Original subtitles

Do you remember

when a cure for deafness came with a window seat?

Pilots take you thousands

of feet in the air doing crazy vertical dives,

corkscrew turns, and loopty loops.

You might get sick but passengers say

that it does work.

Or when a treatment for allergies was a real whiz?

You provide a urine sample.

It's put through a centrifuge

and then injected back into your body.

That's right, you get injected with your own pee.

Or when one medical breakthrough could be deadly.

On one side it says dose, one tablet.

On the other side, it says poison, which one is it?

I'm not a doctor,

but giving children rat poison isn't good for them.

These are the things we used to do.

For fun, for money,

or maybe out of boredom, that we'll never see again.

Were they dangerous? Certainly.

Deadly? Occasionally.

But boy, wasn't it exciting?

Don't you wish that curing dental issues could be as fun

and painless as seeing a show?

Well, there was a time when that wasn't just a fantasy,

except maybe for the painless part.

In the 1890s, dentistry is very, very painful.

There's really no anesthesia, no antibiotics,

so you could walk in there to get a tooth pulled

and walk out with a very dangerous infection.

Most people just avoid the dentist altogether.

So when a man named Edgar Randolph Parker graduates

from dental school and goes to set up his dental practice,

he's got a problem.

No patients.

So he decides he's going to stand on a street corner

with a very unique dental sales pitch.

He will pull your tooth out for 50 cents,

and if you feel pain, he'll pay you $5.

There is a saying, "The house always wins."

Well, Parker is the house.

He's placing the bet,

and he has one very significant ace up his sleeve.

A little substance known as cocaine.

Now, as crazy as it seems, at this point in history,

cocaine is completely legal in the United States.

It's actually seen as a very effective cure-all

for everything from stomach issues to fatigue.

It's a great painkiller.

You used to even be able

to buy cocaine capsules at a pharmacy.

Plus, cocaine is pretty cheap.

You could buy a box of cocaine pills for like 50 cents.

In today's money, that's like $18.

So for the same price you're spending on a six-pack of beer,

you're getting a box of cocaine.

What Parker does is add the cocaine to water

and inject it directly into the patient's gums.

If you inject cocaine into your gum, it's going to work.

It's going to kill the pain.

And if the pain returns,

just top them off with a bit of whiskey.

He markets himself as painless Parker,

and people who are terrified of the dentist start lining up.

That's when he decides to upgrade his cure

into a traveling show.

He calls it the Painless Parker Dental Circus.

This is back when traveling medicine men

are a thing.

Why not have a traveling dental circus?

You make money off of the show and also off the dentistry.

Who cares that you're pulling out teeth around animals

in completely unsanitary conditions?

Parker's circus has everything.

Dancing ladies, contortionists, show girls

with a 15-piece band, and of course, the main attraction.

Tooth pulling with cocaine and whiskey.

Parker is dressed to the nines.

He's wearing a top hat, he's wearing tails,

and he's wearing a necklace

of 357 human teeth that he pulled out in a single day.

He's like the ringmaster at a

three-ring circus.

And he's selling dental hygiene

and products like Painless Parker's mouthwash.

After warming up the crowd, he proceeds

to the main attraction or extraction, if you will.

He gets a volunteer from the audience.

He takes out his tools.

He does his injections and his whatnot and like magic.

No wincing, no winging, no yelping, nothing.

Painless Parker.

There's a good reason things go so well,

and it's not the cocaine.

So the person who volunteers is a plant.

Somebody who has a fake tooth that Parker pretends

to pull out.

Painless Parker is Billy [bleep]

but his spectacle is flawless.

And the crowd falls for it. They're totally into it.

But the extractions

for real patients aren't always painless.

As Parker starts speeding up things, he takes a shortcut

of squirting the cocaine into the cavity rather

than injecting it into the gum.

And that doesn't work the same.

Injecting the cocaine directly

into the cavity can cause infections.

If you swallow it, it can cause other problems

like heart attacks.

