May 21, 2021 • 16 mins
Holly and Tracy talk about Paré's work in context on the timeline, and then a very cool modern gardening project using the book we mentioned this week, "The Feate of Gardening."
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
of I Heart Radio. Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Holly Fry
and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. We talked about m
Boise Parret this week. We sure did I level of
(00:21):
French history always, but I also have gotten just so
fascinated by medical history, so he was a fun one
to cover. We didn't get too deep into any gross
specifics regarding surgery. I think I did send you a
very silly ping last night where I had found a
translation of one of his works that UM mentioned a
(00:44):
title to a chapter that I won't say in its
um it's actual translation as I found it, because it
is a little um blue, but basically it was a
general treatment of hot will say, p yeah, there, there's
just the more crude version of it. But what was funny.
I was trying to explain this to my husband and
(01:05):
he was like, why, why would anybody worry about that?
And I was like, because that's the translation that is
about urinary tract infections, Like it's addressing the burning sensation
that happens if you have a U T I And
he's like, oh, which just sent us down a road
(01:25):
of giggling like children because we are yep, I like you,
I found myself marveling at the time period in which
he was working. Yeah. I don't think of like all
of the religious wars and the stuff with the meta
cheese and the Huguenot uh conflicts all being a time
(01:46):
when there was a lot of like surgical invention going on. Yeah,
but that is exactly when he was working. I really
did just like go whoa when I briefly googled, because
I mean, we've talked about some way longer ago than
that medical and also surgical figures like like Sashruda from
way before. But still when when I when I googled
(02:11):
and saw the word surgeon, I expected the year to
start with more like an eighteen right. Yeah. So, uh,
we've mentioned that we have tried to like get our
social media going a little bit more at least at
least feature our new episodes when they come out, um when,
(02:33):
which has meant finding artwork and I was like, oh, no,
this is from so long ago. Is there going to
be artwork uh that that we can find and use?
And man, there are so many depictions of him, like
so many engravings that are probably from editions of his
books and then works of art and statues, and I
(02:54):
was like, this is so much for somebody that I
really don't think I had heard of until I asked
who you were working on for this weekend. You told me, yeah,
I mean his complete works. We mentioned that it was
republished in multiple editions. I think it got to something
like thirteen additions before it became considered like outdated enough
(03:15):
that they weren't necessarily reproducing it for medical texts, which
is astounding. I also had that moment of like, really,
they were using a thirteen hundred year old text by
Galen as most medical most medical colleges, and that to
me is very sobering. I mean, we in the modern era.
You know, medical knowledge shifts so quickly. You know, nothing
(03:39):
is ever absolute. There can always be a new discovery
that sheds light on anything. So the idea that something
hundreds of years old, I mean if we if you
went to a doctor, partially a surgeon who was being
trained in things that were from two hundred years ago,
you would be like, I gotta go. But like literally,
(04:01):
just in this same recording session that we recorded this episode,
we also recorded the one about the Nelson Pill hearings
that I felt like I had the caveat because the
thing I was referencing maybe in a totally different state
in two entire weeks when the episode comes out. Yeah, yeah,
which is is in some ways really really cool. I
(04:21):
love that we do live in an age where scientific
knowledge is forever surprising us. Um. But it's also, as
that kind of situation points out, it's tricky because we
will often do something and then publish it and it's
outdated almost instantly. Um. This is just the trick of
our lives. I think, Yeah, his history is alive and
(04:45):
it's happening every day. I do like that the final
book of m Boise Paray's career was this snarky exchange right.
It ended in a It ended in a reality show
of French medicine. At the time, it seems so weird
(05:05):
to me that someone's ego would be so great that
they would go after a man who is so obviously
beloved right by the military, by the public, by his
fellow barber surgeons before he became a master surgeon, by
the medical community because they recognized his contributions, and this
guy would go, you know what, I'm gonna make a
(05:25):
name for myself by picking a fight with you in public. Grandmama,
What were you thinking, dude? The humiliation that he got.
