Phantom Pains

Those of us of a certain age have probably slept wrong or bent ourselves in a way that caused a twinge in our backs, and when we feel it, it's some of the most excruciating pain imaginable. Daniel David Palmer thought so too. Born in Canada in eighteen forty five, Palmer moved to America with his family when he was twenty years old. Looking back, at might seem like that he didn't have much direction in life. He bounced from job to job for many years, like teaching school, beekeeping,

and owning a grocery store. Or maybe he just had a lot of interests and he was out there looking for his true calling that whole time, while in eighteen ninety five he found it. Palmer had been fascinated by spiritualism and alternative medicine for a very long time. He even practiced magnetic healing, which involved the placement of magnets along the body to improve one's health. Eventually, he began to theorize that curing diseases required more than some well

placed magnets. He needed something bigger, like a complete readjustment of the spine. This idea came to him almost by accident. He'd been in his office in Davenport, Iowa, when he ran into the janitor, a man named Harvey Lillard. Lillard had been hard of hearing for seventeen years. He told Palmer about how one day something popped in his spine and suddenly he couldn't hear as well as he used to. The two men continued talking, and that's when Palmer noticed

something strange. On Lillard's back. It was a lump, and in Palmer's eyes, it was the reason his janitor was nearly deaf. So he decided to test out the practice he'd been studying, called thoracic manipulation. Palmer worked on the man's spine, twisting and cracking it in different directions. It took a few days, but pretty soon Lillard came back to Palmer with an unbelievable claim his hearing had returned.

This miracle of sorts was the reassurance that Palmer needed to continue his work, and it led to the creation of one of the most important discoveries in alternative medicine. And that's the official story at least. But there is another, and it's not nearly as heartwarming. In fact, it's a bit so here's take two. It all started when Palmer consulted a man named Jim Atkinson, also from Davenport, Iowa. Atkinson was a physician and taught Palmer all about the

different thoracic manipulation techniques that he had learned. In fact, they weren't even Atkinson's methods in the first place. In a textbook published by Palmer in nineteen ten, he wrote doctor Atkinson has frequently informed me that the replacing of displaced vertebrae for the relief of human ills has been known and practiced by the ancient Egyptians for at least three thousand years. Unfortunately, the concepts that have been proposed

by Atkinson hadn't caught on. According to him, they were ahead of the time, or, as Palmer wrote in his book, the intellectuality of that time was not ready for this advancement. But how could that be, after all, these techniques were already thousands of years old. Maybe these Iowans just couldn't handle the idea that a few twists and turns could cure what ailed them, Or maybe there was something about

doctor Atkinson that rubbed them the wrong way. Whatever the case, it was a long time before people understood the ideas being presented, and it took Palmer to show them. But it was a funny thing about Atkinson and Palmer. The two men actually never met, and they didn't exchange letters or chat over the phone either. Their paths had never crossed because doctor Atkinson had died fifty years earlier. Palmer, ever, the devoted spiritualist, had spoken to him through a seance

or other similar event. In other words, Daniel David Palmer, the founder of chiropractic medicine, had been introduced to it by a ghost. There are some parts of history that form the very foundation of our understanding of the world. Many of our beliefs are cemented in what we know about the past. Sometimes, though, the bridge between past and present isn't as that's wrong as we might think. In early two thousand and six, a woman named Dun Barya

made her way down the bustling streets of Mumbai. She journeyed toward the lush green forest on the city's outskirts. Once under the cover of the canopies, the noise faded, but the change in scenery didn't give done the sense of peace that she had come for. Still, she continued down the path and hoped for a good sign. Finally, she approached her destination, a clearing in the woods with a stone tower at its center. It was an isolated, sacred space. Dun hoped to find the answers there. She

hoped to find closure. Once at the base of the tower, she said a prayer, but even this didn't settle her unease. There were a few men there as well, not many people were allowed to enter the area, but it was the men's job to be there, and she knew that they might have the answers that she was looking for. So she asked them, is my mother gone? And the men laughed no, they said, your mother will be here for years to come. Done stood in horror. She thought

