert and then grabbed a knife
and step toward a leg that need to be removed.

(15:02):
This was supposed to be a simple amputation by his
own standards, one that he had done hundreds, maybe even
thousands of times before. Just before the procedure began, Robert
said what had become his catchphrase, asking those of the
room to quote time me, gentlemen, Time me. Then, in
what seemed like just a moment later, the leg was separate.
Just two and a half minutes. That's all Robert needed
to complete the amputation. But all was not well, and

(15:23):
what happened next would go down in medical history. Now,
Victorian era surgery was not great. To put it lightly,
things like anesthesia, antiseptics, and handwashing had not yet been
employed by surgeons. Operating rooms were agonizing, and most surgeons
would make little to no effort to spare patient the
full experience. The primary objective wasn't even precision, it was speed.
The faster surgeon could get in, get out, and get

(15:45):
a limb to the floor. The better the chance the
patient had of not bleeding out or dying from sheer shock.
Under these circumstances, Robert was extremely effective. While most surgeons
took several agonizing minutes to saw through some tougher areas,
Robert could do it in under thirty seconds in some cases,
eventually earned the nickname the fastest knife from the West End.
What really separate Robert from other doctors of the time, though,

(16:06):
was his care for those he operated on. He had
a strong sense of empathy and honed his speed because
it was necessary in limiting pain as much as possible.
Robert was born on October twenty eighth, seventeen ninety four
in Scotland, and he was the son of a clergyman
and inventor, and he in hired both his intelligence and
imposing physique by adulthood. He studied, towering six foot two,
practically a giant by early nineteenth century standards, but it

(16:27):
wasn't just his height that made him a big presence.
He was first educated by his father at a local
village school, and Robert showed early brilliance. At just fourteen
years old, he entered Edinburgh Medical School and by sixteen
he was already assisting the ananimous doctor John Barclay. In
eighteen sixteen he took his skills to South London, trained
under a famed surgeon, and then returned to Edinburgh to teach.
Two years later, in eighteen eighteen, he became a house

(16:49):
surgeon at the Rural Infirmary of Edinburgh under doctor George Bell.
As all of this was going on, the public just
wanted a chance to live through surgery at a time
when mortality rates were around forty percent for even the
most mind procedures. Robert, though, was slightly different. He gained
a reputation for preserving the lives of those he operated
on in a way that was uncommon for the time period.
And beyond that, he also cared deeply for doing things

(17:11):
better faster, yes, but also safer, cleaner, and smarter. In
eighteen thirty seven he published Practical Surgery, and in it
he argued that surgery should be done with precision and
above all speed. He also designed surgical tools that are
still used in modified form today. He also changed how
surgeons approached amputations themselves. Rather than simply removing, Robert developed

(17:31):
techniques for leaving folds of skin that could be sewn
back over to promote healing. This wasn't just better medicine,
it was more humane and it gave patients a real
chance of recovery and even mobility in a time when
many amputees died of sepsis. In December of eighteen forty six,
Robert reached his greatest milestone at University College Hospital in London.
He became the first European surgeon to perform a public

(17:52):
operation using modern anesthesia. The patient was put unconscious and
when they woke up, the procedure was complete. This was
the beginning of a new era. But for all his
incredible innovations, there were some missteps too. In trying to
save lives of speed, he sometimes moved too fast, like
for example, in one case he apparently removed a leg
so quickly that he accidentally castrat a patient in the process.

(18:14):
There was another time where he apparently mistook a carotid
artery aneurysm for a simple skin abscess. This would result
in the affected man dying right there from major blood loss.
Those instances, though, pale in comparison to his most famous surgery.
After requesting those in attendants in the surgical theater to
time the operation began, Like so many others in Robert's career,
he was determined to make quick work of it, but

(18:35):
something went wrong. In the heat of this Robert not
only went through his patient's leg, but he also took
off several of his assistant's fingers. Then, in a blur
of movement, Robert spun with his blade still raised and
accidentally cut through the coattails of a distinguished doctor observing
the procedure. This motion apparently startled the doctor so much
that he dropped head on the spot from a heart attack.

(18:55):
Then the patient, despite the speed of the surgery, would
later succumb to gangreen, which was common in pre antiseptic
wards of the time, as did Robert's assistant. This meant
that it was one surgery that left three men dead.
To this day, it is remembered as the only surgery
in history with a three hundred percent mortality rate. But
if we're being honest, this story smells strongly of historical embellishment.

(19:16):
It could very well be a medical urban legend passed
around by med students. But even if the story is exaggerate, though,
if you had to go under the knife in eighteen forties, London,
and you wanted a fighting chance of survival, you probably
still would want Robert as your attending surgeon. Doctor Robert
Liston died quietly and suddenly at the age of fifty
three brain aneurysm. He passed away just one year after

(19:37):
helping usher in one of the greatest revolutions in medicine
through the use of ether. He may be remembered for
a botched operation that supposedly killed three people, but he's
also revered for the thousands of lives he saved thanks
to his forward thinking care and ingenuity.