← The Duncan & Coe History Show
The Duncan & Coe History Show
Rabbit Holes
00:38:16
Mike is back from his brush with not-quite-death and Alexis offers him no quarter, immediately speculating on 18th-century treatments he mercifully avoided. The actual episode: Their rabbit hole tales of unwoe, from the lexical versatility of "slut"...
Loading summary
Transcript138 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to the Duncan and company Show. I'm Mike Duncan.
- [00:05]
B
I'm Alexis Co. And this is our show. Welcome back, Mike.
- [00:10]
A
Oh, thank you. It's great to be here again.
- [00:12]
B
I like this much more.
- [00:14]
A
Yes, yes. Thank you so much for pinch hitting last week.
- [00:17]
B
Yes. And you did not die from any of those things. You're here, so you survived and you weren't suffering from sepsis or poodle or talking too much, which is amazing. Afeet, congratulations.
- [00:32]
A
Thank you. Yes. Yeah. For those of you who have been around with me for a while and were saying online, gee whiz, I hope it's not kidney stones again. It was absolutely kidney stones again. I have severe kidney stone issues that apparently flare up once every few years. This is the same thing that happened to me when I was trying to finish the Lafayette manuscript that took me into the hospital in France and I had to do all of this stuff in French, but this time there were additional complications on top of everything else. And so I was in the hospital from Tuesday to Friday last week, and so was unable to get any work done. But I am home now. I'm okay. I will be okay. And I thought that you did a great job pinching in. Thank you. Last week. Yeah.
- [01:19]
B
I was wondering what sort of, like, the worst thing that could happen to you in the 18th century and 19th century and, you know, certain parts of the 20th century really, is that someone would call a doctor. You're sort of better off taking your chances rather than have the barber surgeon.
- [01:37]
A
Yeah. The guy who would come in and like, open my kidney up and scoop the stone out with a spoon and be like, I got it. And then I would die from what he did to me.
- [01:46]
B
From something totally avoidable. Did they bleed you?
- [01:49]
A
There was no bleeding of me. There was bleeding. There was no bleeding of me. By the Barber of Seville or whatever.
- [01:57]
B
Did they use a hammer and a nail? Yes. Yes. Did they. Did they use that?
- [02:05]
A
No, they did not use. There were no hammers or nails involved.
- [02:08]
B
So everything I know about this operation is from 1812, because James K. Polk, who would go on to be a one term president, people would later claim that was his intention. It was not. But when he was 17 years old, he had to have bladder stones. So not, you know, gallstones removed. And they had. They restrained him, like, assistance held him down. He was conscious. It was 45 minutes of excruciating pain. And this is before anesthesia. It predated the development of it. And they made this, like, incision in his abdomen. That's how they, you know, got totally fine, very probably maybe clean instruments used only for humans only intended for human use, not also used on the animals. And it was harrowing. And then, yes, there are, there are accounts that I read in graphic detail about how they used a hammer and a nail to crush the larger stones.
- [03:10]
A
Oh my God.
- [03:11]
B
That couldn't be removed. Just as, you know, they couldn't get. Get them in, get them out. I'm making all these gestures.
- [03:19]
A
So. Yeah, so sometimes I can be like a tech skepticism and I self identify as a Luddite in the sense that I think that technology should come with an awareness of how it impacts the human society that it's being introduced into. But you can take modern medicine, you can pry that from my cold, dead hands because it's the greatest thing in the world. They use little tiny cameras and lasers to do this now. And I'm under anesthesia and then when I come out, they have all of these wonderful drugs that they can give me and take care of me. So modern medicine is an incredible, wonderful, magical thing that I love and never want to let go of.
- [04:01]
B
We won't abolish modern medicine. Or maybe we will. Maybe we will.
- [04:05]
A
No, I know. And that's the thing is like, maybe we will. Maybe we are. And we are watching. You know, we're both historians and not to get off on a tangent here, but we're both historians who know how much suffering existed in the past and how much many of our modern advancements have alleviated that suffering in a lot of like, early childhood death. And now it seems like we're just sort of turning our backs on a lot of that stuff in really depressing ways. But. But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about other things.