And it doesn't really get rid of the pain.

People are now screaming throughout these

procedures, but Parker, being the showman that he is,

has a way to cover it up.

He just cues the band to play louder.

Drown out the screams.

After each performance,

Parker hits the road,

leaving behind some pretty irate customers.

Dental boards are furious.

Dentists and states start to sue him.

The American Dental Association brands him a menace

to the dignity of the profession.

In California, he's actually banned

from calling himself Painless,

which obviously is his whole brand.

So he know what he does?

He legally changes his first name to Painless.

Just using my name, folks.

Even his band can't drown out the legal threats

and lawsuits.

Parker's down, but he's not out.

Painless Parker retires the circus and goes legit.

He eventually operates a chain of successful dental clinics

and speaks about the importance of preventative health

and dental hygiene.

But Parker never loses his love of performing.

He makes educational films.

He hosts a call-in radio show,

and he even helps the animal's teeth at the zoo.

You know, his methods

in retrospect probably weren't the right thing to do,

but I appreciate a man like Painless Parker trying

to make it better for all of us.

Now, if you think Painless Parker was wild, wait

until you meet Clark Stanley.

He had a cure that would leave you rattled.

In the 19th century,

America is building a vast railroad network.

It's very difficult, very dangerous, grueling work.

And so the typical worker suffers from a lot

of physical aches and pains.

For thousands

of Chinese immigrants working on the railroad,

there is a cure.

Oil derived from their native water snakes.

Chinese workers rub this on their bodies where it hurts,

and it actually relieves the symptoms of arthritis,

bursitis, and rheumatism.

Sounds crazy, but it really works.

These snakes contain a high level of omega-3 fatty acids,

which deliver actual pain relief.

Suddenly,

there's a market for snake oil in the American West.

There's only one problem.

America doesn't have those snakes.

But one entrepreneur sees an opportunity

to make a lot of money.

Clark Stanley, he's a cowboy,

and he sees rattlesnake oil as a business opportunity.

Rattlesnakes are a totally different snake,

but it sounds good.

I mean, what's more potent than a rattlesnake?

And that's good enough for Stanley.

Stanley decides to debut this snake oil

at the world's Colombian Exposition in 1893.

Millions of Americans come to this thing

to see fascinating new inventions.

This is where the world is first introduced

to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer,

the automatic dishwasher, and Wrigley's chewing gum.

Stanley, he rises to the occasion,

dressed in full cowboy garb

with a crowd gathering around him.

He slices open a live rattlesnake,

drops it in boiling water.

He skims the oil off the top and bottles it right there.

He calls it Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment.

He claims he was taught this recipe

by a Hopi medicine man.

He said it cures basically any ailment.

Clark Stanley's snake oil liniment

will kill your baldness.

This will solve your male impotence.

Do you have rheumatism or arthritis?

Only Clark's patented snake oil liniment will help you.

But rattlesnake oil doesn't even contain enough

omega-3s

to soothe your muscles, much less do anything else.

His snake oil cure is a sham.

Stanley launches a nationwide blitz

of newspaper ads and live shows

featuring his phony rattlesnake cure-all.

It's pretty insane,

but the product is actually so successful

that he sets up two different production facilities,

one in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island,

neither of which are known

for having rattlesnakes in that area.

It actually doesn't matter where he sets up shop,

because the only time

that Clark Stanley's snake oil liniment contains

any snake oil at all is at the Colombian Exposition.

Once it went to market,

there was never any snake oil in his snake oil cure.

So what's really in Stanley's snake oil?

Thanks to the Pure Food and Drug Act, we actually know.

In 1916, federal agents seize bottles of his

liniment, and they find that what's inside

of it is a little bit alarming.

Instead of snake oil, it contains mineral oil,

capsaicin from chili peppers, camphor, and turpentine.

Turpentine dissolves paint, it is highly toxic.

And here people are rubbing Stanley's concoction

onto themselves like baby oil.

Stanley's eventually fined $20.