I don't know. Just from the brief synopsis of of
that whole exchange, I'm like, hey, seems like you got
what was coming to you in that, right. Yeah. I'm
(05:46):
humans humans, everybody's got their weird thing. But I am
forever grateful by about this idea of you know, hey,
let's remember that our patients are human, that they're kind,
and then we should treat them with kindness, and that
we should treat everyone, whether they are a wealthy person
or a king, or you know, the lowest ranking person
(06:08):
in the battle, like they should all get the same
level of care and treatment because all of them are
worth saving. That to me is such a unique perspective
at this time when everything was about hierarchy. I mean,
we talked about even in the medical community, from barber
surgeon to surgeon to physician, how all of those petty
arguments were going on. And it's like this one dude
(06:29):
who's like, no, everybody be cool, let's take care of that.
The goal should be taking care of everybody, not our egos. Hey,
what I love you. I'm sure he had his faults,
they just aren't recorded for history. We talked about gardening
this week, Tracy. I alluded to my problem as a gardener.
(06:53):
This happens to me over and over. I'm sure this
is a soil problem. I have never gotten it to
work out right, which is that I will because I
am a fall loving person and I love pumpkin everything.
I try to grow pumpkins all the time, and sometimes
I grow beautiful pumpkins. But every time I cracked them open,
not every time, but a lot of times. When I
cracked them open, I discover that they've had blossom rocks,
(07:16):
so they were forgeous on the outside, but on the
inside they're just like slimy and yuckus um, which is
the heartbreak of my soul. However, I sure do make
a lot of squash blossom case it is during the
early bloom period because they're gorgeous and usually your your
first big batches of blooms on those guys are not
(07:38):
going to produce any kind of vegetation, Like, you're not
going to get anything usable in terms of an actual squash.
Just pull those things off and put them in a
yummy casity, it's delicious. The other fun thing I wanted
to mention, though, which is truly one of these projects
that just captures one's imagination and it's right up my alley,
relates to our episode on Bodium Castle, because one of
(08:04):
the volunteers at Bodium, a woman named jan Black, has
decided that she is going to try to recreate some
of the original kinds of landscaping and plants that would
be there, using none other than the Feet of Gardening,
which I think is just absolutely brilliant. UM. I know
(08:28):
she was working on this several years ago, so I'm
not sure where this project is at this point. UM.
They had started like their herb garden in and then
they did UM textile plants, like plants that could be
used for dying, and then they started doing UM ornamental plants,
(08:50):
and so they're they're continuing. Uh. They have been in
touch with the library at Trinity College, Cambridge to have
some access to the information in the manuscript. And there
are eighty nine main herbs that are in that book
and so UM and another twelve plants that are mentioned,
and so they are are one cataloging the plants that
(09:12):
are still growing at bodium because some of them are
still there that are mentioned, that have presumably been there
for all this time, just self propagating, and then they're, uh,
there are forty five remaining that they don't have, and
they're trying to see or they were as of as
see if they could start successfully propagating them. I this
(09:34):
is the kind of project that I love. A good checklist, yeah, um,
and a little sort of strange and marvelous effort to
recreate something. I love it. I love it, I love it.
I love it. Are you guys gardening this year? No? So?
Uh So. When I was a kid, from the time
(09:58):
that like as long as the earliest I can remember, um,
until my mom eventually went back to work full time,
we grew literally every vegetable that we ate, and so
there was a you know, whole the whole spring, summer
and fall was like planting and tending and harvesting and canning.
(10:20):
And a big part of why we eventually stopped doing
that was that, like my brother and I got to
the point that we had other interests and we weren't
necessarily around on the summer to work in the garden. Uh.
And then it's like my mom wanted to to go
back to work full time, and then that meant that,
like Mom also was not around to do all this
(10:42):
canning and stuff. It just wasn't feasible anymore. We talked
about starting a garden this year. We we do have
a few potted herbs. I don't think my mint made
it through the winter, which surprises me. Me too, mint
is usually they tend to be almost unkillable, but it
(11:03):
seems to not be living anymore, which is weird. I'm
just kind of leaving it there to be like, maybe
maybe you'll come back. But uh, Patrick wanted to start
a garden. We had had several friends that were gardening
during the pandemic, and he seemed very interested in it.
