The Talking Dead

Published Sep 29, 2022, 9:00 AM

Some academicsThe Talking Dead discover groundbreaking concepts, while others become them. Today's tour should explain exactly what we mean.

Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. We've all been there, those days when we wake up too early and barely function on a few hours of sleep. We pump ourselves full of coffee, but it's never enough, and so we shamble through the workday like zombies. It's unknown whether French neurologist Jules Qatard was a morning person or not, but he certainly understood what it was like to feel like the walking dead. He observed it firsthand. Qatard, born in France It's in eighteen forty, started his medical career at the Pier Sulpetriar University Hospital, where he interned later on as a full fledged doctor. He took a strong interest in those who suffered from cerebral vascular accidents otherwise known as strokes. He wanted to know more about the effects on the brain, so he would often perform autopsies on those who had died because of them. But in eighteen eighty two, a woman walked into his office with something new, something different, something strange. She was only ever known as Mademoiselle X, and on that day she rattled off a list of symptoms for doctor Quitard. She claimed, as hard as it is to believe to have nobody, an odd admission that probably sounded like a joke at first, but she was completely serious. According to Mademoiselle X, she had no nerves, stomach, chest, or bowels, not even a brain. She was literally nothing but skin and bones. Now, clearly doctor Coutard could see that something about the woman was not right, but it wasn't the symptoms she listed off. She was all there physically, All the body parts that she claimed to be lacking were still intact. Her mental faculties, however, had taken a nose dive. Mademoiselle X went on claiming to have no soul and that without any internal organs to process her food, she had stopped eating. There was no God, no devil, and believed that she was immortal. She was convinced that she could not die, at least not by natural means. In order to kill her, she said she would need to be set on fire. Qatard, fascinated by the patient's claims, turned to his medical texts for help. He found that another woman about a hundred years earlier had been examined by a Swiss scientist named Charles Bonnet, who had recorded symptoms almost exactly like these endured by Mademoiselle X. This other woman had been cooking at home when she suddenly lost feeling in one half of her body. She had become partially paralyzed. Eventually, the paralysis subsided a bit, and the woman was able to explain to her daughter's the situation. She was now dead and had to be dressed in a shroud and put into a coffin. The daughters did as they were told and laid her to rest until she fell asleep. Once the ruse was over, they took off the shroud and put her back in her own bed. Clearly their mother was sick. There had actually been a number of cases over the years where people believe that they were dead, and Cotard believed that it was a previously undiagnosed form of depression that he called hypochondria, called delirium. Those who suffered from it were often sad, shut down, mentally, didn't feel pain, believed they had no internal organs, and thought that they would actually live forever unless forcibly killed. Today, however, the syndrome has a new name, derived from the man who discovered it. It's called Qatard's delusion, and it's believed to be caused by neural misfirings in the part of the brain that recognizes and reacts two faces. It's similar to capgrad delusion, which makes people think that their loved ones have been replaced with impostors. Cotard's delusion occurs in patients who don't recognize their own faces and insist that the people they are or were don't exist anymore. It's a rare condition, affecting about two people worldwide, and is typically treated with a variety of medications like antidepressants and anti psychotics. However, pills don't always work, and electro convulsion or shock therapy is sometimes needed. As for Mademoiselle X, there were no pills for her to swallow, nor was she subjected to any kind of therapy. She eventually passed away, but not from fire. Sadly, she started to death. Doctor Jules Quatard went into medicine to understand the human brain. What he found was one of the rarest and strangest symptoms ever recorded. The truly dead may not have been able to speak for themselves, but for Qatard, the undead certainly had a lot to say. William never set out to become a legend, yet that's exactly what he became later in life. Though many don't know his name today, they're familiar with the character he inspired, but we'll get to that later. William was born in New York City in eighteen nineties seven. To Janets and Felix, travel was practically built into their DNA, with Janet whisking a young William off to Mexico to witness an ongoing revolution when he was only six weeks old. Though he was born in New York, William spent many years growing up in Asia. He attended the Buddhist monastery of Nishi hang Ganji in Kyoto and graduated as a Doctor of Divinity. From there, he traveled to Paris and Germany for additional schooling at the Sorbonne and University of Berlin, respectively. William was practically a professional student, eventually getting his doctorates in philosophy from christ Church, Oxford in nineteen twenty two, which he paid for by teaching Chinese at the University of London. During his time there, the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland asked the school to send an academic mission to the capital of Tibet, Lassa. At the time, permission had to be granted to Westerners looking to visit, permission that was often denied. William and the mission were sent with several specific goals. First, to sit with His Holiness the Dali Lama and explain to him how Buddhism was being taught in the West. Second, William and his team were to get filmed footage of Tibet, specifically of the city's great Cathedral. Though the trip had been approved by the school, the Tibetan government had other ideas. Neither William nor the mission would be allowed into Lassa. He tried three different times to convince them to let him in, either alone or with one other colleague, but each time he was met with the resounding no. William, however, refused to take no for an answer. Rather than turn around and head home, he went deep undercover. According to a Time magazine article from ninety eight, it said that he stood naked while a companion covered his body with brown stain and squirted lemon juice into his blue eyes to darken them. William you see, disguised himself as a Tibetan cooley or low status worker, and paid a few locals to help him over the mountains to the forbidden city. He overcame a snowstorm, dysenterry, leeches, and mosquitoes, finally reached Lasa in February of n Once there, he alerted the Tibetan authorities of his arrival, and they agreed to furnish him with lodgings and keep his identity under wraps. Unfortunately, a mob of monks discovered who he was and began stoning his house. William snuck out, clad in his disguise and joined the throng of monks attacking his home. He lasted six weeks there before he was finally forced to leave. Back in London, it was clear that William had kicked off an international incident, with the school's India office in constant communication with William himself. After much back and forth, William resigned from teaching and took a job with the Chicago Times to become their Far East correspondent. He then went on served during World War Two as a naval officer and put his knowledge of the Japanese language to good use. But war was no place for an academic like William. Once the fighting had ended, he returned to his first love, teaching, and lectured all over the United States. He taught at Harvard, gave talks at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and even spoke at various military colleges across the country. He finally settled down at Northwestern University, where he taught political science for the remainder of his life. Williams soon learned that even the most boring classes would fill up quickly if students wanted to learn from certain teachers. William had become something of a celebrity, you see, due to his questionable antics when he was younger. Students wanted to hear his stories and learned from the man who had snuck into places he wasn't meant to go all in the name of knowledge. They registered in droves, filling up his classes each and every semester. Had William been right in forcing his way into Tibet and most likely not, but that had been typical of Americans and Europeans for centuries. Williams actions did, however, go on to inspire his students and Hollywood as well. The story of a swashbuckling professor traveling to ancient cities and even taking on the Nazis sounds like just the kind of character to enthrall movie audiences, and he did when he debuted in nine Raiders of the Lost Dark. William Montgomery McGovern had been one of the key influences in the creation of everyone's favorite fictional archaeologist, Indiana Jones. 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. Yeah h

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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