0:00

right? So my body decided to

0:02

get really on seem this week

0:04

and I got sick while writing

0:07

about medieval illness. So. As

0:09

we go through if I sound a little

0:11

garbled as because my tongue is still little

0:13

swollen along with my tonsils so. Not.

0:16

I'm just going to be able to put myself

0:18

in the medieval examination room. So. Forgive

0:20

me everyone if I sell over or even more

0:22

money than I usually nukes and own on. Great

0:24

talker as it is. What's nice is we

0:26

don't have this as a visual medium so

0:29

no one could see that one are recorded.

0:31

The last episode, both of my eyes were

0:33

literally read like I was a sophomore to

0:35

some girls. Outside of the first time we

0:37

got covert, we've got a kid in daycare

0:39

geico bit more than once. I don't think

0:41

I've never been this sec like that was

0:44

that was up to have. No we pick

0:46

up something really nasty it it's taking a

0:48

long time to get through so but the

0:50

it's just it's right on thing. So here

0:52

we are feel little six still talking. Mental

0:54

Illness. So

1:00

kind of as I predicted the last time we're

1:03

talking at. this is a. A big topic. And

1:05

so I did. I'd I. Decide their needs

1:07

to be another split. So instead

1:09

of medieval treatment and illness and

1:11

I'm going to have to like

1:13

shove that back as it turns

1:15

out that just the medieval examination.

1:18

Was a big enough topic, but I think it deserves

1:20

to like. Sit on it's own,

1:22

or if if I try to shove everything else

1:24

in off to make that stuff shorter, less fun,

1:26

and everyone just forget everything. So we're not

1:28

doing treatments. Were doing the examination

1:30

so like what does it a

1:33

medieval doctor. During the

1:35

theoretical turn due to

1:37

examine the. Body Art and I

1:39

got okay. well I'll hold on what I've

1:41

got for next episode. Yes, you're going to

1:44

be great for the next orgasm. Because.

1:46

I've got some weird cures. So

1:48

what we're talking about today's just

1:50

okay. Feel sick or you may

1:53

be think you might be getting

1:55

sick. Ah, and there are practitioners

1:57

around. What are those practitioners do?

2:00

to try to determine what your illness

2:02

is and then, you know, apply

2:04

appropriate course of medicine

2:06

after that. Are you asking

2:08

me this? No, that's what I'm saying what we're looking at. I'm

2:11

guessing it's body fluid related. It

2:14

is in fact heavily reliant on

2:16

the body fluid. And remember, there

2:18

is a more visible part

2:20

of medicine to us now because it's based

2:23

in text. The Salerno approach

2:25

to medicine that we talked about

2:27

last time, and that's

2:29

the one we know more about because they're

2:31

writing to each other developing this on text.

2:33

It's accessible to historians. Remember

2:35

that at this time, especially while this turn

2:38

is being made, there's probably

2:40

a whole other culture of

2:42

practitioners and practice that's going to be

2:44

happening. That's less accessible to us and that

2:46

we aren't going to be, it probably would

2:48

have looked more like what was coming out of Bald's Leech

2:50

Book. And this was probably happening

2:53

simultaneously at this point of, you

2:55

know, the 11th century, long 12th

2:57

century. Well, Bald's Leech Book was

2:59

drawing heavily from the Mediterranean tradition,

3:01

but it goes so far beyond

3:04

that. There are

3:06

so few medical practitioners that

3:09

acquired anything that we would identify

3:11

as formal training. A lot

3:14

of this, we're dealing with monks, we're dealing with

3:16

nuns, we're dealing with priests, but

3:19

we're also just dealing with random lay people.

3:21

And for a lot of people, this was

3:23

like not even their profession. This was their

3:25

side gig. This was like, oh

3:27

yeah, well this person knows a lot about healing

3:30

and that's who you go to. And

3:32

that was something that when I was doing my

3:34

reading, I was coming. So part

3:36

of the big part of what I was reading

3:38

when I was like, okay, so tell me more

3:40

about these treatments, was basically

3:42

like we've got these documents like

3:45

Bald's Leech Book, the Lacanunga, things

3:47

like that. But it's

3:49

impossible to know how

3:51

widespread that knowledge was

3:54

for the medicine that people encountered

3:56

on a day-to-day basis, and we

3:58

don't know what. kind of

4:00

medicine that they were encountering outside

4:03

of these books, outside

4:05

of like the academic

4:07

version of these treatments.

4:10

So like you have lay treatments

4:12

that some of them are just

4:14

straight up magic where you've

4:16

got like literal incantations

4:19

and a lot of it doesn't make it

4:21

in because we know when we look at

4:23

previous documents where they're drawing from and we

4:25

can see them doing editing sort of like

4:28

the King James Bible where we can we

4:30

can go back and be like oh you

4:32

cut certain parts of the Bible out. You

4:35

do that with the medical treatment, the medical

4:37

text, and you end up figuring out like

4:40

wow you cut out most of women's

4:42

health and most of child related

4:45

health when you were compiling this

4:47

thing. So with your reading

4:49

do you have any sense of

4:52

how much was cut and also

4:54

how deep this knowledge went into

4:57

the lay understanding of

4:59

medicine? I would think of this less

5:01

as something being cut and more of something

5:03

being formed. So this is a new type

5:05

of medicine that's coming in and it's going

5:08

to slowly take over the practice of medicine.

5:10

But it's humor based right? It is humor

5:12

based. It's a new theoretical. That is old.

5:14

But it's again think about it

5:16

like the Renaissance where you had this period

5:18

where you had a very developed classic you

5:21

know the classical ancient world had

5:23

this very developed culture that got

5:25

they wrote it down so it was able to be saved

5:27

and there was a certain amount of people that still engaged

5:29

with it continually but it was small. Then we get to

5:31

the Renaissance and people pick up those texts again and they

5:34

blur for it and we even see like very

5:36

similar architecture come back because they're

5:38

reaching back into time and pulling

5:40

it out. And what

5:42

happens in the long 12th century is

5:45

like a small renaissance in that context.

5:47

And part of

5:49

what the Benedictine reforms have done is

5:51

they've created a more scholarly church

5:55

and then there's church properties all over Europe. And

5:58

they take a Latin turn and they take a Latin term. They

6:00

create the sort of i'm much

6:02

more scholarly. Approach.

6:05

Textual approach to a lot of topics

6:07

thrive and so you get this money.

6:09

Renaissance of them reach him all the

6:11

way back to Greece. sort of jumping

6:14

over folk traditions and folk culture that

6:16

have existed in Europe and pulling Mediterranean

6:18

practices back in. Right and

6:20

breathing life into the eminent objects. That

6:22

doesn't quite answer my question though I'm.

6:25

I'm. Thinking particularly, there's something that really loved

6:27

out when I was. Doing. Supplementary

6:30

reading on this and it was immediately

6:32

apparent to me and I don't know

6:34

why, it never occurred to me that

6:36

the vast majority of. Both. Short

6:39

term and long term Care of

6:41

the Sec. Filter. Women: Which

6:44

that is. A group that is

6:46

not well recorded is not granted

6:48

very good access to any of

6:50

this material. The monks are not

6:53

exactly thrilled that women exist to

6:55

begin with. Seems to which hooked

6:57

your clothes are these documents. And

6:59

so when you're when you're looking

7:01

at the vast majority of people

7:04

who are going to be dealing

7:06

with the Sec. Being women

7:08

and they're not given access

7:10

at least to the degree

7:12

that men are. So like

7:14

how how realistic and how

7:16

widespread was this medicinal change

7:18

that was taking place? That's

7:20

I'm saying is what we

7:22

can talk about Is this

7:24

because it because it's. Text is

7:27

actually very small reality of what

7:29

Madison actually. Was there would have

7:31

been this much bigger, richer folk

7:33

medicine going on and yet you're

7:35

right. It was primarily Pat getting

7:37

passed down from woman to woman

7:39

and a whole suite. The traditions,

7:41

And Knowledge Stout, we're not written down,

7:43

we're not cared for, were not given

7:46

legitimacy, and so we have some access

7:48

to them. And as I'd like. It

7:50

it reside a lot it in obstetrics which

7:52

is like I'm saving for a whole other

7:55

episode brawl or get more into their to

7:57

love yeah ram. and and a bunch of

7:59

the so needed medicine with that. There

8:01

are places where we can see hints that this

8:04

was happening, and we just know that this was

8:06

happening, if you just think about it for five

8:08

seconds, like you said, the people who were treating

8:10

people day to day were women

8:12

in the household, that was kind of like, if

8:14

there is a household, the head, the lady of

8:16

the household was sort of in charge of the

8:19

medicine of the people who were around her, and

8:21

that wisdom and knowledge was getting passed

8:23

down amongst women. In the same way,

8:25

even today, with all

8:27

the advances, that

8:30

we've made in terms of how we have

8:32

brought men back into the family, rather

8:34

than using, men used to

8:36

have a sort of entirely public facing role for the

8:39

last few hundred years in our culture, and we're bringing

8:41

men back into the family and giving them a

8:43

back involved in childcare. And even with that,

8:46

we noticed that when we had a baby, I

8:48

just had no particular interest in babies until we

8:50

had our own, and yet I had

8:52

all this passive knowledge of how to care for

8:54

a baby that hadn't even realized been passed on

8:56

to me in a way that was not passed

8:58

down to you, just because

9:00

these sort of like very

9:02

informal networks and knowledge sharing

9:04

just exist in these gendered spaces. And

9:07

this would have been even bigger at this

9:09

point, because there were very gendered spheres. So

9:11

yes, that's what I was starting with, is

9:13

like what we're talking about, and what we're

9:15

able to talk about in a detailed way,

9:17

is like this very

9:19

new phenomenon of the scholarly

9:21

type of medicine that is

9:23

very theoretical, that is injecting

9:26

itself amongst a tradition

9:28

that was much richer, but unfortunately kind

9:30

of invisible to us, because it wasn't

9:32

text-based, and therefore isn't available to historians.