It's a meaningless amount of money,

but that destroys his reputation

and causes his empire to collapse.

Stanley does leave us with one final gift though.

We now have the expression snake oil salesman

to describe someone who's trying to scam you.

We all know the importance of being regular,

but one man built an empire taking

that idea a little too far.

John Harvey Kellogg is born one of 17 children.

The Kellogg family is a big family,

but sadly, it's also riddled with illness.

He himself suffers from tuberculosis,

severe constipation, and hemorrhoids,

and six of his 16 siblings die of infectious disease.

Kellogg goes on to become a doctor,

and in 1876, he takes over the management

of the Battle Creek Medical Surgical Sanitarium in Michigan.

People will hear sanitarium

and they'll think crazy people.

It actually has more

to do with the word sanitary being clean,

and it was a place for people with all kinds

of different illnesses to get well.

Kellogg quickly turns his childhood sickness

into the main focus of the sanitarium.

And he believes health starts from the inside.

Kellogg's work leads

to a theory that all this disease is caused

by food sitting too long in the intestine,

basically causing your body to rot from the inside out.

And he calls it auto-intoxication.

His solution for auto-intoxication is simple.

More bowel movements.

And not just like one a day.

We're talking at least four a day.

But you can't make four bowel movements a day just

because your doctor tells you to.

It's not how it works.

So Kellogg invents a colonic irrigator

that can pump 15 quarts of fluid

into your intestines per minute.

Imagine all the fluid in one gallon of water.

Now imagine four of those shot

into your colon every minute.

Four of those.

This is not a relaxing day at the spa.

This is a fire hose in the outhole.

The colonic irrigator was not his only attempt

at getting people to poop.

He would invent things like a chair that vibrated

and made you had to clean out.

This guy's a mad scientist.

He's like the Willy Wonka of poop.

The machines do everything.

They beat you and pummel you and shake you.

And after all the flushing,

Kellogg's going to give you a yogurt enema

to basically replenish bacteria in the gut.

By the early 1900s,

the Battle Creek Sanitarium becomes the wellness resort

of its day.

At its height, it has up to 1300 patients at a time,

paying 45 to $60 a week.

That's more than twice what the average worker makes

at the time.

From where I'm sitting now,

I could look at these things and be like,

"That's so stupid, and who would do that?"

But if you look at who did it,

it was like influencers of the time.

Celebrities would hear about these things

and then go and do them.

Everyone from Henry Ford to Thomas Edison,

Booker T. Washington, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt,

they all come for their industrial strengths enemas.

But the sanitarium isn't the oasis it claims

to be.

This enema machine forces high pressured water

through the system, basically like a power washer.

It cleans out waste,

but it also can tear away parts of the colon

and cause a lot of damage.

Ironically,

excessive enema use can actually lead to constipation.

It's unknown how many people were injured

or even killed by this dangerous procedure,

but we do know that there were several suicides,

which would suggest this is maybe not a safe place

to go get medical care.

And yet, the sanitarium is wildly successful

until the Great Depression.

After the stock market crash,

people don't have money anymore

for recreational colon cleansing.

So in 1933, the sanitarium is put into receivership

and it ultimately closes in the 1940s.

But the end of the sanitarium does not mean

the end of Kellogg's ideas.

He is just as obsessed with what goes into the body

as what comes out.

He created a sort of cereal porridge,

but one night it happened to dry on the rollers.

And suddenly these flakes appeared.

Changing the Kellogg family fortune forever

with the iconic Kellogg's cornflake.

If you think those constipation cures defy logic,

there was another miracle cure that was even more

of a stretch.

In the early 20th century, the average guy was

about 5' 7", and the average woman was about 5'3".

Much like today, height equals confidence,

authority, and power.

So what do you do if you want to be taller?

Well, in 1914, science had the answer with the invention

of the pendiculator.

The pendiculator is this polished wooden table

with leather straps.

You lay down, you strap your head on one end,

and then your feet on the other,

and then you start to crank.

