Behind the Scenes Minis: Odd Baby Train

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about rickets this week. We sure did. I have had Ricketts on my list for a while. I didn't want to do it immediately after the one about scurvy or the one about pelagra, because people might get tired of hearing about my fixation with vitamin deficiency diseases. I mean, we all have our things. It's fine, we do we do. I also knew that I had enough of the the underpinning knowledge that it would be a relatively easy episode. Yeah. So it would be helping with the on ramp from having taken some time off over the holidays, returning to normal working time. A couple of things that came up. One we talked about Saranas of Ephesus. Was his name Seranas or Solanis? I don't remember either way, writing I'm you know who I'm talking about guy, the guy we mentioned, the guy during the Roman era who wrote a book on gynecology that included a section on baby care, caring for newborns. Seranis of ephesus. I of course locked this up because I wanted to see exactly what he had to say. Yeah, and this text includes some hilarious pictures of anatomy, and I don't know. I didn't look into it find to find out. Are these things that he drew and included? Are these things some other commenter drew and included with a later edition. Not sure, but they are pictures supposedly of fetal gestation right in the uterus. Okay. I showed them to the friends in the group chat because they were so ridiculous. And one of them said, why am I looking at a full, a fully grown man in the devil's water bottle? And I was like, that's a great question, because that's a perfect characterization for all. Oh I was looking at them. Oh, these are great, They're amazing and so funny. Okay, here's what I will tell you. Okay, we all know I'm a little bit of a baby pobe. For people to love babies, I'm so glad you do. Just they freak me out. If people look like tiny adults when they were born, I might be less weirded out by it. And I'm not sure what that means. That's funny. But I love the idea of someone just like arriving on this planet in miniature form but with adult proportions. Yeah yeah, I mean and there there is just there like little dolls. Yeah yeah. There are periods of art history where the babies look like tiny adults, Yes, for sure. The fact that they are in what is supposed to be a uterus but does look like the kind of old tiny rubber water bottle that you would put hot water in for your cramps makes it more funny. I like how one looks like they're dipping their toe into the outside world, like testing, Yeah, checking it out. So that was one of the funniest things. We didn't talk about it at all because I really wanted the focus to be on rickets. But for a while it seemed like there was not exactly a fad. Might mean more of a trend in the world of medicine to routinely test people for their vitamin D levels and then recommend potentially supplementation based on that. And there were a couple of physicals where I had a vitamin D test and then had a recommendation. One of these times, I was working a job where I was in literally an underground space, and I worked from like, I worked the whole afternoon and evening, so if I was going to get any sun exposure, like they had to leave the house and do things before work that would be out in the sun. And I read an article like I'm not a doctor, I can't really make medical medical recommendations that would not be okay. And I did not read the entire spectrum of writing about this, but it does seem like there was eventually a okay, we tried this for a while. It doesn't seem like there is a net benefit to across the board testing people's vitamin D levels and giving most people's supplementation. So that's this episode was about Rickets, the actual medical condition, not like the sort of low grade vitamin D deficiency that for a while there was a lot of general practitioner testing, right going on? Right? I have so many thoughts. One and you almost segued into this when you were talking about the full adult humans in a water bottle. I wondered because you referenced a number of artworks where there have been questions about like is this depicting Rickets? Oh yeah, And I immediately wondered, like, have there been a lot of paintings from like the era when mannerism was really popular that could have been misinterpreted this way. Yeah, because you know, just as a quick refresher for anybody that doesn't remember, mannerism is this era of art where people look a little bit surreal. It's it's very popular in like the sixteenth century. I think I'm getting that right, you know, where bodies would be slightly along and limbs would be preserved in ways that they don't really do, Like instead of an elbow, you would see a curved arm kind of thing. And I'm like, I wouldn't have any of these people. Yeah, but like and because of mannerism and not because of deficiencies. Yeah. And that was a general conversation in several of the things that I read, which is like, we don't really know did this person have rickets or is this like artistic license? Right? Like was the model for the baby Jesus in the painting that we talked about, Like, did that model have rickets or was this just like how the artist was depicting baby We don't know. Yeah. I also wonder if there isn't like sort of a reflexive problem of it, where you know you had mentioned that there have been I'm trying to remember the name of the researcher who determined that rickets was like primarily a rich people problem, and if depictions of people with rickets may have been a way to signify that they were or from the higher even if they didn't necessarily have it or exhibit any symptoms. Yeah, I'm sure someone has done a study of this. Yeah, but now I'm sure and wondering. Well, and something that I had in here that I eventually took out because it just it felt a little out of place no matter where I put it in. The outline was about how a bunch of the Medicis all had rickets and there were a couple of its or did they get children that way? No, we're