← True Weird Stuff
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Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a very powerful king. His palace was the most glorious there had ever been. This was a king who loved beautiful things, painting, sculpture and music and ballet. The king loved his people too, and under his reign, theirs was the most powerful nation of all. He was quite good at being a king and ruled longer than any other monarch in the history of the whole world. But even a king chosen by God is still just a human being beset by all the troubles and mischief a human body can get up to. Yet his heart was glad because his people called him the Sun King and not the other nickname he'd so richly earned, the Enema King.
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True weird stuff,
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foreign. Let's cut to the chase. The ancient Egyptians invented the enema. Of course they did. You're not even a little bit surprised to hear it. The inspiration for the enema came, according to legend, from the ibis. The ibis is a long legged wading bird with a distinctive long curving bill. The ancient Egyptians associated the ibis with their God, Thoth. Thoth was the God of magic and justice and the judgment of the dead. Thoth also served as the divine mediator among the band of prickly and argumentative gods worshiped by the Egyptians. You do have to pity the poor ibis, though. Just being their very best bird selves was enough to get them murdered and mummified and packed into tombs. The mummified ibis was sent to the afterlife as a reminder to Thoth and crew that the favor of their godly attention was requested. We can thank Roman historian Pliny the Elder for crediting ancient Egypt with the discovery of the enema.
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Pliny wrote, the Egyptians learned the art from the long beaked ibis, who washes the inside of its body by introducing water with its beak into the channel by which the residue of our food should leave.
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The enema really caught on in a big way. The ancients understood that there was a connection between human human waste and disease. They just didn't connect the dots the way modern humans have. We're really careful to keep human waste far from our drinking water and our food. Understanding the potential for contamination with harmful bacteria, the ancients took a broader and simpler approach. Ew. It's just gross. Whether it's inside the body or out, they even had a word for it. The word four letters, no vowels, W, H, D, W. No idea how that's pronounced. Unfortunately, it's ancient. Let's go with W. Hood Wood was believed to be the element in fecal matter that caused Putrefaction and putrefaction led to disease and decay. The only way to keep the body healthy and vibrant was to purge the wahud on the regular. Writing in the fifth century BCE Herodotus detailed how the Egyptians performed ritual enemies on themselves three times per month. Naturally, the pharaohs and the ruling classes made sure that their ritual enemy experience was superior. Each pharaoh was granted a special servant devoted to that one special task. The royal enema. Ancient Egyptian writings dating back to roughly 1600 B.C. bCE very helpfully tell us that the title bestowed upon the servant responsible for these duties was the shepherd or guardian of the anus, the Ebers pepperis, which, let me tell you, is 68ft long and as complete an encyclopedia of ancient Egyptian medicine as we have, offers up more than 800 different prescriptions for everything from dermatology to dentistry to ophthalmology and gynecology. That's how we know that the shepherd of the anus would add various herbs and a bit of honey to about a pint of diluted salt water, milk, wine or beer. The enema would be administered via a thin golden tube or canula. Now, folks of lesser means might instead have to use a hollow animal bone. But the shepherd of the anus had the finest tools and the highest honor of helping to cleanse the pharaoh's bowels. Such a privilege, the fact that these servants were sometimes put to death when their pharaoh died so that they could continue serving him for all eternity was just part of the job. This is pretty much the only awful thing corporate America hasn't forced on us. But we can't rule it out as a strong possibility for the future.
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C
Great news Dave. You've been tapped to join the CEO's leadership support initiative. We're calling it Project Afterlife. We see it as a real win win, A strategy for leveling up while thinking outside the box. You've been on our radar as a team player, willing to go above and beyond when it comes to creating meaningful synergies. We work hard and play harder. Now hold still while Kimberly from HR strangles you to death and shoves you into the boss's tomb. We're family here.
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Enemas were enthusiastically practiced by the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans. The pre Columbian peoples of South America had it figured out. The indigenous peoples of North America knew the secret. The people of the Mongol Empire looked to be the very first to use the enema not as a way of purging waste, but of delivering nutrients to the body. Think of it like Primitive tube feeding. The Mongols would take a cow's horn attached to the wide end of an animal bladder, which they filled up with some sort of broth. The narrow end of the cow's horn was then inserted into the rectum of the person receiving the feeding. The ancient Greeks, who were incredibly fastidious about the health and the cleanliness of the body, they used enemas to treat wounds, to manage constipation, of course, and as a delivery system for medication. They believed that the physical and emotional health of the human body was governed by what they called the four humors. Blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. And the four humors were connected to the four elemental qualities of life. Wet, dry, hot, and cold. The enema correctly administered was a means of correcting the imbalance of the body's humors that led to illness. The father of Greek medicine, Hippocrates, found the enema to be useful for nearly every kind of ailment unless the patient was in a profoundly weakened state. And in that situation, Hippocrates was like, no, no enema, use a suppository instead. The ancient Romans ran with this big time. Their physicians, side note, were not required to have any special education or training. I mean, you could literally just call yourself a doctor and start practicing. This is another thing corporate America would love to bring back because then they could quit providing health insurance and just let it have a look at whatever's ailing you.
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Back to work, Savannah. Brian in engineering says you're probably fine.
