The Bullet Catch and Other Deadly Illusions!

- This is Lab Medicine Rounds, a curated podcast for physicians, laboratory professionals and students. I'm your host, Justin Kreuter, a transfusion medicine pathologist, assistant professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic. Today we're rounding with Dr. Reade Quinton, an associate professor of Laboratory Medicine Pathology. He's the program director for our pathology residency program here at Mayo Clinic.

And also the current Vice president for the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME). So thanks for joining us today, Dr. Quinton. - Happy to be back, Dr. Kreuter, it's always a pleasure. - Well, and I, there's a forensics meeting

that's coming up soon and I was scrolling through as, as one does when you're in, in transfusion medicine, scoping out what other meetings are doing, and I see that you have a lecture that you're gonna be giving called the Bullet Catch and Other Deadly Illusions. So maybe we could start off, 'cause you give some of the best podcast interviews for our audience. What's the story behind this lecture? - Yeah, yeah.

So first of all, thanks for looking this up to begin with, you know, we're always looking for ways to bring in people to the, the lectures we do. And I think, you know, some people are going to see the podcast and go, this is not lab medicine, or at least not normal lab medicine. So, so yeah, every year we have a forensic science symposium that Mayo Clinic puts on. This would be our ninth annual one. And most years it's kind of a popery of topics that goes, you know, runs the whole spectrum.

And we have some of our consultants who are lecturing, we bring in guest lecturers. And this year we're trying something a little different by having a little bit of a theme, or at least part of our schedule is themed. And so this year, part of our theme is just simply focusing on firearms and firearm injuries.

So we have Dr. Lehman coming in to talk about the basics of firearms because there are a lot of people in, especially in our field, who might be comfortable with medicine and injuries, but they don't really understand firearms themselves. So Dr. Lehman's gonna talk about that. We have a visitor who is one of my former fellows back in Dallas, Chris Pulos, who is a firearms expert on top of being a medical examiner.

And so he's going to talk a little bit about unusual ammunition and things like that. So we'll talk a little bit about injuries, a little bit about firearms. And so one of the other things we always include is usually something kind of historical, something different, you know, just to mix up the topics. And so I thought it would be fun to kind of still stay within the realm of firearms, but to talk about an illusion called the bullet catch.

And if anybody saw any of the older podcasts that you and I did, then they would know that I also have, besides my focus in forensic pathology, is a focus in magic and sleigh of hand. And so this is an entire topic talking about the forensic, a aspects of magic, mostly stage illusions focusing in particular on this one illusion called the bullet catch. - So I'm kind of curious, right?

A lot of times when I, and I've been in these groups that are organizing meetings, and certainly from a student point of view, there's always often a, a focus on what's the latest thing coming out, what's, what's the bleeding edge of, of clinical medicine. It seems a little bit, I don't know, is it, is it brave to, to make a, a section based on this historic aspect? Or how do you see that? - Yeah, well, so there's a couple of reasons to, to sort of go backwards instead of forwards.

Sometimes the number one thing, I mean, just looking at it from the standpoint of putting on either a one day or multi-day conferences, you kinda wanna mix topics up a little bit. So always having the newest cutting edge thing is, is, you know, important in some ways, but you know, you like to have sort of the highs and lows in between and just kind of mix up the focus. So that's part of the intent here is to kind of give somebody just a different perspective on what we're talking about.

But also I, I think we can all agree that, that, you know, hi, history is so important to what we do for a lot of reasons, particularly looking at the Mayo Clinic and its own history in pathology. For instance, anybody who comes here is going to say, why do you do frozen sections that way? Well, there's a very distinct history behind how the frozen section was developed and how those stains were developed and everything that is unique to our program, and it's an important part of our program.

So kind of understanding that background is, is sort of important to understanding the bleeding edge that we're doing now. You know, so I think that sometimes it's just sort of that stepping back and going, this is why we do this this way. You know, also sometimes just understanding what the history it is, is in something you don't repeat past mistakes. You understand how you came to this position and why these other options in the past didn't work.

So I think it, it's important to look at those things. And then finally, just sometimes backing off and doing a historical thing is just memorable. In forensic pathology in particular, we always joke that if you get more than one forensic pathologist in a

room, they're just going to sit there all day and try to one up each other on, you know, cases. Oh, there was this one case I had back, you know, at this time, and he had this, and oh, well I had one that had this. And you see that constantly in what we do. And I think those cases, those past cases are so memorable.

So when I'm sitting down with a trainee and we're going through a new case and I start telling the story about, okay, I had this case back then and it turned out to be this, and that's what this is reminding us, reminding me of, so let's look at that. And I think that creates sort of that, that memory link for the resident. - I think that the bullet is definitely, that's a tough one to one up maybe for our audience.

