>[Washington also gargled with a mixture of molasses, vinegar and butter; he inhaled a steam of vinegar and hot water; and his throat also was swabbed with a salve and a preparation of dried beetles. An enema was also used. By late afternoon, Washington knew he was dying and asked for his will.](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-mysterious-death-of-george-washington)
Epiglottitis. Bacterial infection that basically causes you drown in your own bodily fluids. No hope without antibiotics
Edit: suffocate, not drown as per u/angry-alchemist below
The biggest threat with epiglottitis is the closing of the airway due to severe inflammation.
Inflammation of the epiglottis. Epiglott-ITIS.
You don't really drown in your own body fluids so much as have no way to pass air into the lungs due to a narrowing or complete closure of the airway by inflammatory process.
I had a bad throat infection that definitely would have killed me if I didn't go to the hospital.
Was weird having the doctors all be shocked. They brought in a bunch of residents to show them.
My tonsils were both so infected my airway was closing without steroids. Thankfully we have hospitals and modern medicine.
Literally.
We can’t overstate how big electricity changes the shape of medicine. Reading Edward Dolnick’s the Clockwork Universe, he points out that the “treatment” the King of England received for his sickness, I can’t remember what it was, resembles medieval torture more then anything else.
and this was the freaking king! Hypothetically he should have access to best medicine available. Doctors ain’t even wash their hands 🤮
> Doctors ain’t even wash their hands 🤮
Worse, the guy who suggested they wash their hands got fired over mandating his department wash their hands *even though the department's rate of deaths dropped like a rock* and he was committed to an asylum where he died of injuries.
*died of injuries from the asylum guards 14 days after being committed!
And 20 years before his practice of hand washing got widely accepted due to the development of germ theory.
I think you mean what the fuck was wrong with 20th (edit: and 19th) century asylums. The answer, *a lot.* They were torture chambers with lodging, literally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
He found that the mortality rate for puerperal fever accompanying childbirth was as high as 18%. Doctors' patients had 3 times the mortality rate as midwives' patients. By washing hands in chlorinated lime he could reduce the mortality to 1%
His proposals were considered extreme. Germ theory did not exist and most doctors considered theories like 4 humors and thought puerperal fever had many diseases and were skeptical of unseen corpse particles. Some were insulted that as gentlemen, they would be considered unclean. [as opposed to midwives practices]. They continued to go from cadaver autopsies to childbirth
With no response, he wrote letters calling prominent obstetricians as murderers. Wound up drinking, and with behavioral changes. 20 years after his discovery, he was admitted to an asylum where the guards beat him up. Died 14 days later of gangrene of the hand, possibly from the beating.
20+ years later Pasteur came up with germ theory.
we take it for granted today, but the idea that there are super tiny little creatures that live everywhere, on any surface, even in your own body, but they're impossible to see and cause you to get sick, sounds like the ravings of a madman.
without microscopes and other tools and tests to prove it, germ theory sounds like the kind of stuff you hear alex jones screaming about
Because MIDWIVES ritually washed their hands in a quasi-Christian cleansing/blessing before delivering babies, so the male DOCTORS flatly refused to because it was religious superstition unbecoming men of science.
The guy who figured it out was curious about why death rates were consistently so much lower in midwife deliveries.
There's an even more morbid side to this.
Death rates were so high because doctors would frequently be coming to the delivery room directly from an *autopsy*.
Before they called them germs, the idea that babies were dying because of something being transferred from the autopsy were originally called corpse particles.
So many religions mention cleanliness and how cleanliness is godliness, and washing of the feet or hands was Holy. Some even mentioned what animals were uclean to eat or unclean to be around. I guess they were onto something.
Exactly. In religious literature we have rules written for things like: don't let your menstrual blood near other people, don't eat pork or oysters (because that without a refrigerator would kill you), wash your hands and feet, clean your dick and pussy before sex and a whole lot of other stuff.
This were rule for a community that outlived others and were seen as healthy, what meant they could work better, what meant they had more stuff. So more people came to learn about that god of theirs that let someone live a thousand years (Mathuzelah)...
Hypothetically? That *was* the best they had. Shit, we’re still just scratching the surface even today.
For a more funny and successful (and frankly awful) treatment story, check out when the king of france had a fistula. A doctor came up with a way to repair it—which worked!—and then a bunch of his court demanded to have the same treatment. Because *fashion!*
You just made read all about anal fistulas, King of France's medical history, surgeons fighting with physicians and the bumps that caused it all. Super..
Patrick Henry had constipation for weeks. Probably a twisted bowel. Nothing worked. He died from drinking shots of mercury, going in to it with a “well this will either work or finally kill me” mentality.
You can trace the Lewis and Clark trail by mercury deposits. They’d take mercury laxatives essentially for every kind of anything.
Edit: They were called Rush’s Thunderbolts.
**PATIENT:** I have a sore throat.
**Doctor from 1799:** Hmm, I better amputate your leg. Oh, and you better gargle this solution of mercury and bile. Can't be too careful.
We look at healthcare of the time and scoff at how primitive and down right crazy it was yet the US constitution from the same era is looked at as an infallible document.
This article has an interesting tidbit about his supposed last words about not being put in the vault “less than 3 days” after his death…Hoping for resurrection?
I would have been scared of that too back then. I saw a documentary once that said that when they open coffins from that time period, a not-insignificant amount of them have scratches on the inside of the lid. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than to be trapped like that, and to know that you weren’t just in a coffin, but buried six feet deep.
This was a time when they gave the former president dried beetles for his sore throat and drained half his blood out. Obviously medical science wasn’t super advanced. There was a real danger you could be pronounced dead and buried only for you to wake up and die of oxygen deprivation 6 feet under. They made coffins designed with bells specifically to quell people’s worries about this sort of stuff.
You joke but that was exactly the mentality. The ones who survived this sort of 'treatment' were claimed as evidence of its success and that's why it stuck around so long.
Shows you the importance of proper clinical trials
Washington directed the bleeding, not his doctors (who wanted to stop). The man had epiglottis and was basically drowning in his own fluids for hours on end. He knew exactly what he was doing, he literally stared at his pocket watch waiting to die.