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Where were we? Oh, that's right, Ancient Rome. So the Romans learned almost all they knew of medicine from the Greeks and the Egyptians. So naturally they embraced the use of animus to treat everything from constipation to dysentery. And the Romans crafted all kinds of fascinating medical tools, many of which outlasted their empire and can be found today in museums. You may not know this, but the speculum your gynecologist uses now was invented by the ancient Romans. And the design has changed very little over the centuries. Oh, how shocking. I would never have guessed that that large, cold, metal, pinchy thing that you're cranking down there and my delicate lady parts is actually a 2000 year old relic designed by a dude in Togo with no formal training in anatomy. Color me astounded. When it came to the anima, though, the Romans created a more comfortable device. Picture a syringe like object crafted from solid bronze. The enigmatic Roman writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus, author of the very first medical textbook ever printed. Offered this detailed description of the enema as it was practiced in ancient Rome.
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The patient should have his diet regulated on the previous day so as to be properly prepared for the enema. For medicine is generally offensive to the stomach, and if the body be violently purged too often, it debilitates the patient. Therefore, in sickness, medicine ought not never be administered with that view, unless the disease be without fever. But generally the bowels were preferably open with injections. This should neither be too often repeated, nor entirely omitted, but used once or at most twice if there be heaviness of the head or dimness of the eyes.
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Celsus goes on to offer specific recipes, pure water and simple cake cases, concoctions of oil, barley, fennel, honey and saltpeter for more challenging diagnoses. The idea of the body's four humor sailed right on into the medieval period. Doctors in the Dark Ages were big fans of bloodletting. Crazy as it sounds to us, cutting a sick person and letting their blood flow into a bowl was believed to rid the body of dangerous impurities. Since blood was one of the four humors, it only made sense that disease could be caused by bad blood. Early bloodletting techniques involved slicing into an artery, typically at the knee or the elbow, and letting the blood flow until the patients passed out. You can see why our ancestors were so excited about an innovation like leeches when you consider that the average human body contains about 160 fluid ounces of blood. And a bloodletting till you faint equates to 20 ounces. That adds up to a loss of just over 12% of your total blood volume. Not enough to kill you. You need 30% or more to be at risk of dying. But that's a lot of blood flowing into that bowl. And if you were a monk in the Dark Ages, you were most likely bled four times or more more a year. And when you weren't bleeding, you were purging with the help of ye old medieval enema. And sometimes the doctors prescribed both. Our ancestors, bless their hearts, were made of tough stuff. Medieval enemas were administered with the help of a greased up tube attached to the bladder of a pig. Lukewarm saltwater was mostly most common, but more extreme cases called for more extreme remedies like vinegar, if you can imagine that, and the diluted bile of a dead boar. If you're wondering why anyone in their right mind would consent to a vinegar enema, well, you need to know how hemorrhoids were treated in the Dark Ages so that you can Appreciate a peasant's fervent desire to be anything but constipated. People of faith, seeking a cure, prayed to Saint Fiacher, the patron saint of hemorrhoids. How does a saint get that gig? Well, Fiakar was toiling away in his garden one day, and feeling most uncomfortable in his bottom, he took a rest from his labors and he sat upon a large sun warmed stone. And when he rose again, the he realized that his hemorrhoids were gone. He glanced down at the stone and sure enough, the imprint of his hemorrhoids was there. It was a miracle. So some medieval physicians advised their patient to go sit on St. Fiakor's stone and pray to be cured. You think I'm making this up, but trust me, it is so real that the stone is still there to this day, and. And people with the roids still go sit on it. That was the medieval faith cure, which was infinitely preferable to what Hippocrates suggested doctors do. Just snag the hemorrhoid with their fingernails and yank it off using force. Excuse me, can you please tell me how to find St. Fiacre stone? And for the most extreme situations, there was always the rectal cautery iron. Now, if you thought the doctor's fingernails were rough, try having a red hot iron inserted into your booty. You see why people back then were like an enema? Yes, please. I'll take two. What's that? A hot vinegar enema. I'm in. Definitely. And then came the golden age of the enema. In 17th century France, enemas were widely enjoyed by many. Thanks to the invention of the home enema apparatus. The process could be managed in the privacy of one's home. No need to consult a physician. French society preferred the word clyster, derived from the Greek word clusian. And that cannot possibly be the right way to pronounce it. And I apologize. And that word means to wash out. You can be very sure that the French had no time for primitive clothes. Sliced her tools like hollow animal bones or pig bladders. No way. The French aesthetic demanded something more stylish, more sophisticated and more efficient. They wanted tools that were both effective and elegant and durable. You can buy antique French enema kits on ebay for under 300 bucks. You know, if you need a gift for that, one person is just impossible to shop for. The French embraced