And I was like, I already manage so much of
(11:25):
our household. I cannot add managing a garden to this,
So this is your thing. Uh. And it didn't really happen,
so we may still. Uh it kind of depends. At
this point. I feel like it's kind of for the
best because our our backyard fence is literally about to
(11:45):
fall down, so we need to have that repaired, and
it's probably best to not have people tramping all through
the backyard. That's maybe freshly planted with stuff. Um, but
depending on how that goes. Once our farmer's market opens
up a little later in the spring, a lot of
times they have things that have already been started in
(12:06):
their greenhouses, and so we might still get some seedlings,
get some seedlings and start from there instead of trying
to start things ourselves from seed. They're often way better off.
I mean, I've started a lot of stuff from seed,
and I always end up with kind of weird, leggy situations. Whereas, yeah,
if I m am gifted plants like I was recently
(12:27):
by people who like are seasoned, really skilled gardeners, They're
they're much more beautiful and happier than anything I would
have started, So I'm happy to have it. That was
a little trade of I'll do some sewing for you,
which I was just gonna do. I wasn't expecting anything,
and then she showed up with like a little palette
of beautiful, beautiful plants. I do like to dig in
(12:49):
the dirt and plant things in the dirt, put my
success rate and then successfully seeing those things I did
keep all of my herbs alive through the whole spring,
summer and fall of last year and then the ment.
I really, I'm still like, how did this not survive
the winter? I'm not sure the ones that we brought
(13:11):
indoors survived on the window sill. The mint was outside
and is seemingly no longer living. Yeah, we now have
a bunch on our front porch in containers and we'll
see how they do. My roses continue to with no
effort from me, be very happy. I just clipped them
(13:34):
back and try to shape them a little. But roses
are very hardy anyway in a lot of cases, and
ours are. It's funny because, um, you know, we have
that sort of non ideal for most plants. There's a
lot of Georgia clay kind of in the in the
base of our yard. But boy do our roses love it. Um.
(13:55):
So I've been making lots of rose syrup this year,
rose water fresh from the We have one um species
of rose, variety of rose called a twilight zone rose,
and it blooms of very dark purple. It looks almost
black in some light, and it smells like cloves and
it makes the best rosewater n ever create, which is
(14:18):
pretty exciting. Yeah, our our house came with some roses.
Uh that I have tried to take some care of,
particularly cutting back the ones that are right next to
our front stairs that become increasingly aggressive. I feel like
you have a similar problem in your own yard. We do.
These ones are not a climbing variety, but they do
(14:39):
just send out these tendrils that are like, let's grow
right into the stairs. Uh. And they they have survived my,
uh lack of discipline regarding the flowers pretty well. I'm
I'm I'm in a little bit of a minor panic.
I feel like I do this every year we have
(15:00):
too hardy hybiscus. Uh. It gets a little too cold
here for hybiscus. But there are hardy hybiscus that are
meant to be able to winter, and they die back
completely every year they're supposed to. But it is terrifying
because you're like that plant is dead. And then every
year I'm like, this is the year they never come back.
This is the year they never this is the year.
(15:20):
And one of them has started to really come back
very quickly, but the other is still silent, and I'm worried.
I really want my paink hybiscus back, So we'll see
what happens. Um that is my ridiculous flower story. If
anyone out there knows what I need to do in
(15:41):
a container garden to make my um squash actually be
beautiful and healthy, please write me. I have done various
like tests of various components of my soil and I'm
either doing it wrong or I'm too heavy handed with something.
But my mint is very happy and having a lot
of mohitos in my house right now. Um yeah uh.
