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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

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A production of iHeartRadio,

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Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson

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and I'm Holly Frye. We

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talked about Sir Humphrey Davy all

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week. I

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would say, usually

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when we are talking about a

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poet whose poems

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are in the public domain, I

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will try to find a poem and we

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will have one in the episode. We

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have even done this with such people as

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Natalie Clifford Barney, who,

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in my personal opinion, I

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did not find her poetry

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to be great, but

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I did feel like it was. I mean, in French

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it's probably a lot better, but what she wrote

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in English I found to be like kind of it

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did not move me in the way that poetry

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generally does, but I felt

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like it was, you know, indicative of

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her, her life, and I still wanted

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to read some of it. We did not read

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any Humphrey Davy poems because

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while there are lots and lots of them that have

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been unearthed by this whole project

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to transcribe all of his journals,

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I did not go to confirm, like what

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the copyright status on any of

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that is generally

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stuff that is that old is

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not protected by copyright anymore.

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But when you get into something that is like somebody's

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journal that has been newly

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transcribed, sometimes the organization that

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is doing that transcription has some kind of rights

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over it. I don't know. But the

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other answer is the

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poems of his that I did find, they

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were all very long, even

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one that was printed as a fragment

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of a poem. That fragment still went

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on for pages. And

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I couldn't even find like a little

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snippet that I felt like could stand

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on its own and be fun

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to read and listen to. I

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personally just found it very

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ponderous, and I

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could not even make my mind focus

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on it. And I'm saying this as a person

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whose college degree was

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partially devoted to poetry.

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Well, I mean he wrote him while he was high,

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So like I,

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this is no surprise whatsoever to me. Yeah,

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some of them while he was high, and some of them while

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he was like in the lab stuck

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on whatever problem he was working on.

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So it was more like sort

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of trying to shift the brain gears

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a little bit. Yeah,

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that's why we don't have any Humphry Davy bombs.

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Oh, I borderline

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wonder if we were to exhum

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Humphrey Davy do

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a little testing how much B twelve depletion,

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we would find that had

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maybe caused some brain damage. That is one

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of the things that can happen with excessive

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nitrous oxide. Yep. Yeah,

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brain and nerve damage from B twelve depletion.

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Yeah, with chronic use. And it sounds like he

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got pretty cavalier about his use of it

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if he was just strolling about with his bag

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of g and enormous amounts

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of it. And that's really like

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a lot of the places where nitrous

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oxide is like illegal for

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recreational use today, That's like one of the things

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that has been cited is that like when

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it's not illegal, a lot of times it is fairly

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easily available. I

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don't want to get into the ways that people

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can extract it from things that are not meant

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to be consumed. It's like a whole other thing. But

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because it is sometimes readily

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available in places that it

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is not regulated, it's

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possible for people to

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inhale large amounts of it and inhale

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large amounts of it for a long time, and that can't

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have some pretty

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serious risks. Yeah,

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it's one of those things that, like in a medical use

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is the side effects

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tend to be things like a headache and maybe some nausea.

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But when somebody is using lots and lots of it,

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it is possible to nearly

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asphyxiate or asphyxiate yourself

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the way that Davy dearly

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did at some points. Yeah, it's interesting

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because if you read about nitrous oxide

4:44

use, one of

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the things that's always mentioned is

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that it is not addictive. Oh

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and I'm like, uh, maybe

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not chemically addicted, right, like your body

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doesn't need it, but clearly, I mean

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he even talked about people who didn't want to

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stop sucking in air during his demonstrations.

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It's like, it may not be chemically addictive, but that doesn't

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account for like the psychological like

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just drive and desire. People would have to

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continue using it, which

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is always one of those tricky things when talking

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about any kind of substance

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that alters your brain, right, Like, no, it's not addicted.

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I mean there was for a long time. Having

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being a person of a certain age, I

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remember a long period where there was

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a lot of discussion about how cocaine

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was not addictive, and it's

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like, but

5:37

people are addicted to it so like you're

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not factoring in something here. Yeah,

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yeah, yeah.