talking about their bones, like their actual like there were at least one baby in the Medici family, who of course were some of the wealthiest and most powerful people of their era, were described as having rickets. And then there was a study that I did not keep the details of where there was a you know, a research into the bones of a Medici family tomb and how all of the kids had signs of rickets. That does also mean these were all people who died as children. It's harder to tell if, like, had they survived until adulthood, like, what would their skeletons have looked like then. That had led to some speculation that the Meditees were all keeping their babies inside and out of the sun, which meant that since they were almost certainly being breastfed, then they would not have been getting enough vitamin D. They're like the original indoor children. Yeah, I'm not in any way suggesting that breastfeeding is bad. Whatever way gets the baby enough food and nutrients is the way the babies should be fed. It does seem like there's a lot of recommendation around the world for vitamin D supplements for exclusively breastfed babies because also not having babies with sunburns. That's important, right, just for the comfort of the baby, for the baby's future skin health. Did you run into anything in your research, and this may be a little too modern, about the impact of the early phase of the COVID epidemic. No, I did not look at anything that number, because I'd be curious. Now, so many folks were staying indoors all the time. Yeah, there were a lot of people staying indoors pretty much all the time, and then is it became clearer that being outside was less risky there were people that did the opposite and were spending more time outside. Yeah, so that would be interesting to look at. Something that we mentioned is that some of these studies that were done on babies and small children would not be thought of as ethical today because like, there were kids in a control group who were not getting Yeah, it's troubling something that we knew was helpful. And this still has relevancy today because one of the anti vax talking points is that there are vaccines on the market today that did not have like a placebo group comparison in the study. Right. The reason that we didn't have a placebo group comparison in the study is that we already know that the measles vaccine prevents measles. So if you are instead giving children a placebo, you are exposing them to measles, a dangerous disease. So when new versions of vaccines come out, usually the test is to compare the new vaccine to the previous one, not to intentionally expose children to the disease the vaccine prevents. Welcome to ethics, and medical research people. Yeah, yeah, it's weird. Yeah, I wish I had more information on Harriet Chick, right, having not a typical career for a woman in science given when she lived. Yeah, and I jotted her name on the list for maybe a future episode in the immediate looking did not seem like there was probably enough information, but who knows that could change. Now I'm just thinking about cod liver oil and how it appears in all children's literature that I grew up with, and all of the oh yeah cartoons that I grew up with, and all of the and it just makes me giggle because now I realized I didn't realize. Of course, when you're a kid and you see it, we're kind of you're a couple years younger than me, but we're even I'm still kind of outside of that window when like everybody was administering cod liver oil to their kids at all times, right, because if it's benefits, And I remember being like, what why are they doing this to these people? And and cartoons And I didn't really learn until much later, Oh, because it's considered you know, full of essential and exciting and heuture right when Patrick and I were on our honeymoon in Iceland. One of the hotels that we stayed at had just a bottle of cod liver oil on the breakfast off with little basically shot glasses where you could just get yourself a shot at the cod liver oil with your breakfast. And at the time, I was like, I was thinking mostly of you know, cultural things. It did not really connect in my brain until doing this that Iceland is a place that is at a northern latitude. We were there in the early spring when the sun was not setting until like ten pm, but the sun was also not nearly as direct as it would be in like the American South, and it like didn't really connect that, like that could be a reason that someone in Iceland might want some cod liver oil. A friend of ours was, so, did you try it? No? Oh you have? You never had it? Not as just like a shot of it in a cup. We were going to get in the car and drive from we were going to having a multi multi hour drive back to Reikivic before flying back home, and I was like, I did not want to just chug some cod liver oil having never experienced it, and then get in a car for a long drive, not knowing when we might find a restroom. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, you know, I'm unwise and we'll try anything. So I have tried it. It's fine, Yeah, exactly what to think. But I also sometimes just take fish oil supplements. Oh sure, yeah, go form. Yeah, I always crack up that. Now most of the bottles will tout no fish burps. Yeah. I think. I mentioned in a recent episode that I had had a medical appointment at which an OBG I N recommended that I try to get more omega threes in my diet, which has involved eating more sardines than salmon. And so I was as I was working on this, I was like, maybe my vitamin z's doing good. Probably I added added salmon and sardines. And do you have fishburps? Is the bigger Not usually I did have like a very a very uh sardini. I don't even remember what I made, But later I did have a little fishburp and I was like, no, thanks, it's okay. It's a part of liven. Yeah. Ah. We talked about George Stevenson this week. We did. I really like him. Yeah. It's very interesting because there are a couple of full length biographies written of him. But then everywhere else you see, like