5 Ancient Body Myths that Are Wildly Inaccurate

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  • čas přidán 4. 08. 2018
  • Early humans had some pretty odd theories about their bodies-and most of them were entirely inaccurate. Some of these ideas led to treatments that were plain ineffective, but some were downright harmful! Join Hank Green for a fun new episode of SciShow, all about our bodies and the theories of ancient humans. Let's go!
    Head to scishowfinds.com/ for hand selected artifacts of the universe!
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    Sources:
    www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/sh...
    www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/...
    www.britannica.com/science/hu...
    www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/t...
    web.archive.org/web/201107080...
    ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/...
    ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/b...
    www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
    academic.oup.com/labmed/artic...
    www.amjmedsci.com/article/S00...
    www.carlsterner.com/research/f...
    broughttolife.sciencemuseum.or...
    www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/chole...
    www.infezmed.it/media/journal...
    www.newswise.com/articles/view...
    www.colgate.com/en-us/oral-he...
    web.archive.org/web/201704272...
    link.springer.com/article/10....
    arthistoryresources.net/visual...
    web.stanford.edu/class/histor...
    www.spring.org.uk/2008/03/50-...
    www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...
    www.muslimheritage.com/article...
    neuroportraits.eu/portrait/fel...
    www.britannica.com/science/li...
    www.aaojournal.org/article/S0...
    www.researchgate.net/publicat...
    embryo.asu.edu/pages/ernst-ha...
    embryo.asu.edu/pages/meckel-s...
    embryo.asu.edu/pages/ernst-he...

Komentáře • 1,7K

  • @alzoron
    @alzoron Před 5 lety +2408

    You would have thought the whole "shooting light beams out of our eyes" method of sight would have been easily debunked by the fact that we can't see anything in a completely dark room.

    • @barneymiller7894
      @barneymiller7894 Před 5 lety +68

      Shut up Spike, just accept it lol

    • @barneymiller7894
      @barneymiller7894 Před 5 lety +44

      It was a joke. Obviously.

    • @jesusmora9379
      @jesusmora9379 Před 5 lety +64

      nah because obscure is a mist like element, that's why you can't see

    • @vituzui9070
      @vituzui9070 Před 5 lety +147

      It's because the theory was actually that vision was produced by the contact between external light and the eyes light. So even the holders of the light beams theory agreed that vsion was impossible without external light.

    • @itaiko5498
      @itaiko5498 Před 4 lety +8

      would be kinda cool tho

  • @Devilot109
    @Devilot109 Před 5 lety +194

    Plague Doctor outfits were actually really impressive. The thing is, miasma was only one of several guesses about how the plague might be caused or spread. They were worn with smoked glasses to ward against the evil eye, and the entire thing was waxed to keep out liquids in case the victim's humors were somehow contaminated. It was *incredibly* clever, but only helped by coincidence if at all.

    • @Ahrpigi
      @Ahrpigi Před 2 lety +29

      Trying everything and getting incidental benefit sure as heck beats trying nothing and expecting things to get better. Two years after your comment was posted, I'm really wishing more people would take the former approach over the latter.

    • @J.A.huscher
      @J.A.huscher Před rokem

      Historically accurate plage mask look like nasty ugly gopher child

    • @52flyingbicycles
      @52flyingbicycles Před rokem +3

      Full body coverings and a breathing mask would protect against a lot of diseases so hey if it’s stupid and it works it ain’t stupid. Wrong method right solution right?

    • @milefiori7694
      @milefiori7694 Před rokem +3

      That uniform is bizarrely charming and dreadful. Kinda remind me of old world vulture and new world vulture. Still I don't know what motivated them to create such unnecessaryly scary and eccentric uniform.

  • @Olli_exe.
    @Olli_exe. Před 5 lety +962

    Ancient Greeks: Our eyes shoot beams of light and that's how we can see.
    Everyone else: seems legit.

    • @barneymiller7894
      @barneymiller7894 Před 5 lety +54

      I feel like thats how everything on this list happened LOL "Man i feel shitty today" "Ya got to much blood bro, gotta let some out" *Seems legit

    • @paulahaverinen4338
      @paulahaverinen4338 Před 5 lety +11

      LASER EYES!

    • @Rickuo
      @Rickuo Před 5 lety +9

      At least Epicurus and Aristotle were on the right track.

    • @elias_xp95
      @elias_xp95 Před 5 lety +3

      They actually weren't wrong.
      When you close your eyes you see light emitted from your bodies own bioluminescence.
      www.livescience.com/7799-strange-humans-glow-visible-light.html

    • @addy7464
      @addy7464 Před 5 lety +7

      Greeks were one of the most intellectual empires in the world...... Remember heron,aristotle,socrates,plato,PYTHAGORAS,zeno,plato and thales.