Is there, you know, I, I appreciate you might abbreviate it to some extent, but can you kind of tell us what's the story of, of the, the bullet catch as an illusion in the field? - Sure. So, you know, being in my field in forensic pathology and also enjoying magic and magicians and what they do, one of the things early on that I noticed was there's this bizarre correlation with magic tricks on stage and violence. I mean, you can go all the way back to what we talk about.

I think anybody who talks about stage illusions at some point is gonna refer to sawing a lady in half, right? But then if you go down the list of, of magic effects on stage, there's decapitations, mation spikes, saws, water torture cells, I mean like a million different things that are these deadly illusions.

And the bullet catch was one of those, the bullet catch it, it can be several different things, but in essence the effect is on stage the performer catches a bullet fired by someone else or by a group of people or what have you. Now some of those are illusions, some of those are not. So if you watch more modern things like David Blaine's special and things like that, there are some people who have legitimately performed a bullet catch and then don't do it again after that.

But, but the bullet catch classically was this idea of the performer is going to catch a bullet, and it might be in the mouth, it might be in, in a pan or, or on a dish or something like that. So the, the most famous version of this, and the reason we talk about the bullet catch in particular, is because the most magicians have died doing this illusion compared to any other illusion. So this is the most deadly illusion and, you know, makes sense. But the most famous example of this was in 1918.

So there was a performer, his real name was William Robinson, but he went by Chung Ling Sue. And at that time there was this big sort of emergence of magician performers coming from the east. So they had kind of this orient, you know, style to them, and it was, it, it was the big rage at the time. And, and Robinson actually was not that successful of a magician. And so he changed his entire persona and essentially, you know, appropriated this Chung Ling zu persona.

So he would actually show up, he had a interpreter and would literally just speak gibberish and, and passed off as a Chinese performer for his entire career and was incredibly successful. But he had his signature piece was this stage performance called condemned by the boxers.

And essentially it was him standing in front of a firing squad of multiple people and they would fire their rifles at him and he would have a dish that he would hold up and essentially capture the bullets in this dish, and he would come out unscathed. That was the effect, unfortunately for him. One night, the, the trick went wrong.

There's still a lot of debate over exactly exactly how that occurred, but they fired. And for the first time in his entire career, he spoke English on stage and said, oh my God, something happened. Drop the, you know, drop the curtain. And that was the only time the public ever heard him speak English. They didn't know he could speak English. And essentially he was shot in the chest and, and passed away. So there's been a lot of interesting stories about how did that occur.

I mean, the, the main idea is that there was essentially a malfunction with the, the rifle that was used. But of course the stories, you know, that was it somehow like an assassination attempt by someone else who was offended by his appropriation of this other character? Was it, I it sounded at, I think there was a history at some point of some strife between him and his ex-wife, and so did she set it up. So there were all these rumors and stories that abounded from that.

- I gotcha. You know, I, I'm fascinated about this. You certainly caught my attention with this. And so you've told us the story, you've told us about how the, you know, history is sometimes some of our best teachers, right? The way it can stick something in our mind. I was wondering if we could kind of take two steps back from your actual lecture, the, the bullet catch and for the audience, so you know, faculty, young faculty in various positions, students.

I'm kind of curious about like your approach to storytelling. And I realize I'm saying this to somebody who's a card carrying magician. So I think you have a very deliberate, and, and probably, you know, you have a keen sense of what story is and how to go about it. How might our audience think about setting up and telling a story in a presentation for maximizing that learning? - That's a great question. I mean, because presentational skills are something that we have to develop over time.

And, and I think so many of us, I don't know about you, but you know, we've all heard the stories about how pathologists are such introverts and you know, we just, you know, stare at our shoes and mumble under our breath to people and just look under the scope. And obviously that's not always the case, but I, I mean, I know when I was young, I, I was just like anybody else, I, you know, was ab absolutely terrified of speaking in public.

I think the first couple of times that I spoke at national conferences in, you know,

med school or residency or whatever, I was a basket case like anybody else. But I, I think that actually again, we can use some of the lessons from stagecraft to kind of help us out here. So magicians, even the best magicians script, what they do, you know, a lot of people think that their conversation on stage is just very off the cuff, you know, just sort of natural and organic and they just came up with this on the spot.

And yet if you watch them in the performance the next night and the night after and the night after, you realize that every beat of what they're saying is perfectly scripted. And so I, I think for us going, you know, applying that to what we do, you know, scripting is important. It's trying to determine if you're gonna tell a story, what are the important things, what are the things that you need to cut out?

