The Poor Historians: Medical History Misadventures

With the success of "The Last of Us" show, we thought we'd take some time to look at historically important cases of fungal infection. We'll investigate a possible explanation for all those witch trials of yesteryear as well as a common childhood fungal infection that accounted for quite the degree of social upheaval in Victorian England.
Also, we'll have our first entry in Mike's mailbag segment. Tune in to see if he gets the question correct.
Full show notes on our website.
References:

1. https://microbialcell.com/researcharticles/2020a-kainz-microbial-cell/ overview of Fungal infections, Kainz et. al., 2020 (linked in BBC article)
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64402102 BBC Health article about The Last of Us
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials Wikipedia page on Salem Witch Trials
4. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/study-zombie-ant-death-grip-comes-from-muscle-contractions-not-the-brain/ Ars Technica blog post on Cordyceps
5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/20/cordyceps-fungus-last-of-us-hbo/ WaPo article on climate change related to the show
6. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/#:~:text=The%20Salem%20witch%20trials%20occurred,accused%20and%20compensated%20their%20families Smithsonian Salem Witch Trials article
7. https://www.vox.com/2015/10/29/9620542/salem-witch-trials-ergotism Vox article on Ergotism in the trials
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3898692/ mirror neuron review article
9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975928/#:~:text=Herpes%20zoster%20(HZ)%2C%20a,%2C%20or%20varicella%2C%20in%20childhood St. Anthony’s Fire survey article

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK169210/ Ringworm Chapter, Fungal Diseases in the US and Britain 1850-2000

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When you hear the story of how syphilis research was carried out in the United States in the 20th century, you'll probably start to understand why there is a history of mistrust of the medical establishment, especially among the African American community. This episode details one of the bleakest and most shameful chapters in U.S. medical history, a time when ethics were cast aside at the expense of minority communities. We'll talk about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (aka Tuskegee Experiment) as well as the Guatemala syphilis experiments that preceded them.
Sources:

1. For symptom confirmation: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/syphilis-epidemiology-pathophysiology-and-clinical-manifestations-in-patients-without-hiv?search=syphilis&source=search_result&selectedTitle=3~150&usage_type=default&display_rank=3#H10 UpToDate (paywall)
2. Emily Blunt gets Syphilis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_(TV_series)
3. Medical Microbiology, Chapter 36: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7716/
4. Wikipedia Syphilis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis
5. Long Article on Syphilis Origin: https://asm.org/Articles/2019/June/Revisiting-the-Great-Imitator,-Part-I-The-Origin-a
6. Republication of the AP study about Tuskeegee: https://apnews.com/article/business-science-health-race-and-ethnicity-syphilis-e9dd07eaa4e74052878a68132cd3803a
7. Bioethics statement on Guatamala Studies: https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf
8. Wikipedia on Guatemala Studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiments
9. Wikipedia on Tuskeegee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
10. John Charles Cutler Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_Cutler

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This episode will be a deviation from our normal format. Unfortunately, the entire episode we'd recorded for release this week was lost to the cyberspace aether. A whole episode just gone from existence. Discovering this with no time to re-record, we decided to release something previously unheard: a Poor Historians Podcast pilot episode.
We had played with several formats for the show and this episode was one such project. It's a brief radio drama about Dr. William Beaumont, a famous surgeon, who happened to treat a fur trader named Alexis St. Martin for a gunshot wound to the abdomen. St. Martin did not die from the wound, but instead a permanent channel grew between his abdominal skin and the inside of his stomach, medically called a "fistula". This was a window into his stomach (literally) and Dr. Beaumont used this opportunity to study how the stomach worked in digestion and its other general duties. In this episode, we imagined what it would have been like to use a time machine to travel to the early 19th century to see how this unfolded in real time.
We'll be back in two weeks with a regular episode, but hopefully our fans and new listeners find this a fun departure. The alternative was no episode and that would make us sad. Enjoy a very new Aaron, Max, and Mike with then just unboxed microphones, fumbling around a story in medical history.

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Marie Curie and her husband discovered radium and radioactivity in 1898. Soon thereafter everything has radium in it, from beauty products to glow in the dark timepieces. Who would have thought there was a tragic price to be paid for all that "healthy glow?"

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Because sometimes you gotta put a lotta holes in heads to figure out when it's beneficial. What's more exciting than old tyme neurosurgical trial and error?

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