In the world of healing, there have always been folks willing to make money off of the suffering of others. And it was often seen that the more shameful the secret, the more profitable these problems would be for cunning charlatans. 

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The human body has long been a battleground for morality. And one of the places that these ideas have shown up might be surprising to you: the dinner table.  

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For centuries, cutting into the human body was strictly forbidden. In fact, for a long time, medical schools taught aspiring physcians not to touch their patients. You can imagine how helpful this was. But then, a turn in the story: along came a class of people whose dirty, rough, and practical work changed the way we practice medicine: the surgeons. 

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In the not-too distant past, many European communities had their own local executioner. It was a paid government trade just like any other, but it came with a damning social stigma. But this role was a crucial one: though they brought imminent death, many people believed they also played a significant role in holistic healthcare. 

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Staying alive is a tough task, and medicine’s function is to help us do just that. Often, we turn to pharmaceuticals. But we can trace a moment, very early in our construction of the healing arts, that the first chemists – the alchemists – sought something else: not just to extend life, but to make it eternal. 

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Our language is ripe with turns of phrase that invoke the idea of blood. These idioms seem to illustrate some of our most intense human experiences – it’s the thing that we can’t live with, after all. So tell me this: what happens when the blood spills?  

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For much of human history, the interal geography of our bodies has been a mystery. We’ve walked a long, dark road as we’ve sought its secrets – taking many wrong turns, and leaving a trail of casualties in our wake.

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From the blood in our veins to the search for eternal life, and everything in between, this is your chance to learn just how miraculous it is that we understand so much about the human body—and why many of those discoveries almost never happened.

Beginning January 6th 2023, Grim & Mild Presents: Bedside Manners will unpack the dark and twisted history of healing medicine.

Subscribe today on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more at GrimAndMild.com/presents.

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Hollywood adores the loveable rogue. Pirates are often depicted as wisecracking, kind-hearted individuals who set out for treasure but inevitably do the right thing. In the end, he usually gets the girl and the treasure. 

Pirates. The word itself hints at a story. And in our final episode, we have a couple more tales to tell.

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Cutthroat. According to dictionary entries, it’s someone so ruthless they cut the throat of another. A murderer is a person of vicious and Machiavellian nature. And in the world of piracy, there were cutthroats so cruel that they went over the line, even for their own crew.

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