  • @pdreding
    @pdreding Před 5 lety +2983

    I always wonder what we believe now that people a century or two from now will think us foolish for believing.

    • @bobhope4288
      @bobhope4288 Před 5 lety +365

      Survey says....supernatural beings.

    • @GREENSP0RE
      @GREENSP0RE Před 5 lety +86

      I'll second that answer, though societal prediction is a super hairy subject.

    • @Jarod3926
      @Jarod3926 Před 5 lety +502

      "Healthy at any size"

    • @FriedEgg101
      @FriedEgg101 Před 5 lety +398

      That cannabis is more harmful than alcohol.

    • @ikrar26
      @ikrar26 Před 5 lety +178

      Like flat earth.. ?!

  • @PunchyAirplane
    @PunchyAirplane Před 5 lety +1731

    Has anyone seen my inhaler?! I need it because of miasma

  • @spiderwebnitter7859
    @spiderwebnitter7859 Před 5 lety +244

    I'm surprised that they didn't talk about how in ancient Greece they thought that hysteria was caused by a deprived lustfull woman when her uterus was dry and would start wandering around the body looking for moister and nausea and other stuff was because the uterus was trying to get moister from the other organs. (Unless that was a myth I heard)

  • @Poofiemus
    @Poofiemus Před 5 lety +192

    One of the reasons I love science is because I love knowing that someday, people will look at some of the stuff we believe now and laugh as hard as I did at the ideas in this video.

    • @canyonparkerfirebird
      @canyonparkerfirebird Před 5 lety +8

      Like how some people had pony pfps lol

    • @gives_bad_advice
      @gives_bad_advice Před 2 lety +4

      That's an optimistic thought.

    • @spazzwazzle
      @spazzwazzle Před 2 lety +1

      Reddit moment

    • @edwardtwofeathers4823
      @edwardtwofeathers4823 Před 2 lety +1

      The CDC.

    • @Neme112
      @Neme112 Před rokem +2

      Not really, at least definitely not to such an extent. Those older ideas were really just ideas and weren't based on evidence or the scientific method, which didn't even exist yet. Today, science is much more rigorous.

  • @billythedog6485
    @billythedog6485 Před 5 lety +152

    “I have too much phlegm and I don’t want to do things”
    Found my new yearbook quote

    • @audreydoyle5268
      @audreydoyle5268 Před 3 lety +2

      There's possibility that inflammation correlates with depression.

  • @eckmann88
    @eckmann88 Před 4 lety +43

    “What do we have?” “TOO MICH PHLEGM!”
    “What are we going to do about it?” “Meh. Nothing really.”

  • @jebblount7360
    @jebblount7360 Před 3 lety +14

    "Worked better than wearing no mask at all" 2021 would like to steal that line, Hank.

  • @supremereader7614
    @supremereader7614 Před 5 lety +436

    Why not make a video, ‘Five things humans get really wrong about our bodies - still.”

    • @sleepyote
      @sleepyote Před 5 lety +68

      Supreme Reader #1 vAcCiNeS cUaSe aUtIsM

    • @carlosmarte428
      @carlosmarte428 Před 5 lety +10

      Doggoroo I read this while thinking of the 4chan guy with the dent in his head and I lost it.

    • @sofialaya596
      @sofialaya596 Před 5 lety +9

      also things people get wrong about the 2 sexes, male and female. I've seen so many misconceptions about that part of our biology over the years, more than any other, it's impressive

    • @lukebowar3788
      @lukebowar3788 Před 5 lety +5

      @@sofialaya596 In what way? As in believing gender is different from sex? Because that is quite the ridiculous claim

    • @99Kuromaru
      @99Kuromaru Před 4 lety +18

      @@lukebowar3788 well, when you think about it, not that much... I mean sex is just difference in anatomies based on chromosomes... But gender is a societal thing, what you have between your legs doesn't affect your behaviour though... does it?

  • @micahphilson
    @micahphilson Před 5 lety +317

    It's amazing how, even though these are all so terribly wrong and were such commonly held beliefs for such a long time, they still often led to treatments that worked, like the London sewage system!
    I mean, more often it led to trepanning and bloodletting, but you know, you can't win 'em all.

    • @VitalVampyr
      @VitalVampyr Před 5 lety +29

      Miasma Theory is almost true. I holds that bad smells cause disease while today we know that pathogens or poisons cause disease and things which carry them often smell bad. That's why many miasma-based solutions to health worked.
      There was also a marginally more successful method of humor-based treatments that this video didn't cover. Instead of "draining bad humors" they would instead "promote good humors" by having the patient consume things which were hot, cold, dry, or wet (I forget which is for which humor).