The crank slowly stretches your body.

Adds promise that it will lengthen compressed vertebrae,

and restore inches lost to gravity.

Some customers report that they've gained two

and a half inches, two and a half inches.

That's kind of the difference between looking up at someone

and looking them in the eye.

The pendiculator not only promises to make you

taller, but it promises to relieve back pain, constipation,

headaches, crooked posture, and even exhausted nerves.

Ads declare that the pendiculator can give you

the health and vigor of a soldier.

If you saw the ads, you'd go, maybe that's worth trying.

Sounds like it would work.

Doctors endorse it. Newspapers promote it.

You can even order one by mail, no prescription required.

A doctor in Tampa advises his patients to come

in and use his pendiculator if you want superb shoulders

and back, or you want to gain a little height.

Another doctor calls the pendiculator the most important

health invention of the century

and urges his patients to come into his office to grow tall.

But the pendiculator isn't all it's cracked up to be.

It's a cool idea,

but there's no safety mechanisms on this thing.

So basically people are willingly subjecting themselves

to extreme spinal traction without any medical supervision,

which is a recipe for herniated discs, for chronic pain,

for paralysis, and on and on and on.

This is the medieval torture device known as

the rack.

But now we have upcycled it with a polished wooden surface

and the promise that you'll be taller.

But it's literally ripping your spine apart.

People start complaining.

They're not getting taller, but they are getting hurt.

Amazingly, it goes on to sell for 30 years.

The pendiculator doesn't meet its end

by getting pulled from the market.

It's actually the US Post Office that steps up to say,

"This thing is so fraudulent, we refuse to ship it."

And that was it.

So in the end,

the pendiculator didn't quite measure up.

What do you do when you're feeling tired?

Reach for coffee or an energy drink?

You won't believe what doctors used to prescribe

for a quick pick-me-up.

In the late 19th century, Americans are tired.

Industrial work is grueling.

Nutrition is inconsistent, and diseases like tuberculosis

and anemia are all over the place, people are run down.

So doctors had a little something

that could put a little pep in your step,

and they called it strychnine.

Now, you may have heard of strychnine

before because it's the thing that we all use to kill rats.

Does it help with energy? I don't know.

I'm not going to try it.

Ultimately, it doesn't help the rats.

You ever seen a rat on rat poison?

They don't look very energetic to me.

But in the late 1800s, it was used as a nerve stimulant

and as a medicinal tonic in very small doses.

Advertisers promote the drug

as this kind of cure-all du jour.

Whatever you've got, it can fix it.

They say it'll restore flagging strength,

revive masculine vigor, cure the despondent.

It'll do everything.

It's sold in pharmacies across the country,

and in some versions,

they're in tiny little chocolate morsels.

It's like microdosing before microdosing was popular.

You could buy little pieces

of it and just chew on it throughout the day.

But its most memorable use

is as a performance-enhancing drug in the Olympics.

In 1904,

an Olympian named Thomas Hicks is running the marathon.

He collapses in the middle

of it as a result of his exhaustion.

His trainers then rush to the scene

and give him a formula of egg whites

and Strychnine that brings him back to health.

Later, he gets a second dose mixed with Brandy.

What a treat.

He does finish, Andy wins Gold,

but it's not really doping at the time.

It was more like nutrition.

This is a time

when strychnine is even considered safe enough for kids.

In 1894, in a newspaper column,

someone writes in and says, "Hey, my kid's lethargic.

They just don't have as much energy as they should.

What should we do?"

And the doctor said,

"Oh, just give them a half a teaspoon of strychnine

before each meal."

What?

That's a ton of strychnine.

I'm not a doctor.

I haven't gone to any fancy medical schools,

but I do believe giving children rat poison isn't good

for them.

In fact, the line between therapeutic

and toxic is razor thin.

On one side, it says dose, one tablet.

And on the other side, it says poison.

Which one is it?

Just a few milligrams too much

of strychnine will cause your back to seize.

Arch like a bow.