the clyster syringe. There was a version with a bent nozzle designed for self administration. And for ladies who preferred to have their cloisters done for them. There was another innovation created to protect their modesty. Because it was just unthinkable to expose one's buttocks to any old random male apothecary or doctor, they came up with a sort of ship shield contraption that concealed everything except the anus. It does seem like a surprising amount of energy to devote to something like the enema. But it made perfect sense in 17th century France, where clysters were so much the rage that some people had three or more a day. What? Yup, three or more enemies. Cinemas per day. This was a craze that swept Paris that appealed to the aristocracy and the highest echelons of society. The poor, for whom the French Revolution was still a ways off, were too busy trying not to starve or freeze to death. The glitterati of 17th century France had the luxury of worrying about their complexions, something a flea addled peasant couldn't even begin to think about. A glowing complexion didn't exactly register on the radar for people busy scrounging a moldy crust of bread to feed their children. But how in the world did these people get the notion to have three or four enemas a day? Well, you know how we have social media influencers banging on about one fad or another, how we have celebrities, we, we idolize and emulate. The French had their king, King Louis xiv, AKA the Sun King. The Sun King was so renowned for his enthusiastic commitment to his cloisters that a Dutch artist named Romain de Hoja created an engraving that showed the king receiving an enema while seated atop a globe of the world, thus soiling with his bodily waste. Clearly, de Hoha wasn't a fan. So how did Louis xiv, or maybe why is the better question, become such a devoted consumer of cloisters? Historians tell us that the king had at least 2,000 enemas over the course of his reign. And that number might be on the low side. Louis XIV was a few months short, short of his fifth birthday when he ascended to the throne in 1643. And he ruled for the next 72 years until his death in 1715. It's a little surprising to learn that the tiny king, considered a walking divinity by his 19 million subjects, was all but neglected. Left in the care of palace servants, mostly ignored by his mother, he barely escaped drowning in one of the palace fountains. And then, at age 9, was faced with a rebellion against the crown by the nobility of Paris. That's a lot to manage for any fourth grader. And young Louis suffered greatly over the course of that long civil war. Even though the crown ultimately triumphed, Louis wound up holding a lifelong grudge against the common people, the nobles and even the city of Paris itself. Forced to marry for politics, he turned away from his great love, Marie Mancini, and set about the serious business of being a king. He believed that God placed him on earth as a divine dictator and that any disagreement or rebellion was downright sinful. Louis wanted control over everything the military, the fields, the construction of roads, the etiquette at court, any matters of theological conflict. He was a micromanager, but he also loved the arts and all things beautiful. He wanted monuments and gardens and music and dance and palaces. He had several of those, all magnificent, but the only one that still stands today is Versailles, which cost as much to build then as it would cost today to build an airport in a major city. The expense caused an uproar, even as Versailles itself brought praise and renown to France and it moved the monarchy out of Paris, which, as you now know, Louis wanted to punish. Ruling from the magnificence of Versailles, Louis XIV uplifted French culture, brought glory to the nation, and was adored by his court. Painting, shown to be a handsome devil, bewigged in a cascade of tight, glossy black curls, eyes blue, lips cherry red. But the reality was a little different. Louis always suffered poor health. He survived about with smallpox in age 8, but was left with disfiguring scars. He was nursed through a ferocious case of measles a few years later. His first sexual encounter at age 16 gave him a walloping dose of the clap gonorrhea. When he fell ill with typhoid fever, the royal physicians treated him with the methods of the time, bloodletting, laxatives and enemas. After taking just one of their prescribed tea drinks, the poor king was racing to his chamber pot more than a dozen times per day. This constellation of medical treatments continued on the regular for the rest of Lou's life. His physicians bled him at least once per month and could not leave the man's intestinal tract alone. They were forever requiring His Majesty to submit to one clyrde after another, which, honestly, didn't seem to be helping. But then again, when you look at the man's medical history, maybe the almighty anima kept him functioning more than anyone realized. Louis suffered from all sorts of parasitic infections like trichinella, a kind of worm you can pick up from eating undercooked pork. He battled ascaris, or hookworm. The symptoms of that include abdominal pain and bloating and diarrhea. He was afflicted with a parasite called Fasciela hepatica, which is common in animals like cows, sheep and goats. According to the cdc, people usually pick that up from eating raw watercress or other water plants that have been contaminated with immature parasite larvae. The young worms cruise through the intestinal wall, the other abdominal cavity and the liver tissue right into the bile ducts where they develop into mature adult flukes that produce eggs. As you can see, 17th century food safety practices must have been pretty casual. Even at Versailles, the royal physicians were diligent record keepers, which is how we know as much as we do about Louis xiv. Every everything he ate and drank was noted. All excretions were thoroughly described