he up in a lot of places because he was so important to engineering. But there they cut out so much of the really interesting parts of his life. Right. They don't talk about his pet blackbird that slept with him. They don't talk about all of his mad sewing skills. You're going to talk about in the minute growing a straight cucumber. I had to include that. I was like, should I put this behind the scenes? Yes? No, No, it was his invention. He was proud of it. I don't know why it was so important to him to grow a straight cucumber. They're delicious, even if they're curved. But it made me chuckle a little bit. There were so many cute stories though about him, and that Smiles biography that was written in the mid nineteenth century. Smiles, as you may recall, wrote a book called Self Help after he had met with Stevenson, got hired by him, and then later on wrote a biography about him. He it's a really interesting biography because it is very thorough and also he notates every person he talked to and got him from from, Like I talked to this person in this village and they told me this story. It's like a much more notated biography from that time than were accustomed to seeing in that he shows his work, which is pretty great. One of the many stories that I loved Slash hated right. I don't love the idea of children working in a coal mine, surely, but there was this cute thing because George was clearly very smart from a young age, and he had kind of gotten moved up into jobs even early for his age, even given that it was standard practice to employ kids that at one point he had been promoted and he was working with his dad, but whenever the owner of the mind came out, he had to go hide because he was like I was also very tiny, and I looked really young, so scared I was going to get in trouble if this guy saw me, And it looked like a twelve year old was running a really expensive piece of equipment. That just was very funny to me. He also had one and one only fistfight in his entire life, and it was because there was a pittman at the Black Callerton mine who was kind of a notorious bully, and George stood up to him and this guy threatened him and said, like you know essentially, do you want to take it outside? I mean, George half this guy's size, this little scrawny dude, and he goes yeah, and they had this fight, but it was a fight club scenario where you got to watch out for the wiry ones. He was apparently George whipped this guy's tail. Wow. Again, violence is never the answer, but I do like it when bullies get come up. Yeah. One of the other things that was very interesting about his intuition as an engineer and as a mechanic was when he had to fix that new Cooman engine that essentially set him on a path to like a much higher level of professional career, which is that he essentially overclos that thing, like he yeah, was putting the settings at like double what they were labeled as being able to handle. But he really felt like, I know this machine and I know it can handle it, and it's not doing its job. So I want to try this and we'll see if it works. And it did. Huh. So, Yeah, his intuition was apparently very good, but that would also terrify me. Yeah, I mean that sounds like a recipe for another explosion. Yes it does, but it never happened. I do want to talk about his sewing. Yeah, let's do, because we mentioned in the episode that like I had read in one place that he was cutting out sewing projects for women and like basically he was taking piecework where he would cut their stuff out and return it to them and then they could just stitch it up, which I know to a lot of stitchers that are listening are like, where can I get one of those? But it didn't come up everywhere. But then later in the Smiles biography in particular, he mentions that when he first sat Robert to school, you know, they were still I mean, he was doing better than he ever had, but compared to the other kids at Roberts school, he was very poor. Yeah, and he was wearing a homemade suit that George had made for him. That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. But there is also another cute story, which is that when he was out surveying, and granted this is a different time in a different place, but like he would walk those survey lines and he would just kind of stop at people's houses and be like, hey, can I have lunch? Yeah yeah, and talk to them. And he really loved talking to kids and at one point. I don't remember if it was there, if it was when he was like when he was doing that, or was when he was in a meeting. He was talking to these two little girls who were learning embroidery, and he was like, do you want me to teach you some stitches? And they looked at him completely confused because men normally did not embroider, nor did they offer very sweetly to teach them stitches. And he says to them, quote, when I was a brakesmanute killing Worth, I learned the art of embroidery while working the pittman's buttonholes by the engine fire at night. And I just love that. He was like, I don't care about blue collar work. I'll do anything. I'm a hustler. Yeah, I know how to do lots of stuff because I'm interested in lots of stuff. And I think that's great. My last note on him is this, Okay, he apparently I'm not going to read the whole quote, but there's a really beautiful quote in that Smiles biography where George's one big regret is that because he didn't learn to read until later in life, there were a lot of things he was working on trying to invent that. He was like, if I had been able to read books and know that other people had tried things, it would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment because I made foolish mistakes or sometimes I thought I had invented something, only to discover that it had existed already for a long time. But that having to like figure things out on his own without the benefit of having learned from the work of other people also made him more inventive and probably more ingenious in terms of his mechanical ability. I kind of love that. Yeah, he seems like a