9:35

I imagine this was actually probably catastrophic

9:37

for patients then. It's unclear, because there

9:40

was no medical forms where we

9:42

can trace behind. No, it's not like where

9:44

you can look at where

9:46

doctors suddenly got involved in childbirth, and

9:48

you're like, oh, mortality really went up

9:50

for a while. Yeah,

9:53

and when we get there, I think this is

9:55

kind of a thing that probably

9:57

happened several times, as... There

10:01

are these repeated periods

10:03

of formal takeover, especially

10:05

by the church

10:07

of major areas of life

10:09

as they declare themselves scholars

10:11

and the former holders of

10:13

knowledge and enter into a

10:15

new part of life that they

10:18

previously weren't practicing

10:20

in or in charge of, shoving

10:23

particularly women and their like passed

10:25

down knowledge out of the way and then

10:27

making a huge mess because yeah, you lost all

10:29

that knowledge and they're coming in with an attitude

10:32

that is already that

10:34

they are better and no more and

10:37

that the lives that they're dealing with

10:39

are lesser than them if they're women

10:41

or children. So this is like a

10:43

this is a patriarch process very, very

10:45

literally literally the patriarch of the church

10:48

is getting spread throughout Europe and this

10:50

is part of that and this

10:53

scientific of medicine and healing is

10:55

this process and it looks like

10:57

this, this very heady

10:59

theoretical term in medicine. Oh man,

11:01

it's like where your company

11:03

gets bought out by some larger holding group

11:06

and they put an MBA in charge and

11:08

he has no idea how your business is

11:10

run but he's busy telling you what to

11:12

do and you're like, okay, that's the terrible

11:14

idea but I guess I have to do

11:16

it except people die. Yeah, there's a lot

11:18

of that but the other reality is

11:21

that there probably was a lot

11:23

of incorporation of folk medicine into

11:25

practitioners. There is the

11:27

reality that upon writing it down and

11:29

having these massive reintroducing

11:32

the lecture and that kind of teaching

11:34

that we were able to advance medicine and

11:36

we probably wouldn't have if it's data folk

11:39

practice. So I would think of

11:41

it as a difficult turn,

11:44

clearly a turn

11:46

that was patriarchal so it was not

11:48

great for women especially women practitioners but

11:51

it seemed to be this thing that just like we

11:54

could have done it better had we had some sort of

11:56

like broad scale view but this is the way it happened

11:58

and it wasn't all bad but yeah. Yeah,

12:01

the churches and people

12:04

related to the church, the sort of like,

12:06

there's the church who are scholars on a

12:08

religious base and then there's sort of a

12:10

secular scholarship that's kind of starting to build

12:13

underneath it. Both of

12:15

those are grabbing hold of medicine

12:17

and health as their domain.

12:20

And they're going about in a particular way that

12:22

is very much reaching back into the classics and

12:24

into the, and using

12:27

also Arabic practices and bringing them

12:29

into Europe. There's no science like

12:31

an out out war with folk medicine in Europe,

12:34

but it's not necessarily aligned and

12:36

there's definitely, I'm sure, knowledge

12:39

being lost. Now, when

12:42

we get to partly why I took

12:44

out treatments because it was its big

12:46

thing, I think that's where

12:48

it's clear that the folk medicine's really being placed in

12:51

because they're not reaching back for

12:53

Greek herbology. They're going to European

12:56

medicines, European cures in

12:58

a lot of ways. And I think

13:00

that's where you're going to see sort

13:02

of this like folk based knowledge come

13:05

back in. Yeah, because like the Luck

13:07

Nunga and Bald's Leechbook, which are like

13:09

very Anglo-Saxon, like English cures, that

13:12

all pull off of Mediterranean and

13:15

Middle Eastern cures. It's very herbology

13:17

kind of. Yeah, well, everyone was

13:19

using herbal medicines because that's what

13:21

you have on hand. But it's

13:24

by necessity, you're going to be using the

13:26

plant life that's around you because you don't

13:28

have enough to treat everybody with

13:30

something you can import from Mediterranean. Some

13:32

stuff grows everywhere, but there's other things

13:34

that just don't. And you can

13:37

just see when the herbology is basically just so

13:39

complex that you

13:41

can see there's people going, we

13:44

just know this in this region, you use this

13:46

to treat this. And it's getting, and then you'll

13:49

see them, we'll get into this when this

13:51

is the actual topic, but you can see them trying to

13:53

then be like, well, it's because that herb

13:55

is adding dryness to the body. Like they're trying

13:58

to re-inscribe. their

14:01

new theory and theoretical overlay

14:04

into this other

14:06

knowledge. This

14:08

is all to say that what I am describing is

14:11

what is visible to us

14:13

through text, which is what historians have

14:15

to look at. Just know that this

14:17

isn't everyone. This is kind of like the new kids

14:20

on the block in terms of medicine and

14:22

it's part of a movement that grows from here. Do

14:25

we use the music for that? No. That's

14:28

too old for me. I don't even know. If you put the new

14:30

kids on the block music in front of me, I'd be like, I

14:32

have no idea what that is. So part

14:34

of what is happening is you are

14:36

seeing the start of the

14:39

scholarly physician. It's not something that

14:41

shows up overnight. This

14:44

is something that if you went in 950 to

14:48

a monastery, there may

14:50

have been a practicing physician there.

14:54

So this is something that is already kind of there and

14:56

it grows slowly but surely. You

14:58

have these people who, in this

15:00

case, we're talking about these men who are

15:02

taking this on as a particular interest and reaching

15:04

back in the classical text to try and learn

15:06

something. They are practitioners

15:09

in their area. They practice on

15:11

their fellow monks, on

15:13

people in the villages that are around them.

15:16

If you got good, then you'd have very

15:18

important people reach out to you looking

15:20

for help if they're feeling sick.

15:22

What I came here today to

15:24

give the idea of is, okay,

15:27

what does the medieval examination

15:29

look like for

15:31

this group? Knowing that there's

15:34

probably another practice where you would go to the lady

15:36

house and she'd have a whole

15:38

suite of things. It could have been the

15:40

same. I'm not sure. Or they could have

15:42

been completely different. Unfortunately, it's just not as

15:45

available to us. What

15:48

you have are all these texts that,

15:50

again, the last one where we have these

15:53

manuals of like, okay, so you

15:55

practitioner, when you get back to your monastery, here's

15:57

your things to go look for when someone comes

15:59

back. comes to you with an illness? Constantine

16:01

the African calls them the like contrainatural

16:04

things that are unnatural happening in the

16:06

body basically. And you're looking

16:08

for a handful of things.

16:11

Blood red eyes? Some obvious, some non,

16:13

yes. That would be called, I

16:15

think they would call like, like

16:19

if you had severe redness of the eyes, they'd see that

16:21

as like a. Penguin?