It could cause asphyxiation, seizures, and even death.

As the 20th century goes on,

reports of accidental strychnine overdoses

are flooding the medical journals.

You've got imprecise measurement in tonics leading to death.

You've got children mistaking chocolate-covered strychnine

for candies and dying.

It's a bad situation.

It's not until 1962 that strychnine use

on human beings is completely banned.

But if you want to charge yourself up a little bit,

that's right

at about the time that instant coffee takes off.

Before American doctors went crazy for strychnine,

they went mad for an equally curious remedy.

In the 1800s, if you went to the doctor

for basically anything, syphilis,

gonorrhea, tuberculosis,

a cold, you would probably leave

with this small pill called Blue Mass.

Most of the ingredients seem pretty

harmless, licorice, rose water, honey, sugar,

but also something called quicksilver.

Quicksilver is like a jaunty name for pure liquid mercury.

At the time,

they though mercury was kind of like a cure-all.

Mercury is this mesmerizing,

highly reflective liquid that seems like it's magic.

So it would make sense that people would want to use it

to cure things because magic can do incredible things.

Blue Mass is used by everyone

and anyone, including future presidents.

In 1841, Abraham Lincoln starts taking the pills

to manage melancholy.

Today, we would call that depression.

Shortly after his inauguration as president,

he determines that these pills are making him irritable.

It is a little surprising that it took him 20 years

to figure this out.

You know, he starts in 1841 and stops in 1861.

Lincoln was irrationally angry

and having these mood swings.

And when he stops taking these pills, that's when he sort

of settles into the character that he's remembered for,

patient and thoughtful and contemplative.

Is it a coincidence? Maybe.

But mercury is known to cause mood swings.

Quicksilver also causes bleeding gums, coughing,

vomiting, and trouble breathing.

But doctors at the time take these symptoms

as signs that the medicine is working.

What doctors though was a therapeutic reaction

to this medicine was actually just early signs

of mercury poisoning.

The modern analysis

of Blue Mass has revealed that the doses of mercury

in it were 9,000 times higher than today's safe level.

So people were getting like real crazy hits

of mercury back then.

By the early 20th century,

doctors realized they were wrong about this cure-all pill

and Blue Mass goes away.

It's just funny

because the human body is the most complicated organism.

But the medical profession at that time though,

it's easy guys.

We just need one pill. Let's not complicate it.

Turns out one of history's favorite mood stabilizers

was a little unstable.

At the dawn of aviation,

airplanes weren't just thrilling.

They were mysterious and powerful and magical.

And when something new feels magical,

people start to believe it can do anything.

Like maybe even curing the sick.

After the Wright Brother's famous flight in 1903,

America becomes obsessed with airplanes

and airplane technology,

the number of airplanes grows exponentially.

They're used for agriculture, for transportation,

for shipping, for warfare.

Then a story hits the news

that seems almost impossible.

A World War I veteran named Henry Renz mysteriously

loses the ability to speak.

Doctors try every cure they can think of, but nothing works.

So after eight months of all kinds of tests

and coming up with nothing,

he goes to the US Public Health Service.

And there,

a doctor tells him that his problem is psychological.

What does he prescribe as treatment? A plane ride.

The fact that a doctor could even think

of using an airplane

as a medicinal cure shows just how novel they really were.

People weren't sure what planes could and couldn't do.

So why not give it a try?

His theory is that if you take a patient thousands

of feet in the air and you do all these dramatic turns

and you're in this different sort of air pressure system,

you will actually reset their nervous system.

Whether it was psychological or physiological

or merely a placebo effect, when Renz lands,

they ask him if he can talk

and he says, "I don't know whether I can talk or not."

Which says everything.

Newspapers spread the story across the country

and soon curative flights start taking off.

In 1922,

a World War I veteran by the name of

Augustus S. Harris

is dismissed from a military hospital

as being hopelessly deaf.

Thinking that maybe the changes in air pressure

at high altitude can help,

the American Legion arranges a flight.