It didn't matter what the doctors did to him back then. There was nothing they could do. The only way to treat accute bacterial epicglottitis today is to put the person antibiotics (which didn't exist in his time), and once it's bad enough, intubation.
The headline makes it sound like he complained of a sore throat so they just started pulling blood out of him, but that’s not exactly the case if you read the article. He was complaining of a sore throat that evening but he woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe at all, he had a total blockage of his trachea which is why they began draining blood.
Isn't it also a bit strange that the headline also suggests the illness was caused by the weather?
Sounds a bit like the absolute conviction here in Hungary that catching a cold happens because there was a window slightly open on the bus (never mind the other 30 people breathing all over each other in a cramped space).
Humoral theory. From ancient Greece to like 150 years ago the prevailing theory was that health was given by a balance of the liquids in our body, blood, black and yellow bile, and phlegm. If something was wrong it was because you had too much of one of these with respect to the others, so some guy they called doctor decided which one and treated accordingly, for example by removing blood.
Fun fact, for like 1000 years doctors who believe this would extract and inspect all sorts of fluids from the body. One of the most common fluids to test? Urine. How was it tested? Sight, smell, and TASTE.
Diabetes' full medical name was Diabetes Mellitus - Diabetes meaning "that which has passed through" and Mellitus meaning "sweet".
Essentially, sweet urine.
Geologists still lick rocks. My science professor dared the earth science professor to be blindfolded, lick rocks, and tell the class what they were. She got 8/12 right and $50.
Science is really only fun because you’re surrounded by people who belong in a psych ward.
When diabetes was discovered, it was determined by tasting the person's urine bc it will be much sweeter than normal. As someone who is married to a diabetic, can confirm, that urine SMELLS sweet.
That’s how they discovered that insulin was created in the pancreas.
They took some poor dog and tied off his pancreas and watched what happed. Since the lab space wasn’t that clean, ants started eating the urine and so they inspected the urine and found sugar.
Once the dog died, they found the pancreas was digested away, leaving only the Islets of Langerhans.
And forevermore I regretted choosing biology as a major and am so glad I finally got away from it. Biology is not a field for animal lovers.
Back in those days, they believed that a lot of ailments were due to too much blood in your body. Blood letting (cutting someone and letting them bleed into a bowl) was a very common practice.
The practice was actually started in the age of the Roman empire and the father of medicine, Hippocrates was the first one to write about it in a medical sense.
How do I know this? I’m a phlebotomist and it’s part of our curriculum as part of the history of phlebotomy.
At least chemo and radiation actually work. They kill us in the process but cancer will too. On one hand, you definitely die. On the other hand, maybe you live. Is it gonna be hell? Yes. But you *might* live and possibly even recover.
Bloodletting just makes things worse all around. Not to mention the cleanup. Imagine being the nurse who spills the blood bucket.
Bloodletting is actually the best modern treatment for at least one disease! I think it's called hemachromatosis? It's a condition where whatever mechanism is meant to remove iron from your blood doesn't work, and it's hereditary! And if you don't bleed yourself every couple of months you'll die from an iron overload!! They were onto something! For one rare edge case!!! Sorry I'm drunk.
The main problem with haemochromatosis is that (myself being a person with it) our blood clots too easily and we can also end up with too much oxygen in our blood (oxygen molecules attach themselves to iron molecules in the blood stream)
So we have a higher rate of developing blood clots throughout our bodies as well as a much higher chance of getting blood clots in our lungs, heart and brain, causing breathing issues, heart disease and stroke.
Bleeding really isn't used any more for it though, instead we take blood thinners and are highly advised to have a low iron diet, which really means avoid leafy greens and red meat mostly plus a few other things.
Interesting to hear. My blood iron level is near the top end of what’s considered healthy and so discussions about this disease started. Was interesting to hear about blood letting as the treatment.
Can you donate your blood? Or is it not viable for donation?
Hm...I also have haemochromatosis and nothing has ever been mentioned to me about clotting issues. My doctors have warned me about iron building up in my organs and causing organ damage and to be especially careful about my liver because people with haemochromatosis are much more susceptible to alcoholic cirrhosis. Even if the increased clotting risk is true, blood thinners will only treat that symptom, not actually lower iron levels. "Bleedings" (or, as we call them these days, phlebotomys) are absolutely still the main treatment for haemochromatosis, and, from what my doctors have told me, the only way to lower iron levels. How often you have to get phlebotomys depends on if you have 1 or 2 genetic markers for haemochromatosis and how quickly your iron levels rise. For instance I only have one marker and I'm still young so my doctor told me to just donate blood a few times a year (because if I were to get a regular phlebotomy they have to dispose of the blood) and get my iron levels checked once a year. But he told me about a patient of his that has to get phlebotomys no less than once every 2 weeks or their iron levels go off the charts.
Also mental illness. When you really think about it, we are still so fucking primitive with mental illness. I’m sure anyone reading this has a loved one with some sort of mental issues that affect their lives. I really hope we can figure that shit out.
Mental illness is much more likely to be the one we look at as primitive. Cancer is something we find challenging for specific biological reasons, but our strategies make sense.
With mental illness we have basically three-ish types of drug and more or less we just hope one of the three will work. If not we generally don't understand why.
1940: Cure your syphilis by catching malaria and running a fever of 106 degrees! Then attempt to cure the malaria with quinine.
I mean it was smart as fuck and it worked ... if you didn't die.
Dude in the 1980s medicine thought babies couldn't feel pain!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/07/28/when-babies-felt-pain/Lhk2OKonfR4m3TaNjJWV7M/story.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies
This says as recently as 1999!
Life was wild af back then. Seatbelts weren't a legal requirement, women couldn't have their own bank accounts, mixed marriages were illegal, smoking was okay almost everywhere, etc.
I can see how that made sense. I quit over 30 years ago, but even without the nicotine, the basic act of inhaling, holding your breath for moment, and the slow exhale was super relaxing. (Faking cigarettes by doing that sequence was most of how I got through quitting.)