and carefully recorded. His moods, his dreams and nightmares, all documented right down to the smallest sneeze. The book is called the Journal of the Health of the King. This by the way, is how we know for certain that his majesty enjoyed three or more enemas per day for a total of 2,000 plus over the course of Lou's lifetime. In his mid-40s, following an accident on horseback, Louis developed rheumatism. As bad luck would have it, that was right around the same time that most of his teeth achieved peak rotten and were super painful. If you've ever had a toothache, you know the misery. The royal physicians, in a rather unexpected departure from their usual Clyce oysters to treat everything protocol, decided to pull all His Majesty's teeth. They thought this might help with the rheumatism. But 17th century dentistry was about as advanced as 17th century food safety. Things did not go well. The unavoidably brutal oral surgery left Louis with an abscess, an infected hole between his mouth and nose. Any liquid the King consumed sprayed out of his mouth right into his nose. Fun party trick, but one that came with all sorts of unpleasant complications. Ultimately, there was nothing to be done but cauterize the abscess with a hot iron and no anesthesia. Then came the year 1686, and with it the arrival of an anal fistula on the backside. On the one hand, this is about to get kind of gross, but on the other hand, isn't it satisfying to know that even a king isn't spared the troubles and afflictions that come with having a body anal fistula. So if you're picturing some kind of giant growth, I did too. It's the opposite though. It's a hole. An anal fistula is basically an abnormal tunnel or passageway way that typically develops inside the anus near the anal glands and extends to the skin outside it can be the result of an injury or a trauma. The anal glands become infected and that infected drainage causes the fistula. For whatever reason, it's twice as common in men as it is in women. It's painful, sometimes intensely so. Redness, swelling, nasty. Drink drainage. And keep in mind that King Louis XIV wasn't lucky to be born at a time when medical knowledge was much advanced. Plus, His Majesty was no longer in peak condition. He was gravely overweight and frequently confined to his bed. The anal fistula was terribly inflamed, oozing pus, and the King could no longer control his bowels. It was not uncommon for the King to require three. Three or more changes of clothing a day. Such was the devotion to Louis, so powerful was his influence that many of his courtiers bragged that they too suffered from anal fistula. Dozens insisted that surgery was required, only to be told that, oh, you're fine, go home. Nutty as this sounds, the King had already ignited a craze among his people for the enema. The wealthy and powerful people at the Court of Versailles were accustomed to the King excusing himself after a meal to retire to his private chambers for a thorough washing out of the royal intestines. There was nothing even remotely embarrassing about it, no need whatsoever for discomfort, as you're about to see. Prominent aristocrats embraced the trend by commissioning their very own luxury clyster syringes. Is Armand Jean du Plessy, AKA Cardinal Richelo, AKA the Red Eminence, who served as chief minister for Louis Father King Louis XIII insisted on a sterling silver apparatus. It's said that Madame Pompadour enjoyed her daily clysters from a syringe crafted of ivory. Even servants at Versailles who attended it to the nobility got in on the action. In fact, they were ordered to receive a daily enema not out of concern for their health, but to make sure that their duties wouldn't ever be interrupted by their doos. Gossip spread almost as quickly then as it does now, and word got out that a regular purge did wonders for the complexion. And it wasn't long before the well to do. The kinds of people whose status wasn't quite lofty enough to merit an invite to Versailles were all clamoring for cloisters, too. And the French, always so meticulous when it comes to style and aesthetics, weren't content to have their bows flushed with regular, old, salty water. They preferred concoctions perfumed with orange blossoms and rose petals. There was a brief craze for tinted fluid, something that only Makes sense if an audience is present to ooh and ah over the delicate beauty of one's cloister. Fluid. The classic story out of Versailles involving a cloister and spectators was recorded by St. Simon, the political strategist, historian and chronicler of Louis XIV's reign. Here goes. The Duchess of Bourgogne was attending a party at the palace, wearing a magnificent bejeweled gown with enormous full skirts. She was chatting away with King Louis when suddenly her lady's maid appeared at her side. In a flash, the servant dropped to her knees and disappeared beneath the duchess's gown. The duchess didn't miss a beat in her conversation with the king as her maid administered an enema right there in the crowded ballroom. Now it makes a little more sense. Why so many of those closest to the king pined for an anal fistula of their very own. As for the king, who actually had one of the cursed things, surgery was required. Problem was, even the court's chief surgeon lacked experience in this area. Off he went to visit the hospitals of Paris in search of patients that he could practice the priest procedure on so as to perfect it for the king, which he did. If this sounds sketchy and unethical, it sure was. Historians have had little success identifying the poor people whose rectums were sacrificed for His Majesty. It's unknown how many survived the surgery at all. Much less had a successful outcome. But people will talk. And rumor had it that the bodies of the royal guinea pigs who died were slipped out of the hospitals under cover of night and buried at dawn, without fanfare.
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Terrible.
