Man, Myth, Legend

to make it to patients. On a wider scale, yeah, that doesn't stop people from hunting for miracle cures, those one in a million treatments that bypassed the lengthy safety tests mainstream drugs undergo. Before the nineteen o six Pure Food and Drug Act, there were almost no regulations in place to prevent doctors or snake oil salesman from peddling whatever tinctures they thought might heal someone, and for hundreds

of years, the science behind medicine was well questionable. King Charles the Second, for example, was no stranger to medical curiosity. As a child, he'd been tutored by William Harvey, a surgeon on the cutting edge of the field who had been the first person to detail how the heart pumped blood throughout the body. Charles studied many scientific subjects growing up, including chemistry and physics, but when it came to medicine,

especially later in life, he rarely turned anything down. Due to his poor health, in the weeks before his death, Charles underwent all manner of treatments, including cupping, blood letting, and something called the King's Drops. King's Drops were created by Jonathan Goddard, a physician and surgeon who had developed a unique formula for what he deemed a royal cure all. It could help with fainting bladder stones, and it was

said to be a powerful stimulant as well. Nevertheless, Charles wanted to know what he was putting into his body, so he paid Goddard for the formula. The King learned much about the drops chemical composition. Among its ingredients were ivory dried vipers, and heartstorn, an ammonious solution made from deer horns. Everything was ground up, liquefied, distilled, and filtered through a complex process that eventually yielded an alcoholic solution.

But there was one ingredient that really pulled the whole thing together. It's effecting this however, varied from person to person. What was it that Goddard put in his drops? Human skulls five pounds of them crushed into a fine powder, But not just any skulls would do. Goddard sought out the craniums of young men who had been killed violently, like soldiers or recently executed criminals for lesser ailments. A

few drops were administered at a time. For more serious conditions, though, such as a stroke or lethargy, forty to fifty draws could be ingested at once. Unsurprisingly, this miracle cure didn't cure much of anything, and it might have made the King's health even worse. He died on February second of sixteen eighty five, and it was believed at first that he had been poisoned. Today experts are able to tell that Charles most likely suffered from kidney disease, which led

to his passing. Whether the drops had contributed to it, however, remains to be seen. It's likely they didn't help. Edward Walpole had been a member of Parliament for the town of King's Lynn in Norfolk when he took some of Goddard's drops in sixteen sixty eight. Walpole died after suffering a seizure shortly thereafter, but that didn't stop people from believing in the drop's power, especially since they were chock

full of human skulls. Skulls had been used in medicinal treatments from the sixteenth century all the way through the eighteenth century. In fact, a German Man named Oswald Kral developed a concoction in sixteen forty three that was meant to cure epilepsy, and like Goddard, he preferred to use skulls from men who had died under violent circumstances. But corpse medicine, as it was called, extended beyond the bones

inside the head. Someone with a sore muscle might have rubbed belly fat on the offending spot to alleviate the pain. People drank blood because they believed it had restored if properties, and the poor who couldn't afford expensive medicines, would attend executions and pay for a cup of the red stuff,

freshly squeezed. Of course, other cultures who practiced corpse medicine, like the Native Americans, were vilified and called all kinds of slurs due to what the Europeans saw as uncivilized cannibalism. The hypocrisy was strong back then, and some of those stereotypes have lingered to this day. But times changed, and with them, so did medicine. Scientific breakthroughs led to new remedies like penicillin and vaccines for diseases such as smallpox.

People stopped eating and drinking skulls to feel better. After all, any cures would have been psychosomatic anyway, you know, all in their head. Ask anyone today about politics, and they'll long wistfully for a simpler time, a time when senators, congress people, and even presidents were more civilized in their disagreements. But the fact is, the political landscape has always been a hotbed of shady campaign tactics and even shadier players.