The plane takes Harris to 16,000 feet,

and then suddenly he regains his ability to hear.

After word gets out about Harris being cured

by taking a flight,

other pilots begin to offer this deaf-curing service.

Even well-known pilots go along for the ride.

In 1925, two years

before his big flight, for $50,

Charles Lindbergh will take you up,

spin you around 28 times.

You might get sick,

but his passengers say that it does work.

But these miracle flights come

with multiple risks.

These pilots are using

these decommissioned World War I planes,

and some of them have been in combat

and they're really beat up and old,

and now they're pushing them to their limits.

Doing crazy vertical dives and corkscrew turns

and loopty loops.

In 1930, the wing of a plane that is flying comes off.

The plane crashes into a swamp, kills the pilot,

and the person that was hoping for a cure.

Another deaf flight in Massachusetts results

in the deaths of three people.

Eventually, science and common sense catch up.

By the late 1920s, medical journals debunked the treatment,

and these flights are ultimately grounded.

Whatever the reason these people got better,

who knows?

But it definitely wasn't the plane ride itself.

Doctors ultimately realized that if it did anything,

it should have made them much worse.

Rapid changes in air pressure

and the noise of loud engines is much more likely

to damage your hearing than to heal it.

At the same time Americans are fascinated by flight,

they're also obsessed with another new wonder, electricity.

But some people took that obsession a little too far.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

electricity is transforming every facet of American life.

Streetlights glow, homes hum with appliances,

and factories roar to life.

As people see all the things that electricity can do,

some begin to wonder,

can we use electricity to improve our health?

So several enterprising companies come up

with a device called the Violet Ray Generator.

This is a handheld device that channels high

voltage through a glass tube filled with gas.

When activated, it glows purple,

hence the name Violet Ray Generator.

And the manufacturers claim that it can treat up

to 80 different conditions.

We're talking asthma, headaches, dandruff, wrinkles,

and even hemorrhoids.

This thing sounds like a miracle.

Doctors endorse it. Dentists are using it.

Consumers are buying it.

Everybody is now smitten with this new technology.

When you're using them and rubbing them all

over your body,

they're creating these beautiful purple arcs of light.

But what people don't realize is that it can generate tens

of thousands of volts.

Some of them generate 50,000 volts.

That's the same as a stun gun. .

If you don't use it right, you could suffer burns,

electrical shocks, other electrical injuries.

It's really dangerous.

Prolonged exposure can absolutely damage your

tissue and worsen the condition that you're trying

to treat in the first place.

If people are using this to treat hemorrhoids,

you can end up with some interesting situations here.

But the most interesting thing

about the violet ray generator

is even more shocking than electricity.

The device also generates ozone,

which manufacturers claim has antibacterial properties,

but is toxic.

Ozone is O3, meaning three oxygen atoms combined

into a molecule rather than just two,

which is what we breathe.

And that third oxygen, that sucker is highly reactive.

Short-term exposure to ozone triggers asthma,

and long-term exposure can lead

to chronic respiratory failure and even death.

It's one thing to emit ozone,

but the violet ray generator actually had an ozone setting

to treat lung disease of all things.

By the late '40s, the FDA has seen enough

and it files multiple lawsuits

and ultimately the government bans them completely.

Before it went away, it was a product that burned bright

for decades and people had the scars to prove it.

Back in the day, moms had a cure for everything,

but one popular cold remedy came

with a little more kick than anyone expected.

In the early 1930s, when Americans get a cold,

their options aren't very good.

Most people just suffer through the cold

without any treatment at all.

Then in 1932,

an American pharmaceutical company introduces

an over-the-counter cure that's small,

sleek, and revolutionary.

The Benzedrine inhaler.

It's a little tube that fits in your pocket,

and you just inhale it through your nostrils,

and it clears your sinuses in seconds.

Doctors love them, drugstores stock them

everywhere and by the late 30s,

they are a household staple with millions sold every year.

But they come with a dirty little secret.