- [04:32]
B
It's true. Although it's so terrible to watch someone in a primary source, a letter or die or an account to watch them die from something that was so avoidable and maybe even existed at the time, some sort of remedy. I'm thinking about Washington the first winter. He makes sure all the troops are inoculated. He makes sure Martha is. Who's very against it. He convinces them. And that's probably why we made it through that first winter.
- [05:04]
A
Right. And you know, and another thing, I don't know, Alexis, if you were aware of this, but women used to die a lot in childbirth.
- [05:11]
B
No way.
- [05:12]
A
Used to. Yeah.
- [05:12]
B
I mean, and still now.
- [05:15]
A
Right. Again, I know, like, fingers crossed, but. Oh, my God. But we're here to. We can talk about all of that stuff. Other times, we are here to talk about more fun stuff as we try to. As we're getting this show off the ground. And Alexis suggested that we talk about the way that we, you know, as Alexis and I, when we're out there just fooling around and having fun on the Internet, what kind of little rabbit holes do we fall down? What rabbit holes do we fall into? How do we goof around with history on the Internet?
- [05:46]
B
Like, you had no idea what I was talking about.
- [05:49]
A
Well, I didn't know. I know what a rabbit hole is. I just didn't know exactly, because I was thinking of it like, how do I goo with history? Because you had something that was on your mind that you wanted to talk about, and I was like, oh, what do I have that I do out there? Which I did come up with something, because I do do this, and I realized what sort of my version of this is. But I want to start with your version of this, which is incredibly nerdy in a lovely way, which is, where do you go to fall down historical rabbit holes?
- [06:20]
B
I think I want to talk about this to figure out if I was the only one. Surely there are others. Sure.
- [06:28]
A
No, not me.
- [06:29]
B
Founders Online is the National Archives. It's like an amazing collab between the University of Virginia National Archives, other entities in which documentary editors. So the people who process the primary sources at the University of Virginia and at Mount Vernon and the National Archives, they have digitized almost everything because they don't really want you to request those things as researchers. They're too delicate, and they would rather you just access it from home, which is amazing when, let's say, you live in New York and you're researching things that are primarily in Virginia or all over, sort of, but mostly in Virginia.
- [07:08]
A
Or, for example, what if you're living in Paris and you need to access all of these things?
- [07:13]
B
Yes. Well, not. Not all of us are. Right.
- [07:16]
A
Right. I know you're not. Not everybody is as fancy as me.
- [07:19]
B
No, no.
- [07:20]
A
I was. I was living on Founders Online to write the Lafayette book.
- [07:23]
B
Some of us were in a small, cramped apartment in Brooklyn.
- [07:27]
A
Well, it was a small, cramped apartment. It was just in Paris.
- [07:29]
B
It was just in Paris.
- [07:30]
A
It was just in.
- [07:31]
B
So. So the thing is, I don't. I, you know, use Wikipedia. I'm a human, but I prefer not to, because I just. I think there are better sources. I like to start sort of with the trusted sources and then work my way out. But if I want to just mess around on the Internet, I go straight for Founders Online, because it's like this cornucopia of historical tidbits. So you understand that it's amazing because it's not only digitized records. That means that they've actually typed out the primary sources, so you don't have to strain to read someone's bad handwriting. Although Washington actually had really good handwriting. Kennedy, terrible. Washington, good. I miss those days. They also sometimes will annotate it, and so they'll tell you, oh, this relates to this other letter. This is. This. I mean, they do a lot of heavy lifting. They're really earthbound angels. But you learn. So it all started, you know, when I was writing my book on Washington. You never forget your first. And I was trying to, you know, you try to make people more than one dimensional. And I. I realized that Martha was only kind of a reflection in most. Most books of Washington. And so I thought, you know, who is she? Outside of being a wife and a mother and then a grandmother and an enslaver? She liked dogs. But the word that they used for this, I had never seen used that way. And I realized that this word is like this lexical chameleon. Thank you to the founders. And that word is slut.
- [09:07]
A
Slut.
- [09:08]
B
What do you think of when I say slut?