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It also makes me think about Kubla

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Khan. Yeah, you

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know, and I'm like, was

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Coleridge Hitten nitriss

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when he was because the whole thing is right

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about like there's this amazing thing

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I saw when I was asleep, but

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I could never describe it, although he describes

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it in the poem, So he's a lying liar

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who lies. But sure. I

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mean, I love my romantic poets, but I

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also recognize them as like project

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men. Yeah,

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and I'll just also like various

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romantic poets also were using other

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substances, yeah, to nitrous

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oxide, so yeah, but specifically

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that idea of seeing things in

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a sleeping state. I

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mean, it could I can also be attributed certainly

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to other things. But it did make me think about Kubla

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Khan in a different way, knowing that he

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too was playing in the nitrous

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oxide pond. Right, I'm

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free, David. Yeah.

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My thing with Roget's

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reaction, m right, I'm

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sure you have heard the thing. It

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comes up a lot in relation to like everything

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that can alter your mental space, from like

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you know, alcohol to cannabis to much

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harder drugs like whatever

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you walk into that experience with

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is just gonna get amplified. And

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I'm like, was Roget just a super anxious

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dude and so this whole

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thing just made him feel like I am out of

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control and he was just white knuckling through it.

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Totally possible, which is I mean,

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he kind of even a loose like I could get used

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to this. Yeah, but my initial

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reaction is that I don't like it. Yeah,

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that sounds like somebody who has had their

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anxiety highly triggered by being in this

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altered mental state. Mm hmm. Yeah,

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let's let's keep doing more experiments. Guys.

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I'm just gonna walk around town, hang out

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back. Yeah.

7:53

My other thing is about Frankenstein, okay,

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which is not even it has nothing to do with every dating,

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okay, but it is that I love

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every time we mentioned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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because to me, more

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than I won't say

8:09

all other but many other works of literature

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and history, that is clearly

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one of the most important, not

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just because of its like reputation

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as like a you know, a key pillar

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of Gothic literature or whatever, but

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because we can't stop engaging

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with it as a culture. Do you know what I mean, Like,

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there is another Frankenstein movie coming

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out next year, ye, with Oscar

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Isaac as Doctor Frankenstein. Can't wait, can't wait wait?

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Okay yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks very

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good. But like we love that

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story as humans

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as a piece of entertainment, and so it

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just makes me think about

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how sort of seminal it is in

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terms of like hitting a chord with

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everyone subconscious that the idea

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of creating a living

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being from dead things and

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what that'sicology is. We're

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fixated on whether we know that or not. Yeah,

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I love it. Yeah.

9:07

I have an embarrassing story about Frankenstein

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relating to my years of college. Okay,

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great. There was one year when

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I was in college where I had two different courses

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that each involved reading Frankenstein, and

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I think one of them was maybe humanities and

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the other was a literature course. And

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I wrote a paper for my literature course in

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which I don't remember exactly

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what my argument was, but I was entirely

9:33

focused on that frame story

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in Frankenstein. Oh,

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I never actually read Frankenstein. There is a frame

9:40

story. Oh yeah, yeah right. I'm

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saying that to listeners who may not I'm sure you

9:44

know it well now I'm thinking of Elsa

9:46

Lanchester, so you know, keep going. So

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I don't remember exactly what my argument

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was, but I had a whole argument about

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just the frame story part I

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turned in for my literature class, and

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I got a

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B on it, in which

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my professor, as his

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note, said that my

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paper was very well argued

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and very well substantiated, but

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he just disagreed with my conclusion.

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And I was so livid about this that

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I went to the department head, Oh my

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goodness, in

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part because it was, I think this

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was my junior year, and so I had stuff

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that I was like attempting to

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get on the path of going to grad

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school, and like this

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be on this paper was going to mess up

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my grade, and it was going to mess up my GPA,

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and it was going to mess up everything with my ambitions

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toward getting

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an advanced degree, which I never did. And

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that's one of the things that I look back on now and

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I just kind of think about what an arrogant, pretentious

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person I was when I was twenty.

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I mean, who wasn't who was?