If you use it properly, it opens up your

nasal passages.

But if you break it open, you can get super duper high.

Inside of it was 200 to 300 milligrams

of amphetamine.

And you don't need a prescription.

You can just go to the corner drugstore

and get a massive dose of speed.

And while you're at it,

top it off with a milkshake at the soda fountain.

If you suck on the cotton swab that's inside of it,

you get the equivalent

of 40 Adderall coursing through your system.

They keep stuff like this behind the pharmacy counter

today because if you buy enough of it,

you can actually manufacture methamphetamine.

But back in the 30s and 40s, sky's the limit.

Buy all you want.

There's lots of groups that immediately get into it.

Students who want to stay awake, to cram for tests,

truck drivers who need to do a long haul.

There's musicians who want to just be able

to riff all night long on the stage.

Jazz legend Charlie Bird Parker allegedly is

cracking so many inhalers during his performances

that his stage starts to look like it just snowed.

It was a massive sales hit, but it was dangerous.

The stuff is so potent that militaries

on both sides give it to their spies

and soldiers to keep them awake and alert in World War II.

Problem is,

soldiers are coming back from the war addicted to Bennys.

The overuse of Benzedrine leads to insomnia,

paranoia.

hallucinations, seizures, and in some cases, death.

By the late '40s, it's become rampantly clear

that addiction is a huge problem.

One newspaper puts it perfectly.

They say Benzedrine inhalers start dope craze.

The proper thing to do is to just take this thing

off the shelf, but there's no profits there,

so the company's not going to do that.

So they decide to monkey with it a little bit

and they put dye inside.

So if you do rip it open, use it, your mouth gets all black

and everybody knows what you're doing.

They also try to deter the abusers by adding capsaicin.

That's the stuff that makes hot peppers hot.

The problem is people who are using it

for the right reasons also dealt with that.

Imagine, you're all congested.

Your eyes are watery, your nose is stuffy.

The last thing you want is a shot

of hot pepper up your nose.

But none of these measures work.

So by 1959, the FDA steps in

and says Benzedrine inhalers are prescription only.

And a decade later, Benzedrine itself gets labeled

as a controlled substance.

And just like that,

people who have a cold are left out in the cold.

When one miracle cure disappears,

it leaves an opening in the market for a new one.

In the 1970s, if your allergies wouldn't go away,

some doctors had a more personal solution.

Back in the 1970s, if you had allergies,

you would be treated with an antihistamine,

but they caused drowsiness.

The type of drowsiness that would put you out of action.

So people start looking for alternatives,

but what they find isn't sold in drugstores.

It's urine.

Dr. George R. Burrell runs

the allergy control medical clinics.

They're based in Southern California

and they're working on something called autoimmune therapy.

Don't worry, patients are not drinking the urine.

Dr. Burrell has a better idea.

You don't drink liquids for 12 hours.

You're then exposed to an allergen.

You then provide a urine sample.

The urine sample is taken by the clinic

and it's put through a centrifuge

and then injected back into your body.

That's right. You get injected with your own pee.

I mean, my first thought is that someone

had had a little too much to drink

and they were like,

"You know, I bet your pee could heal you."

And they're like, "You wouldn't dare."

You would think with all

of the ridiculous cure-alls we've had

throughout human history, we'd be done with that.

But it just keeps happening.

The theory is that the antibodies created

inside you when you were subjected to your allergens

is basically then resubmitted into your body.

So it's almost like your own little mini vaccine

to help you fight those allergies

and over time overcome them.

When you say it out loud, you go, "Oh,

that kind of makes sense," but then when you think about it,

you're like, "So my pee will cure me?"

That's a tough sell.

Although unconventional,

it seems to work.

Newspapers began running testimonials

and they're singing its praises.

It has helped with their hay fever,

their asthma, their eczema.

It has even relieved headaches,

and they make it sound like urine therapy

is the best thing ever.

It would be great if your own waste could become

your own cure, but it's a cure with a catch.

