A Real Knockout

It's the color and texture of tree bark. It started forming six years ago and now it's nearly ten inches long. You want this weird growth gone, but the doctors all tell you the same thing. Surgery is going to be horrifically painful. However, after six years of living with this thing growing out of your head, you don't really care anymore. You go in for surgery to handle the pain you know is coming. You're given whiskey that's it, drunk, but fully aware that a scalpel is aimed at your face.

You lay back, bite down on a towel and hope for the best. It's the most excruciating thing you have ever experienced, but you survived the ordeal, and because of that you become famous for being one of the first successful plastic surgery patients ever. And I'm sure you've guessed by now that this is a true story. The patient in question was Madame Demanche of Paris. She had a cutaneous horn, which is a large tumor formed out of keratin.

After her successful operation, she became a poster child for plastic surgery. A wax model of her face, horn and all was purchased by an American medical school graduate while he worked abroad. His name was doctor Thomas Mooder, and he would become one of the most important surgeons in the world. Born in Virginia in eighteen eleven, Thomas's boyhood was marked by tragedy. By the time time he was seven years old, his brother, mother, and father had all

passed away from illness. He was sent to live with his grandmother, but soon she too died. He was then raised by a family friend until at fifteen years old, he left to go to college, and Thomas flourished in school. He flew through his undergrad studies and soon moved to Philadelphia, where he attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. At just twenty years old, he officially became doctor Muder. The next year, he took a trip to Paris to study

the burgeoning field of plastic surgery. Now, just to be clear, doctor Mud wasn't doing facelifts. In the eighteen hundreds, plastic surgeons were most often focused on helping patients with congenital deformities, body growths, or injuries from severe accidents. Usually they worked with very extreme cases, like that of Madame Demnche. Doctor Mud purchased the wax model of her face while working in Paris and brought it back to Philadelphia the following year.

In eighteen thirty two, he established his own medical practice. He soon gained a reputation as someone who truly cared about his patient's comfort and safety when he operated. He tried to keep the surgery clean and quick to minimize his patient suffering. But still, the sculpture of the horned woman served as a sad reminder people tended to avoid surgery even when they desperately needed it. It was just too painful, and a lot of nineteenth century doctors didn't

seem to care. They viewed pain as a natural part of surgery, something to be accepted rather than avoided. But doctor Mutor disagreed if surgery wasn't so agonizing, people would be more likely to get the help that they needed, and that's why when he learned about a new medical technology in eighteen forty six, he was desperate to try it. He was called ether. Now, for those who don't know, ether was in early form of anesthesia. It knocked patients

unconscious during surgery, preventing them from feeling any pain. Many physicians were opposed to its use, though, believing that it could be dangerous, but doctor Mutor saw it as an opportunity that couldn't be passed up. That same year, doctor Mudor became the first surgeon in Philadelphia to administer anesthesia. It was a huge success, and people begin flocking to him for pain free or at least far less painful medical care. Over the next few decades, the practice of

administering anesthesia before surgery caught on. Meanwhile, doctor Muder became a professor at the local Jefferson Medical College. He lectured on the benefits of ether, inspiring a generation of physicians. By the time he died in eighteen fifty nine, he had become a symbol for a more humane, patient centered approach to medicine. He'd also amassed an impressive collection of medical specimens, which were eventually used to found Philadelphia's Moodor Museum.