How can I, the, the one approach that I think we use a lot is you write your script, and this could be for a talk, it could be for a stage presentation or whatever, and then you look at it and you constantly go, how can I say the same thing in less words and get that across. Now granted, for some of our topics in pathology, when we're talking very specific scientific research or what have you, you need more words.

But is there a way to kind of streamline that, to focus what you really want to get across - It? It, I think this is awesome for our audience to hear, right? Because it's, you're highlighting these presentation skills, so practicing this. So every time we get asked to give a talk, look at this as a practice opportunity, this idea of scripting, this is something else that I think falls by the wayside, especially in training as people get busy, right?

That they kind of put something together really quick at the last minute. But that doesn't really help us develop those skills. Like maybe that helps develop improv skills, but not necessarily like the presentation skills. Like, I think that we want, you know, in your role as program director, I'm, I'm expecting that you're probably, I know use Cap is coming up, you're wanting your residents to be able to stand up at use Cap and, and really articulate Well, - Yeah, absolutely.

And if you think about it, the, we have all this amazing technology that we use, you know, PowerPoint and, you know, all these things have completely changed the way we gave presentations a generation ago. I came in at the very, very tail end when I was a very young resident of literally showing up to a conference with a carousel of 35 millimeter slides. And what that did was you had to be committed to that talk.

You couldn't just put it together one hour before you got on stage like a lot of people do now. So you had more time to really, really think about, you know, I have to put together my talk, know what's important, and then go print the slides, the physical slides, and that's what you would take with you. So yeah, I think the technology today has really made it so easy for us to put things together last minute that we do lose a little bit of that preparation that we should be doing sometimes.

- And, and something I'm struck by sometimes in training programs, I know in ours, our residents might give a presentation in, in one area of practice. I know when they rotate in transfusion medicine, they'll, they'll give talks, but then they might be giving that same talk in another forum at another time. And so it kind of provides that opportunity for trainees

to kind of rework yes. What their talk was. And I guess if you sort of put your mind, you know, somebody who's a particularly strong trainee and say that they're gonna be giving a talk again, I imagine somebody who's generally a strong trainee might just say, okay, I, I, I gave the talk. You know, people generally like my talks, they're just gonna go and, and give that again.

But, you know, as far as wisdom for our audience, what would you say as advice for somebody who's gonna go and give that talk again, how to improve it? - Yeah. I, I mean, I think every time you give it, you're gonna get a little bit more comfortable with it. The irony is sometimes the more you give a talk, the worse you get because you get a little bit too relaxed and you start to forget some of the nuances that you wanted to get across the first time.

But, you know, I think that a trainee, if they have the opportunity to practice, like let's say they're going to use cap in presenting, if they have the opportunity to present to us as faculty first, that's always a really nice way to start, because we may have additional comments, questions, or whatever that they never thought of that they can then still have time to incorporate into their talk.

But as far as giving a talk over and over, I think the important thing is if there's some way to freshen it, modify it, spin it a little different, that's always important. You know, for instance, this talk that we're talking about, I gave a similar talk at the last name meeting in October, but it was a, a fundraising event for the foundation, which was a two hour event. And so, you know, I don't have the same amount of time for this one, so this is gonna be a lot more streamlined and concise.

But the other one had opportunities for me to chat a little bit more about other types of, you know, magic tricks and deaths that were associated with that. And, and you know, so every time you, you kind of try to take a little bit different of a spin. So for this one in particular, it fit very well because I'm going, okay, this theme for this part of the conference is specifically about firearms, so let's really hone in on that.

- And just to say that Dr. Quentin is somebody that, that isn't just talking the talk, but he walks the walk in preparation. I was up in his audio in his office and saw him, you know, he had pulled up in his working on tweaking and fine tuning this talk again.

So I, I think this has been wonderful for us to kind of take a little bit of delight to talk about the bullet catch to learn that it was, it's the most deadly illusion that's, that's been performed at least to date, but also to take a step back and like, you know, for all of our audience, how can we become better storytellers, whether we're teaching colleagues or trainees or if trainees want to get better for their future positions as far as presentations,

I think this has been immensely helpful with your advice and I'm really grateful that you were rounding with us today. - I'm always happy to be here. It's, it's always been a pleasure. - Ed, you know, to our audience, thank you for for joining us today. We're gonna have in the show notes a link to this conference that Dr. Quinton was talking about and be presenting at. We invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions via email at mcl [email protected].

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. And then until our next rounds together, we encourage you to continue to connect lab medicine and the clinical practice through educational conversations.