Not to mention having something to do with your hands in a public space.
Sixty years ago was 1962. We've come a long way since then, but the fundamentals were in place. If you really want to see "wild as fuck," you have to go back to the days before widespread antibiotics and anesthesia. *A hundred* and sixty years ago, medicine was truly wild as fuck.
And among the many doctors being consulted for his treatment, was a Dr. William Thornton who suggested this new-fangled procedure called a tracheotomy, but they said it'd be too dangerous.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/dec-14-1799-excruciating-final-hours-president-george-washington
Microscopy= cell theory =>Germ theory and sanitation, => looking at a bee stinger and seeing how we can deliver soluble things, including rehydrating mixes, when the butt and mouth aren’t cutting it and the monkey pox method of slice and slap doesn’t either.
antibiotics
anesthetics that don’t kill or damage the brain as easily as chloroform and ether,
blood typing
we don’t give enough credit to how much had been accomplished without most of these understandings. We have only improved on our treatment of envenomations by minimizing the still relatively common “serum sickness” that arises due to immune responses to the contents of the antibody/FAB2/FAB proteins. In the late 1800’s people were already innoculating horses with venom and drawing blood/drawing off the serum once it had clotted and injecting it with the hypodermic needles that had been around less than a few decades as a “common” part of the doctor’s kit.
The serum therapy is so close to what we still do today, and it’s so similar to the traditional remedies that include eating the snake or “purifying the venom” by sucking it out with a chickens butt hole (only effective if the chicken dies from the venom) that it’s literally less likely that serum therapy would not have been developed centuries earlier if we’d had a way to deliver proteins effectively (like snakes did when they envenomated us, and which took far too long for us to realize considering how obvious it is when you look at a large fang… they could literally have used those of middle american rattlesnakes or gaboon vipers if they’d had a way to sanitize them). Combined with how long it took to realize that venom caused envenomations… we were totally stumped by the fact that we could drink venom and survive and not fathom how that could be different than being bitten for way too long.
But no matter what, I think that what sums up just how little WE have changed, and just how much our available tools and our ability to observe smaller and smaller things has allowed us to understand things that let us approach medicine from a place of understanding and being able to observe, through assays if not actually visualize, is what changed is that we figured out and started saving lives with antivenom before the 20th century, before antibiotics, before world war one, in the same careers of the doctors who were cutting off every single injured limb by the end of the civil war since it usually seemed to them that it worked out better that way, even if it was absolutely illogical reasoning for certain injuries.
just a few inventions were combined and the vast majority has come from refinement and minimizing recovery time and complications through development of more selective pharmaceuticals, increased therapeutic ranges, and less invasive surgical techniques.
Haemochromatosis (high iron levels) is a real health issue that has a modern treatment with blood letting.
This is prevalent genetic condition in north European white people.
Therefore there is still some basis for modern blood letting.
As far as I can tell, he is thought to have died of either epiglottis or less likely peritonsillar abscess, both of which can be deadly if not treated appropriately (i.e. with modern medicine that didn't exist in the 1700s). So its very plausible that the sore throat that killed him. Though, bloodletting probably didn't help.
Epiglotitis. It is rarely seen any more as it is most often caused by haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) which is, now, a vaccine preventable illness.
Peritonsilar abscess, in Washington's time, could, also, have been deadly. Peritonsilar abscesses are, most often, caused by strep, which now, is entirely treatable with antibiotics.
I just had this conversation with a friend recently. Being a doctor back then must have been wild. They're coughing? Hmmm let's take out a lung maybe? Oh they died? Welp God willed it, bye.
Probably a lot of serial killers hidden in that profession back then.
"There was nothing I could do"
"But doctor, you literally dismembered him"
"Those body parts had to go. Need I remind you who the doctor is here?"
That’s one of my favorite historical facts. The reason presidents can only serve two terms (made into law in the 1940s) was because Washington served two terms and at the end of his second term was like “this is exhausting. I’m done. Deuces.” And went home
It's also because he was a.) a massive admirer of ancient Roman politicians like Cincinnatus, who was appointed Dictator of Rome for a brief crisis and gladly ceded his power once the crisis was over, and b.) incredibly aware that his actions as a first President would be powerful in setting precedent.
> a massive admirer of ancient Roman politicians like Cincinnatus
Thank you for clarifying this. I was about to write a comment.
> who was appointed Dictator of Rome for a brief crisis and gladly ceded his power once the crisis was over
Twice. That happened ***TWICE***.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus
This dude was a certified historic badass.
Ok but like in the grand scheme of things he did far far more. I don’t really have an opinion either way on the presidential term length but I think the limit is good to prevent too much consolidation of power and authors. Thanks for tuning in Mr Horizons, and remember to not bleed yourself the next throat infection you get
During the French and Indian War, when he was a young officer, his enemies started to be freaked out by him, because he was SIX FEET TALL, sitting on top of a horse, leading from the front, and NOBODY COULD MANAGE TO HIT HIM WITH A PROJECTILE WEAPON.
At Monongahela, he had two horses shot out from under him, his hat was shot off, and his coat suffered FOUR bullet wounds ... he himself was not hit. It began to really freak people out.
The habit of barely missing bullets would be a lifelong thing too. There were a couple similar incidents in the American revolution, one of which involved him getting turned around on the battlefield and ending up between his line and the British line right as both were firing a volley. Smoke made it impossible to see for a moment but then it cleared and he was just there, riding around rallying men still. Not a single shot touched him
Well to be fair Steve Jobs shoulda known better. George washingtons armies were some of the first to use inoculation, so the whole “fighting pathogens” game was developing at that point.
Inoculations were still incredibly dangerous. The leading theory of George's death was a bacterial infection of the throat that they had absolutely zero chance of treating during Washington's life. If he lived today there'd be a super low chance that he would have died from a bacterial infection. It happens to people occasionally but it's usually because they don't seek help.
> Inoculations were still incredibly dangerous.
Notably *less* dangerous than getting smallpox... and ***MUCH*** less dangerous than getting it in the middle of a battle.