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But then, the king was God's chosen ruler, and these were mere peasants. The royal surgeon, Felix du Tassi, could always soothe his own conscience by counting their deaths as offerings to God and not, you know, as manslaughter. When. When it was Louie's turn for the operation, he toughed it out like a boss. And by that I mean he submitted to a gruesome operation on his anus without the benefit of anesthesia. But even under the best conditions, it can be a complicated surgery. And the risk of infection is always an issue, one that we can manage today with antibiotics. But Louis was hundreds of years too early for the that option. Lou's procedure was performed in his private bed chamber. Detesi, his surgeon, had devised a special new tool for the occasion. Picture a long, thin, gracefully curved scalpel with a probe on the end. The plan was to insert the probe directly into the fistula, which, I'll remind you, was a fist festering abscess. A hole in the King's flesh, in the royal taint with zero anesthesia, all hailed the King, who endured this ghastly undertaking with dignity and grim forbearance. Because, you know, it had to be excruciating. And it went very well, believe it or not. And the King made a good recovery, which we must at least try to feel good about, because otherwise all those poor surgical test subjects suffered and died for nothing. It's beyond remarkable, you know, that his recovery went so smoothly. Even today, with all the advances we've made in hygiene, medicine and surgery, the complications from an operation on an anal fistula range from heavy bleeding to infection to fecal impaction to clotting, not to mention the risk of recurrence that can be as high as one third of patients. But here's Louis xiv. No sterile operating suite, no pain meds or antibiotics. Yet somehow, the man came through it like a champ. Within hours of the procedure, Louis XIV was conducting a meeting of his council. And Felix to Tassi was the toast of Versailles, fending off requests for the same surgery from those yearning to copy copy their king in all things, even this. Louis was 48 years old at this point, and now suffering from gout. A lifetime spent eating rich foods can do that to a man. And Louis was known to enjoy enormous meals. One guest at court, the Duchess of Orleans, wrote he could eat four plates
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of soup, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a large plate of salad, two slices of ham martin au jus with garlic, a plate of pastry, all followed by fruit and hard boiled eggs, all washed
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down with copious amounts of champagne and wine. The journal his doctors kept noted that Louis consumed a great deal of salt and pepper and very strong vinegar and a great deal of cheese on top of it all producing a fermentation in his stomach that was hard to deal with. He was fond of chocolate, too, and often patted off at the end of the night with his pockets stuffed full of candied fruit as a bedtime snack. If not for all those multiple daily enemas, perhaps His Majesty would have exploded. Who knows? As the years rolled on and took their toll, the royal physicians continued to bleed and purge the king. By age 66, his teeth gone, his rheumatism more and more troublesome, Louis no longer enjoyed food as he once had, no longer climbed into the saddle for the hunt. Now he rode in the royal carriage and watched instead. He still loved listening to music, still paid sharp attention at council meetings, but he was clearly feeling the effects of age and poor health. He had Chronic fevers from malaria, crushing headaches, a plague of boils and near constant pain in his mouth. His doctors diligently cut him and drained his blood into golden bowls. They mixed purgative teas for him to sip at every meal and performed clyster after cloister after clyster. And the fact is, Louis xiv, despite a sickly childhood and a not exactly robust adulthood, lived until four days shy of his 77th birthday. He was the king of France for 72 years, the longest reigning monarch in human history. Of the last four years of his life, we really know nothing about his health. The royal journal entries stopped four years prior to Louis death. We can assume that the the bleeding and purging continued right up to his last breath. No reason to think otherwise, but no proof it was gangrene that snuffed the Sun King's light. This time, though, it was his leg that was infected and not his rectum. The King had only just returned to Versailles from a hunting trip and complained of a sharp, stabbing pain in his leg. The royal physicians diagnosed sciatica. The standard treatment for that at the time was bloodletting. Within just a few days, black marks appeared on the King's flesh. It was a condition called senile gangrene, a type of infection caused by poor blood flow, resulting in tissue death. It's called senile because it tends to affect older people with arterial sclerosis. That's a thickening or stiffening of the walls of the veins. It mostly impacts the lower extremities of the body. If the bacteria from the gangrene escapes into the blood system, it can cause septic shock, which can lead to all sorts of awful things, including death. As always, Louis XIV tried his best to tough it out. He continued on with his royal duties despite what had to be pleasant blinding pain and the malaise of fever and infection. Finally, on August 25, 1715, even the sun King could bear the pain no longer. He took to his bed and remained there until his death one week later. On September 1st. Shortly before his passing, Louis told his five year old grandson, remember that this. Kings die like other men, Let me just say. Appreciate y' all listening to this episode. If you thought an abscessed royal taint was bad. The technical challenges that we had just doing this today have been insane. We have had all sorts of like, we've had to like, bounce and come back in, bounce and come back in. I had somebody working on a repair in my house. It sounds like they're like running jackhammers upstairs. We have just had one thing after
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C
another leaf blower inside my window.
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Yeah. Louis XIV would say, you guys, that is nothing a good solid vinegar and a bloodletting cannot cure.
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C
So, Sherry, when you first talked about this episode to me, when you first mentioned it, I remember thinking I was hearken back to my childhood because my parents would do warm tea enemas as we were kids for either.
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A
To cure like whatever. Whatever they thought was ailing you.
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C
Yes, but primarily for either. Constipation or diarrhea. Either of them, you would get the warm tea enema. And you know what, as a kid, I'm looking back on it now, it seems really weird, but as a kid. Well, just there's the enema bag, it's in the. It's in the closet. Everybody's got one, right? You know,
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well, my great grandparents on like, on all sides and they, they like, they were probably gone by the time I was 7 years old. Maybe because they were very, very old and from the old country, but they all had those red rubber enema bag hoses draped over the shower rod in the bathroom, like for all to see. And I never thought about it as a kid because it was just part of like the decor in great grandmom's house. But yeah, it was a very common thing. Like when you, when you look at how the enema has been a standard medical treatment from the ancient times, is it all that surprising that your parents, who, Max's parents, they lived until they were 102. Your parents came from a world where, yeah, you know, maybe the kid needs
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C
a good flush, you know, but doesn't it seem like that there's like a trendy, A trendiness about it that seems to come and go? Now, you did say there was. They sold $45 million worth of this just two years ago. It seems like there's a trendiness to this every once in a while where. No, no, this is what you need to do for good health.
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Well, I remember. So probably around 20, 19, 20, early 2020, before COVID lockdowns, thereabouts. The Goop website was touting coffee animus, right? That was, that was one of the secret to Gwyneth's glow. The truth about the enema is it comes in and out of fashion. To your point, it's never left. It really has never left. We don't do it the way that they did in the court of Versailles because that was what the king was up to and so his subjects copied him. I mean, I don't know anybody that would have three enemas a day. It seems like that would be medically unwise.
