Renaissance Medicine: healthcare and disease in early modern England

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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to your Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Gregg Jenna, I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we're putting on our plate masks and rummaging in our doctor's bags as we head back to 16th century England to learn all about Renaissance era medicine. And to help us, we are joined by not one but two is steamed doctors.

In history corner, she's an associate professor in the department of English literature at the University of Reading. Where her research focuses on medicine and the body from the 16th to 18th centuries. Luckily for us, she's also the author of the fantastic new book, The Surgeon, the Midwife and the Quack. How to stay alive in Renaissance England. It's Dr. Alana Scoose, welcome Alana.

Hello nice to be here. Lovely to have you here. And in comedy corner, she's a comedian, actor and writer. You might have seen her on all the TV, on live the Apollo, QI, Pointless and have a good news for you. Maybe you've caught her live shows or heard her on radio for the news quiz, but you're definitely remember her from our show. Episode of Chungi Sao and Marco Polo, of course it's Dr. Rielina, welcome Dr. Rielina.

Thank you so much. I rarely use that title, so it's nice to use it. I mean, you're such a sort of renowned comedian, people might not know this. You have a PhD in Verology. I do. From my sense, I have a PhD in herpes, that's especially the classic group into comedy.

It just doesn't come up much, especially on a first day, I really.

“So if you are a trained scientist, modern medicine presumably, you're pretty comfortable. Do you know about the history of medicine?”

I know bits and pieces. I did the evolution of herpes. That was sort of my, well, not the evolution of it like from what it looked like at the beginning to what it looks like now. I mean, it was pretty much the same. Well, it wasn't, but you know what I mean? I know bits and pieces, but when you study virus evolution, it actually doesn't come up in terms of human medicine as frequently as you would have thought. Even though you can kind of look back and go, ah, that was a virus. That was a virus. But so I'm excited.

Good. Especially 16th century, I've been sitting here for five minutes going, is that the 1500s or the 17th?

Because it's always one number out, isn't it? It's the 1500s. What I was going to ask you, actually, you know, is the phrase Renaissance era England mean anything to you?

See, when you say Renaissance great, I'm thinking Italians, I'm thinking French, I'm thinking some wonderful progression in science. Then you said England and I went, oh, that's a very different thing. You know, that could be as big as we don't poo inside outdoors anymore. I mean, like, progress for the English, especially back then, wasn't quite the same as progress for the rest of year. So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know that today's subject.

And thanks to Shakespeare's plays and the many weird and wonderful adaptations you've seen, plus all the pop culture about shooters and stewards, you've probably got some sense of what life was like in Renaissance era England. But what about disease and health care, specifically? Well, maybe, like me, you're just thinking of the classic scene in Blackadder where the cure for everything is leeches. But what was visiting the doctor in Renaissance England really like? Was there more to it than plague masks? Did they use plague masks?

And what about those leeches? Were they true? Oh, and who in earth was the strocha? Let's find out. Yeah, when we say Renaissance England, you're thinking post Italy in front, in your head, you've got lovely image of Michelangelo doing all of the turtles. Do you want to say? Definitely. But if you're going to narrow it to the 1500s, and, of course, you've mentioned Shakespeare, this is screaming to me, specifically Queen Elizabeth.

Okay, the first, because I'm not going to give Mary that much credit for any kind of progress in the five years that you, I'm sorry. I'm just not going to do it.

I'm not going to do it. Dr. Alana, you've used the phrase English Renaissance, as a historian, I typically would say early modern periods. So I'm curious, what, what is, I mean, a rea's done a pretty good job there, but why is the English Renaissance not the Italian Renaissance? Okay, so you're right, what are you right about? Is mostly the early modern period, because I write 16th and 17th centuries, 1500 and 1600s, but you cannot put early modern in a book, like 450 times.

“So we just have to go with Renaissance, because that's what everybody knows. It's a great word.”

It's good, isn't it? And it's got a bit more sparkle to it than in the French.

That's even worse. I mean, you can't trust archeologists for anything.

“No, my brother's an archeologist, whatever thing.”

You know, we're talking about a Renaissance that arrives in England later than in Italy, and in France. So it's the chuda and Stuart Eres, 16th, 17th centuries. Is there a kind of commonality between European medicine and English medicine in this period? There really is. There's a lot of overlap. In fact, it's not very different from each other. You're right about the Catholic church, losing its power in England, and so stuff starts to be more in English, but that's kind of happening all over the continent, because we often think that the church has really been like stamping down on medicine before this,

that they didn't let people do anatomies and stuff. Actually, it's not true. The church never stopped people from doing anatomies.

There weren't enough people being hanged, basically. So provide enough dead bodies that nobody would mind you in atomizing. Once you have cities, you've got more crime, you get more people being hanged. You also get universities, more people wanting to see the anatomies. Alana, what does an atomized mean? It means cutting up somebody's dead body to have a look inside. Fair enough. And English doctors are going all over the continent, and they're going to these new anatomy theatres in Leiden and Padua and Paris and stuff.

And they're going to the hospitals as well. Paris is meant to be like the best place in Europe for hospitals. Well, not exactly the best for hospitals, but the best for having a big hospital that will let you do weird stuff to the papers. That's quite the caveat, isn't it? Yeah, it's the best hospital. No. Yes, it really depends which end of the treatment you're on there. They bring that all back. There's also loads of migrants coming into England and a lot of those are doctors.

So a lot of people coming from Hugono France over here and bringing their skills with them.

“And that's how the chamber they arrive on boats with skills.”

I know. I'm outraged. Absolutely. And I suppose the other thing to say is this is after the printing press, right? We are post-good in books. So we're getting the proliferation of written stuff. Yeah, loads and loads of books. More people who can read lots of people.

If you can read the chances are that you can read a bit of several different languages. Right. Yeah, so a lot of even fairly low-down medical practitioners like the Apothecaries can read a little bit of Latin as well. But obviously, once you're publishing things in English, that makes a new market, which is people who haven't gone to university, they aren't physicians or anything.

But they're just kind of interested in they're just buying it to have in the house a bit like you would buy like a first aid book.

You know, we're talking here about before the discovery of microorganisms, really, you know, before your specialists even exists. They haven't got microscopes just yet. Okay, let's show. They existed. But the study didn't exist. So, you know, we're talking here about a time where the theory of medicine hasn't changed in over a thousand years. Is that fair, Alana?