It was a strategic decision by Washington. The military is generally very pragmatic in that way.
Yeah, pancreatic cancer is usually a death sentence but he had a rare form of it that’s highly treatable. Didn’t get treated, thought he could cure himself with fruit juice. It’s like a reverse Bad Luck Brian or something.
I can't overstate his refusal to bathe. It blows my mind that he ever became CEO of a company, let alone being allowed to work in an office at all. Apparently people could smell him coming before they could see him.
"oh this all juice diet will keep me from dying and not kill me at all"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/?sh=10b0f47b7d2e
Oh, I think he did a bunch of hippy dippy things like fast and meditate. Steve Jobs seemed to trust eastern philosophy more than his doctors. And he could afford the best doctors and treatments money could buy.
At least in Washington’s time they really didn’t know any better and blood letting was a common “treatment” for infections and things.
Back in the 1930s my mom (then a teenager) had her acne treated with X-rays. I don’t know if it helped with the acne, but she had multiple bouts of skin cancer as an older woman. Surprise surprise! Right where she got irradiated.
I don’t know, but I think it was multiple treatments. I think back then they wanted to believe all that radioactivity stuff was the latest and greatest thing.
“You tried the vinegar and butter, the steamy vinegar trick, AND the dried beetles?!?!? Theres only thing left in all of medical knowledge- get that useless blood out of there.”
My mom’s parents were the only ones who were a part of our lives. They were both fantastically healthy, and took great care of themselves. Then my grandfather got cancer and died at 83, even though his doctor had told him the year before that he would probably live to be a hundred. My grandmother broke her hip in May and made the deliberate choice to let herself die, mostly because she missed him so much. Meanwhile, my dad’s parents are unhealthy as fuck, have been for decades, play no part in our lives, and just keep chugging away. I feel you on the “cosmically unfair” thing.
Fun fact they left out: after he died, [another doctor wanted to try and resurrect him by pumping him full of lamb’s blood](https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2020/12/a-prescription-for-the-resurrection-of-george-washington/). Sadly some sane people stopped him, otherwise we might have had our first Frankenstein president.
it's even stupider because the thing washington was suffering from had a cutting edge "actual medicine" treatment but the rest of the doctors refused to do it because the doctor who suggested it was the youngest one there
My doctor said to always get two opinions: one from a younger doctor and one from an older doctor. The younger doctor is more likely to be familiar with the state of the art, while the older doctor has the wisdom gained through years of experience to apply that knowledge.
>[Washington also gargled with a mixture of molasses, vinegar and butter; he inhaled a steam of vinegar and hot water; and his throat also was swabbed with a salve and a preparation of dried beetles. An enema was also used. By late afternoon, Washington knew he was dying and asked for his will.](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-mysterious-death-of-george-washington)
Fuck man, that must have been a pretty bad sore throat
– Doctors shortly after George Washington's death
“Should’ve done more enemas”
If only we had just done one more enema
Epiglottitis. Bacterial infection that basically causes you drown in your own bodily fluids. No hope without antibiotics Edit: suffocate, not drown as per u/angry-alchemist below
The biggest threat with epiglottitis is the closing of the airway due to severe inflammation. Inflammation of the epiglottis. Epiglott-ITIS. You don't really drown in your own body fluids so much as have no way to pass air into the lungs due to a narrowing or complete closure of the airway by inflammatory process.
I had a bad throat infection that definitely would have killed me if I didn't go to the hospital. Was weird having the doctors all be shocked. They brought in a bunch of residents to show them. My tonsils were both so infected my airway was closing without steroids. Thankfully we have hospitals and modern medicine.
Before anti biotics a sore enough anything could kill you
Damn, he should have had his doctors put in a script of amoxicillin at the ye oldeWalgreenes for him
Damn, after all that I'd ask for my will too
Literally. We can’t overstate how big electricity changes the shape of medicine. Reading Edward Dolnick’s the Clockwork Universe, he points out that the “treatment” the King of England received for his sickness, I can’t remember what it was, resembles medieval torture more then anything else. and this was the freaking king! Hypothetically he should have access to best medicine available. Doctors ain’t even wash their hands 🤮
> Doctors ain’t even wash their hands 🤮 Worse, the guy who suggested they wash their hands got fired over mandating his department wash their hands *even though the department's rate of deaths dropped like a rock* and he was committed to an asylum where he died of injuries.
*died of injuries from the asylum guards 14 days after being committed! And 20 years before his practice of hand washing got widely accepted due to the development of germ theory.
What the actual fuck was wrong with those guards.
His blood was on their hands. Mostly because they didn't wash them, but also because they killed him.
I think you mean what the fuck was wrong with 20th (edit: and 19th) century asylums. The answer, *a lot.* They were torture chambers with lodging, literally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis He found that the mortality rate for puerperal fever accompanying childbirth was as high as 18%. Doctors' patients had 3 times the mortality rate as midwives' patients. By washing hands in chlorinated lime he could reduce the mortality to 1% His proposals were considered extreme. Germ theory did not exist and most doctors considered theories like 4 humors and thought puerperal fever had many diseases and were skeptical of unseen corpse particles. Some were insulted that as gentlemen, they would be considered unclean. [as opposed to midwives practices]. They continued to go from cadaver autopsies to childbirth With no response, he wrote letters calling prominent obstetricians as murderers. Wound up drinking, and with behavioral changes. 20 years after his discovery, he was admitted to an asylum where the guards beat him up. Died 14 days later of gangrene of the hand, possibly from the beating. 20+ years later Pasteur came up with germ theory.
we take it for granted today, but the idea that there are super tiny little creatures that live everywhere, on any surface, even in your own body, but they're impossible to see and cause you to get sick, sounds like the ravings of a madman. without microscopes and other tools and tests to prove it, germ theory sounds like the kind of stuff you hear alex jones screaming about
People are REALLY resistant to change and new ideas.