- [09:11]
A
Well, I think of a very specific thing when I think of the word slut. And I think it's the same thing that everybody else is out there thinking.
- [09:18]
B
Oh, we're going to change that.
- [09:19]
A
Do not shame. We do not shame that around these parts at all. But we all know what the word slap means in modern English.
- [09:26]
B
But it has changed over time. And so I'll start with the letter where this journey began, which is a 1798 letter from Frederick Kitt, who was a steward in the president's house when they lived in Philadelphia. And he wrote to him about Hercules, another enslaved person who had escaped this. This man also successfully, but was never found. So not caught and never found. We don't know what became of him. At the end of the letter, there's, like, a postscript, and Kit writes, my wife joins me in respect to you, Mrs. Washington, Ms. Nelly, the granddaughter who they were raising and desires to inform your lady that our little slut died in the straw.
- [10:12]
A
And so. So now I'm just back. I'm like. I'm, like in junior high school, just, like, tittering about this.
- [10:18]
B
I mean, that's what I. I was doing. I was reading this, and I thought, is that a. Is that a typo? No, it isn't. Because they had Hyperlinked it, of course, because they are again, earthbound angels. They said that. You know, this is one of a number of hints in George Washington's correspondence that Mrs. Washington was particularly fond of dogs. Score. That was a really nice moment for me to put in the book. And then I ended up expanding on those themes of their relationships with animals because they did indeed live on a farm. So that happened for research purposes. And then at some point later on, I wondered if there were other founders who had used the word slut in fun and unexpected ways.
- [10:58]
A
And you can just type this word in and have it pop up all the iterations of the word slut throughout all of our founding fathers papers.
- [11:08]
B
Yes. And Abigail Adams is always included because she spills the tea and so she's amazing. But. So if you type in slut, you get seven results and you can, you know, organize them however you want. I, I do by date. You know, I know these moments in their lives and what's going on. I realized, oh my gosh, like the first One is in 1771. And so that's, you know, quite a bit before the rest. They're usually. Then they start in like the early 80s. The first one you see, it just says, Celia's an artful little slut. Alexander Hamilton to the Royal Danish American Gazette. So it's not a letter. I mean, it was a letter because he wrote a letter to them. But this is Alexander Hamilton submitting a poem.
- [11:58]
A
Yeah.
- [12:00]
B
Oh, so good. Okay. So he writes in this letter, I am a youth about 17, and consequently such an attempt at this must be presumptuous. And then he goes on and he says, if upon perusal you think the following piece worthy of a place in your paper, by inserting it you'll much oblige your obedient servant. They all seemed to write terrible poetry when they were younger.
- [12:24]
A
Yeah, I mean, I didn't know until right now. I mean, I've read biographies with Hamilton. I don't remember any overt discussion of the fact that he was like a would be poet.
- [12:34]
B
I think they did publish it. And the line is, Celia's an artful little slut. Be fine, she'll kiss, et cetera. So that is the traditional sense of it. I think that's what he's implying. And then the next one, which is pretty fun, was from Thomas Jefferson. And this one is like, it's bumpy. It's like a cobblestone street in Boston. This is going to be a little bit rough. So it's from Jeff.
- [13:01]
A
Is this More poetry or is this a letter?
- [13:03]
B
No. So it's a letter. So let's remember that Thomas Jefferson lost his wife when he was in his 30s and he said he was never going to remarry. As we know. He had a, he had, you know, a decades long sexual exploitation of Sally Hemings, a woman who he enslaved and who was related to his wife. So her name was Martha. Everyone was named Martha. Everyone was named Martha and mostly called Patsy. It got so confusing in all of these families. So this is not his wife Martha, this is his daughter. And this is December 1783. So he's just lost his wife and he's sending his daughters, he has several, he's sending them all letters, all the time about what to do. And that in another letter, which is. Doesn't have slut in it, so we're not going to pay attention to it. But in another letter he has like a schedule. It's what he believes she should be doing outside of her studies. And it's, you know, practice an instrument, do this, do that. You know, he was, they were all sort of Renaissance men and he said, if you do that, I'll love you, Jefferson. Dr. Becky would not approve.
- [14:15]
A
Oh, come on, man, can't be like that.