Broadly, yeah. So the main thing that they believe is gaylerism. It's the idea of the four humors, and there's these four humors that go around in your body. And they're on this spectrum of hot cold wet dry. So you have black bile, which is cold and dry, blood, which is hot and wet.

You've got yellow bile, which is hot and dry. And then flim, the most appealing humor, which is cold and wet. And kind of confusingly, they all also go around in the blood. So the blood that you see if you cut yourself, that's nutritive blood. But the blood that is in mix with ill those humors, that's sanguine blood.

So it's slightly confusing, but it does kind of make sense. If you don't know about microorganisms and stuff, this is quite an intuitive way of viewing your body. And we still talk about like being in a good or bad humor or whatever. Yeah, we do. I mean, still talk about melancholy and stuff now. I need you to go back a bit because, okay, blood, heart and dry.

No, blood's hot and wet. Oh, it's wet. Yeah, that okay, that makes more sense. Blood is hot and wet, okay.

“That's the real good one, that's what you want.”

That's the one we want. Yeah, that's the one that makes it cold and wet. Lemon is cold and wet, okay. That's like, so I'm, I'm with you so far. I'm blowing my, like, I'm living like 10, 100s of blowing those cold and wet.

I cut myself hot and wet. Then we get to black and yellow bile. Yeah, which, I'll be, you know, I know what bile is.

I've never come across my own bile.

No, no. So where are we coming across yellow and black? Which, by the way, if that was green? So we're black, black, black. Yeah, black bile.

They also call melancholy. Yeah. So if somebody's kind of got like big dark circles under the rise or they're generally of a notch like black or brown skin. But of a dark complexion, then they would be thought to have a lot of black bile.

So that's cold and dry. Yes. So there are personality types associated to medical, humoral conditions. Yeah, very much. Like the, the flen people.

Because the flenish.

Yeah. People will lose a flen. Great chips.

They're like, they actually exactly like you would expect somebody with loads of flen tag.

So they're just kind of dopey and they're a bit like a wet lettuce. And apparently they have really stinky feet. And then those who've got yellow bile are sort of quick to temper. They're angry, they're hot-headed. Yeah.

The melancholic people, it's fairly obvious what they are. Yep, they're sad. They're sad. And what's the other one? The sanguine.

The sanguine. The sanguine is really good. Jolly. Yeah. And most of the sanguine people are men.

Women have more melancholy humor.

“It's probably because I think like kept inside and not allowed to do anything.”

But yeah, that it goes with kind of types as well. So sanguine people will often have like ginger or blonde hair. There'll be quite kind of retound and merry. It describes a lot of what the tutors look like, which is probably not my question.

All of tutoring was full of Boris Johnson. Just the reals. All right. So these are ancient Greek ideas, the humoral system, the four humans. Galen was a Roman Greek.

And he was building on hipocrates. He was a Greek. So this is ancient theory that's still in use in the 1500s and 1600s. Rio, which of the humoral profiles do you think you would be? Especially after that conversation, yellow bile.

So we've honed our sense of humor's law. Now let's look at the various medical professions in Renaissance England, because there's not just one type of healthcare work. There are, as today, there are multiple professions. Alana, can we start with, I suppose, the obvious ones,

what we would call physicians, which I assume means doctor, but maybe it doesn't. It pretty much does. So the physicians are doctors, but not all doctors are physicians. Oh.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's going to be a big diagramming my mind. Yeah, and in the Venn diagram, like the bit of overlap is really small, because the physicians are quite a small group,

because it's really difficult to be a physician.

“You have to train for about seven years.”

You need a university degree, and then you have to get licensed by the College of Physicians. So they get this college in 1518, they manage to get Henry the AIDS. So yeah, you can be a college. This is a brand new. It's a new field of body.

Yeah. So regularly, and so administer and say like you've been, you're legit. You've done the training. Yeah. And then if you're in the College of Physicians, they have a bit of control over you.

You know, if you do something bad, they can bring you in and say, why did you give that lady like seven ounces of hemlock or something? That's a lot of hemlock. That's too much hemlock. Yeah.

Yeah, much does it. Time does it take to get that much hemlock. Anyway. Yeah, the physicians are really expensive. So they're only seeing like really quite wealthy people.

It's about 10 shilling, so get a physician to come out to you. And then as you go on, you get different groups.

Like there's always been different groups,

but they start to be more and more formalized because they have to be. Because otherwise, the physicians are just going to take them all over.

“And so the physicians are, I suppose, the educated class, right?”

You know, Latin and Greek, they've got to know they're Galen. They've got to know their humans. Yes. And that's kind of a problem because when they start doing an atomizing stuff, often like they're so wedded to Galen,

they love Galen so much that they'll be an atomizing people's bodies. But looking in the Galen book, and it doesn't match. And they're like, oh God, another freak of nature. How is this happened for the third time in a row? So, okay.

So if I'm a rich person spending my 10 shilling to get the doctor in, the physician comes around, how are they diagnosing me? What are they looking for in terms of symptoms, things they can read? So the physicians are really proud of their diagnostic skills. It's kind of the main thing they have that's different from everybody else.

So they'll take a really detailed history. They'll ask you, you know, what your symptoms are, but also what you've been eating, what your relationships like, how you sleep, how often you have sex, and they're right, all that stuff down.

They also will take your pulse, and I'll never quite work out why they're doing this.

They're really proud of their ability to take the pulse, but they never seem to actually diagnose anybody from it. The thing that they use, and it's more useful to them, is reading urine. So, you'reoscopy, and you'll get flask up your urine, and the physician will have a look at it, and he'll give it a sniff, and he might drink some of it. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's normal. The fastest way to tell are someone's diabetic is to take that. Exactly, which they call the pissing disease. Really? Yeah, okay.

Amazing. So they're literally taking the piss. Yep. Okay. Wow.

Yeah, and it means that you don't need the physician right there, because if you've gone off to your fancy country house, but the physicians in London, where you can send your servant with a long letter and a jar of your way, to the physician.

And I do wonder, like, how many servants just dropped the Wii, and then had to, like, pee in a vessel themselves? Oh, that would be a classic sitcom episode, wouldn't it? It would. I have to refill the jar, and then the doctor's like, I'm so sorry.

You've got this read. You're pregnant?

Well, I mean, I can you seem very unperturbed about drinking urine.

Like, we shouldn't be grossed out by urine. I mean, people were washing their clothes in it. It's a fair point. It's a fair point.