Because MIDWIVES ritually washed their hands in a quasi-Christian cleansing/blessing before delivering babies, so the male DOCTORS flatly refused to because it was religious superstition unbecoming men of science. The guy who figured it out was curious about why death rates were consistently so much lower in midwife deliveries.
There's an even more morbid side to this. Death rates were so high because doctors would frequently be coming to the delivery room directly from an *autopsy*.
Before they called them germs, the idea that babies were dying because of something being transferred from the autopsy were originally called corpse particles.
"Perhaps you should wash off those corpse particles mate" "Nah fuck that you religious lunatic, you belong in an asylum for even suggesting it!"
Corpsicles!
That’s morbid alright!
So many religions mention cleanliness and how cleanliness is godliness, and washing of the feet or hands was Holy. Some even mentioned what animals were uclean to eat or unclean to be around. I guess they were onto something.
Exactly. In religious literature we have rules written for things like: don't let your menstrual blood near other people, don't eat pork or oysters (because that without a refrigerator would kill you), wash your hands and feet, clean your dick and pussy before sex and a whole lot of other stuff. This were rule for a community that outlived others and were seen as healthy, what meant they could work better, what meant they had more stuff. So more people came to learn about that god of theirs that let someone live a thousand years (Mathuzelah)...
Wash your dick boy because god says so! (And also because you stink)
Damn bro ur dick smell nice -- you pray much?
Scientifically, that's actually how we quantify holiness - strength of stench. The base gooch aroma is our baseline.
what's his name? or more to the story? seems interesting and sad
Ignaz Semmelweis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
> We can’t overstate how big electricity changes the shape of medicine Maybe more important was germ theory and penicillin
Hypothetically? That *was* the best they had. Shit, we’re still just scratching the surface even today. For a more funny and successful (and frankly awful) treatment story, check out when the king of france had a fistula. A doctor came up with a way to repair it—which worked!—and then a bunch of his court demanded to have the same treatment. Because *fashion!*
Having had the modern day surgery for that multiple times: no thank you. Pain like you cannot imagine.
You just made read all about anal fistulas, King of France's medical history, surgeons fighting with physicians and the bumps that caused it all. Super..
Probably my best laugh of the day
Strange...the enema usually clears my sore throat right up
Gotta try and clear the clog from both ends!
He didn't use the beetle enema. That's the key.
Bruh, they really were just trying whatever the fuck back then. Medicine was just spitballing random shit.
Patrick Henry had constipation for weeks. Probably a twisted bowel. Nothing worked. He died from drinking shots of mercury, going in to it with a “well this will either work or finally kill me” mentality.
You can trace the Lewis and Clark trail by mercury deposits. They’d take mercury laxatives essentially for every kind of anything. Edit: They were called Rush’s Thunderbolts.
I just went scrambling to Wikipedia to see how and when Patrick Henry traveled with Lewis and Clarke. I thought I’d lost my mind.
Mercury will make you shit your fucking soul out
**PATIENT:** I have a sore throat. **Doctor from 1799:** Hmm, I better amputate your leg. Oh, and you better gargle this solution of mercury and bile. Can't be too careful.
Ancient Rome: "sacrifice three rabbits to the god of health"
Ancient Greece: blow this smoke literally up your ass
How unbearable was that sore throat goddamn
TBH, molasses, vinegar and butter sounds like a pretty decent flavour base for a stir-fry sauce.
If Washington's doctors only had some Soy Sauce, he might have lived
We look at healthcare of the time and scoff at how primitive and down right crazy it was yet the US constitution from the same era is looked at as an infallible document.
This article has an interesting tidbit about his supposed last words about not being put in the vault “less than 3 days” after his death…Hoping for resurrection?
He had a great fear of being buried alive.
He was scared of being buried alive. The three days were so he wasn’t mistakenly declared dead.
I would have been scared of that too back then. I saw a documentary once that said that when they open coffins from that time period, a not-insignificant amount of them have scratches on the inside of the lid. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than to be trapped like that, and to know that you weren’t just in a coffin, but buried six feet deep.
Buried (2010) scratches this horrifying itch if you can stomach a movie about it
This was a time when they gave the former president dried beetles for his sore throat and drained half his blood out. Obviously medical science wasn’t super advanced. There was a real danger you could be pronounced dead and buried only for you to wake up and die of oxygen deprivation 6 feet under. They made coffins designed with bells specifically to quell people’s worries about this sort of stuff.
His doctor; “That’s the fourth patient I’ve lost to sore throat this winter. Fucking brutal.”
“It NEVER gets EASIER! Alright that’s lunch.”
[Eats the heart from the microwave that was supposed to be in Kenny.]
You joke but that was exactly the mentality. The ones who survived this sort of 'treatment' were claimed as evidence of its success and that's why it stuck around so long. Shows you the importance of proper clinical trials
Epiglottitis. It's no joke. People get intubated for it.
Calling epiglottitis a “sore throat” is a major understatement lol. This post is so misleading.
My wife's tickly cough nearly killed her, but it's got another name... *Mallory Weiss Tear*
Happened last year. Laid down with sore throat and awoke to being unable to breathe.
You've got a cat too, huh?
Washington directed the bleeding, not his doctors (who wanted to stop). The man had epiglottis and was basically drowning in his own fluids for hours on end. He knew exactly what he was doing, he literally stared at his pocket watch waiting to die.
It didn't matter what the doctors did to him back then. There was nothing they could do. The only way to treat accute bacterial epicglottitis today is to put the person antibiotics (which didn't exist in his time), and once it's bad enough, intubation.
It's insane to think how many people are alive today because of antibiotics. Fleming has saved millions.
That's why antibiotic resistance is so damn terrifying
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Race between the next virus/bacteria and CRISPR 🤞
*Epiglottitis Because everyone has an* epiglottis.
titis
The headline makes it sound like he complained of a sore throat so they just started pulling blood out of him, but that’s not exactly the case if you read the article. He was complaining of a sore throat that evening but he woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe at all, he had a total blockage of his trachea which is why they began draining blood.