to herself, could it be? Are the rumors true? Panicton confused, she returned home and devised a plan. She needed to know the truth, so she hired a photographer to sneak back into the clearing in the woods, but this time the photographer would climb the tower, something few people were allowed to do. The photographer's job was to capture images of whatever he found there without getting cut, and that's what he did. Soon these photographs and even video footage

made their way around the city. Done plastered the images around town. They were so shocking that they even ended up on CNN, and by that point the whole world knew what Done had discovered. Dozens of dead bodies were decaying atop the tower in the forest. The people of Mumbai were in an uproar. The city's governing body insisted that they had everything under control, but it was too late.

Everyone had seen the pictures. Now, I know that this might sound like an unsolved murder case, but it's a little more complicated than that, and it all circles back to the question Done had set out to answer in the first place, and as it turned turned out, scientists from another part of the world with an entirely different question would find that answer. In the late nineteen nineties, a Kenyan biologist named Munir Vuani traveled to a tiger

reserve in India. But Munir wasn't there to study tigers. His specialty was in birds. He worked for the Peregrine Fund, an organization that protects birds of prey. When he arrived, Munir walked through the reserve to a large ficus tree. Under the tree, over a dozen vultures lay dead. Munir took a closer look. He was puzzled. The birds showed no signs of harm. They weren't even that old. The biologists couldn't understand why young, healthy birds would suddenly drop dead.

And it wasn't just these birds that Munir was concerned about. By this point, the vulture population in India had declined by about ninety five percent, and this was a big issue. You see, vultures are known for eating dead things. For that reason, they sometimes give people the hebgbis. But vultures eating habits are actually great for the health of the

environment and even for humans. Disease and bacteria thrive inside dead bodies, but vulture's stomach acid is highly acidic, so they killed deadly bacteria, including rabies and anthrax before it spreads to the living. I'm sure you can imagine the level of harmful decay a country is left with when ninety five percent of vultures just disappear. Suffice to say, Munir had quite the undertaking. He and his colleagues dissected some of the dead vultures and discovered that a white,

chalky paste covered their insides. It was uric acid, the very same acid that allows vultures to digest deadly things. The build up of the acid meant that the vulture's kidneys had shut down, but why. By the early two thousands, Manir and his team formed a hypothesis whatever was causing the vulture's kidney failure had come from something they were eating, and at some point the researchers asked cattle farmers what their cows ate, and that's how they found the answer.

It was a painkiller called Diclopenic. India had approved it for use in cattle farming in you guessed it's the nineteen nineties, and this brings us back to dun Barriya's initial investigation. Dunn observes Zoroastrianism, a small religion that was formed over three thousand years ago, and the tower where she went to prey at the beginning of our story is a big part of this religion. It's known as

the Tower of Silence. There are many like it, but this one has been there since sixteen seventy three, and Zoroastrians practiced something known as sky burials, which involve bringing the bodies of the departed to the top of the towers for vultures defeat on. They believe that bodily decay is caused by a demon, so by eating the bodies before the decaying process can begin, the vultures help people

gain entry into heaven. After her mother died, Dunn had a gut feeling that her body was still on top of the Tower Decayne on that day in two thousand and six, when she journeyed to the tower, she spoke with the men who were responsible for carrying the bodies up the tower and eventually disposing of the bones. These were the only people who were allowed to venture to the top. My reaction to Dunn's question about her mother all but confirmed her suspicions when the photographer she hired

return with proof. The rest was history. In two thousand and six, following munir Varani's discovery, India banned the use of diclofenic and cattle. While the country works to recover its vulture population, it's also trying to find new ways to manage sky burials. We don't know what will happen in the future, but this story is a reminder to not take for granted the parts of our world that connect us to our history and maybe even to our afterlives.

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 theworldoflore dot com, and until next time, stay curious.