Pandemics Do Not Exist (Health)

[Ishmael]

Nope.

[Hatty]

I noticed that Doc Holiday was, among other things, a dentist. Is the use of toothpaste connected to the TB and polio viruses?

[Ishmael]

Not to my way of thinking. His occupation as a Dentist, to me, immediately identified him as middle class or upper-middle class. That's what I took as significant. He can afford things poor people can't.

[Mick Harper]

[Ishmael]

Interesting!

[Ishmael]

About three days ago it was that I lay in my bed pondering this question of the origins of TB and Polio. I immediately thought of Doc Holiday and Franklin Rosevelt.

What do these two people have in common?

Relative prosperity. I think to myself.

Ok. And, according to me, TB emerges in the population late 19th century with Polio to follow on quickly as a kind of echo. Both diseases die out about the same time.

So, I imagine then, that I am looking for an innovation of the mid to late 19th century that gained widespread use at the time, particularly among the relatively well-to-do before being adopted wholesale by the wider population. An innovation that might have the power to create or spread desease.

Have you got it yet?

I got it in five seconds.

[Ishmael]

Ladies and gentlemen....



I present to you.....







THE INDOOR TOILET

[Mick Harper]

I was just about to not say that. What is it? Splash back? Legionnaire's in the tank?

[Grant]

Easy way to test this. Gypsies don’t like indoor toilets, preferring to do like the bears in the wood. Did Gypsies get TB?

[Ishmael]

The pipes leaked, contaminating the drinking water.

For thousands of years people shit outside the home. They understood where to locate latrines in relation to the homes and the water supply.

When shitters were brought inside the home, the houses weren't redesigned. Indeed, the plumbing was run into existing homes in which toilet rooms were added. And while the septic tanks were still properly located, the pipes between the homes and the tanks were not.

TB and Polio disappeared with improvements in plumbing and sewage disposal.

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

Four years ago I guessed what caused the deaths of the Bronte family from a single clue:

The parsonage was paid for by the parish.

I knew immediately that their groundwater was contaminated. The parish would have purchased the cheapest lot of land available to give to their parson.

I was right.

As I would then learn, the Bronte home was situated immediately adjacent a graveyard.

Three years ago I guessed how Mary Jo Kopechne really died and who killed her. I needed only a single clue.

She left her handbag at the party.

From that alone, I knew she had died at the party. The behaviour of all those involved filled in the remaining details.

I think my intuition is pretty good. I think it has not failed me in this case either.

Toilets were the culprit.

[Mick Harper]

It's awful. I can't hold it in much longer.

[Ishmael]

You think the idea is awful?

[Grant]

It’s an interesting idea, but I’m serious about the Gypsies. You’d also have to explain why poor Indians still have a high rate of TB despite the widespread use of pig toilets and outdoor latrines. Hundreds of millions of Indians don’t have private toilets