(16:05):
We hope that you have a marvelous weekend. If you
have some time off, we hope you use it to
restore and regenerate. If that includes gardening, fabulous. If it doesn't,
also cool. If you don't have time off and you
maybe have to work, we hope that everything goes as
smoothly as possible, that you stay safe, and that you
have the most wonderful possible days. We will see you
(16:26):
tomorrow with a classic and next week with fresh episodes.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
of I Heart Radio. Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Holly Fry
and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. We talked about m
Boise Parret this week. We sure did I level of
(00:21):
French history always, but I also have gotten just so
fascinated by medical history, so he was a fun one
to cover. We didn't get too deep into any gross
specifics regarding surgery. I think I did send you a
very silly ping last night where I had found a
translation of one of his works that UM mentioned a
(00:44):
title to a chapter that I won't say in its
um it's actual translation as I found it, because it
is a little um blue, but basically it was a
general treatment of hot will say, p yeah, there, there's
just the more crude version of it. But what was funny.
I was trying to explain this to my husband and
(01:05):
he was like, why, why would anybody worry about that?
And I was like, because that's the translation that is
about urinary tract infections, Like it's addressing the burning sensation
that happens if you have a U T I And
he's like, oh, which just sent us down a road
(01:25):
of giggling like children because we are yep, I like you,
I found myself marveling at the time period in which
he was working. Yeah. I don't think of like all
of the religious wars and the stuff with the meta
cheese and the Huguenot uh conflicts all being a time
(01:46):
when there was a lot of like surgical invention going on. Yeah,
but that is exactly when he was working. I really
did just like go whoa when I briefly googled, because
I mean, we've talked about some way longer ago than
that medical and also surgical figures like like Sashruda from
way before. But still when when I when I googled
(02:11):
and saw the word surgeon, I expected the year to
start with more like an eighteen right. Yeah. So, uh,
we've mentioned that we have tried to like get our
social media going a little bit more at least at
least feature our new episodes when they come out, um when,
(02:33):
which has meant finding artwork and I was like, oh, no,
this is from so long ago. Is there going to
be artwork uh that that we can find and use?
And man, there are so many depictions of him, like
so many engravings that are probably from editions of his
books and then works of art and statues, and I
(02:54):
was like, this is so much for somebody that I
really don't think I had heard of until I asked
who you were working on for this weekend. You told me, yeah,
I mean his complete works. We mentioned that it was
republished in multiple editions. I think it got to something
like thirteen additions before it became considered like outdated enough
(03:15):
that they weren't necessarily reproducing it for medical texts, which
is astounding. I also had that moment of like, really,
they were using a thirteen hundred year old text by
Galen as most medical most medical colleges, and that to
me is very sobering. I mean, we in the modern era.
You know, medical knowledge shifts so quickly. You know, nothing
(03:39):
is ever absolute. There can always be a new discovery
that sheds light on anything. So the idea that something
hundreds of years old, I mean if we if you
went to a doctor, partially a surgeon who was being
trained in things that were from two hundred years ago,
you would be like, I gotta go. But like literally,
(04:01):
just in this same recording session that we recorded this episode,
we also recorded the one about the Nelson Pill hearings
that I felt like I had the caveat because the
thing I was referencing maybe in a totally different state
in two entire weeks when the episode comes out. Yeah, yeah,
which is is in some ways really really cool. I
(04:21):
love that we do live in an age where scientific
knowledge is forever surprising us. Um. But it's also, as
that kind of situation points out, it's tricky because we
will often do something and then publish it and it's
outdated almost instantly. Um. This is just the trick of
our lives. I think, Yeah, his history is alive and
(04:45):
it's happening every day. I do like that the final
book of m Boise Paray's career was this snarky exchange right.
It ended in a It ended in a reality show
of French medicine. At the time, it seems so weird
(05:05):
to me that someone's ego would be so great that
they would go after a man who is so obviously
beloved right by the military, by the public, by his
fellow barber surgeons before he became a master surgeon, by
the medical community because they recognized his contributions, and this
guy would go, you know what, I'm gonna make a
(05:25):
name for myself by picking a fight with you in public. Grandmama,
What were you thinking, dude? The humiliation that he got.