- [14:17]
B
But let's get back to sluts. Let's get back to the time he called Patsy a slut. So Patsy's in her teens and he writes a lady. And by the way, again at home, if you want to look this up and follow along, you can, this is available Founders Online. Type in sluts. You're going to get there real quick. 1783. So a lady who has been seen as a sloven or a slut in the morning will never efface the impression she has made with all the dress and pageantry she can afterwards involve herself in. So he writes that, oh, I'm sorry, she's 11, she's not a teen. He writes about. He really wants her to understand, right? He's not just going to tell her what to do, he wants to show her why he said it's so disgusting to our sex as a want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours. I hope, therefore, the moment you rise from bed, your first work will be to dress yourself in such a style s t I L e that you may be seen by any gentleman without his being able to discover a pin amiss or any circumstances of neatness wanting. So he's not saying that she's coming in and she's like reeking. Not a pin can Be amiss.
- [15:34]
A
Right. And there's nothing. You know, again, this is not slut, as in our definition of the term. But he is saying, don't be a. Like, don't be a gross dog. Don't be a slovenly dog about all of this stuff, because then no man will. Will like you.
- [15:51]
B
No, they'll be repulsed.
- [15:53]
A
Oh, excuse me. Yes.
- [15:54]
B
Repulsed. Disgusting is the word that he uses.
- [15:58]
A
Yes.
- [15:58]
B
Yeah. So not. You know, he was less than a year into grieving for his wife. We can. We can cut him a little bit of slack.
- [16:08]
A
Ah, do we have to cut Jefferson? I don't think we have to cut Jefferson slack.
- [16:12]
B
I think. Well, no, not on. Not in the. Not in the general. The thing about biography, obviously we're not. We. We are all talking about the same thing here. We're all thinking the same thing. We're all. We're getting. We're going to get there. Annette Gordon Reed, who wrote the Hemmings of Monticello. So she wrote this story. She has a pretty sunny view of him and a very fair one. And so I remember years ago when I found this letter, of course, I tweeted it, and she was like, that was a rough time for him. And I think that is the feeling of biographers, that you see these people on their best days and their worst days, and you have this real obligation to see them as a whole person. It doesn't mean that you like them. That's a whole different story. I once, actually, Sarah Polk's biographer once said, like, I really hate spending this much time with her. She had very few redeeming qualities. But I think with Jefferson, you know, you have to sort of lean into these moments. But he is trying in a really unsubtle way.
- [17:13]
A
He's being helpful.
- [17:14]
B
He's being helpful. They grew up to be pretty fun in their letters, too. There was one letter where they get basically grills at a ball in Richmond, and they're really saucy about everyone. Which brings us to another example, actually, from Jefferson I forgot about, which is. Then this led me, because they cited this. They being these documentary editors, they cited that it had also been used in reference to Jefferson in the Richmond Recorder, which always mentioned Sally Hemings. And this is interesting because we say, you know, Annette Gordon Reed did introduce this reality, which is that the sexual exploitation started in Paris and then it ended when he died. But they did know about this at the time, and they. In one column, they described her as a slut, as common as pavement.
- [18:13]
A
Oh, boy.
- [18:14]
B
Yeah.
- [18:15]
A
But to your point, and this is a point that I think you've made, that I've made over the years, which is that when we think about a lot of stuff, like when people critique modern historians and their focus on race or gender or family, and I can't believe you're, like, you're changing the past. A lot of what is going on is that this is stuff that they did know about in the past. This is stuff that was fully talked about in the past. And then it got buried under 150 years of historiography going in a different direction. And now it's being resurrected. But all we're doing, and all people are doing, really, and all Annette Gordon Reed was doing is resurfacing stuff that people in Jefferson's own lifetime and in his own orbit knew all about and was a full. It was fully a part of his and their lived experiences. And then we just sort of, as a society have forgotten about it. So it's not rewriting history so much as continuing to fully illuminate the past as people in the past understood it themselves.