“I suppose in the sixth century, urine is a lot more utilitarian, right?”

I mean, urine's probably cleaner than a lot of the water sources. Okay. Wash your hair in urine. You're in your makeup. But listen up, please.

You're not. It's don't go around drinking your own weed, because we said so. Yeah, okay. Stick with camera mouth. It looks very similar.

It's similar temperature. Okay. So, Alina, so the doctor has diagnosed as cloth the urine. What are they going to recommend?

The guard of it. What a lovely vintage. What are they going to recommend? Is it diet, exercise, you know, the classic stuff? Yeah.

You're about probably 80, 85% of what they recommend is going to be Regimen as they call it. Okay. So, diet and what you do, but mostly diet. So, you want to rebalance whatever humor is out of whack.

Let's say you've got a disease and it's being caused by melancholy So, black bile, which is cold and dry. You're going to want to eat things that are hot and wet. So, the foods that are hot, it kind of makes sense. It's the things you think are hot.

So, red meat, salty foods, cheese, red wine. Okay. I mean, it sounds great. More often they're telling people that they have to give up all that stuff,

which they don't always like very much.

And the physicians are always complaining about like people not taking their advice. Okay. I mean, presumably there's also things like purging, I mean, Yeah, they love a purge. So, the three great remedies, that's a call them of the College of Physicians,

are bleeding, vomiting, and diarrhea. So, those aren't remedies, those are symptoms. Yeah, very fast and used with the word great there. Um, but they first will purge you, probably, with something to make you vomit or give you diarrhea,

which can be like any kind of herbal stuff. Somebody has a purge that they said purges both ends at once. Oh, yeah, it's so. It's lovely. They can also give you really strong stuff like mercury.

One of their best purges is mercury, and they use it for people who've got syphilis. So, you give the person mercury, or you like smear it on them, or you give it to them in a medicine. And then you wrap them up in blankets, and you put them in front of a fire in a room, and you shut all the doors.

And the idea, with them out, is to sweat it out. And people sweat so much, and the mercury has such an effect on them. If you do this a lot of times, like their teeth will fall out, they'll go away at color from all the mercury inside them. It's, it's a whole thing.

And this is a cure. It's crazy how close they are to something that's good for you.

“If you just took away the mercury, it's a sauna, right?”

It's just a simple sauna treatment, and we've all enjoyed that, you know, we paid to go to a spa for the day, and check ourselves wrapped in blankets, but we don't smear ourselves in heavy metal.

But we don't smear ourselves in poisonous substances first.

So, you were so close. They've said such a disgusting thing. Just one tiny detail out. Yes, listen to the police. Yeah, this is like it work.

Yeah, this is police. Do not take any of this as current medical advice. Don't buy this at home. Also, can we make a nod to the fact that this feels very much like the male takeover of medicine?

Because you know that maybe even 100 years prior to that, the women were saying, what I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap you in basil, and then I'm going to wrap you in blankets. I'm going to shut the door and we're going to sweat you out with basil, and that would have had a better effect.

You know, they were using plants in nature. And actually, you know, here's a bit willow bark. Oh my god, my pain's gone. [ Laughter ] And then the men came in and went, no, it needs to be red meat for the black bile.

Yes, mercury. Well, it was all gone. It will get to that later. You're kind of spot on actually with some of this stuff. You're kind of right that the women sort of rolls.

“I think were more important than often given credit.”

Well, come to that little later. The other thing I suppose we need to talk about is well, it's purging the bloodlessing with leaches. Black head of was correct. Yeah, they don't use leaches all the time.

Sometimes they just cut you and let you bleed into a bowl. That's that beer. It just depends. Right. Yeah, that's what everyone knows about medicine in the past.

Right. They have this image of bloodletting. And it's kind of true. And we have this idea that physicians love letting blood out of people, and they want to do it all the time.

Actually, it's kind of driven by the patients. Patients want to get their bloodlet. Because they have the idea that if you let out some of the blood, all the bad stuff's going to go with it, and then you'll make new blood, which is good.

Yes, because that's the galenic theories that you make new blood through the liver, and so you'll just produce new blood, and then you'll be fine. Yeah, and some people are getting blood, like every six months, like you would go to the dentist, let's say,

whether I feel ill or not, I'm going to let out a bowl of my blood, and that's going to keep me healthy for the summer. Wow. And what about the menstrual cycle, I suppose, you know, if we're talking about these,

that's that's regular bleeding that's meant to happen. Yeah, that's nature's bloodletting. Right. So they are keen on that if you are a man, so you're not getting nature's bloodletting,

which pretty much do the same thing. Also hemorrhoids was like a natural. Yeah. Oh, really? Yep.

And if you've got a woman, and she's not menstruating, it's a medical emergency. Sure. And you need to let blood,

“probably you need to let blood from her ankles,”

so you draw the blood down to the right place. Oh, yeah.

Wait, so were we doing that on women in their first trimester?

Because we didn't know they were pregnant? No, if they're like pregnancy age, like, okay, you're pregnant. But if it's somebody like Paris Metapausal, you know, okay, we need to let some blood out of you.

Wow, okay. Listen, just the fact they live that long and the 1500s are impressive. They do. Everyone thinks they die at like 35, but that's because all the children die.

If you like take out that, then the average age is much higher. I mean, it's not high, but it's much higher. You'd expect to get to get to like 50s,

probably, wouldn't you? Yeah. There were old people around, but people in their 80s and 90s too. I mean, actually there were quite a few people

that lived to 70s and 80s and the 1800s. Yeah, absolutely. The plant lent to you about the, availedly people, but unfortunately child mortality is so high, the mean average gets dragged way down.

Oh, wow. Alanna, one famous disease that ravaged England late in this period was the plague, especially the plague of 1665. Did physicians have any idea how to deal with it?

Any protocols?

“Well, a lot of the physicians just go up.”

Which is run. Yeah, we are out of here, but the ones who are still there, they do actually have some pretty good ideas. So they put in place basically social distancing.

If somebody in your family might have the plague, then the whole family has to stay inside, kind of on pain of being very severely told off, and it marked your house, didn't they?

Yeah. And they say, like, if you're going in a boat, don't sit on the straw that they put in the boat, because they might be bugs in it, or if you have to go around town,

don't go down alleyways, where there's washing hanging out. Oh, really? This is all good advice. Yeah.

Okay. And of course, people don't like social distancing.