16:24

No, a problem of the members. So they like,

16:27

your eyes are a member of the body. There's

16:30

an obvious injury or illness to

16:32

that member. So they label

16:34

it as such. And so, but you're

16:37

looking for fever. This is one of the

16:39

things they're gonna check for. They're going to check for

16:41

swelling. They're going to

16:43

check for signs of chill. So

16:46

that's like literally like, well they

16:48

consider diseases of being

16:50

exposed to cold, which would make

16:52

sense. Heatings, let the consistent. So

16:54

you end up with like, I

16:56

hear. Like are they actually looking

16:58

for like, blackening of. No,

17:00

I mean that would have been obvious and they

17:02

would have been able to label that. But I

17:05

think it's more like, if you're persistently having, struggling

17:07

keeping your body temperature up seems more like what

17:09

they're describing. Obvious injuries. And

17:12

then the big thing is, cause those are, there's obvious

17:14

things like, if you come up with your arm cut

17:16

off, they're gonna be like your arms cut off. That's, there

17:18

you go. And there are certain

17:20

diseases that they're very familiar with. Leprosy,

17:23

smallpox. They know what these are. We'll

17:26

talk about them more in detail when we get

17:28

to like, treatments. Right. But when you have just

17:30

like, something you're not sure what's going on, you're

17:33

not feeling good. Something's

17:35

up, you're looking for a diagnosis. The big

17:37

thing that they're gonna be looking at is

17:39

your skin, your pulse, and

17:42

your pee. It's interesting

17:44

that they were looking at the pulse. Yeah, actually

17:47

the pulse thing, I was very, well, I'm

17:49

gonna break it down. It's

17:51

way more astute than

17:53

I would think until of course they start mapping it onto

17:55

the humerus thing. Of course. Then

17:57

you get lost in it. in

18:00

but you'll see

18:02

when we get there. But one thing

18:04

a physician will do is they

18:07

would have regular patients which I was kind of

18:09

impressed with. So these

18:11

texts considered there are three states like

18:13

three people that need continual supervision of

18:16

health. Those who are prone

18:18

to fall ill so there's like this recognition that there

18:20

are people who are just kind of like... Sickly. Yeah,

18:23

you're sickly. You tend to get something every six months or you

18:25

just like you're not very strong.

18:27

That must be really tough I

18:29

can't imagine just regularly getting sick.

18:32

So these are people are like, yeah, come visit me

18:34

regularly. You've got a child in daycare. Those

18:37

who are beginning to fall ill so it's like,

18:40

ah, you're feeling a little off

18:42

so come to me every week, you know, type

18:44

thing. What they're going

18:46

to think of that is we're going to balance your humors

18:48

because they're slightly off now and we don't want to

18:50

get them way off. Right.

18:53

Preventative medicine. Yeah, and then this

18:56

acknowledgment that there's the young and the

18:58

old are kind of like in this category.

19:00

Right. Yeah. And

19:02

then all medicine is considered

19:04

in this practice is again, the

19:07

harmonious maintenance of humor balance.

19:09

Okay, I want to pause really briefly. So

19:11

they are concerned with the care for the

19:14

young like children. There's

19:16

just sort of an acknowledgement that like I

19:18

could not find a whole lot of evidence

19:20

for like special pediatrics. There

19:23

was just sort of like this like, keep an

19:25

eye on them when they're young. I don't even know

19:27

what that means because there's not like here's the drugs

19:29

for kids. But there's clearly

19:32

the child mortality would have been really high. There

19:35

was a 14th century text that I was like

19:38

poking around and they literally erased

19:40

childcare stuff out of like pediatric

19:42

stuff out. It's crazy. And

19:44

this stuff, this is I have I

19:46

have cut some stuff from this because that kind

19:49

of thing accelerates as we go forward. I'm

19:52

trying to get again kind of hang as close to the

19:54

12th century as I can. But

19:57

the sort of there's

20:00

There's an increase of

20:02

sort of hierarchical oppression,

20:04

so the oppression that comes from an

20:07

aristocracy that is getting more and more

20:09

aggressive towards non-aristocracy, and there's also an

20:11

increase in misogynistic

20:14

patriarchy. Right,

20:18

so you have the social downward pressure and

20:20

then it ever turns into crabs in a

20:22

bucket. Yeah, in the 13 to 1400s,

20:24

you really start to get like an increase

20:27

of that and part of its ideological coming from

20:29

the church where they've made some decisions there that

20:31

are like, yeah, this is where we need to

20:33

go. Right. But

20:36

back here at the long

20:38

12th century, again, you can't pretend

20:40

it's some sort of utopia for women,

20:42

but there was definitely a decision

20:44

to make things more hierarchical

20:47

later, so it's a

20:49

little more balanced at this point. So

20:52

if you come in with an obvious fever or swelling, there's

20:55

part of your diagnosis, your physician's going

20:57

to notice that. They're seeing

20:59

it as... You've got a lump. Yeah.

21:02

So they see that as like an obvious

21:04

excess of particular humors. And

21:09

they have a list of like how to then

21:12

like differential diagnose what's

21:14

coming in based on that fever. So

21:16

if you have a continuous fever, that's

21:19

a sign of putridity in the veins. Okay.

21:22

That was their term for it. You've got an infection.

21:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So far. Fevers

21:27

that come and go. So you've

21:29

got goose-less fevers that reside in a

21:31

sensitive number. The hot and cold thing.

21:34

Yeah. Gnawing and chilling, which is

21:36

considered a like sign of a

21:38

localized infection. Fever that

21:40

declines day by day is a minor putridity.

21:43

I want that to be like our next name for like a

21:46

trivia night team. But if you

21:48

come in with... Gross. ...a fever

21:50

that's high and the next day it's less, you come

21:52

in again. They're like, oh, you've cooled down a bit.

21:54

You've got a cold. You're going to be okay. Right.

21:57

Basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. modern

22:00

doctors were like, okay, you're hanging out at

22:02

a moderate fever continually for days.

22:05

I'm concerned. Yeah. Something

22:07

serious. If it's coming and going, there's an

22:09

infection that you're fighting somewhere that's not

22:11

going away. Is there any commentary regarding

22:14

visible signs on the skin in

22:16

relation to fevers? Like,

22:19

if you have an infected wound and you have

22:22

red spider web type patterning,

22:24

that's a bad infected wound.

22:28

This would be considered a swelling. Now,

22:31

swelling, again,

22:33

they're going to put them in the humor context.

22:35

If you have a blood-based swelling, this

22:37

is characterized by redness, pain,

22:41

heat, and swelling, which

22:44

sounds like that's a cut that got infected

22:46

to me or maybe something that's under the

22:48

skin. Or a nasty spider bite. Then you

22:50

have red bile swelling, heat,

22:53

redness mixed with a yellow color. That sounds

22:55

bad to me. Like

22:57

pain and rapid growth. Yeah, that

22:59

would be like a boil, right? Or

23:02

some kind of abscess. I don't

23:04

know. This is how they classify

23:06

them. The reality is that probably a

23:08

lot of things are getting caught up in this that

23:10

are not actually related, but because they're, you know, this

23:12

is how it goes. You have

23:14

phlegm-based swelling, which are white in color

23:17

and soft. If you press your finger into it, it

23:19

makes an indentation and has no color. Gross.

23:23

Okay. Would that be like

23:25

a blister? That sounds like,

23:27

yeah. Okay. I mean, to me, that sounds like something

23:29

that's filled with pus. Yeah. Okay.

23:33

But again, we don't know because this is their categorization

23:35

and they're thinking of it as what

23:38

falls into our categorization of

23:40

what one of the humors is. Right. And

23:43

then black bile swelling. So a

23:45

swelling that's considered excess of black bile. That's

23:48

what I'm saying. Red bile swelling, that's

23:51

named that because it's

23:53

considered those are caused by an excess of red bile and you

23:55

want to purge that. Yeah. Black

23:57

bile swelling is cancer. It's

24:00

great hardness, black in color,

24:02

and an absence of sensation. That

24:05

doesn't sound really bad. Yeah, that's really

24:07

bad melanoma or something like that. But

24:09

they do actually, they say that their term for

24:11

that is a cancer, which is

24:14

probably where that term is still being

24:16

used and the way it is. And so

24:18

those are the four categorizations of swelling. So

24:20

that's part of their examination of you. It's like they're going to

24:23

categorize if you have some sort

24:25

of physical swelling on your body. So

24:27

that's a term and based on that, whether or not it's

24:29

an excess of which humor? And

24:31

then they start extracting fluids? We're not

24:33

at treatments yet. Okay. Because

24:36

those get so weird and crazy that they have to be their own episodes.

24:38

As soon as you mention cancer, I'm like, so when

24:40

do you cut that thing out? The

24:44

other thing that they're going to do, and we touched on this briefly

24:46

last time, which is they're going to look at your skin. They're

24:50

going to look at the color of your skin and indicate,

24:53

if you're kind of red, they're going to indicate that

24:55

that's like a little more. I'm a winter. Well,

24:57

there's your actual complexion, which they'll consider because they

25:00

already consider that it's like, okay, what is your

25:02

normal condition of the body? What foundation do we

25:04

need to apply? But

25:07

they also have indications of

25:09

they're looking at your pores. And

25:13

so if your pores are constricted, then they

25:15

consider that sign that something's being retained and

25:19

that maybe you're suffering from constipation

25:21

and you need purging treatments. Okay.