- [19:12]
B
And it takes a few tries. There was another biographer who had written much earlier on this, Fawn Brodie. Amazing name. She was a big biographer, but she. In this biography, she made some of the points. You know, Annette Fawn Moore, she made some of the points. But what was to the biography's detriment is that she went on this whole, like, psychological journey and really stepped out of the bounds of what's appropriate for a historian. And so that it was so distracting. It's sort of like this also happened with Reckless Youth, which Nigel Hamilton wrote. It's about Kennedy and the scandals that ensued after. Based on, like, a few. Just small, small things in the book. Completely obscured all his research. It was heartbreaking. But again, we digress. We digress. Okay. I have a third. Because you have to do three.
- [20:10]
A
We have to do three. And if we don't do three, then we're both gonna just, like, be like, where's the third?
- [20:14]
B
It doesn't feel right.
- [20:15]
A
Or Complete rule of threes.
- [20:17]
B
So we have Abigail Adams. Her person and countenance resemble an old maiden in your neighborhood. Nellie Penniman accepts that one is neat, the other is the Queen of Sluts. And her tongue runs like unity badlams. Whoa.
- [20:35]
A
Whoa. Her tongue runs like unity badlams. Like, that's. That's a heavy. That's.
- [20:41]
B
Yeah. I hope the badlams never saw that.
- [20:44]
A
Right.
- [20:45]
B
Such a. Abigail Adams could really. I mean, she was cutting. That's why she's so fun. It's such a gift to us that they were separated for so much of their marriage.
- [20:54]
A
Yeah. There's great Abigail Adams quotes in the Lafayette biography that were like, you know, you come across these and just be like, you know, bless you, Abigail Adams, for saying something that is so great and also just entertaining in its own way. Like, the quote itself is lively and entertaining, not just being, like, proof of something or. Or allowing me to establish some historical fact.
- [21:18]
B
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I. One of my favorite quotes from her that I use all the time, and this is how she described her children. Not all of my geese are swans.
- [21:30]
A
Well, that. And that's definitely true in her case.
- [21:33]
B
It is. That's how I talk about the Kennedys. When someone asked me about RFK Jr. I'm like, well, as another prominent Boston family would say, not all of my Geysers ones. So. Okay. Second example last is in a letter to her daughter Abigail, because they were an Abigail family. Saucy Susan says, sighs and groans as much as if she was giving a girl for the slut. Got her letters to me and read them. You know, she is, too, knowing in some things for her years. So much going on, really judgy.
- [22:06]
A
Yeah.
- [22:07]
B
Not coming from a place of acceptance.
- [22:12]
A
So. So I have to, like, we go all the way back here and, you know, slut is a. Is a dog. They're still using it in these. Like, you know, it comes with some kind of negative connotation. It feels like not just a dog, but like a certain type of dog. And now. Now it means something else. Do you have any insight as to who might have changed it from one to the other?
- [22:36]
B
We see this all the time. Like, in the parlance of our time, there are always sayings that are somewhat different than what they've been in the past, and words are, you know, reimagined in different ways. But I think it was always. I went on this journey after this, of course, and then I looked up the origins of the word, and one of the earliest in that we know of is Chaucer. So we have like 13, late 13 80s or something. From there, it goes on to mean those, like, sort of hard bits of dough in bread. And those are called. Those are called sluts. Pennies. You can't. I know this from experience. You can't casually work that into a conversation.
- [23:13]
A
You have to. You have to start a whole podcast. So, yes, you can get it out there.
- [23:18]
B
Yes, exactly. So I don't know. I think that slut is still on its word journey, but this we live in the time. We live in probably the first era where there has been an attempt to make it positive. The kit letter where I started on this journey, that did seem positive. You know, it was said with tenderness. They. The slut died in the straw. They feel bad. That means it was like in the barn.
- [23:42]
A
Yeah, bummer. Very sad, you know.
- [23:45]
B
Okay, okay, so it's still on its journey. But you. So at first when I mentioned this, you're like, that sounds like fun. I don't do anything like that. You're weird. I just do Wikipedia stuff. But then later you had an epiphany. You do do this.
- [24:04]
A
Well, I mean, my, my version of this is. I'm. I'm thinking, like many people who are out there listening to this is that I, I do like Wikipedia. I've. I've always enjoyed Wikipedia. I actually think that, you know, and we'll talk about sort of what, what Wikipedia means and where it sits in like the media landscape right now.