So there's always complaints about, you know,

we told them they all had to stay in the house. And they are technically in the house, but they're just hanging out of the window talking to their neighbors. That's interesting.

So all of those things suggest that they thought it was communicated through touch, rather than what it was, what someone was infected, which was through the air.

They didn't really know.

“They knew that it was passing from person to person”

somehow. Sometimes they thought it was through the air through my asthma, which they shared. Or so bad smelling air they believed had naturally occurring disease, right?

Yeah. But that's why there were those masks with the big noses. The big hooked noses that physicians would wear, which were quite scary.

But at the end of the nose, they put a little bouquet to that they could not, so if they went to this. Yeah, it's an iconic image.

It's the thing that everyone thinks of us,

like their famous plague, Dr. Mask. Yeah. It's more of a thing in Italy. They don't really do it in England. And therefore Edinburgh,

because of the strong connections between Italy and Scotland. So Italy and Scotland had a great relationship going on before the English came in. Well, and before Elizabeth died

and then James took over England, is how I like to phrase it. [laughter] And so there was a really strong medical connection between Italy and Scotland.

So you see that more in the Scottish plague. That's interesting. You did in England. But yeah, England. It's a bit of a misnomer in England,

and it's very rare. So social distancing, obviously the Italians have quarantine, which is where we get the word from, where you have 40 days of isolation.

And we get some pretty wild cures. There's a guy called George Thompson. Yeah, George Thompson's great. [laughter] He claims that he survived the plague four times,

which would be amazing. But possible. But yeah, technically possible. And they think now some people had a genetic mutation, which makes them a bit more likely to survive.

Okay. But anyway, he's a physician, but he stays in London when a loaded the other physicians have left. And he's very interested in the plague.

He anatomizes his neighbors, like man's servant, who's died of the plague. And then surprisingly, he gets the plague again. [laughter] But he's got a few different cures.

So he says if you can carry gemstones about your person, they might somehow draw out the plague. Oh, okay. Yeah, or the dissolved flesh of snakes, that's also good.

That's him for later things. He's still doing that. Yeah, yeah. I don't know that. Carrying her crystals.

Oh, wow. But if you can't afford gemstones, you can do an alternative, which I haven't seen on TikTok, which is you get toad, and you stare at the toad really hard for about 15 minutes.

And there's this theory that toads really hate humans, and that the toad will be so pissed off by you staring at it that it will die. [laughter] And then you can, like, dry out the toad,

and you can make it into pills, or you can just hang it around your neck. And because of the badness that's then in the toad, it's like concentrated rage that's inside the toad. It kind of draws out the plague.

Amazing. I see the movie now, the men who stare at toad. [laughter]

It's a, and it's, I've definitely a weird ending to wins in the willows, isn't it?

“Where toad just gets sort of stared at and dies,”

and it is powdered. So we've got amphibian-based plague cures where you get a furious toad, the dies of sheer rage, and then you powder it, find dissolved snakes

and emeralds on gemstones. Unless that's George Thompson. We do have scientific progress, and you know, you talked about anatomy, which is where someone is opening up the body

to look for evidence of disease. We do have a very famous anatomist, William Harvey, who does some proper science. Yes, he is a clever chap. Before this point, you talk about Galen and Blood,

and the Galenic theory of blood is that you make blood mostly in your liver, and then the heart, like adds oxygen into the blood, and then it kind of goes around the body, but it sort of just sloshes around the body.

William Harvey, he measured how much blood you could pump out the heart, and he worked out for that to be true. You'd have to be making enormous quantities of blood from your liver every day,

like multiples of what you weigh. So it's like, okay, that can't be true. So he gets ligatures, and he puts them around people's arms. So he ties off their arms.

Yep. And then he looks at what happens to the arm. And if you have the ligature really tight, the arm will go cold. Yep.

But if you have the ligature a bit looser, the arm will go hot and fat, because the arteries are further down in the body, than the veins. So from there,

and using various weird experiments on animals, he works out that the blood does in fact go around around the body. So this is the circulatory system. He figures out that the heart pumps blood around the body,

and this is not completely like we would understand it now, but he's pretty close. Sure, he gets the principle of it, and this is a major evolution in the history of medicine, and it's important.

And to a certain extent he's doing that, because he's got a lot of bodies around, because the English is a war, there's violence, there's wars, there's battles, there's dead bodies everywhere,

so he's sort of going, alright, I've seen some bodies. So are we post 1665 now? Well, just before. Yeah, just before a little.

I think a little bit before.

“Yeah, I think I was 1640s and 50s I think.”

The other person we need to talk about, Christopher Ren. Rhea? Do you know the name Christopher Ren? Yes, but not in the context of medicine.

Uh-huh.

That was his first great love.

Was that his first great age? Yes. And he just turned himself. Dabbled in cathedrals. He dabbled in cathedrals.

Yeah, I could do your cathedrals. Yeah, but now he's a doctor. So he is, you know, not discussing what, you just like stick your lane. All right.

Some of us have one lane, and we barely feel it. That's not true, you're a comedian, Verola, just a musician. You've got also to learn. All right, that's okay, all right.

I'm trying to speak for the every man here. You know, I can't start on a wrestler. I'm a, you know, I thought. No, no. No, he is, he's a doctor,

and an architect, and he's a scientist. He's part of the Royal Society. He's doing blood transfusion research. Yeah, I love the blood transfusions. They do it this time, because they're just wild.

Christopher Renn works out that you can basically transfuse various substances into people's veins using a quill, and like a sheep's bladder or something. And I've seen the bit of apparatus that he makes in a museum.

It is incredible that they ever managed to get anything

into people's bodies. But anyway, he starts putting various things in.

“He's like, what happens if you give them opium or wine?”

You know, these various things. What is he doing this on? Just not volunteer, surely. Volunteers is a strong word, yes. Patients he'd found, I guess.

Yeah, and dogs. And dogs and animals, isn't it? Okay. All right, he has problems because the dogs keep running away as you might expect.

So he's, I mean, there's a, a physician called Richard Loer or Lauer may be who's doing the, before the first dog blood transfusion. You'd hope the only, but the first. Oh, yeah, not the only.

Once you've got a way of getting blood into an animal, then they're really keen to see what happens if you put blood from different animals into each other. Right. There's like a moment where they say,

maybe we could put blood into people who've lost a lot of blood. But they almost immediately dismiss that idea. And instead go down the avenue of what happens if I put, like the blood of a timid dog into a fierce dog, because it made that dog more tame.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Or if I put like a gray house blood into my best at howl, will it then run really fast? Robert Boyle's involved in a lot of this.