In these days, the museum is considered one of the nation's foremost collections of historical medical oddities. It houses a mixture of doctor MUD's belongings and other curious acquisitions like cross sections of Albert Einstein's brain, a tumor from US President Grover Cleveland's jaw, and of course that wax model

of Madame Dimanche. So if you ever have to go to the oar, spare a thought for the horned woman and the surgeon she inspired, and be thankful that doctors can knock you out with more than just a stiff drink. On Valentine's Day in nineteen eighty one, twelve year old Todd Dombowski was walking down the streets in his Pennsylvanian hometown. His tennis shoes hit the asphalt with each step. Todd knew to never walk around barefoot. That was something that

you just didn't do. There. He glanced up at the trees, admiring the first hint of green as winter turned into spring. Then suddenly he heard a cracking sound his heart leapt as the ground dropped out from beneath him, creating a sinkhole that was one hundred and fifty feet deep. Smoke billowed out of the fissure in the earth, and Todd fell right in. He flailed his arms desperately, only just managing to grab hold of an exposed tree root underneath

the broken concrete. He held on for dear life, trying not to inhale the smoke, and of course he screamed for help. Thankfully, Tod's cousin was just up the road, and he ran down to poll Tod out of the sinkhole. Shaken by the close call, both boys rushed home. The worst part was this was just another day in Centralia. It had all started nineteen years earlier. In May of nineteen sixty two, the city's landfill was starting to overflow.

Their annual Memorial Day celebration was coming, and the last thing they wanted was to make citizens parade past a giant mountain of garbage. So the city council came up with a solution, burn all the trash. It seemed simple enough. The fire department surrounded the landfill with flame resistant material, then set the rubbish ablaze. When all the garbage had been reduced to ash, they doused the area with water and snuffed out any remaining embers, or so they thought.

Two days later, the landfill was somehow on fire again. Firefighters sprayed more water, but it didn't seem to help. The following week, more flames arose. Confused, the fire department sifted through the ash to find out where these seemingly immortal flames were coming from. That's how they discovered that

they had made a horrible mistake. You see, in the early twentieth century, Centralia was a mining town, but that was so long ago that when the officials lit the landfill on fire, they didn't think to check underneath it first. If they had, they would have noticed that all the trash was stacked on top of an opening of a coal mine. Completely by accident, the fire department had ignited that coal and it wasn't just a single mine. It was a labyrinth of them, stretching out beneath the city

in all directions, all ablaze. Over the following months, a fire raged underneath people's homes and businesses. The ground was hot to the touch. Smoke rose out of cracks in the concrete, and people started getting sick because carbon monoxide levels became unnaturally high. Of course, the fire department tried to stop the blaze, but your regular run of the mill fire hoses were weak weapons when it came to

putting out miles long underground coal fire. They sought outside help and ended up spending seven million dollars trying to put the fire out. But by nineteen eighty one, when twelve year old Todd almost fell into a flaming sinkhole, the mines were still burning. In nineteen eighty three, twenty one years after the fire began, the federal government stepped in.

US officials spent forty two million dollars to purchase the entirety of Centralia, demolishing all the buildings and relocating the twenty five hundred people who once called the city home. The government even revoked the city's zip code, officially wiping it off the map, and just like that, Centralia turned into a ghost town, a smoky, abandoned abyss of a ghost town. However, sixty three determined citizens insisted on staying put.

They remained in Centralia for another decade until the state of Pennsylvania invoked eminent domain in Nighttien ten ninety three, forcing the remaining locals to leave, well most of them. If you can believe it, exactly six people refuse to leave Centralia, even though it had become a dangerous ghost town where the streets routinely opened up to reveal the flaming mines below. In twenty thirteen, these remaining Centrallians sued

the state of Pennsylvania for rights to their property. They each received a settlement of nearly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the right to stay in their homes for as long as they lived. And you have to admit it's a spooky image. Six people living in a town that doesn't officially exist, their homes nestled in between the rubble of raised buildings in the ash of a fire that's still burning. In fact, it was so spooky that it inspired the creators of a well known horror

movie franchise. The setting of Silent Hill was inspired by Centralia, and these days the city is more commonly known as the real life Silent Hill. Sadly, it doesn't look like Centralia will be getting a new reputation anytime soon. The fire beneath the city has been going for sixty one years, and according to experts, there's enough coal in the minds to keep it burning for two hundred and fifty more. I guess that doesn't technically qualify as an eternal flame,

but it's pretty darn close. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.