I don't know. Just from the brief synopsis of of
that whole exchange, I'm like, hey, seems like you got
what was coming to you in that, right. Yeah. I'm
(05:46):
humans humans, everybody's got their weird thing. But I am
forever grateful by about this idea of you know, hey,
let's remember that our patients are human, that they're kind,
and then we should treat them with kindness, and that
we should treat everyone, whether they are a wealthy person
or a king, or you know, the lowest ranking person
(06:08):
in the battle, like they should all get the same
level of care and treatment because all of them are
worth saving. That to me is such a unique perspective
at this time when everything was about hierarchy. I mean,
we talked about even in the medical community, from barber
surgeon to surgeon to physician, how all of those petty
arguments were going on. And it's like this one dude
(06:29):
who's like, no, everybody be cool, let's take care of that.
The goal should be taking care of everybody, not our egos. Hey,
what I love you. I'm sure he had his faults,
they just aren't recorded for history. We talked about gardening
this week, Tracy. I alluded to my problem as a gardener.
(06:53):
This happens to me over and over. I'm sure this
is a soil problem. I have never gotten it to
work out right, which is that I will because I
am a fall loving person and I love pumpkin everything.
I try to grow pumpkins all the time, and sometimes
I grow beautiful pumpkins. But every time I cracked them open,
not every time, but a lot of times. When I
cracked them open, I discover that they've had blossom rocks,
(07:16):
so they were forgeous on the outside, but on the
inside they're just like slimy and yuckus um, which is
the heartbreak of my soul. However, I sure do make
a lot of squash blossom case it is during the
early bloom period because they're gorgeous and usually your your
first big batches of blooms on those guys are not
(07:38):
going to produce any kind of vegetation, Like, you're not
going to get anything usable in terms of an actual squash.
Just pull those things off and put them in a
yummy casity, it's delicious. The other fun thing I wanted
to mention, though, which is truly one of these projects
that just captures one's imagination and it's right up my alley,
relates to our episode on Bodium Castle, because one of
(08:04):
the volunteers at Bodium, a woman named jan Black, has
decided that she is going to try to recreate some
of the original kinds of landscaping and plants that would
be there, using none other than the Feet of Gardening,
which I think is just absolutely brilliant. UM. I know
(08:28):
she was working on this several years ago, so I'm
not sure where this project is at this point. UM.
They had started like their herb garden in and then
they did UM textile plants, like plants that could be
used for dying, and then they started doing UM ornamental plants,
(08:50):
and so they're they're continuing. Uh. They have been in
touch with the library at Trinity College, Cambridge to have
some access to the information in the manuscript. And there
are eighty nine main herbs that are in that book
and so UM and another twelve plants that are mentioned,
and so they are are one cataloging the plants that
(09:12):
are still growing at bodium because some of them are
still there that are mentioned, that have presumably been there
for all this time, just self propagating, and then they're, uh,
there are forty five remaining that they don't have, and
they're trying to see or they were as of as
see if they could start successfully propagating them. I this
(09:34):
is the kind of project that I love. A good checklist, yeah, um,
and a little sort of strange and marvelous effort to
recreate something. I love it. I love it, I love it.
I love it. Are you guys gardening this year? No? So?
Uh So. When I was a kid, from the time
(09:58):
that like as long as the earliest I can remember, um,
until my mom eventually went back to work full time,
we grew literally every vegetable that we ate, and so
there was a you know, whole the whole spring, summer
and fall was like planting and tending and harvesting and canning.
(10:20):
And a big part of why we eventually stopped doing
that was that, like my brother and I got to
the point that we had other interests and we weren't
necessarily around on the summer to work in the garden. Uh.
And then it's like my mom wanted to to go
back to work full time, and then that meant that,
like Mom also was not around to do all this
(10:42):
canning and stuff. It just wasn't feasible anymore. We talked
about starting a garden this year. We we do have
a few potted herbs. I don't think my mint made
it through the winter, which surprises me. Me too, mint
is usually they tend to be almost unkillable, but it
(11:03):
seems to not be living anymore, which is weird. I'm
just kind of leaving it there to be like, maybe
maybe you'll come back. But uh, Patrick wanted to start
a garden. We had had several friends that were gardening
during the pandemic, and he seemed very interested in it.