25:25

So you want like Edward

25:27

James almost pores where they're just like

25:29

really open and craggy. I

25:32

think they're just saying there's a normal condition of the

25:34

pores. And so if you come in, they're

25:37

looking at the quality of the body. If you have really

25:39

closed pores, something's being retained,

25:42

you want a purging treatment. If

25:45

your pores are dilated, something's being expelled

25:47

and you need something to like close you

25:49

up and put you in more, again, harmonious

25:51

state. So they're looking for signs

25:53

of what is out of balance so that we

25:56

can put in balance. No, I'm just trying to wrap my head

25:58

around this because it's like at least With

26:00

our current culture having perfectly

26:02

smooth skin is Preferable,

26:05

but that would be seen as bad You're

26:08

already coming to doctor saying you're sick So I

26:10

don't think this is like you're not running around

26:12

a normal healthy people being like hmm your pores

26:14

are too close You're going

26:17

in sick, and this is them like trying

26:19

to figure it out. Yeah, yeah If

26:21

their doctor says your pupils look dilated because

26:23

you're going as a doctor You're not being

26:25

like do they think that's bad if you're

26:27

you know they dilate the Sun That's not

26:29

that's a point. I look at you because you're already complaining but

26:33

that is they are looking at your pores and

26:35

the idea is that your Retaining

26:37

or body is yeah, right in a

26:40

condition of retention or in a condition of

26:42

expelling and they're looking to that say Oh

26:44

that points to this or

26:46

that treatment because we're going to try and reign

26:48

you back to a more balanced state

26:50

right and then like

26:53

the most important thing is

26:56

they're gonna make you piss in a cup ah They

26:58

still do that Deuces a

27:00

lot because urine can be it can hold

27:03

important clues the health of the body however

27:06

The place that it sits in medieval medicine is

27:09

just it's the tippy-top

27:12

it is the thing that you look at to

27:14

consider the health of the body so

27:17

much so that the The

27:19

urine glass all medicine flows

27:22

from urine base The

27:24

urine glass actually becomes the symbol

27:26

of medicine during this era so Kind

27:30

of like how we have like the green cross is like

27:32

a symbol of medicine or maybe a

27:34

stethoscope if we're trying to indicate a doctor's

27:36

around staff with the Snakes,

27:39

right? Yeah, I mean that's the

27:41

that's the class room from Hippocrates

27:43

Yeah, but but I'm talking more

27:45

like the symbol of a practitioner is more like

27:47

the stethoscope or something I got a doctor already

27:49

has always has on them. Yeah, I find that you're gonna get

27:51

medicine We might have

27:54

like a syringe for a shot or a

27:56

stethoscope or something they have

27:59

the Uroskine the

28:02

urine glass is the sign of

28:05

medicine, medicine practitioners. Some

28:07

of the ephemera drawings

28:10

on illuminated text during

28:12

this time have

28:14

monkeys examining urine glasses. It's

28:19

hard to overstate how present

28:22

the picture of the urine glass was in terms

28:24

of medieval life because it was so central. It's

28:26

like a damning illustration. That feels like something you

28:28

would expect to see out of a

28:31

satirical comic. There's a

28:33

lot of satire, we'll get to this a

28:36

little bit more in general, but there is

28:38

a lot of satire around doctors because there's

28:40

a fundamental skepticism

28:43

to doctors coming from

28:45

a couple of places, I think. Part

28:48

of it is that people are

28:50

a little skeptical of people who would

28:52

choose to do so much

28:54

with the body. There's like a why are

28:57

you... So into urine? Yeah, honestly,

28:59

yeah. It's actually written down in text. I'm like,

29:01

what the hell? There's a

29:04

story that comes out of England

29:06

around this time where during

29:09

the reign of King Henry the First where he

29:12

puts forward a person

29:14

to become Bishop of Canterbury. He's

29:16

got a preferred guy saying, I think this

29:19

is a guy for the job. He's rejected

29:21

the job because he's also a practicing physician.

29:23

Basically, the powers that be in the church

29:25

say they don't want... It's inappropriate for some

29:27

to be such a high position in this

29:30

church that spends so much time handling

29:32

the urine of women. He's

29:37

saying that they're trying to

29:39

heal people and everyone's like,

29:42

women and their fluids, disgusting.

29:45

You can never be clean enough to

29:48

be Bishop. It's very weird. I can't

29:50

wait to get that story in the

29:52

normal episode. There's this fundamental weirdness around

29:54

I don't... They don't trust

29:56

the physicians because there's this association with the

29:59

body that's... kind of uncomfortable. There's

30:01

also clearly an awareness that

30:03

there's a lot of just quackery and

30:06

a lot of people are going to doctors and not getting healed.

30:09

And so there's this

30:11

almost hostility and

30:17

cynicism around medicine

30:19

and practitioners. You'll

30:21

get this more in like lay

30:25

literature, stories, is kind of

30:27

where you get the real culture of things where people

30:29

start writing basically early novels

30:31

and early stories that happens later in the

30:33

12th century, where people

30:35

will go to, want to go to a physician

30:38

and other people will be like, go to the lady

30:40

house, she actually knows what's happening. She knows what's

30:42

up, like these quacks don't know what the fuck they're

30:45

on about. He will kill you. Yeah, yeah.

30:47

So there's like, and it gets,

30:49

it actually increases. We'll get there. But

30:51

yes, there's a, the monkey's

30:54

looking at urine glasses, kind of

30:56

belies. It's both, it's a, oh,

30:59

sorry, go ahead. Both it's just a, we

31:01

illustrate funnily things that are normal in life.

31:03

There's some of that going on. But there

31:05

is also like this kind of skepticism

31:08

around that and as a practice. Is it

31:10

because they keep screwing up because they're so

31:12

focused on theory

31:15

and they're not actually doing

31:17

observational medicine? I assume that's part

31:19

of what's happening. It's also just that like, medicine

31:22

wasn't good at this. Like we didn't have antibiotics.

31:24

Like most people who got

31:26

sick enough were going to die because we didn't

31:28

have the technology at this point, bring them back.

31:31

And things that we're prescribing, because

31:33

you can see they're categorizing

31:35

things that are probably different illnesses into

31:38

the same illness and the

31:40

treatment that they have probably only works for

31:42

one out of 10 different things. So, and

31:44

there's just only so much you can do about that. So

31:47

they would have also noticed that someone would go to the

31:49

physician with something that you should have

31:51

lived from, just hoping to get

31:53

better sooner and then dies because whatever

31:55

they're prescribed kills them. Right. They

31:58

Would have been noticing this, at least obviously. Regional a new

32:00

would end up with the cynicism around that are

32:02

totally so that. You. Will

32:04

see throughout. European.

32:07

And British Culture. The. Sort

32:09

of underline cynicism towards

32:11

doctors. That. Is probably

32:14

coming out of this road? Reality?

32:16

They're responding to it. Thankfully, no

32:18

and cynical about doctors. Now I

32:20

think there is. probably. A. Like.

32:22

A very real parallel between that, the

32:25

reality of that medicine then and medicine

32:27

now. In that. Medicine.

32:29

Now is also not without its

32:31

problems. The can't cure everything. People

32:33

noticed that mistakes happen. Pitbull also

32:36

knows, knows that and it's a

32:38

lot of cases you gods. Places.

32:40

Where. People. Are

32:43

run into the biases of just er

32:45

physician. They can tell. Disposition isn't taking

32:47

them seriously or has some pet

32:49

theory that is wrong. You'll

32:51

often hear this. the cynicism and our

32:54

culture often comes out of like get

32:56

a second opinion Yeah yeah because when

32:58

you would actually dig into like odd

33:01

treatment and outcomes it is surprising. The

33:04

differing levels of

33:06

farm. Wait, Dad's

33:08

as a whole, physicians give our

33:10

men I know what they're reporting

33:13

verses women plate. It's not good.

33:15

It's still not good. Were like

33:18

you or your word and what

33:20

you're reporting is generally trusted a

33:22

lot more. Ah, if you're dude,

33:25

Yeah, This an and said

33:27

also a you eg, fine

33:29

major. Differentials. Along,

33:31

race about and abilities speak the dominant

33:34

language. It goes on and on because

33:36

yeah, there's people involved and we also

33:38

have major biases and our research as

33:40

well. Where. Gender

33:43

to his remains a strong indicator

33:45

were a lot of research assistant

33:47

a male bodies the longest time

33:49

a. Female hard facts and

33:51

females were just miss because. Research.