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C
How could you get anything else done? You know, I mean, I would. It takes a certain amount of time.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Well, I mean, I'm trying to think how long. Trying to think how long would it take? And I. And I can't say that I've really, you know, been a consumer of much in the way of enemas. I think you get one before you have a baby, If I remember correctly, they administer that. Some medical procedures, they'll do that before they do the medical procedure. But it's not like a thing, you know, like, you don't have. I've been to your house. You don't have an enema bag. Here's a conversation you didn't think, I didn't know.
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C
And. And I. If I'm not mistaken, this is. Some people have a certain kink connected to enemas, too. That it's not just all this. There's that, too, of course. You find anything sexual? People that are attracted to cars, which I still don't get.
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Yeah, I think that there is a certain. So I won't go too much into detail, but I have a friend who explained to me that a really good, thorough enema is part of, like, preparing for an encounter with another man. My friend is gay, who told me that that was like, you know, this is kind of like a standard thing. And I thought to myself, oh, my God, I thought women had it rough getting ready for a date. I'm never going to complain about putting on some mascar again, let me tell you. And I don't even know if that's like a. Like a. Like a widespread practice or maybe, you know, my friend is just super fastidious. I. I don't know. It's none of my business what y' all get up to.
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C
I. I wrote down the anal fistula. Inflamed, oozing pus.
- [41:23]
A
Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know what. You know what? You learn something every day. I didn't. I'm very glad that I did not know what an anal fistula was, because that means I haven't had one. And they sound just really, really super painful, you know? You think? I heard you hear the word fistula and you're thinking of a fist. So you're thinking of, like, a growth, but it's an abscess. It's the. It's the opposite. And poor King Louie, I'll remind you, had a nasal fistula, right, that was spraying Liquid from his mouth into his nose and causing all sorts of havoc. And he had the anal fistula, the poison. Poor thing.
- [41:55]
C
Do you think he would have done better without these physicians? Because it seemed like they did nothing but make things worse for him. Also, the audience for the cloister fluids,
- [42:08]
A
the tinted cloister fluid.
- [42:10]
C
Yeah, somebody's watching this.
- [42:14]
A
Pale pink, pale lavender, pale blue. The aristocrats of King Louis Day competed with each other to have the most beautiful kit and also the most lovely enema fluid experience. It would be this perfumed, tinted, gorgeous sort of thing. And then, you know, up we go and inject it. And in fact, there were, I guess apothecary is what they would call them back then, who would be traveling in the streets of Paris with their enema kits strapped to their back on their way to deliver a cloister to some noble or another. And the cloister kits that protected a woman's modesty were pretty substantial. And they kind of wore them on their backs like, like big hiking backpacks. It's. When you step back from it, you go, that is insane. How, how was that even a thing? But you know what, you look at the way these trends catch fire. King Louis XIV was like the first influencer in so many ways, really, if you're, if you're serious about it. Like, he really sparked a decades long craze for enemas and even anal fistulas. And that you've got to be one hell of a powerful influencer to make other people want an anal fistula. Just sit with that. Well, maybe sit on a pillow. Sit with that for a minute.
- [43:49]
C
And by the way, so, you know, you were saying that King Louis XIV ruled for 72 years. And that sounds like, wow, that's amazing. And it is. Do you realize that's only two years more than Queen Elizabeth from England, who just passed?
- [44:03]
A
Oh, yeah. He only narrowly holds the record for the reign. And I think that it's only because he ascended to the throne at age five.
- [44:12]
C
Yeah.
- [44:13]
A
You know, and. And he really, like. I mean, he wasn't doing king work at age 5, but he was the. He was the king. He was His Majesty. So Elizabeth took the throne very early, but she was in her 20s. She was right.
- [44:28]
C
20s. Yeah.
- [44:29]
A
Yeah. That's why she was not able to bounce the Sun King from. From his literal and metaphorical throne.
- [44:36]
C
Good Lord. With each passing thing that you talked about another physical ailment he had, I was surprised that he lived as long as he did.
- [44:47]
A
I mean, that. Well, that's what got my attention, like, he really. And his life could not have been a comfortable one. The physicians were doing something right. Although, my God, between the endless enemas and the bloodletting, the poor thing must have been anemic and dehydrated, don't you think?
- [45:08]
C
Well, I guess the part of. And then he had the gout from the rich food, but he did have good food. I mean, he was. He was eating some. Some good food, albeit rich food. He was. He had. He wasn't going to starve, so.
- [45:22]
A
Well, the thing. I left this out of the episode because it just. There wasn't a really place to put it, but Louis XIV had all these gardens at Versailles, and he ate salad with every meal. He was really, really into fresh food grown in season. It wasn't, you know, in the dead of winter in France. You know, it wasn't always possible for him to get the fresh fruits and vegetables that he craved. But in a lot of ways, he was so ahead of his time in his insistence on fresh local food. And part of the reason that he had the so many parasitic infections is because his, his cooks and servants would go out to the fields where the royal livestock was grazing and pluck up, you know, the watercress and dandelion leaves and whatever, but they really didn't understand about washing and cleaning things. And so they would pluck the watercress out and put it in a basket and then dress it with, you know, a little bit of champagne and serve it up to the king. And unbeknownst to the king, he was consuming this larva for these hookworms. Like a lot of what ailed King Louis XIV would also ail us today if we didn't have such strong and advanced public health measures, like people who are constantly pissing and bitching about the government. You know, we don't need the government. Well, you're. You are living a longer and healthier and more physically robust life today, in large part because we have such stringent public health measures in place. We pasteurize the milk.
