Tracy and Holly talk about Charles Drew’s marriage and the impact of the early HIV/AIDS crisis on blood donation. They also discuss all the aspects of the Chatterley story that didn’t make it into the episode.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy P. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We talked about Charles Drew and Blood Banks this week, and it was the episode that we had to take the most composing ourselves breaks in a long time. I think, yes, it's for both of us. Yeah, the whole last portion. I mean, I feel like I haven't enough to take breaks because I get emotional. But um, yeah, that one was a lot of like read a paragraph, we both wait a minute. Yeah. Um. One of the things I originally had in the outline that I wound up taking out was that one of the reasons there were so many doctors who had trained at Howard who were living in Winston Salem was a hospital called Kate B. Reynolds Memorial Hospital, which was nicknamed the Katib at the time that this happened. This was one of the biggest hospitals for black patients in the United States, and it was also home to a nursing school for black nurses. UM. Winston Salem was the closest city to where I grew up. I did not know that this ever existed. It closed a couple of years before I was born, and as I was sort of trying to track, I was like, why, like why were there so many like specifically how to like where were people practicing Winston Salem? And I found out about the KATIB and I got a little choked up about it. I was like, I think this is something I feel like I should have learned as somebody whose entire K through twelve education happened in the Winston Salem for scythe County school system. Well, but you know, I didn't know until just now. Another thing that came up as a parallel um was there was that passage that Charles Drew had written a letter to one of his his former coaches where he was talking about how there wasn't like a surgical tradition at Howard training Black surgeons, And it reminded me of our episode on Vivian Thomas UM, who if you do not recall, Vivian Thomas was an enormous part of developing a surgical treatment for a condition called te Trilogy of Fellow And UH did that um under a white surgeon. He was a surgical technician, and so we had a conversation in that about how uh Dr Blaylock, who he had been working under, was like had had some regrets that he had not sent Vivian Thomas to medical school, but if he had, what his likely role would have been as a doctor, which probably would have been UM, practicing in a hospital or a private practice or whatever with black patients. Um, which was like really the same point that Charles Street was making. M. Vivian Thomas's work was like just a few years after that, not long after that at all. But it's still sort of an example of how few opportunities there were for black doctors and surgeons to like make groundbreaking discoveries in the world of medicine because of the systems of racism that were in place, and even if they made them, they couldn't move forward in their careers, right right, Also, obviously there are still huge healthcare disparities along racial lines today. That is not something that has disappeared. Did not solve that. No, I um have a thing in this episode for which I'm deeply thankful, okay, which is to have another instance of a couple who got married very quickly, it seemed very happy. Yeah, well, there we didn't get into this, but there were some things about their relationship that did seem to be a little challenging. Like one of the things he really seemed to like about her was that he was really passionate and she was really grounded, and so it felt like she sort of anchored him in some ways. But that also seems to have sometimes led him to feel like he didn't have the kind of passionate connection like. So, like, there were some ways that I think their relationship was sometimes difficult, and the fact that he was at work so much and was separated from them so often, UM and then tragically died at just such an early age where their children were all still really little. Just as a married my person very quickly person. I'm happy for any instance where that doesn't turn into and then the whole thing collapsed in a crunchy pile of flames. Because people shouldn't do that. I Like, sometimes they should write right, sometimes they should m h um, Just just a personal note of appreciation on that one. You talked at the end of the episode about um the issues around HIV and blood donation. Yeah, I didn't know if you wanted to expound on that any further. Yeah, Like, so I don't. You and I both lived through the AIDS crisis, and I think that that folks who were not born yet might not have a sense of like how scary it was, UM and how there was a period of time when there wasn't there was no way to test donated blood for HIV, and there were people who went to get a surgery and got it necessary blood transfusion and contracted HIV through that transfusion. UM. And so in that environment where like there wasn't a way to test, and people knew that it like disproportionately was affecting men who had sex with men, Like I don't know that there would have been another way in that moment to have tried to protect the blood supply. But then tests did become available, and it became clear like that there is a brief window where a person could transmit HIV through their blood but like not show up on a test yet. But that window is it's not an entire life, Like the lifetime band no longer made any sense at all. And then even when it was reduced to a year, that's like still a year was like way longer than the testing seems to back up. And then like now it is three months, and that is something that started during the COVID pandemic. All of this is only related to the United States. I have no idea how the source any world. And even then, it just it felt like the f d A was saying, we're desperate for blood, so I guess we'll take your blood now, um, when really what should have happened is years and years and years ago. Some studies to figure out like what are the right questions to ask individual people, not to make a whole blanket statement of uh. And then also like like what's the actual time period where a person might have been exposed to HIV but not have it show up on a test yet. I've been trying to donate blood regularly. I'm not doing it quite as regularly as my goal is to do. I just there will be times where