33:54

Was under done. Them to discover

33:56

what the symptoms of the her

33:58

sack were and. female body. Well,

34:01

we needed those research dollars for Viagra. Yeah,

34:05

there's a persistent male

34:07

bias even today. Yeah,

34:11

I think the sort of like cynicism and cynicism

34:13

that then people will take it to the

34:15

like they'll go and be cynical about things

34:18

that are like well-founded. Yeah,

34:20

well established because they're over applying it. And

34:22

I think there is probably if you

34:24

can imagine our pickle with medicine now

34:26

and just apply it to a

34:28

much loopier, crazier medicinal

34:31

reality a thousand years

34:33

ago, then yeah, there's probably just a

34:37

very similar picture just kind of blown up

34:41

and people would have been responding to it as

34:43

we do because they're intelligent whole-brained

34:45

people. Part

34:49

of I've actually got a good story that fits into this

34:51

about the sort of like it

34:53

was normal and it becomes increasingly normal to

34:56

challenge a physician. Like to

34:58

a duel? No, like you try and

35:00

trick them in the beginning to see if they

35:02

catch it to see whether or not

35:04

they're a worthy physician. And so like

35:06

there's this like regular hostility towards

35:08

your physician to sort of

35:11

check to see if they're like a

35:13

snake oil salesman type. And

35:16

then in response medical

35:18

tech instructs a physician

35:20

of how to avoid these

35:22

traps. Yeah, and

35:24

how to like establish a sort of

35:26

like authoritative legitimacy in the eyes of

35:29

your patients. Okay, but

35:31

they're still like actually teaching

35:33

their students how to practice

35:35

medicine. So this isn't like okay, so here's

35:38

how you pass the bar. We're not going

35:40

to tell you how to be a lawyer,

35:42

but here's. Yeah, no, they're teaching what they've

35:44

got. It's just like by the

35:46

way, you want to make sure you're in the room while you're doing

35:48

this or else they're going to be sketched out. But

35:52

make sure you look them in the eye and act With

35:55

authority and state things clearly and like you

35:57

believe yourself or else they're going to not.

36:00

Leave your there's just this. Like. Bats are

36:02

gonna bisexual ever that bad. but it's just

36:04

shows that there's like this. Expected.

36:07

It for high with Hillary. Yeah, opposition

36:09

to it. That kind of coming

36:11

out of this, there's a great

36:13

story. The comes up very early

36:15

is actually slightly before. We are in

36:18

the the So right now said. This

36:20

is something and develop fully overtime.

36:22

but. The month of

36:24

ignored a card. the fourth he's a

36:26

story in for his arm. He is

36:29

over at the think all out abbey

36:31

and historian for that abby who is

36:33

running. sorry that com have come through

36:35

and. He left. He lived.

36:37

Until Ten Fifty Six. Oh

36:39

damn flu before and in

36:42

his cast. The Sancti Galley.

36:44

He writes it. a little

36:46

story that's amazing. That.

36:48

They have a healer monk in

36:50

St. Paul. He was. Working called.

36:52

Knock Her I'm not her.

36:55

Knocked her. Older and O

36:57

T P R. And he

36:59

describes him as a teacher, a painter and and. Cool.

37:03

Of and he was one of these early.

37:05

Folk that of what

37:07

turned into the slur.

37:10

Run school of Medicine. he was he.

37:13

Was. Actually reads directly the works

37:15

of Hippocrates. So Hippocrates aphorisms

37:17

and her puppies prognosis just

37:20

like Burn had be a

37:22

physician and three people around

37:24

him will Duke Henry of

37:26

the time of Bavaria. Is.

37:29

Looking for some sort of treatment? He's

37:31

looking for a physician contacts not Kerr

37:33

of like. A out would you

37:36

look at my urine? I'm looking for a

37:38

physician nice to the have we the city

37:40

mayor and. See what you think is. one

37:42

thing that happens is it was common you

37:44

would go into physician or physician. Would go

37:46

come to you and to force us mint

37:49

but increasingly became common that they would just

37:51

take your urine and ah diagnose you just

37:53

from your your and having never see new

37:55

of have like a mail order of urine

37:58

apparently they must have yes since very. I

38:00

see. That would be the worst

38:02

job. I feel like if you're just like

38:04

on horseback, delivering the Duke's urine to some

38:06

guy. Apparently someone did it. Okay.

38:10

Anyway, so Duke Henry, in order to test this

38:13

monk and see if he's a good enough physician.

38:15

What do you think of this pint glass of

38:17

urine? He doesn't send his own urine. He gets

38:20

the urine of a chambermaid that's working for him

38:22

and sends that in to see if Knocker can

38:24

like tell the difference. Because you know, if

38:26

you can diagnose me from urine, you should be able to

38:28

know, right? Knocker sends him

38:30

back this message. God

38:33

is about to perform an unheard of miracle

38:35

and portent. That a man should give birth

38:37

from his womb. For the Duke himself, about

38:39

30 days from today, will lay upon

38:41

his breast the child brought forth from his womb.

38:44

Bullshit. No way. Is

38:47

that verified? That the Duke Henry

38:49

gave birth to a child? No.

38:52

No. You're not pulling my leg on that

38:55

one. That this is something that's written down in text?

38:57

Yeah. This is written down. The

38:59

cast of Santee Cali. How

39:02

reliable is that? I have no idea. It's

39:05

a monk writing stuff. So, okay. But this

39:07

is hilarious. No, it totally is. But

39:09

okay, like obviously we're going to stop this

39:12

episode right here and we're going to zero

39:14

in on this story. So the monks were

39:18

capable, we're not in treatment

39:20

yet. So you don't have to get into

39:22

specifically how, but they were able

39:25

to do the equivalent of the sticks you

39:27

get at the grocery store. According

39:30

to this, this baby is due

39:32

within 30 days. So

39:34

we're talking an eighth month of pregnancy. That

39:36

might be visible. A lot

39:38

of things, like

39:41

I imagine if you're looking at pee all the time and

39:45

you would have been looking at a lot of pregnant women's pee, that

39:48

yeah, you may be able to guess the subtle signs

39:51

of a late stage pregnancy is

39:53

what we're talking about. That's wild. I mean,

39:55

that is the period where even today you're putting

39:58

a lot of pee in cups. and they're looking at it. Oh,

40:01

for pregnancy tests? Sure. But it's one of

40:03

those things where you expect that

40:06

in our modern era, because we have

40:08

chemistry. You don't expect

40:10

some weird monk who, when

40:12

he's not painting and I

40:15

assume teaching social

40:17

studies, is sniffing pee and then

40:19

being like, oh, yeah, no, you're going to have

40:21

a boy. When

40:24

the duke got this response, he

40:27

was like, holy shit, you're totally

40:29

my physician. You're great. And

40:32

apparently, also, the chambermaid was

40:34

brought back into good position,

40:36

and she had a baby

40:38

boy, and everyone was very happy. And

40:40

you can regat the physician he always

40:42

wanted. But

40:48

this is your estimate. We'll get into what they were

40:50

looking for for this. But if

40:52

we're talking what is chemistry, but we've

40:55

got molecular compounds, and they

40:57

give off scents, they have

41:00

appearances, you

41:02

may well be able to tell. We're not

41:04

talking like, oh, you've been pregnant for four days.

41:06

We're talking about you are within a month

41:09

going to give birth. So

41:12

there's certain things where I'm like, yeah, obviously, if

41:15

your kidneys or your liver were

41:17

shutting down, you'd be like, oh,

41:19

that urine looks not great. But

41:21

yeah, wow, OK. So

41:26

the theory behind why

41:28

urine was so important is interesting. The

41:31

circulation of the blood isn't

41:33

actually discovered until the 17th

41:35

century by a man named William Harvey.

41:37

So they don't understand circulation of blood as

41:40

a process. So what do they

41:42

think happens when you get cut? Well, they understand

41:44

blood's real. And what do

41:46

they think is causing the pulse? They

41:48

know that's the heart. But the blood

41:51

actually isn't moving? They just don't understand

41:53

where blood's coming from. And

41:56

so the medieval theory of the body and what

41:58

digestion is is that. Food is continually

42:00

turned into blood. That's what the body's doing.

42:02

That's what digestion is. As you eat food, it's turned

42:05

into blood. And it specifically is turned into blood during

42:07

your sleep. So what

42:09

urine is, is the waste of

42:11

that process, turning food directly into

42:13

blood. And so

42:16

urine is a direct

42:18

insight into the humoral state of the body because

42:20

you're looking at the waste products of your digestive

42:22

process. They're not overly wrong. I

42:24

mean, that's not quite right, but

42:27

your kidneys are clearing out waste from

42:29

your blood. Yeah, it's kind of surprising

42:31

how close they get given their complete

42:33

lack of instrumentation here. Yeah.