This is basically Captain America science, isn't it?

How do I super charged and nerd? Do we even make him super strong? Yeah, basically. And from the beginning when they start doing it, you can see where it's going,

which is they, they want to do on a human. Yeah. And they eventually managed to get hold of this human. They first go to bedlam. But the keeper of bedlam actually to his credit,

says, no, you can't just have one of my patients. Hospital for people who are mental and well. It's, it's Bethlam. Yeah. But we moochedly call it Bethlam now.

So they get this other guy. And they put the blood of a sheep into him because the guy supposedly mad. So where did we get this guy if not from Bethlam? They pay him.

Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. He's supposedly a bit mad. But mostly I think he just needs money. Okay.

Actually not heard of, Oh, I guess he couldn't really just do a sperm donation to a bank. No, that's how they do it. No blood owners. Yeah.

Yeah. They put this blood of a sheep into him, thinking like the sheep is nice and quiet. And it kind of works. He says afterwards.

Oh, yeah.

I feel great because he basically wants to get paid again.

Right. And have them do it again. But at the same time, they're scientists in France doing the same thing with another guy but they're putting calfs blood in.

And after a while that man dies, and then it's zip. They go, they then realize hang of seconds isn't working. Okay. So we can, I think if you're putting sheep blood into people,

we can call that bad medicine. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Thanks.

So let's, sorry. All right. Well, another one now. Let's move on from the bar. Let's go for the bar bars to the barbers.

Because we're going to talk about the barbers surgeons, Rhea, catagast, what a barbers surgeon was. And the clues in the name.

“Basically, I remember that you need to have big hands.”

And I don't know why barbers had to have big hands. But I knew that to be surgeon yet a big hands because you wanted to be able to grip. Like later in the 1800s, you want to big hands to play rock mononoff.

But in this time, you want to big hands to be able to grip the arteries on both sides of the thigh with one hand so that you could stem the bleeding while you saw off the leg. Was hair particularly coarse back then?

Yeah. It's a good question. I've had expensive haircuts. But this could cost you an arm and a leg. Literally, right?

Ah, it's just blowing. I'm loving it. It starts off with the barbers and for ages, they're called the company of barbers surgeons. Because the barbers back in medieval times.

They sound lovely songs. Didn't they? Can you imagine it's for a part of the army. So you're bolstering away? Well, screaming.

As they were the barbers, they are pretty handy with a razor. And the monks that were doing most of the medicine back in the medieval period are not actually supposed to spill blood. So they get the barbers in to do. Oh, but beer was okay.

Wow. The standards, the double standards. And then eventually, some of the barbers, they're pretty much just working as surgeons. And they decide, OK, we should formalize this.

And they get their company of barbers surgeons in 1534. So there's this picture of Henry the A's handing over a charter to this company. Well, the physicians stand on his other side looking like they've swallowed a B. And then they decide, OK, now we've kind of dived it up. The surgeons are going to do the surgery.

And the barbers are going to cut the hair and never the twain show me.

And then, of course, they are doing some surgeries of a sort.

“I mean, the blood, the blood letting a surgery, right?”

It's, you know, they're doing lots of surgeries. We always think that they're either letting blood or they're hacking someone's leg off. That is already kind of dangling off. But actually, they do a lot of applications. But they also do operations for kidney and bladder stones.

They do mastectomy. I really. Yeah, horrible. I mean, I don't know, I mean, they're just plucking that out. And they can't be stones.

The bladder stones must be agonizing because there's no pain relief. No, it's bad. And obviously, there's the 16th and 17th century in England is a time of war of battles. Civil wars in the 17th century course. So it, you've got loads and loads of people going to war and horrible injuries.

So this is also a time of prosthesis of fake, false legs of false eyes of false eyes. Noses is stitched to hats, which I love. So you put the hat down and suddenly you've got ears attached, which is amazing. We should bring those back. But we need to move on to a different discipline, which is the apocotheri.

I mean, I don't know if I pronounce it correctly. But these are pharmacists. Yeah, basically. So they come from the pepperis and the spices who are medieval. Okay.

Because if you say those two words again, pepperis and spices. They import pepper and spices. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

And they basically are pharmacists. What they're supposed to do is fill the prescriptions at the physicians' right. What they actually do is they do that, but they also sell their own medicines. And they do a bit of their own medical practice. So they diagnose, they sell, they've got their own little shops, maybe.

Yeah, there's loads of them. Yeah. And there's loads of them in London isn't it? We know it's like one for every 2,000 people. And this is a big city.

Yeah. So there's a lot of a pothoris. A pothoris? A pothoris? How we pronounce it?

A pothoris? And when the physicians do a runger in the play. Yep. The pothoris stay, right? Yes.

Most of them stay. And sometimes they're actually filling in for the physicians at the hospital. tremendously brave. Yeah, they are brave.

“I think they're more embedded in their communities than the physicians are.”

And the most famous one, I suppose, will be Nicholas Cole Pepper, who is amazing

does work with the poor, often doesn't cry to be sort of, you know, really generous work. And also, right, one of the most popular medicine books of all time. Yeah, it's still in print. It's have more auditions than grazing at me.

Wow. Wow. What's it called? I'm buying a co-pepper turbo. Co-pepper turbo.

Pepper turbo. Yeah, he's a sort of huge name. And he's a sort of good guy.

And, you know, during the play and everything that's amazing.

“So, yes, we could see him doing sort of sarcastic commentaries on, you know,”

TikTok videos now these days. Okay, dumb question. But was he called co-pepper coincidentally, and it becomes an apothecary? Or does he come from a long line of peppers?

No. He's from a long line of thickest. Oh, really? But he's like, my name is co-pepper. I must pepper.

I must. The clue is in the name. Brilliant. I mean, it was like, yeah, I mean, talk about calling. Nominated determinism.

Yeah. So we've discussed legit medical professionals. We've got physicians, apothecaries. We've got, you know, Barbara surgeons. But we've also got some slightly dodgy quacks.

I'm going to use the word quack. Rear. What do you think the stroker did as a surface? Okay. This is a family show.

So, um, not that. Uh, the stroker. The stroker. What can you stroker? Okay.