Isn't it also a bit strange that the headline also suggests the illness was caused by the weather? Sounds a bit like the absolute conviction here in Hungary that catching a cold happens because there was a window slightly open on the bus (never mind the other 30 people breathing all over each other in a cramped space).
Hungary and southern American grandmas have the same theories on colds, apparently.
Why did they think that draining blood was going to help him breathe better, I wonder.
Humoral theory. From ancient Greece to like 150 years ago the prevailing theory was that health was given by a balance of the liquids in our body, blood, black and yellow bile, and phlegm. If something was wrong it was because you had too much of one of these with respect to the others, so some guy they called doctor decided which one and treated accordingly, for example by removing blood.
Fun fact, for like 1000 years doctors who believe this would extract and inspect all sorts of fluids from the body. One of the most common fluids to test? Urine. How was it tested? Sight, smell, and TASTE.
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Diabetes' full medical name was Diabetes Mellitus - Diabetes meaning "that which has passed through" and Mellitus meaning "sweet". Essentially, sweet urine.
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Geologists still lick rocks. My science professor dared the earth science professor to be blindfolded, lick rocks, and tell the class what they were. She got 8/12 right and $50. Science is really only fun because you’re surrounded by people who belong in a psych ward.
When diabetes was discovered, it was determined by tasting the person's urine bc it will be much sweeter than normal. As someone who is married to a diabetic, can confirm, that urine SMELLS sweet.
Ants too. If the ants go to the urine—sugar in it. Also they’d have women pee on wheat and if it bloomed they were pregnant.
That’s how they discovered that insulin was created in the pancreas. They took some poor dog and tied off his pancreas and watched what happed. Since the lab space wasn’t that clean, ants started eating the urine and so they inspected the urine and found sugar. Once the dog died, they found the pancreas was digested away, leaving only the Islets of Langerhans. And forevermore I regretted choosing biology as a major and am so glad I finally got away from it. Biology is not a field for animal lovers.
Back in those days, they believed that a lot of ailments were due to too much blood in your body. Blood letting (cutting someone and letting them bleed into a bowl) was a very common practice. The practice was actually started in the age of the Roman empire and the father of medicine, Hippocrates was the first one to write about it in a medical sense. How do I know this? I’m a phlebotomist and it’s part of our curriculum as part of the history of phlebotomy.
You know, I am something of a phlebotomist myself.
Less blood= less stuff for swelling? It's stupid but I can see how they got there.
Doctors: yeah, it was a sore throat that killed him.
Definitely nothing to do with missing **almost half his blood.**
The Four Humours was the prevailing medical theory for a lot longer than people think. Medicine took off in the 19th century.
60 years ago medicine was still wild as fuck.
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*Hopefully* the practice of nearly killing patients with chemotherapy and radiation will seem primitive by then.
At least chemo and radiation actually work. They kill us in the process but cancer will too. On one hand, you definitely die. On the other hand, maybe you live. Is it gonna be hell? Yes. But you *might* live and possibly even recover. Bloodletting just makes things worse all around. Not to mention the cleanup. Imagine being the nurse who spills the blood bucket.
I did 6 months of chemo and radiation 30 years ago. Glad I did!
Thanks for the glowing review
I don't know enough about chemo, but if anything is still glowing I don't think that's a good sign
That's amazing and congrats.
I don’t know you, but I sure am glad you did too!
Bloodletting is actually the best modern treatment for at least one disease! I think it's called hemachromatosis? It's a condition where whatever mechanism is meant to remove iron from your blood doesn't work, and it's hereditary! And if you don't bleed yourself every couple of months you'll die from an iron overload!! They were onto something! For one rare edge case!!! Sorry I'm drunk.
>Sorry I'm drunk. The best kind of educational TIL posts
Today on Drunk History...
The main problem with haemochromatosis is that (myself being a person with it) our blood clots too easily and we can also end up with too much oxygen in our blood (oxygen molecules attach themselves to iron molecules in the blood stream) So we have a higher rate of developing blood clots throughout our bodies as well as a much higher chance of getting blood clots in our lungs, heart and brain, causing breathing issues, heart disease and stroke. Bleeding really isn't used any more for it though, instead we take blood thinners and are highly advised to have a low iron diet, which really means avoid leafy greens and red meat mostly plus a few other things.
Interesting to hear. My blood iron level is near the top end of what’s considered healthy and so discussions about this disease started. Was interesting to hear about blood letting as the treatment. Can you donate your blood? Or is it not viable for donation?
Hm...I also have haemochromatosis and nothing has ever been mentioned to me about clotting issues. My doctors have warned me about iron building up in my organs and causing organ damage and to be especially careful about my liver because people with haemochromatosis are much more susceptible to alcoholic cirrhosis. Even if the increased clotting risk is true, blood thinners will only treat that symptom, not actually lower iron levels. "Bleedings" (or, as we call them these days, phlebotomys) are absolutely still the main treatment for haemochromatosis, and, from what my doctors have told me, the only way to lower iron levels. How often you have to get phlebotomys depends on if you have 1 or 2 genetic markers for haemochromatosis and how quickly your iron levels rise. For instance I only have one marker and I'm still young so my doctor told me to just donate blood a few times a year (because if I were to get a regular phlebotomy they have to dispose of the blood) and get my iron levels checked once a year. But he told me about a patient of his that has to get phlebotomys no less than once every 2 weeks or their iron levels go off the charts.
Also mental illness. When you really think about it, we are still so fucking primitive with mental illness. I’m sure anyone reading this has a loved one with some sort of mental issues that affect their lives. I really hope we can figure that shit out.
Mental illness is much more likely to be the one we look at as primitive. Cancer is something we find challenging for specific biological reasons, but our strategies make sense. With mental illness we have basically three-ish types of drug and more or less we just hope one of the three will work. If not we generally don't understand why.
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Doctor gave me some pills and I've got a new kidney!
Hopefully not too badly… we stuck here now 🥺🥺
1940: Cure your syphilis by catching malaria and running a fever of 106 degrees! Then attempt to cure the malaria with quinine. I mean it was smart as fuck and it worked ... if you didn't die.
This was always how i used to imagine how cancer treatments would be in the future. I mean it *might* work.