10:59

We all were? We all were one

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thing. Another sort of side note

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that jumped out at me in this episode is when

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we were talking about the pneumatic Institute

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or institution, I don't remember which it was called. We

11:11

might have called it both in the episode, and

11:13

how it was in hot wells, and how in hot wells there

11:15

were baths that people went to, but there you also

11:18

drank the waters, which

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I think that like not everyone because

11:23

when you think of a place called bath,

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you're thinking of bathing, probably,

11:30

but a lot of times these places that had baths

11:32

also taking the waters involved

11:35

drinking the waters, right, not

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just having the various bathing type

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spa stuff that also happened

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a lot of the time. And it reminded

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me of how when we were in Italy a

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couple of years ago and we

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stayed at a little town called Monticatini

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Cheremi and

11:56

Patrick and I stayed there after every the

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trip had concluded, most people had gone home,

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and he and I stayed there an extra day

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to just sort of have a decompression day

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before we went on to have a little trip to Venice

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before we went back home. And

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there was a place that you could go and

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pay a couple of euro to walk around

12:16

that had been a spa

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and the buildings. A

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lot of them were like these neoclassical buildings,

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and it just seemed like an interesting place to walk around.

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And it also had been a place

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where people drank

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the waters from these hot springs,

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and you still could.

12:40

They had little cups and

12:42

they had little spigots that you could turn

12:44

on and drink the water. And I was like, no,

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thanks, because

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what I am not interested in doing

12:54

is accidentally giving myself

12:56

some kind of gi situation right

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on this last

13:02

three days in Europe,

13:05

planning to go have a nice couple of days in Venice,

13:09

and now I'm kind of like, should I have tried the

13:11

water? Well? I mean to be

13:13

clear, so no one thinks Tracy

13:15

was being, you know, overly

13:17

cautious. We had two people in

13:19

our group who had gotten horrible they

13:22

got stomach issues. Yeah,

13:24

yeah, and so I think we were all on kind of high

13:26

alert about what we consumed after

13:28

that. Yeah. Well, and it was also during

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the era of COVID where

13:33

you had to pass a

13:35

COVID test, yeah, to get back

13:37

into the United States. I am not in any way

13:40

suggesting you can get COVID from drinking

13:42

water. I'm just saying, like we

13:44

were all hyper conscious of

13:47

everything, everything health

13:49

related. Yes, so

13:51

yeah. By the way,

13:55

before we go any further, I feel like I have done a

13:57

disservice in talking about

13:59

next year's Frank and Stein movie, okay,

14:01

because I did not mention, okay, that it is adapted

14:03

and directed by Geirma del Toro. Okay, this

14:06

is exciting. I'm I mean, I will

14:08

buy all the tickets. I will go every day.

14:12

That's like going. It's made of all your favorite

14:14

things, like more, yes, please, I'm

14:17

on board with this whole thing. So

14:20

yeah, I really did

14:22

think that we were going to have a one part episode that

14:24

was going to be primarily about Humphrey

14:26

Davy and his nitrous oxide self

14:29

experimentation. And

14:31

then I was like, but this whole thing with

14:34

the miners lamp and the fighting

14:36

about I was

14:38

like, we need to talk about that too. And he had all

14:40

these notable things later in his career and

14:42

then oh, kind of ending on a downer note

14:44

of having several like non successes

14:47

after you know, the

14:49

first half of the first half of his life being

14:51

like, man, this person is a chemistry genius

14:56

well, and he is involved

14:58

in embroiled in so much drama

15:00

at the end of his life, and I find myself

15:02

wondering because you did the research on this and I did

15:05

not, and most of the research, it seems like, suggested

15:07

that he could be a pill. But I'm

15:09

also like, was everybody kind of

15:11

a pill at this point because they all thought like they

15:14

were doing the most at

15:17

a time when, like they're everything

15:19

was new, I mean not everything, but a lot of

15:21

things were very new and so

15:25

science drama. Yeah, yeah,

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So I think tomorrow is

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the day that the Horace Wells Gas War

15:33

classic episode will be out about

15:36

how people did start using nitrous

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oxide

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for like anesthesia

15:43

purposes for dental procedures, and

15:47

then we'll have a brand new episode

15:49

on Monday. What that's about, I don't know. I

15:51

haven't looked at the calendar. We'll be back

15:53

though. Drop us a

15:56

note if you'd like history podcasts at iHeartRadio

15:58

dot com and otherwise we will talk

16:00

to you again, Soude.

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