- [24:24]
B
And I'm not a Wikipedia hater. It's just if I'm going, I just want to like really mess around but also learn something. I just find it's more fun to. For me to go to a primary source.
- [24:37]
A
Yeah. And for me, it's. It usually starts with I want to look up some. I want to look up some piece of information. And at this point, you know, Wikipedia is as good and as solid a place just. Just to get really basic stuff. And then I am compulsive link clicker inside of Wikipedia. And I will go on these Wikipedia rabbit holes from here to there and from hither and yawn and winding up in completely different places than when I started. And I did actually just have one the other day that led me back directly to you. Which is why this is like the epiphany. Because I realized that this happened. And it started because I was futzing around on. On Instagram, which I'm now on Instagram. You can find me at Mike Duncan history. Because I think that's where it was. And I was watching. It was some Michael Caine reel. Right. And Michael Caine was talking about something. Everybody loves Michael Caine. But you know, with a lot of these guys, you got to be like, is Michael Caine right?
- [25:33]
B
Is it okay to like him?
- [25:34]
A
Is Michael Caine okay? So what I do is I open up Michael Caine's Wikipedia page and I look it up and I scroll down and I find that. Ah, yes. Cain has often been outspoken about his political views, referring to himself as a left wing Tory, influenced by both his working class background and his Korean War service. And so then I'm like, left wing Tory. Like, what is that? That is a contradiction in terms.
- [25:59]
B
Like, I didn't know most of the things you just said about him.
- [26:03]
A
Right. I sure didn't either. Like, we do know that. I, we do know things about Michael Caine's politics now. But left wing Tory? What the, what the hell is a left wing Tory? Since this is such a contradiction. And I click on that and it takes me to the Wikipedia page for One Nation Conservatism, which is a 19th century British Conservative political ideology that is trying to sort of head off the rising tide of socialism and communism, which is saying. Yeah, which is saying that the elites can't just run society for their own interests anymore. If you want to maintain sort of the hierarchical structure that we have, there does need to be some churn of like, wealth from the elite down to the poor. And so this is real noblesse oblige stuff, kind of working in that tradition and then also kind of has a role to play in the foundation of what we would think of as welfare capitalism, which, if you want to maintain the system that is in place, you can't just completely impoverish the people at the bottom. So where does One Nation conservatism come from? I'm now interested in this, and it mentions that Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was at the forefront of this. And I know some stuff about 19th century British politics just from. Just from being in the world of history, but I'm reading, okay, and One Nation Conservatism was conceived by the Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who outlines his political philosophy in two of his novels, Coningsby and Sybil, written in 1844 and 1845. And that's something I absolutely did not know about Benjamin Disraeli. Forgive me, all of you Disraeli heads out there who knew all about his career as a literary figure.
- [27:31]
B
I knew about Sybil because it was very. It was an effective means of communicating because they're novels in which he really does articulate things in a really exciting manner for the masses.
- [27:43]
A
And this is just a layer beneath Disraeli. Like, clearly I haven't studied him that much, but this is an interesting thing to me. He's disseminating his political ideology through novels. And so I start clicking through these novels and he's written a ton of them. And I get onto one that was an unfinished one that is called the Infernal Marriage.
- [28:01]
B
Very good title, Very good title.
- [28:03]
A
And this isn't all. This actually sounds like something I want to read. It's set in the Greek underworld, where the gods are modeled after famous cultural and political figures from his own day, like Lord Byron, like Talleyrand, like Charles X of France. And these are all people who show up in the Revolutions podcast. There's a really good chance that someday I will write biographies of Talleyrand and maybe even Charles X to complete a little trilogy of French biographies that I want to write. And this book is meant to end in Elysium, right? Which is also a nice little synchronicity, because in my Martian Revolution series, one of the cities is called Elysium. And I'm looking at the summary of what's going on in Elysium, and it's where everyone can be happy because the work is being done by gnomes and sylphs. And I know what gnomes are, and I know what other fantasy magical creatures. But I've never heard of a sylph. So of course I have to click on sylph and find out what sylph means. And remember here I was just curious about Michael Caine's politics. That's why I'm now clicking the link for sylph. And by the way, Michael Caine voted for Brexit in case he needed to know. But it turns out that a sylph is an air spirit stemming from the 16th century Works of Paracelsus, who conceived of sylphs as being one of the four basic elemental spirits, the others being gnomes who represented the earth, salamanders who represented fire, and undines, undines who represent water. I'm certainly mispronouncing that, but now I'm like, okay, the 16th.