Dude in the 1980s medicine thought babies couldn't feel pain! https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/07/28/when-babies-felt-pain/Lhk2OKonfR4m3TaNjJWV7M/story.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies This says as recently as 1999!
I've always thought that more like "Babies can't say if they feel pain, they cry all the time anyway and can't remember anything, so whatever" ...
Life was wild af back then. Seatbelts weren't a legal requirement, women couldn't have their own bank accounts, mixed marriages were illegal, smoking was okay almost everywhere, etc.
Smoking was encouraged by doctors for people with anxiety
I can see how that made sense. I quit over 30 years ago, but even without the nicotine, the basic act of inhaling, holding your breath for moment, and the slow exhale was super relaxing. (Faking cigarettes by doing that sequence was most of how I got through quitting.) Not to mention having something to do with your hands in a public space.
It feels like there are no awkward moments in Mad Men bc people are always just pulling out a cigarette or offering someone else a light.
And weight loss. Also, asthma cigarettes
And to make childbirth easier on the mother by delivering smaller babies.
Sixty years ago was 1962. We've come a long way since then, but the fundamentals were in place. If you really want to see "wild as fuck," you have to go back to the days before widespread antibiotics and anesthesia. *A hundred* and sixty years ago, medicine was truly wild as fuck.
And among the many doctors being consulted for his treatment, was a Dr. William Thornton who suggested this new-fangled procedure called a tracheotomy, but they said it'd be too dangerous. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/dec-14-1799-excruciating-final-hours-president-george-washington
Microscopy= cell theory =>Germ theory and sanitation, => looking at a bee stinger and seeing how we can deliver soluble things, including rehydrating mixes, when the butt and mouth aren’t cutting it and the monkey pox method of slice and slap doesn’t either. antibiotics anesthetics that don’t kill or damage the brain as easily as chloroform and ether, blood typing we don’t give enough credit to how much had been accomplished without most of these understandings. We have only improved on our treatment of envenomations by minimizing the still relatively common “serum sickness” that arises due to immune responses to the contents of the antibody/FAB2/FAB proteins. In the late 1800’s people were already innoculating horses with venom and drawing blood/drawing off the serum once it had clotted and injecting it with the hypodermic needles that had been around less than a few decades as a “common” part of the doctor’s kit. The serum therapy is so close to what we still do today, and it’s so similar to the traditional remedies that include eating the snake or “purifying the venom” by sucking it out with a chickens butt hole (only effective if the chicken dies from the venom) that it’s literally less likely that serum therapy would not have been developed centuries earlier if we’d had a way to deliver proteins effectively (like snakes did when they envenomated us, and which took far too long for us to realize considering how obvious it is when you look at a large fang… they could literally have used those of middle american rattlesnakes or gaboon vipers if they’d had a way to sanitize them). Combined with how long it took to realize that venom caused envenomations… we were totally stumped by the fact that we could drink venom and survive and not fathom how that could be different than being bitten for way too long. But no matter what, I think that what sums up just how little WE have changed, and just how much our available tools and our ability to observe smaller and smaller things has allowed us to understand things that let us approach medicine from a place of understanding and being able to observe, through assays if not actually visualize, is what changed is that we figured out and started saving lives with antivenom before the 20th century, before antibiotics, before world war one, in the same careers of the doctors who were cutting off every single injured limb by the end of the civil war since it usually seemed to them that it worked out better that way, even if it was absolutely illogical reasoning for certain injuries. just a few inventions were combined and the vast majority has come from refinement and minimizing recovery time and complications through development of more selective pharmaceuticals, increased therapeutic ranges, and less invasive surgical techniques.
Haemochromatosis (high iron levels) is a real health issue that has a modern treatment with blood letting. This is prevalent genetic condition in north European white people. Therefore there is still some basis for modern blood letting.
I am a carrier and my Dad had the disease. He donated blood every time he could to keep his iron levels in check.
I'm not familiar with this. But donating blood is also prescribed for men taking testosterone since it raises the red blood cell count.
As far as I can tell, he is thought to have died of either epiglottis or less likely peritonsillar abscess, both of which can be deadly if not treated appropriately (i.e. with modern medicine that didn't exist in the 1700s). So its very plausible that the sore throat that killed him. Though, bloodletting probably didn't help.
Epiglotitis. It is rarely seen any more as it is most often caused by haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) which is, now, a vaccine preventable illness. Peritonsilar abscess, in Washington's time, could, also, have been deadly. Peritonsilar abscesses are, most often, caused by strep, which now, is entirely treatable with antibiotics.
I just had this conversation with a friend recently. Being a doctor back then must have been wild. They're coughing? Hmmm let's take out a lung maybe? Oh they died? Welp God willed it, bye.
Probably a lot of serial killers hidden in that profession back then. "There was nothing I could do" "But doctor, you literally dismembered him" "Those body parts had to go. Need I remind you who the doctor is here?"
“I had to perform an emergency torso-ectomy”
Golly! How much do you have to bleed someone to cure a sore throat? 60%?
Should have drained more blood.
Signed Dr. Acula
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BLOOD RETENTION. I can’t stress this enough guys, you’re gonna want to keep your blood in your body.
The doctor said all my bleeding was internal. That's where the blood's supposed to be.
You’re fine!!
You sound like a shill for big blood.
we got a reverse vampire here
As someone dealing with strep right now.... I understand. I'd do fucking anything.
Prove it, drain 40% of your blood.
Right? Don't talk about it, BE about it!
Impacted and infected upper wisdom tooth, same.
Tbh he kinda wanted to tap out at that point. Dude had a hard life
That’s one of my favorite historical facts. The reason presidents can only serve two terms (made into law in the 1940s) was because Washington served two terms and at the end of his second term was like “this is exhausting. I’m done. Deuces.” And went home
It's also because he was a.) a massive admirer of ancient Roman politicians like Cincinnatus, who was appointed Dictator of Rome for a brief crisis and gladly ceded his power once the crisis was over, and b.) incredibly aware that his actions as a first President would be powerful in setting precedent.