- [47:10]
C
We.
- [47:11]
A
We have standards about how we process meat. You really should. Don't take for granted that your salad, your lettuce is clean. When you bring it home from the grocery store, you really should wash it. But we do have some standards in place. And none of that, none of that existed in the 17th century when King Louis was a child and a young adult. So a lot of what he suffered from we can cure today with antibiotics and antifungal fungals, and just by decent public Health practices like he suffered just from being a man of his time. But it makes you wonder, Max, if the king had all of this going on and he had a team of enema craze, bloodletting, royal physicians tending to him, what was it like for a regular person? And does it shock you when you consider the really short life expectancy of people when you put all this together and go, well, damn, it was no wonder people didn't live.
- [48:19]
C
So it was the 1600s, I'm just.
- [48:22]
A
Well, he took the, he took the throne in the 1600s and he died in 1715. So most of his reign was in the 17th century.
- [48:31]
C
So my guess is he lived 40, 35, 40 years longer than whatever the. That's a guess. Whatever the life expectancy was at the time, for sure.
- [48:42]
A
Yeah.
- [48:43]
C
Despite the fact that he had the. Excuse me, I wrote it down. The anal fistula inflamed, oozing pus.
- [48:51]
A
Yeah. And that wasn't his first fistula. The first one was in his face. So. And you know, they, I spared you the details of the, the royal oral surgery. I mean, they had to cauterize the fistula in his mouth and nose with a, a red hot iron and he had to just hold still for that. Like, I've got to give King Louie so much credit for fortitude because he endured so much poor health and so much jack leg, unmedicated, half assed, literally, surgery. And he did it without complaint. Now, of course, it's possible that he cried like a baby and called everybody names and that just wasn't noted in the journal because it wouldn't befit the king. Right. But what we do, what we have, the record that we have, is he. He was like, God has chosen me for this role and I must endure. I want you to imagine having a red hot poker in your taint or your nose. Then get back to me. Oh, God, it's so unbearable.
- [50:07]
C
You know, I worry about being unsexy because of, I don't know, perhaps bad breath.
- [50:12]
A
This guy, this guy.
- [50:14]
C
I don't know what he had going on with the misses but she must have gone. Well, now he has no teeth and there's abscesses in his mouth.
- [50:24]
A
It was foul and they weren't bathing.
- [50:28]
C
Oh, may I point out.
- [50:31]
A
Yeah.
- [50:31]
C
On top of this. Well, maybe this has something to do with all the infection. But they weren't bathing because they thought it was bad for you.
- [50:40]
A
And yet they were. Whatever else was not as clean as it might be. Man, their intestinal tracts, clean as a whistle. I want you to think about three enemas per day. Like that was the routine. The king would dine and then have a purge. The king would dine again and then have a purge, and then maybe another purge and then maybe another purge. And the people in his court copied that. Men and women copied that. And so everybody was just. The idea of the duchess, what's her name, Bourgonia, who had an enema administered on the dance floor with a servant up underneath her ball gown skirts.
- [51:24]
C
Talk about that for a minute.
- [51:26]
A
It's dark jobs.
- [51:30]
C
It's dark under there. You know, you don't have your iPhone to put a little flashlight. You're doing it all by sense of feel.
- [51:37]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, if you were, if you were that lady's maid, you were administering those to the duchess three or more times a day. So you probably, you know, muscle memory. After a certain point, it's unimaginable because you think about, well, first you think, oh, my God, the duchess did borgoneo. That was, that was bold. But what about the freaking servant up under her dress? Like, what a, what a terrible fate that would be to find yourself doing. That's why I say, like when people talk about reincarnation and past lives and they're like, I think I was the queen. I'm like, I think I was the Duchess of Bonia's enema girl.
- [52:18]
C
Pretty sure.
- [52:19]
A
Pretty, pretty sure. So what do we, what do we learn from this thrilling episode in history? Well, we can pause and be grateful that we live at a slightly more enlightened time. Right. Some of those medieval techniques, leeches and cupping, have a good and worthwhile place in modern medicine. They really do. And anybody that's had a. Well, what's the procedure? A colonoscopy.
- [52:54]
C
Yes.
- [52:55]
A
And I've had it really does clean you out. Now imagine doing that after every meal. But we have anesthesia now and we have novocaine and we have antibiotics. And the king did not need to die of gangrene. He probably didn't need to have all of his teeth taken out. Nobody needs a red hot piece of metal searing their tank closed like nobody needs that. Nobody. We've come a long, long, long way. We really have. And this wasn't really an episode about the kind of ruler that Louis XIV was. He was determined to have control over every aspect of his subjects lives. And you know, that never really ends well for the people being subjected to it, but he did do, he did do some things that have lingered. So as a young man, Louis loved to Dance ballet. And you don't really hear that. Have you ever heard that?