I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna make it to the to the donation drive to like this, I have to reschedule it sometimes. But like the number of questions that are asked now is I remember the first time I ever gave blood. I feel like there were three questions that they were questions that pertains to I think like HIV hepatitis and maybe a third thing. Um. Now, it is a very long list of questions that involves, uh, like your sexual history and whether you've gotten tattoos recently in your travel history, whether you have lived in the UK during the period when when mad cow diseases have like a it's a very very long list of stuff. I don't you ever seem to get to donate blood. They always do the spin and go, you're an emic, and I'm like, I don't feel like and then that's the end. One of the times I had there was a time I was gonna go. The very first question that you are asked when you're going to donate blood is are you feeling well today? And there was one day where that answer was no, and so I rescheduled it. Uh. And then the day that I rescheduled it, I got there and my pulse rate was too rapid and they'll check it a second time. I'll give you a few minutes to kind of chill out, just check check it a second time, and they were like, your pulse is still a hundred and two and any I don't know what was up with me that day. So I had to defer that day too. I got sent home and like, so that kind of stuff has cost me to to have to defer a couple of times. Um, there have been h for a while. If you had been to Haiti at all, even if you were on like a cruise ship docked at the the private island that you never got off of, you had to defer. I think that has loosened up a little bit. But that's like a malaria risk. Um. Anyway, this study that's happening right now to try to figure out actual questions to ask instead of having this blanket discriminatory band. It's called the Advanced Study. They have recruited all their participants for it. I think they're expecting to have the results of it by the end of the year. Um, and I am hopeful that the result will be like actual questions about people's behaviors to ask it really do quantify an individual person's risk instead of it being like no one who has had sex with another man, like a man who's had sex with another man, or had sex with a man who's had sex with a man in the last three months, Just what is right now? Yeah, I'll probably be disqualified for a while because of tattoos. Yeah, the tattoo requirements are a little bit looser than they were some years ago, because now there's stuff that has to do with whether the state regulates the tattoo parlors. That's how I learned. Massachusetts, a state that regulates a lot of stuff, apparently doesn't regulate regulate our tattoo parlors in a way that the FDA finds sufficient for blood donation. Right now, I'm, you know, trying to get lots of work done and finished up on my tattoos, so I'm kind of there once a month at least, So I don't know when I will you to try to give blood again and be told once more that I am. I one time didn't even get to the spin because they were like, your blood pressure is way too low. Oh yeah, I don't think that would be the case now because I've put on some weight and I'm a little older. But at the time it was like one of those um, yeah, you will turn into a limp rag if we try to take blood anyway. So yeah, we've talked about my hypertension journey on the show. My my blood pressure is doing pretty well right now. It is mostly in the normal range with medication. Um but when there's an app, you can look back at your donation history, and there's a couple of times where I'm like, I wish they had said, hey, you maybe should talk to your doctor about this blood pressure because this is a little well uh, but they didn't. I don't know if there's a rule about how high your blood pressure can be to donate blood, but if your pulses over a hundred, they will tell you to go anyway. Um, fingers crossed that we get to a more reasonable, not discriminatory policy that is about actual risk factors and not like a broad ban on people based on their sexual orientation. We talked about Lady Chatterley's Lover. This week. We did a book I'm pretty sure I've never read. I've read it, but I'll confess to you I get my wires crossed over things that happened in Lady Chatterly's Lover and things that happened in Madame Bovary. And I have definitely read Madame Bovary in one of my literature classes in college. Uh, And we had we had a number of required readings in that class that had to do with people being unhappy and unfulfilled in their relationships. Yeah, there's a lot of crossover between those two. Yeah, and as a consequence, I get very confused. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if you've ever read a plot summary of Lady Chatterly, But their first sexual encounter happens in the forest on the floor, and there's an event in Madame Bovary that happens in a carriage, and I get those two switched every time. Yeah, that I remember the carriage scene. Which one is in which book? One of these that I remember discussing in class. Also, I read that book and I read Bovery in high school, and then when I was in college, my high school English teacher asked if I would like to guest lecture on it for her class she had then, which was fun and made me realize teaching is hard. I have so many side notes for today that I should probably be slightly judicious about them. Um, this one isn't really a thing that's worth a lot of discussion, but it's a fun trivia point. We mentioned in the episode that an Enjoyable Christmas a Prelude was D. H. Lawrence's first published work, and he got to publish that as part of a contest that he had won. But the thing was he had entered multiple times, and so he had used a different name for that one, and it published not under his name but as his dear friend Jesse Chambers. Um. Although people soon realized that D. H. Lawrence was the true author, like, they didn't try to hide it once it was published. But it just makes me a little tickled that his first published work wasn't actually under his own name. That's funny. Um. Something that jumped out at me that I did not realize. It didn't click with me, uh when I was reading the outline ahead of time. It only clicked with me in the studio. Um during the trial, when the prosecution was like would you want your wife to be reading this? I assumed that the jurors were all male, because like there was