The Invention

But, I guarantee you, you've never heard these strange reasons these inventions were actually used or why they were even created.

“The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.”

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called the spectacle. And while the story is not about how this particular device was invented, it does make it very obvious why France eventually decided it could no longer be used in public. The second story you'll hear is called a new technology.

And it's about a doctor's savage invention that helps save mother's lives during childbirth.

And the third and final story you'll hear is called Healing Hands.

And it's about a tool that would change the medical industry forever.

“But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format,”

then you come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to house it for the fall of the button. But while you're there, make sure you glue all of their kitchen cabinets shut. Okay, let's get into our first story called the spectacle.

, just after midnight on June 17, 1939, a crowd of people began to form outside of this unremarkable building in Versailles, which is a city in France.

The atmosphere in this crowd was electric. They all knew why they were there.

“They knew what they were about to see, but even still, there was a lot of nervous anticipation.”

And so as such, some people were coping with these nerves by drinking alcohol and trying to laugh and have a good time. While others were much more subdued, and were trying to be respectful about what they were about to witness. Between one and two AM, the doors of this unremarkable building opened up, and a group of men dressed in the same dark uniforms came out and didn't say a word to the crowd. And the crowd immediately went silent and began to back away from them. And this group of men, they walked right out in front of this building and they had lumber and they had tools with them, and they began constructing this kind of strange wooden structure.

And so the crowd, they wanted to get up close to see what these guys were doing, but at the same time, they didn't want to get too close. And so as the crowd formed a sort of half moon around these men, these men that were doing the constructing were moving so seamlessly. Like all of them had built this structure dozens of times before, and it was just muscle memory. And so by about 3 AM, this structure was built, and they placed this large basket next to this structure. And then these men packed up their tools and the remaining pieces of lumber, and they turned around, and they went right back inside the doors into the building and were gone.

At this point, the crowd had become quite sizable outside of this building, and they were growing kind of restless. Because they knew now that this structure was built, that the next time those doors open, the show is really going to start. This spectacle, they are all therefore, it's about to happen. And the crowd all knew that this event couldn't happen if the sun was up. Because if the sun was up and the area was well lit, the press would be able to take pictures and film it, and that's not what officials wanted.

They wanted this to happen in the darkness. But for whatever reason, things seemed to be getting delayed inside of this building, and so the crowd was just getting more and more restless. People are getting more and more drunk and they're getting louder and more disruptive and boisterous. And then around 445 AM, the sun had come up, and so the press was out in full force with their cameras trained at the doors of this building. And so the crowd really at this point is not actually expecting this event to take place, because at this point it just seems totally unlikely.

But that 450 AM, those doors swung open and standing in the threshold, was 31 year old Eugene Wydeman, who was a convicted serial killer. As arms were tied behind his back, and the collar of his white shirt had been tucked down inside, because they needed his neck to be free and clear, because he was about to be beheaded. So the two guards on either side of Eugene, they pulled him forward, out towards the crowd, so the executioners behind him who were dressed all in black could filter out and take up positions alongside the guillotine,

which is that wooden structure that had been built earlier in the morning. And so as Eugene is being brought out towards the crowd, and everything is getting set up for his execution, the crowd went wild. They were freaking and howling and laughing and pointing and booing, and just generally being completely rambunctious and totally blood thirsty. Eugene kept his head down, he did not want to look at the crowd, and he did not want to look at the guillotine.

at which point the executioners that had taken up their positions around this device.

“They grabbed him and slid him forward so he was on his stomach on top of this wooden platform, the guillotine,”

and they slid him forward until his head poked through this opening at the very far end. At which point his neck was positioned right under this huge blade that was dangling right above him, and his head was positioned over a metal bucket on the ground, which he would be looking directly at. At this point the crowd was at a fever pitch, and one of the executioners pulled a lever, the blade came soaring down, and it removed his head, his head fell into the bin, and the executioners pushed his torso into the basket that had been placed out there earlier,

and then the executioners and the prison guards that gathered up Eugene's body parts and went right back inside of the building, which was a prison.

At this point the crowd was cheering and going wild, and they ran up and began dabbing their scarves and their handkerchiefs in Eugene's blood,

which was on the ground as a sort of souvenir from having been at this execution. And of course, because the sun had been out for this entire spectacle, all of this had been captured on film.