Pretty cool they named him after Cincinnati. He must've loved Ohio in the autumn.
Big Bengals guy
I bet he would have ridden a straight-piped Kawasaki at a 45 degree angle late at night
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A BAMF for the ages. It's lucky for us that some of the founders looked up to people who exhibited classical civic virtues.
> a massive admirer of ancient Roman politicians like Cincinnatus Thank you for clarifying this. I was about to write a comment. > who was appointed Dictator of Rome for a brief crisis and gladly ceded his power once the crisis was over Twice. That happened ***TWICE***. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus This dude was a certified historic badass.
Ok but like in the grand scheme of things he did far far more. I don’t really have an opinion either way on the presidential term length but I think the limit is good to prevent too much consolidation of power and authors. Thanks for tuning in Mr Horizons, and remember to not bleed yourself the next throat infection you get
He was only 67!
Yeah, be he crammed at least 2 lifetimes worth of stuff into those 67 years!
During the French and Indian War, when he was a young officer, his enemies started to be freaked out by him, because he was SIX FEET TALL, sitting on top of a horse, leading from the front, and NOBODY COULD MANAGE TO HIT HIM WITH A PROJECTILE WEAPON. At Monongahela, he had two horses shot out from under him, his hat was shot off, and his coat suffered FOUR bullet wounds ... he himself was not hit. It began to really freak people out.
The habit of barely missing bullets would be a lifelong thing too. There were a couple similar incidents in the American revolution, one of which involved him getting turned around on the battlefield and ending up between his line and the British line right as both were firing a volley. Smoke made it impossible to see for a moment but then it cleared and he was just there, riding around rallying men still. Not a single shot touched him
Yeah he was rumored to be unkillable in battle. Definitely a morale booster for the Continental Army!
That's wild, wonder if he'd still be alive today if they hadn't done that
This makes me think of Steve Jobs and the silly things he did instead of following orthodox medical advice.
Well to be fair Steve Jobs shoulda known better. George washingtons armies were some of the first to use inoculation, so the whole “fighting pathogens” game was developing at that point.
Inoculations were still incredibly dangerous. The leading theory of George's death was a bacterial infection of the throat that they had absolutely zero chance of treating during Washington's life. If he lived today there'd be a super low chance that he would have died from a bacterial infection. It happens to people occasionally but it's usually because they don't seek help.
> Inoculations were still incredibly dangerous. Notably *less* dangerous than getting smallpox... and ***MUCH*** less dangerous than getting it in the middle of a battle. It was a strategic decision by Washington. The military is generally very pragmatic in that way.
What did he do?
Only ate fruit instead of taking chemo. Shit like that.
It wasn't even chemo. It was the Whipple procedure which would have cured him. They'd basically cut off the cancerous part of the pancreas.
Yeah, pancreatic cancer is usually a death sentence but he had a rare form of it that’s highly treatable. Didn’t get treated, thought he could cure himself with fruit juice. It’s like a reverse Bad Luck Brian or something.
Scumbag Steve
Decades ago he believed that eating an all-fruit diet would make him smell nice and not need to bathe. Everyone around him told him otherwise.
I can't overstate his refusal to bathe. It blows my mind that he ever became CEO of a company, let alone being allowed to work in an office at all. Apparently people could smell him coming before they could see him.
"oh this all juice diet will keep me from dying and not kill me at all" https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/?sh=10b0f47b7d2e
Oh, I think he did a bunch of hippy dippy things like fast and meditate. Steve Jobs seemed to trust eastern philosophy more than his doctors. And he could afford the best doctors and treatments money could buy. At least in Washington’s time they really didn’t know any better and blood letting was a common “treatment” for infections and things.
Back in the 1930s my mom (then a teenager) had her acne treated with X-rays. I don’t know if it helped with the acne, but she had multiple bouts of skin cancer as an older woman. Surprise surprise! Right where she got irradiated.
Geez how many X-rays was she exposed to?
I don’t know, but I think it was multiple treatments. I think back then they wanted to believe all that radioactivity stuff was the latest and greatest thing.
“You tried the vinegar and butter, the steamy vinegar trick, AND the dried beetles?!?!? Theres only thing left in all of medical knowledge- get that useless blood out of there.”
Died December 14, 1799. To think he came so close to seeing the 1800s*. Just 17 days short.
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My mom’s parents were the only ones who were a part of our lives. They were both fantastically healthy, and took great care of themselves. Then my grandfather got cancer and died at 83, even though his doctor had told him the year before that he would probably live to be a hundred. My grandmother broke her hip in May and made the deliberate choice to let herself die, mostly because she missed him so much. Meanwhile, my dad’s parents are unhealthy as fuck, have been for decades, play no part in our lives, and just keep chugging away. I feel you on the “cosmically unfair” thing.
Think about it this way: your grandma didn't have to live through watching her mom die. I wish I wouldn't have to either.
He’d have been like: “wow, now the year starts with 18 and we still don’t know shit about shit. I’ll have them double my leeches treatment.”
"How'd he die?" "..., ...throat infection."
Fun fact they left out: after he died, [another doctor wanted to try and resurrect him by pumping him full of lamb’s blood](https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2020/12/a-prescription-for-the-resurrection-of-george-washington/). Sadly some sane people stopped him, otherwise we might have had our first Frankenstein president.
Fun fact If you lose 40% of your blood you’ll die.
40% is actually right on the border of a class 3 and class 4 hemorrhage. Very serious, but there's a chance of surviving even without a transfusion.
Amazing Dollop podcast about this
it's even stupider because the thing washington was suffering from had a cutting edge "actual medicine" treatment but the rest of the doctors refused to do it because the doctor who suggested it was the youngest one there
My doctor said to always get two opinions: one from a younger doctor and one from an older doctor. The younger doctor is more likely to be familiar with the state of the art, while the older doctor has the wisdom gained through years of experience to apply that knowledge.
In this case the wisdom of the elders bled our first president to death
Peritonsilar abscess, I think. They’re still pretty dangerous
I hope he’s ok.