a long time when the jurors would have been on all mail. And so it wasn't until we got to the part about the dedication on the like the next edition of the book that that mentioned the men and women on the jury, and I was like the guy was standing up there being like would you want your wife reading this in front of Like it just added another layer of gross to me. So I will tell you that I had the same journey of discovery while doing the research, and I left it purposely ambiguous in the thing because to me it is kind of a punch of like, oh Lord that bands a jerk at the end. I love this. I love this. I'm glad we've had this conversation. Yeah, there's an interesting thing. We mentioned his ashes being moved from France to Taos, And now if you go to Taos, tause loves their d. H. Lawrence. He didn't live there very long, but they really love d. H. Lawrence. Um. And they have like entire um, like very beautiful spaces dedicated to him. In the chapel where his ashes are is still there, except there are a lot of people that think his ashes aren't in there. Um. So there's a d. H. Lawrence scholar named Emile de la Verna, and he wrote a paper not that long ago, but the case was made that when the ashes were being brought back over, it was discovered that they were going to have to pay taxes on them, and that without telling Frieda, her lover her at the time not yet her next husband, um head instead spread them in the Mediterranean and then put dust and some earth in the the Urn and that that is in fact with sin Taos and he has a whole supporting thing around that. UM. I will and make sure I include that in the show notes. If you want to go read that paper, it's available on j Store, but you do have to be logged in to see it. Uh. It's just an interesting theory. As I was reading, I was like, I wonder how many people are talking about this in biographies of him that are more recent, and they kind of don't. I think most people are like, let's not, it's not Germany. I Also we didn't talk about the fact that the age Laurence painted a lot painted a lot of also very provocative and sexually explicit paintings. I was reading one account of them where someone said they're really not that explicit. They're mostly very gropy, which is not incorrect. Um, but if you go looking for them, he has a very unique painting style. Uh. And we didn't really get to talk about that. But I also mentioned that the US and Great Britain are not the only places that this book has a legal history. No, definitely not. And the two that sort of broke my heart were in Japan and India. Uh. In those cases. There was a full translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover published in Japan and nineteen fifty and that is its own famous subsanity trial in that country. Um. Similarly, a lot of literary experts testified for the defense. However, that publisher received a guilty verdict in that case and had to pay a pretty significant fine. And that's pretty similar to how it played out in India as well. So it's kind of interesting. Um, it was still banned in Australia even after the British case around it, and then black market copies got smuggled into Australia and started to be published republished there in mid sixties, and that kind of led people to go, I guess we're allowing this now, Like it wasn't much more relaxed kind of proceedings. Um. It's just an interesting thing the way one book can really like catalyze this really a pretty serious discussion about what is and is not acceptable, uh, in the realm of literature and art. Um. I mean I think you and I have lived through plenty of those, right, Um, where various artists and writers have been kind of called on the carpet for being obscene and other people are like, no, that's it's art, dude. I know. I don't think we'll ever come to consensus because not everyone will agree what's acceptable. Sure. I mean there are still you know, lists of banned books that appear everywhere, and libraries do banned book promotions and a lot of calls to band books ongoing currently, yes, which is just fascinating to me. Um. There were some really interesting things I didn't include because this was starting to run a little bit long. Um news articles where people had, of course, you know, reporters had, of course, to get a slightly different spin on the story, talked to like their local libraries about it and been like what are you gonna do? And there was one library where the head library and was very matter of fact and I sort of loved it, where he was like, I mean we haven't we've actually had it for a little while, but like nobody checks that book out there. They all read Sons and Lovers. I don't know, and like we wouldn't let a kid get to the checkout desk and take this book, like we did. We do recognize that, like not every book is is for kids. Um. It was just this interesting thing of like why do you think this is a problem kind of like the React books anyway, d H. Lawrence, he's so fascinating to me. Probably kind of a mess on the side, but he had a lot of weird things that happened. Anyway, that's my things. On Lady Chatterle's Lover, which, um, I'm sure people will ask us about various movies. There is a new Lady Chatterley's Lover. I haven't seen it yet because it isn't out yet. Also, I don't know that i'll watch it. That's kind of not my genre of film, So we'll see. It'll be out I think by the time this airs, but it was not out when we recorded. I think November when it's out on I'm pulling this from memory net Flix. Don't quote me on that, but I think November. If you're looking for a new version, there have been lots of versions over the years, including that French one that kind of riled up this whole case again. Uh, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Emma Bovary, they're all one. They're all one. To me, they're not. I know, they're different. I you know, Gustafalobert would be chagrined I do wonder what D. H. Lawrence would think of all this though, Yeah, yeah, like if he would just be like what so many lawyers I don't I don't know. Yeah, but his his little boat got to fly. So there you go. If you are coming up on your weekend, hopefully you will enjoy some art or literature whatever you think is appropriate for you. Uh. And if you can't do that, I hope you at least have the best possible couple of days ahead. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday once again with new stuff. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.