42:36

So they are, and this is where I'm thinking the

42:39

urine story may just be a story, but

42:41

it doesn't seem that implausible because

42:43

if you give things close attention,

42:46

you don't have a smartphone distracting you all every 30

42:48

seconds. You do start to notice

42:50

different qualities of what's around you.

42:52

And your capacity to

42:54

pick up small details is

42:57

pretty high, especially if you're interested. All

42:59

right, so lesson for this episode.

43:01

We should all spend a lot less time playing

43:03

on our phones and more time smelling pee. Slow

43:07

down, miss your urine. I'll be peeing.

43:10

Uroscopy is not invented at this time. This is

43:13

important. You'll remember that in Bald's Leech Brook,

43:15

they also have a lot of detailed

43:17

description of how to

43:19

assess the health of the body via urine.

43:23

But it is being rationalized and

43:25

placed into the humoral system. The

43:28

process of this is the sample is

43:32

collected in the morning. So you wanna collect it

43:35

in the morning from the patient. This is at

43:37

least what was described like 150 years

43:40

from now. The assumption is that that

43:42

was probably the practice all the way through. Why?

43:45

Oh, because it's being, the blood's being turned

43:47

into, yeah, your food's been turning into, so

43:50

like the waste is going to be most

43:52

potent in the morning? Yeah, presumably that's the

43:54

clearest indication of what's happening in the body

43:56

with that interference. You want after sleeping

43:59

before they've had any. anything to drink. And

44:01

then they would allow the urine to settle in

44:03

the bottle for about seven hours. I

44:06

believe that's called steeping. And

44:08

they would, they did make sure to make sure it

44:10

was like not exposed to extreme heat or light. Just

44:13

get a good decanter, you stick it in

44:15

the back room. It would change things.

44:17

They're right in that. That will mess with

44:19

your, the molecular structures

44:22

in that thing depending on what's in there. So,

44:25

good observation on them. And

44:27

what's described in the text is what a physician should

44:29

consider while looking at a urine

44:31

sample is what sort of

44:33

urine it is, what's in it,

44:35

how much there is, how often

44:37

it's passing, when it's passing,

44:40

and then the age, nature,

44:42

sex, exercise, anger, diet, anxiety,

44:45

hunger, movement, baths, food, ointment,

44:47

and tarench. That's occurring around

44:49

the patient. That's a lot. A lot. And

44:52

it's very like, okay. Really nice

44:55

dense urine is considered a sign of good

44:57

digestion. That

45:00

makes me think gelatinous. That doesn't sound healthy. I

45:02

think it's actually a

45:06

little opposite to what we, like today, there's sort of

45:08

a, if you've ever gone on particularly

45:11

long backpacking trips or potentially fewer serve

45:13

time in the military,

45:16

or done a lot of outdoors stuff,

45:19

there's this mantra, piss clear, that you

45:21

will have heard several times, many times essentially.

45:23

And what you're trying to do is make

45:26

you pound water to stay hydrated so you

45:28

want to pee so often and with so

45:30

much as a sign of your own hydration

45:32

that there's just no real color

45:35

going into your urine. For them, they

45:38

seem to be the opposite. They actually see

45:40

the sign of a watery urine as an

45:42

indication of unbalanced humor and

45:44

pending illness. So they

45:47

think density is some sort of sign of good

45:50

digestion. So there's that. But

45:53

if you're giving a doctor your urine

45:55

sample, they're going to be assessing most

45:57

of all their color, the consistency of it.

46:00

it. They're gonna be looking for particulates

46:02

inside it and they're gonna be checking

46:04

for layers so that's part of what's

46:06

letting it settle is they think that

46:08

how things layer out in the in

46:10

their clear glass starch so you can

46:12

see it are indication of what's

46:14

going on in the body. In

46:16

Arabic traditions it was very important

46:18

to taste the urine that was

46:21

one way that they assessed what was

46:23

going on. That

46:26

is how you end up not the Archbishop of Canterbury.

46:29

These guys were not doing well but it was interesting

46:31

that like the Salutron and Menacin were like we're

46:33

good we're not gonna do that as

46:36

much and it was like why it was actually not

46:38

frequent in Europe to actually pick that part up so

46:41

strange there you go you'll find more

46:44

Arabic texts talking about like the different

46:46

tastes of the urine and it makes sense to

46:48

me in terms of getting how did

46:50

Constantine the African feel about the fact that the

46:53

Europeans were refusing to taste pee. I don't think

46:55

there's any commentary based on that. Would be fun

46:57

if he was like they don't even taste pee

46:59

here. No I don't think it's

47:02

he's more and he's trying to just translate

47:04

text and he wasn't a practitioner himself he

47:07

was interested on like a scholarly level not a

47:09

practitioner level so I don't think he had a

47:11

commentary. There were other commentators who were like how

47:14

could you seriously be a doctor if you're not and

47:19

to be fair your tongue will pick

47:21

up detail that the other

47:23

senses will not be able to if you're. Yeah

47:26

I learned that when I

47:28

took geology 101. Yeah taste

47:30

is geologists absolutely will use taste

47:33

as one of the ways they assess what a rock is. Yeah.

47:36

Same thing but just to just to

47:39

note that the European doctors are less

47:41

into this but they're still very into

47:43

urine very important. Now as

47:46

I said often if this was done remotely this

47:48

is like you could like to send in your

47:50

urine get back a diagnosis in some cases especially

47:52

as we advance through time but

47:54

then there are physicians who like argue that this is ridiculous

47:57

practice how could you possibly know the state of the patient

47:59

without laying your eyes. eyes on them, which

48:01

good on them, correct? But

48:03

just know that there's a discussion on this.

48:05

It's interesting. So it's the first

48:08

argument over the efficacy of telehealth.

48:11

Yeah. Cool. Because this is so

48:13

huge, there are a ton

48:15

of texts on basically

48:17

differential diagnosis through urine. There's

48:20

even this very iconic urine wheel

48:22

with a bunch of little urine glasses

48:24

with different colors. Like the color

48:27

wheel? Yes. Yes. But then they

48:29

have little text of like, here's what this color means,

48:31

what this color means. So you could just hold the

48:33

urine glass up to this thing and

48:35

be like, all right, this is what it looks like

48:37

this. Can we get a copy

48:40

of that and frame it somewhere in

48:42

the house? Because that sounds amazing. That's

48:45

what we should put in the bathroom. Um,

48:49

what I'm going to give you, because there's so many of this

48:51

and there's actually a lot of,

48:55

like the details change a lot. So just

48:57

know that, like you can tell that practitioners

49:00

develop their own, probably based on

49:03

who they've seen and what's happened to them, their own

49:05

understanding of what these colors mean. What

49:07

I'm going to give you is an early text. So the

49:09

sort of thing that would have been around and people have

49:11

been learning from where we are on the

49:13

show the early part of the long

49:15

12th century. Knowing that this develops

49:17

and there's a lot more text later, but this is sort

49:20

of the thing that we're pretty sure would

49:22

have been around at where we are. Giles

49:25

of Corbille, he studies Lerno, so

49:29

he's just right in this place.

49:32

He studies Lerno and then he goes and

49:34

practices in Paris. And he

49:36

has a major text that was

49:38

used frequently called On urine. And

49:41

it should have prepped me for this episode. I

49:45

told you to go potty. I'm having a

49:47

hard time staying mature. Anyway,

49:49

this text is just linking, this

49:52

text is just linking diagnosis signs

49:54

to the theoretical model of disease.

49:58

Just know that what I'm going to give you is not like. the end all

50:00

be all, this would be a major

50:02

text that sort of demonstrates what was

50:05

pretty typical in this style of medicine. Okay.

50:08

Know that there's a lot of diversity though in how

50:10

this was applied. Okay. And so he

50:13

understands urine as a serum of the blood

50:15

with residue of the humors, which

50:17

is a remnant of digestion. And so

50:19

you're trying to match that to what

50:22

is going on for real in the body. And

50:24

he notates that urine generally comes

50:26

in 20 colors. The

50:28

first color to consider is dark. It's

50:31

dark with a large quantity and cloudy

50:33

and muddy with sediment. If

50:36

it's accompanied by a loss of hearing

50:38

and insomnia, it portends a flux of

50:40

blood from the nose. Also

50:43

depending on whether the other signs

50:45

are ominous or favorable, the patient

50:47

will die or recover. I

50:50

mean that's all

50:52

medicine. Some

50:55

real advanced stuff here. If the

50:57

urine is livid, there's a range

50:59

of lividity for urine. Like just

51:01

screaming at a street corner versus

51:03

just like glowering at the

51:06

dinner table. This seems

51:08

to be about just sort of like

51:10

not black urine, which really is concerning.