And I was like, I already manage so much of
(11:25):
our household. I cannot add managing a garden to this,
So this is your thing. Uh. And it didn't really happen,
so we may still. Uh it kind of depends. At
this point. I feel like it's kind of for the
best because our our backyard fence is literally about to
(11:45):
fall down, so we need to have that repaired, and
it's probably best to not have people tramping all through
the backyard. That's maybe freshly planted with stuff. Um, but
depending on how that goes. Once our farmer's market opens
up a little later in the spring, a lot of
times they have things that have already been started in
(12:06):
their greenhouses, and so we might still get some seedlings,
get some seedlings and start from there instead of trying
to start things ourselves from seed. They're often way better off.
I mean, I've started a lot of stuff from seed,
and I always end up with kind of weird, leggy situations. Whereas, yeah,
if I m am gifted plants like I was recently
(12:27):
by people who like are seasoned, really skilled gardeners, They're
they're much more beautiful and happier than anything I would
have started, So I'm happy to have it. That was
a little trade of I'll do some sewing for you,
which I was just gonna do. I wasn't expecting anything,
and then she showed up with like a little palette
of beautiful, beautiful plants. I do like to dig in
(12:49):
the dirt and plant things in the dirt, put my
success rate and then successfully seeing those things I did
keep all of my herbs alive through the whole spring,
summer and fall of last year and then the ment.
I really, I'm still like, how did this not survive
the winter? I'm not sure the ones that we brought
(13:11):
indoors survived on the window sill. The mint was outside
and is seemingly no longer living. Yeah, we now have
a bunch on our front porch in containers and we'll
see how they do. My roses continue to with no
effort from me, be very happy. I just clipped them
(13:34):
back and try to shape them a little. But roses
are very hardy anyway in a lot of cases, and
ours are. It's funny because, um, you know, we have
that sort of non ideal for most plants. There's a
lot of Georgia clay kind of in the in the
base of our yard. But boy do our roses love it. Um.
(13:55):
So I've been making lots of rose syrup this year,
rose water fresh from the We have one um species
of rose, variety of rose called a twilight zone rose,
and it blooms of very dark purple. It looks almost
black in some light, and it smells like cloves and
it makes the best rosewater n ever create, which is
(14:18):
pretty exciting. Yeah, our our house came with some roses.
Uh that I have tried to take some care of,
particularly cutting back the ones that are right next to
our front stairs that become increasingly aggressive. I feel like
you have a similar problem in your own yard. We do.
These ones are not a climbing variety, but they do
(14:39):
just send out these tendrils that are like, let's grow
right into the stairs. Uh. And they they have survived my,
uh lack of discipline regarding the flowers pretty well. I'm
I'm I'm in a little bit of a minor panic.
I feel like I do this every year we have
(15:00):
too hardy hybiscus. Uh. It gets a little too cold
here for hybiscus. But there are hardy hybiscus that are
meant to be able to winter, and they die back
completely every year they're supposed to. But it is terrifying
because you're like that plant is dead. And then every
year I'm like, this is the year they never come back.
This is the year they never this is the year.
(15:20):
And one of them has started to really come back
very quickly, but the other is still silent, and I'm worried.
I really want my paink hybiscus back, So we'll see
what happens. Um that is my ridiculous flower story. If
anyone out there knows what I need to do in
(15:41):
a container garden to make my um squash actually be
beautiful and healthy, please write me. I have done various
like tests of various components of my soil and I'm
either doing it wrong or I'm too heavy handed with something.
But my mint is very happy and having a lot
of mohitos in my house right now. Um yeah uh.
(16:05):
We hope that you have a marvelous weekend. If you
have some time off, we hope you use it to
restore and regenerate. If that includes gardening, fabulous. If it doesn't,
also cool. If you don't have time off and you
maybe have to work, we hope that everything goes as
smoothly as possible, that you stay safe, and that you
have the most wonderful possible days. We will see you
(16:26):
tomorrow with a classic and next week with fresh episodes.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.