“And so later that day and for the next couple of days, the headlines all over France were about this blood-thirsty crowd that was cheering as this man was beheaded,”

and it just overall made France look really, really bad. And so French leaders decided that from that point forward they could no longer do any more public executions. So the guillotine would continue to get used for decades beyond this point, but it was all behind closed doors. Also, random fact about being beheaded by a guillotine, your head after it's been separated from your body, stays conscious for about 10 to 12 seconds, so they say. And apparently there's been lots of cases where the executioner, after the condemned, has had their head removed,

will yell the name of the person who has just had their head removed, and that person's head will look over at the person calling to them, and will blank or try to mouth words for several seconds before the lack of oxygen kills the brain and then the head is no longer conscious. Our next story is called a new technology. One day in 1785, a woman rides in pain in a hospital bed at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh,

“which was one of the largest and most advanced hospitals in Scotland at the time.”

Now, despite this hospital being enormous, the room this woman was in was very small, and it was very stark too. The walls were blank, the floors were blank, there was just a single window to the outside. In fact, the only furniture in this room was the metal bed that she was lying on. In this woman as she was laying on this bed, she was gripping the bed frame, and she was sweating profusely, and she was shrieking and pain, like her body was being ripped in half, and surrounding her on all sides, were all these nurses sort of anxiously watching her to see what was going to happen next.

This woman was in labor, and she had been in labor for several hours, and so far, it was not going well. So, giving birth in the 18th century looked a whole lot different than giving birth today. Primarily, because there really was very limited pain management tools at doctors and nurses disposal.

I mean, there were no epidurals, they basically had opium that could just give to the women along with maybe some alcohol.

That was it. Also, giving birth in the 18th century was far more dangerous to the mother than it is today. I mean, today, it's practically unheard of at least in the UK for mothers to die giving birth. It's something like 13 out of every 100,000 mothers dies during childbirth, so like 0.01% of people. But in the 18th century, it was like 30 times higher.

Basically, women died at a fairly regular clip, delivering babies. The reason for this was partly just because of bad sanitation. Back in the 18th century, it wasn't uncommon for doctors and nurses to not even wash their hands between patients. And so, naturally, the spread of disease and bacteria was much higher. And then, also, when it came to just complications, there just weren't that many available solutions.

And so, when this woman showed up at this hospital after her water broke, I mean, naturally, she was terrified. I mean, she obviously knew she had to come here and deliver this child, it was inevitable, but she knew the risks. And so, here she is, she's terrified, but quickly, you know, the staff, they took her in, they got her to this room, they later down, and it just sort of seemed like everything was sort of normal, like they do this all the time. Yes, it's a risky and dangerous thing, but it just sort of seemed like her delivery was going to be fairly normal.

And so, for a couple of hours, she's laying in the bed, the nurses are checking on her, everything's fine, and then at some point she begins to feel contractions. And so, at this point, the staff is in the room with her, and they start encouraging her to push, and so she's pushing, and she's pushing, but she's not progressing.

The baby is stuck in her birth canal.

“And so, by 18th century delivery standards, this is a huge emergency, this is a major complication.”

And so, the mother and the baby's lives are now in danger. So, if this happened today, this woman would just be given an emergency c-section, and very likely, she and the baby would be fine. Now, back in 1785, c-sections did exist, but they were extremely dangerous to the mother.

It was basically a death sentence for the mother.

And so, they were only used if there really was no other option, and basically the mother was going to die anyways. And so, naturally, the staff did not want to go to c-section at this point, and, you know, the mom, the mother laying there certainly does not want to go to a c-section. And so, she's screaming and agony, you know, she's not progressing. It's like, complete chaos in this room, and at some point, one of the nurses senses, like, "Okay, we need to do something here." And so, she left the room, and a couple of minutes later, she came back with this gray-haired surgeon.

And he walks over, he surveys this mad scene of screaming and yelling, and there's bodily fluids everywhere. I mean, it's absolute madness.

“And he looks at the mom, and he just says, "Everything's going to be fine, okay?"”

You're paying this miserable situation you're in, it's going to be over in a second, and, most importantly, you and your baby are going to be just fine. Because I have a brand new piece of technology that's going to save your lives. Dr. John Aiken was one of the leading doctors at this hospital, and, in fact, he was a pioneer in the field of childbirth at the time. And one of the things he really focused on was finding ways to make giving birth not only less painful for the mothers, but also less dangerous, you know, to lower the fatality rate.

And recently, he had developed himself a new piece of technology specifically for the emergency that this woman was having when the baby got stuck in the birth canal. He had come up with it, and now he was this chance to put it to use. And so when he kind of explained this piece of technology to this totally distraught woman who can barely focus, you know, all she really heard was, "It's going to be okay. I'm going to get rid of your pain, your baby's going to be good, you're going to be good." And she's relieved, and she's like, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

And then Dr. John Aiken, he leaves the room, and when he comes back, he's now carrying this instrument.