So far, okay. I think the stroker, I keep thinking too far forward into the 1800s. And there were a lot of things that doctors did for women. Ah.

That could come under the stroking. Okay. Umbrella, which, but we're not there yet. Okay. So is this, it does the stroker do some kind of,

is something that calms the nervous system, like literally stroking.

“They don't realize that that's what they're doing by calming”

people down. It's a good guess. I'm very, very elegantly put. Well, down for radio. I love it.

What is the stroker? And what does he do? So the stroker is a guy called Valentine Great Rakes. What a name. I know.

I mean, you know, with a good name. And then you get an even better nickname. He is Irish. Irish. He's essentially a faith healer.

And it comes over from Ireland in 1665. And the way he treats people is that, save got headache. He'll start, he'll kind of strip your head. And then he'll stroke like maybe down to your fingertips

and the headache comes out with your fingertips. Yeah, he's incredibly popular. He calms your nervous system. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

So it's sort of massage, or is it just sort of, it's more like, the better. It's Irish, right? It's Irish, right? It's also speaking as Irish accent.

Because I'll be honest, if I had a migraine, and someone just talked to me in that beautiful little, I think it would go. I mean, presumably he is Irish. And we would call him a quack.

What is quack mean in his historical term? The word quack comes from the word quack salver, which is a Dutch word for somebody who sells ointments by boasting about their medical credentials. Right, okay.

So someone with a bit of kind of a little bit of showmanship, Rathmataz. By my stuff, it'll kill you. What was the Dutch word? Quack salver.

This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for this show? From the BBC, this is the interface. The shows that explores how tech is rewiring your weak and your world.

This isn't about quarterly earned. Or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

Listen on BBC.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we've got mail surgeons, mail physicians, mail quacks. But Rhea, you brought up women earlier,

“which I think was a really sort of notable point.”

And I think a lot of, we need to talk about the fact that women were hugely involved in healthcare. It's a spec they were hugely involved in, called Pepper's Harbour. Maybe.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of, a lot of people in the herbal. He's just crypt from women. OK, yeah.

We always talk about the physicians and the surgeons

and stuff because they're the ones that left a lot of writings. But the vast majority of medical treatment is being administered by women. Kind of noble women or women of the kind of middle in class who give medicines to their servants and their families

and their neighbors. And they do extraordinary medicine. They do all the kind of, basically giving you a hot toddy type medicine. OK. But they also, some of them,

will do bits of surgery like treat quite serious illnesses. The noble women will do this. That's fascinating. Not like in my picture of my head. I picture the noble woman living in a manner

but then it's going to be like the village herbalist that comes in and does all the midwifery. But you're saying the noble women, they've got money and they're bored with us. And they're clever and they're quite well educated.

So they can be, yeah. OK. So actually, you know, in a local village, you've got your squire who's got some land and everything else. And it might be his wife that that is the nurse of the town.

Yeah. One of my famous women of this area would be Hannah Wully. Yeah. Hannah Wully is kind of like Martha Stewart or someone like that. So she's not noble.

She pulls herself up basically by her bootstraps.

Her husband dies and she needs to make some money. So she does one of the first commercial remedy books. Yeah. And it's really, really popular. And she ends up publishing later these.

So it's her and Cole Pepper are sort of they're kind of best selling medical books of the time as books. Yeah. And a lot of, there's not really copyright in this period.

I company's boo. Anyway, sorry.

“A lot of the medicines appear across like numerous.”

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Because this is a family friendly radio show.

I'm going to assume you're spilling cock. See you. Okay. Oh, beautiful. And it's it's mineral water or something chalky or.

No, it's it's spelled COCK. It's spelled cock water. I tried to lift this program up. That was better. And you're bringing it back.

You're a classy lady. And I've dragged it down again. Well, I don't know. What is cock water? Cock water is cure all medicine for fevers and things.

You make it by mashing up a cock roll. And then you just steal the water from the cock roll with raisins, the milk of a red cow and amberberry. An amberberry is whale flim, right? It is.

Yeah. High-preexpensive. Incredibly expensive to find. Hard to find. Because you need whale to literally wash up on the beach.

Sometimes just the ambergris.

Yeah. Well, we'll wash up on the beach. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. And it's for fevers and things.

So it's like cow pole. Kind of. It sounds like a cure all chicken soup. It's cream a chicken soup. That's been awesome.

“I mean, we've all been fed that one we rarely.”

Sure. And it makes us feel better. Sorry. It was a cow as red as milk. A chicken as red as blood.

What was the recipe? Chicken chicken milk from a red cow. Yeah. Raisins. I'm the grease.

Yeah. An ambergris. Another one, of course. Sorry. I'm sorry.

I know that we say raisins and we go share raisins. We all think, ooh, that lovely California treat in the little red box. But we're talking. 1600s here. Where these grapes are still in Italy.

Aren't they? We're shifting. They're being their shipped in. They're dried raisins. So you can transfer them.

You're shipping them in. I'm not giving them enough credit. The other cures, of course, would be oil of frog. Oil of frog.

Oil of frog. And poppy water. I don't want to ask. Puppy water can either be puppy way or water in which you've boiled a puppy.

Oh, come on. All right. Well, as a BBC program, I once again must rest. Please do not go around boiling frogs or puppies. Right.

Moving on. We've mentioned midwives very briefly. Alana, this is a huge and important part of healthcare and medicine. Does the midwifery world have a college? Are they official physicians?

Are they treated that way? What are they training midwifery is a funny profession. Because some of the midwives are professional midwives. They're making all their money from it. They do a lot of births.

And some of the midwives are like your aunty that has seven kids.

So there's always mostly men trying to get them to make it more formal,

but they're quite resistant to it. And the most famous one I suppose in this year will be Jane Sharp. Yeah, Jane Sharp's great. We hardly know anything about her as a person. She's kind of mysterious.

But she writes this big midwifery book. It's like 400 pages, but it's really good seller.

“And it's very frank about everything, which I think is why people bought it.”

It's also got really detailed pictures of all the different sort of presentations that can go wrong. So babies got it armed, stuck the wrong way. Reach for anything. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I mean, fascinating read. And I suppose we should talk a little bit about general beliefs about women's bodies in this era. So in the 16th, 17th century, Maria, many quiz for you. Okay.

Which of these was not believed at the time? So number one, unborn babies would breathe through the women's vagina. Two, the womb could move around inside a woman's body. And had to be coaxed back into place with delicious smells.