There are so many problems

with injecting your own urine back into your body.

Urine is what your body has already decided to get

rid of.

It contains urea and ammonia

and just all kinds of concentrated waste products.

Injecting it back into the body forces your kidneys

to filter it all over again,

leading to dehydration and kidney stress.

In 1976, a committee of doctors investigate this

clinic and they find no evidence

that these treatments actually work.

There seems to be something about the culture

of the '70s where people were a little fast

and loose with their own health.

Let's just say that treatment didn't exactly hold water.

There was a time when Americans believed

the stronger the treatment, the better the results.

And one doctor took that philosophy

to truly thunderous extremes.

In 1793 in Philadelphia,

there is this sense of promise and hopefulness.

America has waged its

revolutionary war against Britain.

Now the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, it's all ratified.

This is literally a moment

that a new nation has just been born.

And then yellow fever strikes.

Yellow fever is known as the American plague.

What begins with flu-like symptoms soon spreads

throughout the body, causing organ failure

and yellowy, sallow skin and eyes.

And it gives the fever its name.

When the outbreak starts, almost half the city flees,

including Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.

But one of Philadelphia's most

respected doctors stays behind,

believing he's the one who can deliver a cure.

Dr. Benjamin Rush is kind of a big deal.

He's a signer of the Declaration of Independence,

and he's one of the country's most famous doctors.

In a time when a person can be a doctor just

by calling themselves a doctor, he's a real doctor.

He's attended one of the best medical schools in Europe.

Like a lot of doctors at the time,

he believes that the human body is composed

of four fluids called the humors.

Black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm.

If there is a disease,

then it comes from a problem with one of these four fluids.

So the trick is to figure out which one

of these four humors is out of balance and then to purge it.

But Dr. Rush thinks purging one humor

is not enough.

Dr. Rush is a maximalist.

He believes that if a little purging is good for you,

a lot is really good for you.

So he creates his own tablets

called Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills.

These things contain laxatives 10 times stronger

than anything else on the market.

And as if that's not extreme enough,

there's a little mercury to get things moving on both ends.

They cause profuse sweating, intense vomiting,

extreme diarrhea, and enough drool to fill a bucket.

These pills don't just move things along.

They launch them from every direction.

You've heard of extra strength pills?

This is super maximum extra, extra, extra strength.

It basically takes the colon,

which ordinarily moves at a trot,

and turns it up to a full gallop.

Anything that's in you is going to come out and fast.

Patients say the results of the pills are so explosive,

they resemble thunder.

So they get the nickname thunderclappers.

And the results are deadly serious.

If you're already suffering from yellow fever,

you likely are dehydrated,

and then all of a sudden you're doing these things

that are making you more dehydrated.

You're getting electrolyte issues.

You go into kidney failure,

and ultimately the likelihood of dying skyrockets.

It's absolutely crazy to think that the effects

of these pills are so extreme

that they would likely kill you way

before the mercury poisoning could.

Benjamin Rush's patients end up being four times

more likely to die from yellow fever than anyone else.

And yet, his pills remain on the market

until the 1940s.

And we're still finding traces of them today.

In 1804, Dr. Rush equips the Lewis

and Clark Expedition with nearly five dozen thunderclappers,

and they take them prolifically.

This probably was not so good for them,

but it's very good for modern historical research.

We're able to retrace their path

because every time they took these pills

and went to the bathroom,

they would be excreting mercury deposits.

A lot of it ends up in the latrine holes

that they make throughout the journey.

200 years later,

archeologists are excavating a latrine in Montana.

And what they discover is it has way more mercury

than in the surrounding soil.

So thanks to Dr. Rush and his thunderclappers,

we can definitively say Lewis

and Clark were here.

Looking back at the cures we trusted,

whether it was snake oil or electric generators,

or a little strychnine to get us through the day,

some of our remedies may have been hard to swallow,

but hope has always been powerful medicine.

And that's why our hazardous history was just

what the doctor ordered.