“And suddenly, the woman, when she sees the instrument, she goes from being relieved to being downright horrified at the idea that that is going to be used on her.”

But even though she began to panic and literally tried to leave the bed to get away from this doctor in this crazy barbaric-looking tool,

the staff literally held her down, basically strapped her to the bed, and then Dr. John Aiken said, "Okay, here we go, and he turns on this instrument,

and this woman, she's already in blinding pain. She can't believe she's experiencing this much pain, but when he begins to apply this instrument to her body, the pain somehow becomes even worse. It's like she begins having this out of body experience, the pain is so intense, and then suddenly when it feels like it literally can't get any worse than this, that she must be dying. It all kind of fades for a second, and she hears the sound that she did not expect to hear, it was the sound of a baby crying.

Her baby had just been successfully extracted from her stomach, her baby was okay. And amazingly, she was okay too. Dr. John Aiken had been right. This instrument, despite how horrifying it was, really worked, and it literally did save her and her baby's lives. So the procedure that this woman underwent was known as a simphysiotomy,

and the procedure itself had been around since, you know, the 17th century, this was a procedure used when a baby got stuck in the birth canal. And the way this procedure worked is they would go in and sever the joint, called the pubic synthesis, which connects the left and right pelvis bones. So imagine, you know, right in the middle of your crotch,

them going in there and cutting through this big thick joint to basically open up your birth canal.

I mean, this is a highly invasive and excruciatingly painful procedure. That is, until Dr. John Aiken invented this new piece of technology, the thing he just used on this woman to save her in her baby's lives. This piece of technology made the simphysiotomy basically more targeted and more efficient. So it's still totally invasive and painful and awful,

but smaller incision much faster and a higher success rate. And so despite the fact that eight-gins invention sort of looked really barbaric, it caught on very quickly and sort of became the standard for how these simphysiotomies were done. They used this tool. And it would remain that way until about the turn of the 20th century,

which is when sea sections became much safer, which meant the need for simphysiotomies to crease dramatically, which meant this tool was sort of no longer needed in hospitals. And so basically this tool sort of faded into obscurity, until another group completely unrelated to medicine,

In that group were lumberjacks.

“They found that this tool which had previously been used to cut open women's bodies”

and sever these large joints was also really good at cutting down trees. The device that Dr. John Aiken's invented for medicine was actually just a chainsaw. The next and final story of today's episode is called Healing Hands. One morning in the summer of 1889, a 36-year-old surgeon named William Holstead, and his head nurse, 27-year-old Caroline Hampton,

stood in an operating room prep area in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Holstead was the surgeon and chief of this hospital, and that morning he and Caroline were getting ready for a surgery. Now Dr. Holstead had already washed up and was prepped, and now he was watching Caroline very closely

to make sure she followed his hygiene requirements exactly. Caroline stood in front of a row of sinks. They were all filled with different cleaning agents. She started by washing her hands with scalding hot water and medical grade antibacterial soap, then she cleaned her nails with brushes and files,

then she dipped her hands in acid,

“and then she finally finished with a five-minute soak in a highly corrosive liquid”

called Mercury by Chloride. Dr. Holstead ran a really tight ship, specifically when it came to hand washing. This was the process he believed was the safest.

And Dr. Holstead's theory that basically,

newking your hands with cleaning agents before doing anything in the medical field, actually made him sort of unique at the time. Because this was 1889, and hand washing was just not very common, not even in hospitals. Germ theory, which is the idea that illnesses can spread by germs,

germs that we can't see, and they're all over us on our hands in particular, and so we have to kill the germs to prevent the spread of illness. That theory, germ theory, was very new at the time. And truthfully, a lot of doctors at the time didn't believe in germ theory, which meant they didn't do things which we would now consider

standard hygiene practice in hospitals like basic hand washing

“and regularly disinfecting tools and surfaces.”

And Dr. Holstead was a huge proponent of germ theory and aggressive hand washing. And so he had instituted this whole multi-step, awful hand washing routine for his whole surgical team at Johns Hopkins, and the results had actually been fantastic. He had one of the lowest surgical mortality rates in the whole country.

But despite that, people still sort of thought Dr. Holstead was crazy, including his own staff who complained about these highly corrosive cleaning materials that they were rubbing all over their hands all the time. Even if this worked, this was kind of awful. But despite that, Dr. Holstead was not about to change his protocol.