51:13

This is like a darkness to it. If

51:16

it's total lividity, then mortification of

51:18

a member or of its humors. So

51:21

basically like this sounds to me like

51:23

you've got gangrene, some things like

51:26

literally dying on the inside. If

51:28

it's just livid near the surface, so this is

51:30

they let it layer after letting it out, then

51:33

we're dealing with a mild fever, falling

51:35

sickness, a flux, an ailment of the

51:38

womb, a defect of the lungs, pain

51:40

in the joints, consumptive fethcis,

51:43

is this P-H-T-H-I-S-I-S,

51:45

you pronounce that.

51:48

No. Yes. Or the

51:50

extinction of natural heat. The extinction

51:53

of natural heat. Yeah.

51:56

Any further description on what that is? No,

51:58

it's a manual. Did you not listen

52:00

in school? That sounds bad

52:05

So it's living near the surface. So

52:07

okay if it's near the surface so with

52:10

this Stratification for lack of

52:12

a better term of what they're doing are

52:14

I assume they're looking for

52:17

like fatty deposits in the urine essentially

52:19

I don't know what they're actually looking

52:21

at until like they're describing something.

52:23

They're like, okay They

52:26

do describe oily and greasy urine

52:28

So for example if

52:30

there's a very limited quality of urine and

52:33

it's passed with difficulty and it's livid and

52:35

oily Then that portends

52:37

death. Hmm on the

52:39

other side of its livid pass frequently But

52:41

in scanty quality that points to

52:44

a womb ailment Levidity coupled

52:46

with minute distinct particles indicates

52:49

respiratory trouble the

52:51

covid PIS Granny

52:54

lividity foretells affliction of the joints

52:57

and rheumatism Gout involves

53:00

Crystals like from uric acid and

53:02

things right? Yeah. Yeah So

53:04

there this is where you can kind of

53:06

see like I thought there's probably some reality

53:08

of like this towards one Condition

53:11

there's probably someone made a correct Association

53:14

at one point and then they're

53:16

just running with it Live

53:18

a tinge in a woman is

53:20

the womb is pressing upon the spine or diaphragm

53:23

When we get to the obstrextrous thing, you'll see

53:26

that there's this obsession with the womb touching other

53:28

parts of the body They're very sure that this

53:30

means something a little

53:32

bit like playing operation then it's

53:34

mostly I'm not sure But it comes

53:37

up a lot white urine Thin

53:40

in quality this indicates a spleen

53:42

illness dropsy Intoxication

53:45

nephritis delirium diabetes

53:47

rheumatism black bile

53:49

epilepsy dizziness chill of the liver

53:52

or When paired

53:54

with a bilious fever death and

53:56

then we come to the last two colored wine

53:59

color That cannot be

54:01

good. Dangered health when it

54:03

accompanies continuous fever, yeah. Less

54:06

feared if there is no fever. Can

54:08

be produced when a caustic fever inflames

54:11

the kidneys and liver. So would that

54:13

be like a bladder infection that is just getting

54:15

wildly out of control? I mean caustic fever inflames

54:17

the kidneys and liver sounds a lot like that. I

54:19

think that there's like, that's

54:21

pretty good considering. Yeah. Or

54:23

when a renal vein ruptures. Ugh. Or

54:26

when it's vessel broken, menstrual blood passes

54:28

from a woman's body. So

54:30

this is, I think, the idea that they're a

54:33

really common birth injury is when... The

54:35

terror. There's a, yeah, there's a

54:38

terror between the, two

54:40

becomes one, right? It's a very common

54:43

injury and I'm assuming a lot of women were

54:45

unfortunately probably dealing with that. Once that happened, you

54:47

couldn't really do, fix it at that point. They

54:50

also mentioned though, dancing, over

54:53

much coitus, running and in moderate exercise produce

54:55

the same signs in a healthy body. So

54:58

if you've got wine-colored urine and you've just

55:00

been banging it out, either

55:02

in the bedroom or on the track, then

55:05

just slow down a bit, drink some water, you'll

55:07

be okay. Awesome. That

55:10

sounds like Rabdough to me, honestly. Yeah, it does.

55:12

It sounds like, well, it's

55:14

like Olympic grade sex if you're getting

55:16

Rabdough from sex, but yeah. Yeah, I'm

55:18

assuming that's more like a abrasion. Yeah,

55:20

it's got to be. But yeah, it

55:22

does like... But over much exercise, it

55:24

sounds like Rabdough. Rabdough myolysis, yeah, yeah,

55:26

yeah. Blue-black urine is the same. So you might

55:30

dance too hard and also end up with blue-black

55:32

urine, but that's totally fine, according

55:35

to this. If

55:37

I had blue-black urine, I think I

55:39

would pass out from fear immediately. Let's

55:43

tell you not to worry. The one to worry about,

55:45

though, is green tinge urine. That

55:47

indicates jaundice, spasm, severe

55:49

fever, and finally death. Or

55:52

using my brand of vitamins.

55:55

I don't think they had those at

55:57

this point. There is a very astute

55:59

observation. from one of the

56:01

Arabic doctors in his

56:03

treatise on urine which

56:05

notes that when looking at a

56:08

urine sample, judge the illness according to the odor of the

56:10

urine on the condition that the patient

56:12

hasn't ingested a coloring food, certain vegetables,

56:14

cassia fistula which is the fruit

56:17

of a tree related to cinnamon

56:19

and that which may tint like muri which

56:21

is a another tinting veggie.

56:24

That was going to be my question

56:26

is do they have a prohibition on

56:28

when you're going and getting diagnosed by

56:30

a doctor, no asparagus for that before?

56:32

I'm assuming they probably figured, they must

56:34

be giving back because if urine was so

56:36

essential they would have noticed that these things did

56:39

that and there's probably the person that

56:41

ate too many beets freaked out,

56:44

brings the doctor and the doctor's like what were you

56:46

eating yesterday? I'm just a beet salad and they're like

56:48

you're an idiot, go home. Oh man, so

56:50

our son was in

56:52

love with beets and he

56:55

had a beet lunch while he

56:57

was at daycare and I

56:59

didn't know and I changed

57:01

his diaper and just about passed out. They're

57:04

always very good at telling us whenever he eats beets for

57:06

that reason and I think I just didn't pass that information

57:08

on to you in time. You

57:10

were very upset. So

57:13

that's the colors but then they note it's

57:15

colors not enough. You also need to look

57:17

what's in the urine. There's things that can

57:19

be in and so list

57:22

of possible contents of urine, bubbles, grit,

57:25

cloudiness, spume. Explain.

57:29

I'm just going to keep going. Pus,

57:32

grease, chime, blood,

57:36

sand, hair, brom,

57:40

lumps. Aran as in like

57:44

scales, specks, sperm,

57:48

ash, sediment and

57:51

rising vapor. They don't explain any of this. This is just

57:53

lists they give to you. Did

57:55

you not pay attention in class? I

57:57

am horrified. of

58:00

what is in these,

58:02

I assume, very fancy

58:04

decanters. Good Lord. Honestly,

58:07

the sand was the least shocking of

58:09

all of them. I feel like scales

58:11

and hair, not great. Yeah,

58:14

no idea. I'm assuming these were particular things

58:17

and a lot of them were descriptions of the

58:19

shapes that everyone else knew

58:21

what that meant, but it wasn't. Yeah. I

58:23

am sure there are probably texts out there

58:25

that delineate that, but they're not the

58:27

ones, I'm not that deep in the literature. This

58:30

was a standard text that a lot of people would have

58:32

been carrying around with them with that particular list of what

58:34

to check. Gotta

58:37

avoid that hairy urine. So

58:41

that's a very quick run

58:43

down on urine. Just know that half of

58:45

medieval diagnosis was based on pee and

58:48

that was for everything that was not obvious,

58:50

like a limb being hacked off. If

58:53

there was any sort of, I'm not sure what's wrong

58:55

with you yet, 80% of your diagnosis coming

58:57

from your urine and

58:59

your urine samples. The

59:02

other thing that they would have been looking

59:04

at, and this is the final thing I promise for

59:06

this, and this is why I had

59:09

to stop here and not go into treatment, but

59:11

they would have been considering your pulse. And

59:13

so the way they take pulses at this point

59:16

is they're gonna lay four fingers across

59:18

the part of the body where they can feel a pulse. And

59:20

they don't really delineate it, but if you're

59:22

looking, stomach actually, they've got a lot of drawings

59:26

of physicians putting their hands on patients'

59:28

stomach area, and that's probably for palpating

59:30

for swollen organs just like they do

59:32

today. But they may have also been, that

59:34

might be a place to check for a pulse. Most

59:37

of medieval people would have been carrying quite as much padding as

59:39

we do today and it would have been easier to pick up.

