Wonder Drug

boss doesn't have our best interests at heart. We get burned out, and the job we've loved all that time no longer fulfills us the way it used to. Except Belgium's sisters of the Order of Poor Claire did love their job. They were nuns living simple, sheltered lives, full of prayer and joy. But when one of their own put that simple life in jeopardy, they jumped into action in a way nobody ever expected. The Poor Claires, as they were sometimes called, were formed in twelve twelve by

Claire of Assisi. She had been born in Italy to a wealthy family, but gave it all up when she was seventeen to follow St. Francis and his teachings. She became a nun and swore herself to a life of extreme poverty. Claire was eventually joined by her mother and two sisters, along with several other rich women from Florence. Soon Claire had her own order, and she put down some pretty strict rules for everyone to follow. They weren't allowed to own any property, nor could they have much money.

Anything they owned was to be given to them by the people in their community. Now, over the years, the poor Claires grew in number and spread out across Europe and the America's including Belgium. There in the city of Bruge there was a six year old convent that had been home to a group of Claires. They loved it there and kept mostly to themselves, not interacting much with the people on the outside, at least not until Ronnie

Crabs showed up on their doorstep. Crab came to them in ninety five, working as a groundskeeper and a jack of all trades around the convent. If the nuns needed to be driven somewhere, they called on Ronnie. Something broken needed fixed. There was Ronnie. Grass had to be cut. You guessed it, Ronnie. Now, although he wasn't a woman, a nun, or a devout member of their order. The Claires took a liking to Crab. He started giving them small tastes of the outside world, and in return, they

put him in charge of their financial holdings. Things ran smoothly for the next three years until they overheard some unsettling news. They were going to lose their convent. But it wasn't Ronnie's fault. It was the bishops. You see. The bishop wanted to separate the Claires, placing each of them in different churches while he sold off the art and artifacts within the convent. We're talking about hundreds of

years worth of holy relics. As for the building itself, it would also be sold off and probably demolished so that private buyers could use the land. So, not wanting to lose their home and their bond, the sisters took matters into their own hands. They found out that they actually had more rights than they known about. The existing by laws allowed them to change the rules of ownership without the diocese's involvement, so the nuns quickly took over

complete ownership of the convent. They also amended the by laws stating that their assets would go to the church when they died. Now their families would be compensated instead. From there, the Claires, with Ronnie Crabbe's help, started selling off whatever they could, including art and holy relics. The bishop found out what the sisters were doing and he

met with the mother superior sister Anna. He wanted to salvage the situation and keep them from selling the convent to The Bishop promised her that the church would take care of all of them and give them everything they needed for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately for him, though he'd already missed the boat, the sisters had already sold the convent to a series of textile companies for

nearly one point five million dollars. The bishop flipped. He called the authorities and tried to have the Claires arrested for stealing from the church, except they hadn't stolen from the church. They had done their due diligence and had every right to sell their own convent. The Claires used the money to buy a fixer upper of a castle in the south of France, and those old timey rules of extreme poverty and no possessions that they've been following, well,

those went out the window too. The poor Claires bought a Cadillac, half a dozen Mercedes sedans, and a fully stocked limousine with the sticker price of over a hundred thousand dollars. They also chartered an ambulance to bring Sister Agnes, the oldest of their order, up to their new home. Once they reached the castle, the sisters dropped some more cash on eleven race horses and lived out the next several weeks in the lap of luxury, well sort of,

you see. The castle didn't have heat or running water, and Ronnie Crabb turned out to be not such a great friend after all, while the sisters had been selling off church property, he was pocketing millions of dollars for himself. Crab was eventually arrested, spending over a month in prison as he awaited his trial until he was mysteriously released. The charges, you see, had been dropped. The sale of the convent was also avoided, and the church regained control

of everything. And as for the Claires, they were rewarded with a permanent stay in a retirement home for the rest of their lives. Things might not have ended the way they'd hoped, but the poor Claires did pull off in Ocean's eleven style heist of their own convent from right under the bishop's nose, at least for a while. And through it all they've done what any sister would have done. They kept the faith. It seems like there's

a medicine for everything these days. Dealing with about of indigestion got a weird rash, There are treatments for those. There's even a medicine to help people with Catard's delusion, a disorder that makes those afflicted think that they are dead and rotting. But before there was a pill or a cream or an injection for every little ailment, there was silphium. Silphium was a miracle drug. Among its many applications, it was used to season meals fed to livestock, to

plumping them up, to increase one's libido. It was even used as a contraceptive. But perhaps most commonly, sylfium was deemed a cure all, a wonder drug that was taken to alleviate everything from the sniffles and headaches to hernia's and tumors. Anytime someone asked, does this look infected, the answer would inevitably be, just take some sylvium. It was also relied on to jump start menstruation, just stirred up

with a little pepper, a dashamer and some wine. Now miracle products that promised to cure everything under the sun became commonplace throughout the eighteen hundreds. They were branded as snake oil solutions and were mostly chock full of addictive drugs like cocaine and opium, but not sylfium. It wasn't a snake oil, at least not to the likes of Julius Caesar, who depended on it so much he kept

fifteen hundred pounds of it in his treasury. You see, sylfium was nothing more than a plant, and a popular one at that. According to legend, sylfium started popping up after a black rain had fallen over the city of Syrene on Libya's northern coast more than two thousand years ago. It was identified by its dense, blackened roots covered in bark, as well as its yellow green leaves on top. Its stock was hollow, and it was covered in tiny yellow flowers.

When it wasn't being mashed up into medicinal paste or sprinkled like salt over a dish, it was being enjoyed as a meal unto itself. The stocks were often cooked either were a flame or in a pot of boiling water before being crunched on. Every part of the sylphium plant was utilized for something, from its roots, which could be dipped in vinegar and eaten raw, to its flowers, which were turned into aromatic perfumes. Looking to spice up your salad, just sprinkle on a dried form of its

sap to boost its flavor. Greece and Rome came to use so much of the plant that it puts syrene on the map. Sylphium became one of their main exports and started appearing on the city's currency. It was literally worth its weight in gold. But of course, when someone in power gets a taste of something good, they want to control it for themselves, folks like Emperor Augustus of Rome. He ordered that every last plant, seed and by product to be sent to him as tributes. But still its

use continued to spread. Writers and singers wax poetic about it, and its name appeared in various written works. Pliny of the Elder wrote about it a lot in his ten volume naturalist history Area. So what happened to all that sylfium. Well, the long story short is it's extinct. But the reasons why are numerous. For one, it was used for everything. The fact that we don't have it today is primarily because all of it was eaten, ground up, shredded, and

ingested thousands of years ago. It was also believed that farmers would let their cattle and sheep graze on it freely, but never planted more, which brings us to the other problem with sylfium. It was almost impossible to cultivate manually, as the ancient Greeks discovered when they tried to grow it on their own land and failed. Whatever the reason, sylfium is no more, but the image of it still exists today throughout culture. And just take a look at

any greeting card or decoration on Valentine's Day. The sylphium seed, as depicted on coins from ancient Syrene, was shown as a scalloped V shape that came to a point at its base. Given sylphium's use and love making, either before or after, depending on the knee, it became a symbol of love and lust. The ancients saw it as just a seed, but we know it today as a way to tell someone how we feel that symbol the heart. 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.