He knew it worked even if it hurt. But that particular day, as Dr. Holstead and Caroline sat there letting their hands air dry after dipping them repeatedly in acid, he couldn't help but notice when he looked over at Caroline that her hands and her forearms looked really bad,

like they were blistered and just totally damaged from clearly doing this process all the time. And you know, Dr. Holstead, he just sort of felt bad about it. And the reason he felt bad about it was sort of two-fold.

One, Caroline never complained, even though obviously every day

when she would do this procedure that he is forcing on her, she was hurting herself in the process but she never complained. And so that's actually why he had elevated her to head nurse because he thought she had such grit and determination and she believed in the process and so he had made her head nurse.

But the other and more prominent reason why Dr. Holstead felt sort of bad about Caroline in particular in the condition of her hands and forearms was because Dr. Holstead was secretly totally infatuated with Caroline. Now, he had never told her that.

This was something he kept completely inside because he once thought he was too old for her and too he just kind of assumed that she would never be interested in him. So he just carried this intense love of Caroline and was very protective of Caroline but she didn't really know.

And so that was why when he looked over and saw her clearly in pain but not complaining that because of his love for her, Dr. Holstead

really for the first time began to question

his big hygiene process. He knew it worked but at what cost his beloved Caroline was suffering because of him and worse, he was sort of trapped. He would love to tell her that she didn't have to do that.

Let your skin heal, I'm so sorry Caroline but if he did that, if he made an exception for her and said, you know, don't follow this process anymore, people would find out and it would totally undermine

His whole thing is he's like everyone must follow this process to stop the spread of germs and stop the spread of illnesses and everybody's gonna do this.

“And so if he didn't make her, what does that say about him?”

And so as he's sitting there watching Caroline doodifully get ready for surgery,

Dr. Holstead for the first time

really began seriously considering if there was any way any sort of work around that maybe could lessen the pain for Caroline just because he loved her. That was it.

It wasn't a safety thing. It was just because he loved Caroline. But despite putting some real thought and energy into trying to come up with something to lessen the burden on Caroline,

he just couldn't find a solution. All his solutions involved her not following the process, which he couldn't do. Fast forward to early 1890, so about a year after Dr. Holstead

first really began considering how can he help Caroline not hurt her hands anymore. So about a year after that began to be a thing for him and he's in his office and he's looking at his desk

and on his desk is the small package. And he hasn't opened it yet, but he's so excited he's also kind of nervous but he feels like this is it.

“This is the thing I've been waiting for.”

So over the past year, Dr. Holstead had continued to iterate on how can I help Caroline? How can I keep her from hurting herself? And eventually he had this huge epiphany.

He came up with the sort of outside the box concept and he pitched it to a company and said, "Hey, can you help me make these?" And now sitting in front of him on the desk was effectively the prototype of this strange thing

he had come up with, which again was just to help his love Caroline. And so Dr. Holstead took a deep breath, he walked over and he ripped open the package and inside were these two strange looking objects.

He picked them up and without any hesitation, Dr. Holstead took the two objects and left his office, hustled down the hallway to the OR prep room where he finds Caroline. And she's getting ready to wash her hands,

you know, for an upcoming surgery, and he stops her and says, "Here, and he hands with the two objects." And he says, "Don't wash your hands. Just use these."

And with a confused look, you know, with her bloody and blistered hands, she took the two objects and said, "Okay, one week later,

“and already Caroline's hands and forearms”

were healing up beautifully." And also Dr. Holstead, over the course of this week, was so excited about his prototype and the progress that he was clearly seeing in Caroline's skin condition

that he finally worked up the nerve

to tell Caroline how much he loved her. Caroline would actually tell him that, you know, believe it or not, I would love with you too. And before long, Dr. Holstead proposed to Caroline

and they got married. However, it was not their love that sort of was remembered for generations to come. Instead, the only reason we know about these two is because of that prototype,

the Dr. Holstead came up with what he gave to Caroline that ultimately saved her skin. It was the perfect work around to his hygiene handwashing process.

In fact, these objects that he created were so effective that he and everybody else basically in medicine across the world began to use these brand new tools. And so, it is almost entirely

because of one man's love for a woman that we now have arguably the most used medical tool in the world. Dr. Holstead inadvertently created

the world's first ever rubber surgical gloves.

A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized

for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballem Podcast strange dark and mysterious stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballem. Our head of writing is Evan Allen,

produced by Jeremy Bohn and Cole Kaseo, research and fact checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano,

research and fact checking supervision by Steven Eher, audio editing and post-produced by Whittle Kaseo and Jordan Stitham, production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner,

theme song, Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballem Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we've put out on the Mr. Ballem Podcast,

you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballem YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories

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