59:43

Fair. The

59:46

theoretical function of the pulse is to cool

59:48

the heat of the body. So

59:51

that's what they thought it was doing, is that it's actually like a cooling

59:53

system and to impel spirit

59:55

through the members and

59:57

to discharge waste vapors via exhalation.

1:00:00

Okay, so... But that was actually

1:00:03

like, for not knowing the specifics, it's pretty

1:00:05

good. They've got cardiopulmonary. Yeah, that's interesting.

1:00:07

The only thing that's really truly just like

1:00:09

opposite is this idea that you're cooling, sort

1:00:11

of heating. And they know that the

1:00:13

heart is the source of the pulse. They do. And like

1:00:15

the description of the heart is actually pretty impressive.

1:00:18

Let me just read this part where you can see that,

1:00:20

not just the theoretical idea of

1:00:22

how the body works, but how they

1:00:24

map it directly onto how the rest

1:00:27

of nature works. So, the

1:00:30

heart and the liver fill the same places

1:00:32

in the microcosm as the sun and the moon do in the

1:00:34

natural world. Innate heat passes from

1:00:36

the sun through the air as a gift to all

1:00:38

living things upon the earth. So,

1:00:41

two heat progresses from the heart. Its source,

1:00:43

via the vital spirit, consumes waste and is

1:00:45

propagated to supply the body. Liver is analogous

1:00:47

to the moon. Just as the moon communicates

1:00:50

to the regions next to it, and as

1:00:52

the full moon is adorned in fullest roundness

1:00:54

when the sun casts its own rays upon

1:00:56

it, just so the

1:00:58

liver generates humors and bestows a suitable

1:01:00

humor on every member. Should the sun not

1:01:03

regard the moon, the moon would suffer an

1:01:05

eclipse, and the substance of the air wholly

1:01:07

darkened. Likewise, when

1:01:09

the aid of the heart is lacking and within

1:01:11

it the member's nutriment, the relation of the distant

1:01:13

parts to their neighbors is destroyed, and

1:01:15

the marvelous union of the soul with the body is undone.

1:01:18

Neat. It's pretty like, you're like, alright, that's not

1:01:20

wrong. And it's also kind of

1:01:22

like, it's got this poetic like balance of

1:01:25

nature, and they can see the body is

1:01:27

relating to nature. And they look to the

1:01:29

heavens to see like, okay, if it works

1:01:31

in this bigger place that we can

1:01:33

see happening. As above, so below things.

1:01:36

Yeah, that's the logic. It's like, so

1:01:38

in the body which we can't directly

1:01:40

watch occur, we'll go look at other

1:01:42

things and assume that

1:01:44

there's a like logical correlation. And

1:01:48

another phrase from this is, the pulse is

1:01:50

the motion of the heart, and arteries, diastole

1:01:52

and systole, so as to cool the natural

1:01:54

heat into expel vaporous waste.

1:01:56

They actually use that? That's where it comes from.

1:01:58

Diastole and systole, I guess. Uh-huh. Wow.

1:02:02

Okay. And so when they're looking for, if

1:02:05

you go into a physician and they're looking and

1:02:07

checking your pulse to try and diagnose you,

1:02:09

they're going to check your pulse

1:02:11

for fingers and they're checking

1:02:13

for the motion of the artery, condition of

1:02:15

the artery, duration of the diastole

1:02:18

and the systole, strengthening

1:02:20

and weakening of pulsation, and

1:02:22

regularity or irregularity of the beat.

1:02:25

And from those five considerations, they consider

1:02:27

10 varieties of pulse are derived. So

1:02:30

then they start mapping it on to

1:02:32

the humerus. Humers, right. So they've got a long

1:02:35

pulse. They were starting so well there. Right?

1:02:37

A long pulse is considered a plenitude

1:02:40

of spirits and hotness, short

1:02:42

pulse, deficiency of spirit and coldness,

1:02:45

broad pulse indicates moistness and

1:02:47

narrow pulse indicates dryness. And

1:02:49

narrow versus broad versus, that's all

1:02:52

about how much you

1:02:54

can feel it against those four fingers. Oh,

1:02:57

okay. So it's not just like

1:02:59

you're not just checking for rhythm, which is

1:03:01

what we check for rhythm and strength. They're

1:03:03

looking for basically that but as measured about

1:03:05

how it's coming across their hand. So

1:03:08

if you've got a short pulse, it's only hitting two fingers. If it's

1:03:10

a long pulse, you can feel it across all

1:03:12

four fingers. Would that be like a

1:03:14

really rudimentary way to at least

1:03:16

get a vague sense of blood

1:03:18

pressure? Yeah,

1:03:21

I'm sure that, I mean, if

1:03:23

I had someone who is starting

1:03:25

to lose their blood pressure because something

1:03:27

was happening, I would feel it against

1:03:29

four fingers and you wouldn't be.

1:03:33

They also say that there's a hidden or

1:03:35

vanishing pulse, which is one that you can't

1:03:37

really feel. Sounds bad. Or

1:03:40

a vampire. But

1:03:42

again, they start combining these like they do.

1:03:44

Long and broad pulse equals your hot and

1:03:47

moist. Long and narrow

1:03:49

equals hot and dry, caloric problem.

1:03:52

Short and broad, frigidity. Short

1:03:55

and narrow is a melancholic disorder

1:03:58

disposition. And so

1:04:01

this is one of those things that they would put in

1:04:03

addition to your urine, in addition to your

1:04:06

overall appearance, state

1:04:08

of your skin. And

1:04:10

then they'd inquire, as we said before,

1:04:12

about your diet, about how frequently you're passing

1:04:15

fluids or stool. And

1:04:18

from that, then they'll move on

1:04:21

to trying to diagnose you into a particular illness that they

1:04:23

can. They could with things that they saw frequently.

1:04:26

Or then they're just going to try and

1:04:28

hope that they're going to diagnose you with

1:04:30

a deficiency or proficiency of some

1:04:32

sort of humor, maybe give you something to try

1:04:34

and bounce that out. Or they'll tell

1:04:37

you, you're going to get better on your own, or

1:04:39

get your affairs to order. You've got

1:04:41

about this much time to die. This is your two-minute warning.

1:04:43

One of the things they would do is they would

1:04:46

try and measure how long you had left

1:04:49

based on your pulse. And

1:04:51

they do this sort of little math game with it.

1:04:53

So you're supposed to take the

1:04:55

pulse of the patient at the same time every

1:04:58

day. And

1:05:00

if your patient is skipping a pulse

1:05:03

beat in that duration, you

1:05:05

count how many times it happens.

1:05:09

You get a normal pulse, and then you get that

1:05:11

skip pulse. You take the

1:05:13

patient's pulse again at the same time the

1:05:15

next day. And if there's,

1:05:17

say you had 30 pulses before you had a

1:05:19

skip pulse, day one, and

1:05:22

then you have 15 pulses, but

1:05:24

this is an actual example to have,

1:05:26

15 pulses before you get a

1:05:28

skip pulse the next day, then you

1:05:31

use that to indicate how fast they're ticking

1:05:33

down to death, basically. And you can do

1:05:35

the math of you've got this many

1:05:37

days before that goes to zero, or this

1:05:40

many hours. Apple Watch should add that feature.

1:05:45

They would also do this for rising pulse. So if

1:05:47

you're taking the pulse and they've

1:05:50

got a stronger pulse after 15 good

1:05:52

pulses, then they've got a

1:05:54

nice strong pulse coming back. And the next day, it's

1:05:56

10 pulses

1:05:58

before we get that big strong pulse. and they say

1:06:00

you're gonna be at the end of your convalescence

1:06:02

period around this time. So,

1:06:06

you know, I don't think that probably works in

1:06:08

a specific way they're talking about, but there is a

1:06:10

sign of like you can kind of measure descent and

1:06:12

ascent of health and whether

1:06:14

or not something's getting better or not

1:06:17

through their pulses. It's like this one thing

1:06:19

where it's like if you zoom out, you're getting

1:06:21

some pretty correct answers. There's almost something there

1:06:23

and then you make it stupid and humorous.

1:06:25

When you try to get so specific, you're

1:06:27

like, what? All

1:06:30

right, I am... you are really sick. I think it's

1:06:32

about time for us to call it. Go

1:06:35

ahead to the doctor. Yeah, we'll check your pee in

1:06:37

your tongue. Good pee in a cup. So

1:06:41

next time we'll get the treatments, which

1:06:43

is even crazier because then they're actually having to do

1:06:46

a thing and you'll notice that the

1:06:48

theory breaks down pretty quick for them,

1:06:51

but the stories get pretty great because the things that they do

1:06:53

for poor people who are ill are amazing.

1:06:56

Okay, well thanks for

1:07:00

coming on in and bringing all

1:07:02

this stuff and we'll talk

1:07:04

to you next time. Thank

1:07:06

you.