delightful human who was just very kind. He was very generous. He took care of a lot of people, like if this was not standard practice at the time. This was not a time when things like workmen's comp and like payouts for accidents happened. Sure working in mining, and once he got to a certain level where he was a manager, if somebody got killed in the mind he would often just like make it his business to take care of that family for the rest of their lives, the rest of his life anyway, which was not normal for you know, anybody in that position to do. And he also would just you know. There was another story about when he was out just stopping by people's houses and being like, Hey, can I have lunch with you? One couple that seemed a little reluctant initially, but then let him in and he was super charming and they really loved him. And then later in life, when he got much more successful, he made a point to go see them again and tell them how much he appreciated their generosity and their hospitality, and like, just stand up guy that George Stevenson. I'm going to be very sad if I find out he was secretly a monster, but it doesn't. Yeah, we can put him right up there with Levi Strauss as probably has some flaws we don't know about, but overall a rare good guy. Yeah, did you have any thoughts? I'm just pro trains, you know, you didn't mention like the robber barons and the railroad tycoons, And there's a layer of obvious damaging stuff there, but there's also the fact that trains can be a more efficient way to travel than like an airplane, and we don't have enough of them in the United States, and the ones that we do have aren't as great as they could be. There's a layer of that too, involving you know, where train tracks go and the facts that a lot of times that train development displaces the most vulnerable people. Yes, like that's the thing to take into consideration. But we should have more trains than we have, and they should be better than they are. That's my opinion. That includes light rail and within cities that they're a lot more, way more efficient than cars. Yeah, in a lot of places they would be if there were more of them and they worked better. Yeah, I mean, I feel like right, the obvious example of like pushing trains to be a more viable option than other modes of transportation is Japan because they have figured out the speed angle like that. I think see a lot of people is the thing. Right to get from here to San Francisco, it takes me a flight of you know, five hours right or by train, see in a few days. Yes, So that's another big thing holding that industry back in terms of garnering more patrons. Yeah. Yeah, even in the context of a city, it often takes significantly longer for me to get somewhere on like the commuter rail and t system in Boston that it would take in a car, and often I'm like, I'd rather be on the train, So I'll take this hour long trip on the train that would have been half an hour in the car because I like the train better. Yeah, but a lot of people aren't going to do that, especially if what they're talking about doing is their morning commute. That would be much longer on a train than in a car. Yeah. I mean when we moved offices. At one point when we first started working together, when I joined Houset off Works, I took the train all the time. Oh yeah, we had a train station right next to our office. Yeah, it was still a little bit of a pain, and that took us because I had to be driven to the train station and that was a little slow, but whatever. And then when we moved to the next location, it became not tenable to take the train anymore. You had to take a shuttle from the train station to the office, and that just was a whole other layer of stuff. Yeah, and the train ride itself was much longer because I had to switch train, like there wasn't a direct Yeah, it just was a pain and it became ostenable. I am also I am embarrassed to admit I am a person that loves being in my car. I love the solitude of being in the car. Yeah, I don't mind traffic. It's very zen for me to just sit in the car. I can't be on my phone. I can't be on my phone now, I can't be check an email. Yeah, I'm just in the car. Yeah. When the house stuff works office was next to that train station. When I was living in an apartment, I lived like right down the street and I just drove. It was I was right down the street meeting not walking distance, but a fast and easy drive. And then I moved to a place where I's like, I'm gonna take Marta, and I would drive to the Marta station and then take Marta the rest of the way. And there was a series of service cuts that got to a point where it was gonna be an hour and twenty to an hour and thirty minutes if I kept doing that. And it was twenty five minutes in the car going the back way that one of our coworkers showed me, Yeah, and that was I was like, no, I can't. I gotta have some more of my time back. Yeah. Yeah, that's the big trick for a lot of people you know. In cities like New York where traffic is so so bad, the train often is the better option. Yeah. Or Paris where the trains were every two minutes. Yeah. London is anyway and wistful about trains. Trains. Perhaps one day, one day, we'll get more robust train options. Yeah. But in any case, if you have to take the train this weekend, or you want to take the train this weekend, I hope it's a delightful ride. I hope everybody's cool. I hope there are no malfunctions. I hope everybody is kind to one another, and that you get some time to relax and recharge. And if you have to work these days coming up, I hope everyone that you encounter is absolutely kind to you and that there are no needless headaches at your job. I just want everybody to be kind and happy to one another. We're living in such a scary time that any any eke out we can make of kindness feels like a little bit of a win. So do that while you are also figuring out other ways to help. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday we will have something brand new. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.