- [53:59]
C
No, I'd never heard that before, no.
- [54:01]
A
Yeah, you don't really hear that. And I don't know why that is. I guess because it would be considered, like, the frivolous side of his reign. But he really did love the arts, and he really did appreciate beauty, and he had this vision of himself as only a person who thinks that he's been chosen by God. And. And if you are born into a life where you are told God has chosen you, this is your destiny. You are God's right hand on Earth. And you really believe that, that that's who Louis XIV was? He really believed it. He. He saw that he. His decisions and choices, and what he wanted was not anything coming from himself, but that he was channeling the Lord God's desires. And we do have Versailles, which put France. I mean, his. His reign, his monarchy, kind of set the stage for France to become the cultural icon of the Western world, which is a thing that has kind of continued.
- [55:09]
C
Yeah.
- [55:10]
A
You know, right through the American Revolution and up into maybe the last century. So that was all Louis xiv. You know, you can go tour Versailles today. That was all what he did. All kings and all queens have blood on their hands. It's just the nature of the game for human beings. And he had other things on his hands, too.
- [55:39]
C
Oh, I'm sorry. I.
- [55:46]
A
It's just the next time. The next time you're visiting your grandparents and you see that red bag, somebody must still have it hanging up in the bathroom somewhere. The next time you're at the drugstore and you're on that aisle where they have Metamucil and Ex Lax and Fleet enemas, and you look down at that Fleet enema, I looked it up online. It's in a white box with green designs on it, and it's a little squishy squeeze bottle filled with basically salty water. The next time you look at that, what you're looking at is the modern descendant of. Of an ancient, ancient practice that goes all the way back, all the way back in time to the days when the pharaohs were building the pyramids in Egypt. That fleet enema that humble little thing, is what we have, is the souvenir today of what has been a factor in daily life for humanity since humanity, you know, came from wherever we came from, the ooze, the stars, the magic wand, whatever. You believe that that is an artifact that goes back all the way to the beginning. And if you want to grab yourself one of those today at the CVS or the Walgreens and maybe sprinkle a few dried lavender petals in it and a drop of food coloring. You do you boo.
- [57:19]
C
And if you want a classic enema bag, you can buy them used on ebay. I'm not kidding.
- [57:26]
A
Can we all agree that a used enema bag.
- [57:34]
C
Is anybody still listening? Sherry? We just chased them all away.
- [57:39]
A
A used enema bag. So before we wrap up, Max, because I'm very intrigued. Intrigued by the warm tea. And did they dilute the tea? Was it just Lipton? Like, can you give me anything?
- [57:53]
C
I think that it was. I do think that it was Lipton. And I don't, I really don't have. I don't know exactly how they, you know, conjured up whatever they put in the bag, but they called it a warm tea enema. So.
- [58:09]
A
And this was like, if you were looking kind of, you know, know how moms back in the day would say you look peaky?
- [58:16]
C
Yeah. Right.
- [58:16]
A
Was it, was it just the first line of defense against you were maybe coming down with something or you didn't look quite right?
- [58:25]
C
Yeah, it was. But they only did it if it was something intestinal. They didn't do it for everything. It was just if something was intestinal. And so, you know, it's just, you know, when you're a kid, you just accept whatever's put in front of you and you go, okay, fine, if that's what we need to do. Okay, fine. You know?
- [58:44]
A
Yeah.
- [58:44]
C
So we would.
- [58:45]
A
There's a whole.
- [58:46]
C
It was
- [58:48]
A
three or four generations of Americans, even though we don't talk about it. Three or four generations of Americans, if they're honest, grew up with enemas being a routine part of their childhood and adult experience.
- [59:03]
C
Right.
- [59:04]
A
And I guess that went away with when the baby boomers became adults. Maybe they decided that they were done with the red enema bag hanging in the bathroom.
- [59:14]
C
I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right.
- [59:17]
A
So maybe the boomers were like, I've been. I've had enough of that. We're not going to do that. But when you look at the millions of dollars spent on enemas and the billions of dollars spent on over the counter laxatives, the American and diet probably isn't moving through us quite as efficiently as it could. But just be glad that you're not eating larva laced watercress. Yeah, yeah. So the more, you know. And now you know something about Louis XIV and the Court of Versailles that maybe you didn't know before. And the next time you see like some picture of Louis XIV on Wikipedia or in a museum or whatever, I want you to look at those. That was a wig. I want you to look at those black curls and those blue eyes and those rosy red lips. And I want you to know that behind that enigmatic smile is a man who's got an abscess in his face and on his taint, who is being subjected to laxatives and enemas and teas all day, every single day, and still managed to be the longest ruling king in human history. Get back to work, slackers.
- [60:36]
B
Thank you for listening to this classic episode of True Weird Stuff. To fall even further down the rabbit hole of weird history, follow True We True Weird Stuff on Instagram and YouTube. True Weird Stuff is a now media production written and hosted by Sherry lynch, executive produced by Tony Garcia, directed by Max Sweetin. Additional support from producers Carrie Bowser and Stephen Call, our digital witch and social media cult leader, Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash Original artwork by Olivia Axeland True Weird Original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and zayn Nash. Copyright 2026 Now Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.