Three, babies with longer umbilical cords had longer penises. Or four, the womb continued to live after a woman had died. Which of those not true? I'm going to go with number three, umbilical cord of penis length because you could just eyeball that.

Because I know the the womb traveling around your body. That was a thing. There was just like, come back, come back. Yeah, no, we kind of like sue the back into place. The breathing through the vagina kind of makes logical sense.

You know, nothing about the inside. And what was the last one I got? The last one was the womb continue to live. Yeah, and that one I'm going to say, I still think some people in the US believe.

They do not see us as people. They see us as walking incubators. Well, I'm going to go with number three. I mean, you're correct to go for three as a as one that might seem outlanded.

They're all true. I like to. I say, all of the men I date have incredibly long. I'm a little quirky. Still now.

That's. That's. Science. Science. Can argue with the fact.

Um, okay. Well, sorry, sorry for lying to you there. The rear obviously, you know, you trusted me and I betrayed you. But, you know, comedy show. So what you need to do?

Your man. So. Alona midwives. Were they allowed to practice in peace? Or as rear had sort of suggested earlier.

Did men sort of go this is a job from man.

Do we get a sense here of male medicine, muscleing in on midwifery? Yeah. The worst defenders of this family called the Chamberlain's that I mentioned earlier. They get very intimate with free. But people aren't really that interested because the women are doing a perfectly good job

of it.

“But they have this thing that they call the secret and they weren't telling anyone what it is,”

obviously, because they want to sell it. And they turn up to birds. They take like a big box in. They'll be in the birthing chamber blindfold. The women ring bells and stuff.

They want everyone to think that they have this massive piece of machinery. And actually, once they kind of give up on the whole project after about 100 years, it turns out what they have is the four steps. Oh, right. Yeah.

On the one hand. I have so angry right now. I wondered whether we would get into the number of bits of machinery that men invented for child care purposes. And if you, so the depths of depravity, they're just it's angry. It really is.

So one family control the four step industry. Yep. And then eventually they found them under the floorboards at this guy's house. You buried them there to keep them safe. So family secret.

Oh, goodness me. So so men sort of muscled in an invented new technology, also one. And midwifery itself really changed the design of four steps. You know, they were, so I've had a four step delivery. My first kid was a four step delivery.

And, and it really is about treating the woman is meat in order to get the baby out. And the damage that's done to the woman because of the design of four steps is, is horrific in a lot of situations. And, and it's, and I would, you know, and it's because it was designed by people for other people.

So the people who designed it were never going to be the recipients of it.

Hmm. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I know.

No. Kids great. I'm glad to hear that. But yeah, absolutely. Alana, obviously, the Chamberlain family with their four steps.

What came before that? Before that. If the baby got really stuck, there was basically nothing you could do. And if you got to the point where you thought that the baby had died in the mother, the surgeon would be called in and they would use various horrible instruments,

including a kind of great big hook to extract it from the woman. Midwifers would they ever regulate it? Have, have midwifers ever, I mean, of course they've really related now. But whether, you know, in the historical period talking about the 16th century, 17th century.

Yeah, there's physicians in the surgeons. They really wanted to regulate them. And they kept trying to do it.

But basically they never succeeded.

It wasn't actually legally required for midwifers to have training until 1902. Wow. Yeah. After Queen Victoria. Yep.

That's good in Spain. Extraordinary. Okay. So the company of surgeons company of the company of physicians was 15, 18, and 1902 for the company of midwifers.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. Maria, we've been on quite a journey.

“I think that's a testament to how much you can trust women.”

It's the fact that it wasn't until men muscled their way in that we finally went. Okay. We should regulate this. But when women did it by themselves, we were like, they're fine. They're fine.

People are being born. People are standing up afterwards and walking around after childbirth. There's no need to worry about this. Then the Chamberlain's come in and they went, oh, no, maybe we should maybe maybe we should regulate.

It's quite the story. That wasn't the history of medicine in this period, Maria. It's incredible. Who would you have trusted with your health care in this period if you were there back then? Would you have gone with the physicians? Oh, I'm going with Jane Sharp.

Yeah, probably wise. Sure. Who knows what a breach of birth looks like. Yeah. I would like a trust you.

Maybe the noble woman in the areas. Yeah. Hannah woolly. Yeah. Hannah woolly wasn't noble.

But I'll trust Hannah woolly. Okay. Fair enough. But you're not going with the Chamberlain's. I'm very much not going with him.

Okay. No! Okay, it's time now for the new ones window. This is where Rhea and I sit quietly. Mixing our herbal cures for two minutes while Dr. Alana takes centre stage

to tell us something we need to know about Renaissance medicine in England. My stopwatch is ready. So take it away. Dr. Alana. Can I just get a cup of hot urine while we?

You may. You may. Okay. Alana, you've got two minutes. Off you go.

Okay. So this is big emphasis on the mark. Okay. And this is what I usually talk about is that commercialization is driving medical Specialism and driving people to get better at medicine.

“But we also have to remember that this is the birth of a lot of the public health”

that we now know. So we've seen the plague and you have public health measures there. But we also have things like welfare because after the dissolution of the monasteries, the monasteries who've been looking after people, they can't do that anymore. And there's kind of chaos for about 70 years.

And then Elizabeth, as in Elizabeth the first, recognizes that she needs to bring in an act

for the welfare of maimed soldiers. There's so many wars. There are so many people with disabilities coming home. And that act gets tinkered with over the next 300 years.

The other thing we have is hospitals and that again driven by war.

“Because the civil wars, you need hospitals for people.”

It's a whole propaganda thing of who has the best hospitals. So you get more hospitals being used as training centers and more hospitals in general. So at the end of the 17th century, you get new hospitals or expanses of hospitals like Chelsea, St. Thomas, guys, Westminster, they're all produced during that period. So we have quite a lot of hangover from that time in the good as well as the horrible stuff

that we always think about.

That's amazing. Thank you so much. Wow. I forgot that about the monks. The monks wore the welfare system. You know, if you were tired or, you know, they would take in the poor and they would, you know,

some, you know, feed them ups in them on the way. So when Henry got rid of them, we lost our, basically our mental health support. Yeah, he'd never really dismantle the health system. Yes. Just so he could marry them.

They're like, you then executed. Yeah. Classic Henry. Yes. I mean, the dissolution of the monasteries, listen, if you don't know, is, is, yeah, Henry the, switching the, the faith of England from Catholicism.