- [29:30]
B
Who, who.
- [29:31]
A
Who the hell was Parcelist? I don't know who Parcellus is, so I click Parcelis. And Parcelis is a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian and philosopher of the German Renaissance who was a pioneer of several aspects of the medical revolution that we were talking about earlier. So thank you Parselys, for. For helping to invent modern medicine and is credited even in the Journal of Toxicological Sciences as the father of toxicology. And as I'm. I'm reading all of this, Parcelist is often credited with reintroducing opium into Western Europe, which, again, thank you for doing all of this.
- [30:05]
B
I also want to know so much about that. Like, I want to know about. How do you. How do you re. Inject. How do you casually reintroduce opium to. To Western Europe?
- [30:17]
A
Right? Where did it go? How did you Find it.
- [30:19]
B
Yeah. And like, you're also messing with the form in which you deliver it. Like, this man is. What is that story? Did you. How did you resist that? How are you just, like, gliding through that story?
- [30:31]
A
Well, of course, because I got to. I'm. I'm right on top of laudanum, right? Which is what he's going to use this opium for. And he's extolling the benefits of opium through a pill he calls laudanum, which has been asserted to be an opium.
- [30:43]
B
Tincture, very popular with women. They were prescribed it by doctors for literally anything.
- [30:50]
A
Right. And that's where we're about to be. Because I'm like, laudanum, right? Like, I remember laudanum, but I've forgotten. So now I'm kind of interested about the history of laudanum and where it comes from. So I click on laudanum and I'm kind of skimming through the laudanum page, and there is one link in the middle of a paragraph that is purple because it means that I have already clicked on that link at some point earlier in the recent past. And what is the link to? It is a link to Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary. Because Mary Todd Lincoln in the paragraph here is being asserted as being either at least prescribed laudanum and also as a laudanum addict. And then this. Wait, wait, wait.
- [31:29]
B
We have to. We have to. We have to take a moment here. I'm sorry, we have to have the aside. Did you think I wasn't going to let. I need to. We need to intervene in the narrative here.
- [31:40]
A
I know this is the narrative because this brought me. This is. When I hit this, I'm like, well, shit, now I'm right in Alexis wheelhouse. I can't wait to tell her about this.
- [31:48]
B
I've fixed it a few times. I don't really know about how to do that, you know, so Todd was her maiden name, and after she got married, she never used it again. No one did. She only signed her name Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. Mary Lincoln. Mrs. Mary Lincoln. Never Todd. It was because there were complications with her family. It was not always the easiest relationship, and particularly they were, you know, enslavers. And that was sort of difficult when you were married to the great emancipator, you know, Civil War, that whole business. And William Herndon, who was Lincoln's law partner before even his really young, great congressional career, I love his speech on the floor about the Mexican American War. He was really against it. And anyway, so he. William Herndon liked Mary when they were young and she wasn't into it. And he basically never forgave her and blamed her for anything he didn't like to do with Lincoln, which was a lot, because they were partners. And after Lincoln dies, he just never, like, gives up this grudge. And after Lincoln dies, William Herndon becomes, like, I was Lincoln's law partner. This is my new identity, the entirety of it. And he goes on speaking tours, and he just cannot help needling her all the time by saying, Mary Todd Lincoln is. The thing that drives me crazy is he won. He won. And it's everywhere. And I'm constantly writing to, like, huge establishments, trying to figure out who I know there to get them to correct it. And I've been successful, actually.
- [33:24]
A
And this is a part of a legacy of Mary Lincoln, not Mary Todd Lincoln. Even though we were all taught to say Mary Todd Lincoln about Mary Lincoln being sort of slandered and abused in her own lifetime.