In eighteen sixty eight, the Detroit Free Press published heinous insults about presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant. He was described as and I quote, a drunkard, a man of vile habits, and my favorite, as brainless as his saddle. Louis cass isn't a name most people know today, but in eighteen forty eight he ran against Zachary Taylor for presidents of the United States. He also got on the wrong side of a newspaper magnet name Horace Greeley, owner of the

New York Tribune. In fact, Greeley once referred to the Democratic candidate as that potbellied, mutton headed cucumber sold casts. Suffice it to say, cast did not farewell in the election, but one man put all others to shame when it came to outlandish political behavior. We might look back on his actions today as reason for disqualification, but if anything, they only made him more popular. His name was Dan Sickles,

born in New York City in eighteen nineteen. He was raised by his mother and father, who worked as a patent lawyer and politician. It's no wonder Dan followed in his footsteps later in life, earning a law degree and getting himself elected to the New York State Assembly in eighteen forty seven. It was around this time when sickles questionable behavior started to gain him notoriety. He joined up with Tammany Hall, a cutthroat political organization that had controlled

New York for decades. Though he was considered an ally, there were a few times when he found himself on the receiving end of their wrath. Once he was giving a speech when a gang of rivals physically removed him from the stage and threw him down a spiral staircase. On another occasion, he fled through an open window and down a fire escape to get away from their assault. When he was thirty two years old, Sickles married a girl named Teresa Baggioli, who was no more than fifteen

at the time. Both her family and Sickles protested to their nuptials, but it didn't matter. The two were wed, and the assemblyman continued to work his way up the New York political ladder. After a series of positions in both New York and London, Sickles returned home in eighteen

fifty six and was elected to the New York State Senate. Now, while he was pursuing his career, the newly elected senator was also pursuing extracurricular activities outside of his marriage, but kind of got him censured by the New York State Assembly around eighteen fifty nine. However, even though Sickles was allowed to covert with whoever he saw fit, that didn't

mean his wife was afforded the same luxuries. He found out that she was having an affair with another man and confronted her lover in broad daylight, Sickles shot him dead. The man he killed happened to be Philip Barton Key, the second U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and the son of National anthem composer Francis Scott Key. Sickles turned himself in and hired a team of lawyers for his defense. It took over two weeks of testimony, but in the end Sickles was acquitted. He submitted a

plea of temporary insanity. For the first time in the history of the U. S. Court system, the jury believed him. Rather than run for re election in the Senate, Sickles sought to rehabilitate his image by building up an army of volunteer soldiers in New York. The Civil War had just started and the Union was in need of recruits. His efforts earned him the rank of colonel, despite having

no military background whatsoever. He eventually graduated to brigadier general, and his conduct throughout most of the war earned him high marks. For one, Sickles never turned over the runaway slaves who found their way to his camp. In fact, he employed a lot of them to work as servants. The men who were able to fight were trained as soldiers, but he was also a man who hated to be told what to do. During the Battle of Gettysburg, for example, he defied a direct order from his commander to hold

his current position. He instead sought higher ground. His cavalier nature nearly led to defeat for the Union Army, and perhaps were sick cost him his leg, which was destroyed by a cannon ball and had to be amputated. Sickles donated the shattered bone from his leg to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, d c. He even visited it each year on the anniversary of the battle, sometimes bringing his dates there to see it. After the war, he returned to New York and led the committee on creating

the city's most iconic park, Central Park. Post war, Sickles, however, might have been even more brazen than his younger self. In eighteen sixty nine, he took position as u s ambassador to Spain, where he and Queen Isabel the Second began a toward affair, one that ended with Sickles marrying one of her attendants instead. The whole ordeal led to his eventual resignation from the position, and finally, in nineteen twelve,

he was arrested yet again, not for killing anyone. This time he'd been accused of stealing almost thirty thousand dollars from a Civil War monuments commissioned fund that he had been put in charge of, And, just as he'd done with his murder trial fifty years earlier, Sickles got away scott free. He had apparently built up enough goodwill with friends and supporters to have the money paid back in full. Sickles died two years later in New York City at

the age of ninety four. For a man who survived being tossed down a flight of stairs, tried for murder, and losing his leg to a cannonball, he survived much longer than most of his generation. As the artist David Hockney once said, I prefer living in color. Well, a few people live more colorfully than Daniel E. Sickles. 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. The show was created by me Aaron Manky 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 world of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.