So his own personal religion, the church of England, where he's in charge, and taking all the land and all the monasteries. So thank you so much, Alanna. That's fascinating. So healthcare, sort of returned under a list of the first.

She went, actually, we need these institutions. Yeah. I mean, healthcare's a strong word. Okay.

“But kind of not throwing rocks at the disabled.”

That's... I've got an idea for a policy. It's the throwing rocks at the disabled. Yeah. If they go back to their home parish,

the home parish now has to do something to try and take care of them. I've got you. Okay. Also, that just became a law. Yeah. Oh.

So we're home perishes literally kicking out their disabled and going, go to the next parish. Yeah, that's where we get passports from, because it's the past that lets you get through the porch, and then like through the country,

and back to your home village, or whatever, because otherwise being a vagrant was illegal. Wow. Huh. So what do you know now? What is time now for the So what do you know now?

This is our quick-fire quiz for Dr. Rhea, to see how much she has learned. You seem to have known quite a lot coming into this. We've had a lovely chat.

We have. This has been amazing.

And you're good at these quizzes, typically. Well, we'll see. We've covered a lot of ground. You've got a lot of notes there. How many pages we're looking?

One, two, three, four, five. Six, six, six. This is so much better than my student. We've got 10 questions for you. Okay.

Let's see how you do. So question one, what professional medical body was founded in 1518? The Royal College of Physicians. It was, well done.

Number two, name one diagnostic test. A physician might carry out on a patient. Just the one. Okay, they might test your urine by sniffing it, or drinking it coughing.

Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, yeah. Question three, which animals blood did Richard Lower transfuse into a human volunteer in 1667. A dog. There's a sheep actually.

It was a sheep, yeah. I think you were. Oh, no, you're right. Sorry.

Richard Lower did the first dog blood transfusion,

but put sheep blood into his non-bedlim volunteer. Hey, you'd volunteer. Yes. Where's in France? They did it with caps.

Yes, I'll give you half a point there. I'm not a college, but you didn't get me on to straight away. Question four, which group performed the majority of medical care in Renaissance England? I want to say group.

When I say group, which gender? Oh, man. Well, well, well, well, well hang on a second. We started way back at the beginning with all physicians or doctors, but not all doctors are physician.

That's right. My answer would have been doctors, but we didn't cover women really till the end. And then we covered them very specifically as midwives. That's a fair point.

Also, as you said, there were like 1 to 2,000. So there's multiple answers to this question. I'm going to give you a point for that, because that's a fair critique of our system. You've undermined the question writing. So I'll give you the point.

Question five. What was the nickname of the Irish Quack Doctor?

“Valentine Great Rakes, who captured the English attention in 1666?”

The Stroker. I don't know what accent that was. I'm sorry. I tried to do Irish, and I failed me. That was more Bram Stoker.

Yeah, I apologize to all of Ireland's. The Stroker. Question six. What was Cockwater? Not what I said it was.

It was basically cream a chicken soup. Yeah, to put some cock in there as in chicken. Yeah. And then milk from a red cow some raisins. Yeah.

I'm a Greek. But I'm a Greek. If you get your hands on it. Yeah. Question seven, can you name two types of surgery that were performed in

Renaissance England? Well, there was bloodletting. Yes. If we can't that as a surgery, very minor surgery. Sure.

Bloodletting. Shall we go with bladder stone removal? Yeah. Because it's absolutely horrifying, isn't it? Yes, you could have had friends.

I did. My step-to-me's two.

Hernia's fist-to-me's amputations.

All sorts of horrible horrible stuff. A question eight. Who was Hannah Wully? Oh, Hannah Wully was not noble. No.

“But she did end up writing a very commercial remedy book.”

Which probably overlapped a lot with called pepper's book. Very good. Question nine. What's strange belief that people have about wounds in Renaissance England?

Oh, so many. So many weird things. One that the womb traveled around the body. Yeah.

Which probably was a precursor to women being hysterical in the 1800s.

They were hysterical. Your womb was too high in your body. But it comes from. It's there. Also, that it lived beyond the woman.

That's very good. Very good. Excellent. And this for nine and a half out of ten, which 17th century book written by a public spirited

apothecary is perhaps the most popular medical text of all time. Call pepper's herbal. Nine and a half out of ten. Very good. I'm annoyed about that dog one.

“Well, I mean, I think you did very well.”

I think you did, you know, really well. Because you got, you know, dog was correct. It wasn't into that patient. It was. It was a first dog.

Yeah. But I mean, very, very impressive. You wouldn't put it past them. No. Thank you so much, Maria.

And listen, if you want more from Maria.

Check out our episodes on Juni Sal, the amazing pirate queen.

The most successful pirate of all time. And of course, our episode on Marco Polo. And for more on the history of health and wellness. We have episodes on ancient medicine, Renaissance beauty in Italy and the Kellogg brothers. They were fun.

If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to your dead to me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. But I just like to say, you just thank you to our guests in history corner.

We have the amazing Doctor Alana Scuse from the University of Reading. Thank you Alana. Thank you. Pleasure to have you here. And a comedy corner.

Yeah, Lena, Doctor Alana. Thank you, Rio. Pleasure, as always. See me afterwards for that round. Oh, thank you. Puppy water, is it?

Oh, no. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time. As we restore another languishing historical topic back to full health. But for now, I'm off to go and launch my new wellness brand. Leach is for life.

I'm going to be rich. Bye! Your dead to me is a BBC studio's production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Katherine Russell. It was written by Emiro's Price Good Fellow, Emander Goose, and me.

The audio producer was Steve Hanky, and our production coordinator was Jill Huggitt. It was produced by Emiro's Price Good Fellow, me and senior producer Emander Goose, and our executive editor was Philip Salas. Hi, I'm Phil Wang, and this is a podcast to podcast trailer for a different podcast than this podcast that you've listened to.

Oh, I'm going to listen to. But nonetheless, I'm talking about another podcast.

“That you should also definitely listen to.”

The podcast I'm talking about is comedy of the week, which takes choice episodes from BBC sitcoms, sketches, podcasts, and panel shows, including my own show and speakable, and puts them all into one podcast. Maybe I'll trail this podcast on that podcast. Who's to say, I'll do what I like.

Let's into comedy of the week now on BBC Sounds. Podcast. This is not the future we were promised. Like, hell that out for a tagline for this show. From the BBC, this is the interface.

The shows that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings, or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.