- [33:39]
B
Yeah. Her son put her in an asylum because he wanted to run for office, and he thought she was embarrassing, and she had to spend the entire year trying to get out and ruin him in the process. He deserved it.
- [33:52]
A
And then. So it's asserting here Mary Todd Lincoln, laudanum addict, which I don't.
- [33:56]
B
Is also unfair. I mean, she, you know, she used it, but I don't think that it defined her. It's never been a huge part of her story. It's more about her excessive shopping habits. She was. No, you know, I don't know, a perfect person. She wasn't a perfect person, but she also had lost a bunch of kids, and she had PTSD from sitting next to her husband. It's anachronistic to say that, but it's.
- [34:23]
A
Obvious from all of the things that happened to her.
- [34:26]
B
Yes.
- [34:27]
A
And so that's like. And again, that wraps up the rabbit hole, because I was like, okay, well, this is perfect, but also, like, it's also a perfect place to kind of, you know, talk about the limits of what Wikipedia is able to do. And, like, the limits of what I like about Wikipedia, which is I like Wikipedia for introducing me to ideas, to concepts, to. To people or things that I didn't have any idea about. But it can never be considered the end of any journey. Right. Wikipedia is the beginning of things. It's never the end of things. But I still think that, like, as a project and as a resource, it's a really great place to start, sort of any. Anything that you're interested in. Because I go into this wondering, basically, did Michael Caine vote for Brexit, which he did. And then I come out of this having learned about the existence of a thing called left wing Toryism. The Benjamin Disraeli had a robust literary career. We've got a Swiss physician and alchemist that I've never heard of, talking about the reintroduction of opium and laudanum. And then we get to Mary Todd Lincoln and like, so now my mind, now my mind is open to many, many different things. And then I land on a little thing that I'm like, yep. And that bit isn't right. You know, that bit and that bit, even in that Wikipedia article does not have a good citation for it. It's just sort of, kind of, it's just asserted inside the article. And so it's, it's always, always, always we have to consider Wikipedia to be the beginning of any voyage of discovery. It is not the destination of any voyage of discovery. But at this point, like, you know, it's certainly more reliable than chat GPT, I can tell you that.
- [36:07]
B
Well, yes, of course you start there, but that's a pretty wild and worthwhile ride, I would say.
- [36:15]
A
I think so. And it is, and it is always something that I will enjoy doing. I will never then completely base all of my, you know, everything that I say out there in the world on it. But it's, it's a great place to go. And so that is, that's how we goof around online. I cruise around wondering about famous British actors who and their politics. And you type sluts online like a 6th grader looking up in the dictionary.
- [36:46]
B
Oh, I totally. When I've guest lectured at an elementary school, I've completely used that example and it has killed.
- [36:54]
A
Yeah, of course. And it's fun.
- [36:56]
B
It gets them. It's the same thing. It's what you're saying about Wikipedia. It gets them in the door. I don't care. I just want them to know that it can be fun. It's like anything else in life. It's up to you to make it fun.
- [37:08]
A
Right. And Founders Online is an awesome resource that we have both used in writing our respective books and highly encourage everybody to go to it. And as you've said several times, yes, those people are earthbound angels who are doing the Lord's work over there and we love them for it.
- [37:25]
B
I want to know what listeners like to do online, so if you have something you think we might enjoy.
- [37:32]
A
Oh, yeah, hit us up.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah.
- [37:33]
A
Where are we these days? I guess Twitter.
- [37:36]
B
Well, yeah, I guess Bluesky. Lexus company.
- [37:41]
A
Yeah, you're usually Alexis company Lexus company I'm usually Duncan. Or at least searchable in that way.
- [37:49]
B
Yes. Well, welcome back.
- [37:53]
A
Thank you very much for having me back.
- [37:56]
B
I allowed you back in to your.
- [37:58]
A
Zoom, even even though I completely crashed out, like, on episode two, I was like, I can't do it. But I think, yeah, I think it's time to say that this was the Duncan and Company show. I'm Mike Duncan.
- [38:12]
B
I'm Alexis Ko. And this was our show.