    • @calamusgladiofortior2814
      @calamusgladiofortior2814 Před 5 lety +24

      Yup, a lot of the more persistent bad theories kinda sorta worked sometimes, which was why they stuck around. One of favourites was the origin of the saying, “Hair of the dog (that bit you). There was a theory that a wound was connected to the thing which caused it, and you could make some poultice to treat the wound if you could find the dog which bit you or the sword that cut you. But, to keep out other negative vibes until that was done, they cleaned the wound and kept it bandaged and dry. So it worked, just not for the reason they thought.

    • @GotPotatoes24
      @GotPotatoes24 Před 5 lety +10

      Micah Philson at least trepanning, for some reason or other, wasn't actually an immediate death sentence? Like one would assume yanking off a whole circle of skull would just be a game over, but since the skulls showed signs of healing after the fact, obviously a whole bunch of trepanned people (and also. cows) survived the procedure.

    • @zxb995511
      @zxb995511 Před 5 lety +13

      FYI, both trepanning and bloodletting are actual legitimate medical procedures that are useful in some very specific medical conditions. Trepanning can be useful for relieving excessive intracranial pressure when all else fails, and "bloodletting" (phlebotomy) can be useful for people suffering from Hemochromatosis or Polycythemia Vera.

    • @MrBilld75
      @MrBilld75 Před 4 lety +1

      Yeah, funny how that happens. If it hadn't been for a few rebels who defied convention, or just accidental discoveries, we wouldn't be where we are today and imagine how much stupid crap we would still believe? Lol. I find it amazing too. We could be sooooo much worse off.

  • @phrygiandominant6989
    @phrygiandominant6989 Před 5 lety +440

    "Well, you kinda really need blood to be alive."

  • @elisabethandersen1102
    @elisabethandersen1102 Před 5 lety +76

    "black bile causes melancholy", "chemical imbalances causes sadness".
    How far we've come.

  • @owlblocksdavid4955
    @owlblocksdavid4955 Před 5 lety +179

    Can confirm miasma is real. It gets all over my fortress if my dwarfs don't take their dead out to the corpse pile.

    • @Mae_Dastardly
      @Mae_Dastardly Před 5 lety +13

      And so another fortress falls because bad humors lead to a tantrum spiral.

  • @alexmcd378
    @alexmcd378 Před 5 lety +698

    How could you leave "wandering uterus" off of a list of absurdly inaccurate science body ideas?

    • @3800S1
      @3800S1 Před 5 lety +64

      Because they have already covered in a number of times. This would of made it like the 4th or 5th time.

    • @organizedchaos6412
      @organizedchaos6412 Před 5 lety +5

      What's that?

    • @aejlindvall
      @aejlindvall Před 5 lety +38

      czcams.com/video/JefYnYIXY_8/video.html Here's a video of it Sci show did in May!

    • @qiaomeizhang3932
      @qiaomeizhang3932 Před 5 lety +1

      Alex McD lol

    • @luciferangelica
      @luciferangelica Před 5 lety +21

      you might want to read up on a condition known as wandering bladder
      why, dad?
      oh, no reason

  • @SciencewithKatie
    @SciencewithKatie Před 5 lety +428

    Blood letting sounds medieval but it is still carried out today for some conditions, such as those with haemochromatosis (iron overload). Removing blood removes red blood cells (that contain iron), and the body uses up iron replacing them, further reducing the amount of iron!

    • @Im_Just_A_Dreamer
      @Im_Just_A_Dreamer Před 5 lety +28

      Today I learned...

    • @carsonrush3352
      @carsonrush3352 Před 5 lety +108

      Leeches are still in use today, used in reattaching digits and skin graft, due to their ability to reduce blood pooling after surgery and thin the blood to allow circulation restoration.

    • @normalpeopleboreme
      @normalpeopleboreme Před 5 lety +3

      Science with Katie also when there are blood blisters.

    • @user-nu2it6kf2m
      @user-nu2it6kf2m Před 5 lety +51

      Absolutely right! Although it is just for rare hematologic conditions and it is definitely done in a more controlled fashion haha

    • @ryanchamberlain6904
      @ryanchamberlain6904 Před 5 lety +28

      Right, theraputic phlebotomy is the usual treatment for condidtions like hereditary hemochromatosis (iron overload) and polycythemia vera (too many RBCs). I probably wouldn't use the term bloodletting in the clinical setting though 😁

  • @CuddlePhantom
    @CuddlePhantom Před 4 lety +54

    When I told my 10 grade biology teacher that those human embryo drawings are wrong, she yelled at me in front of the whole class saying how stupid I was and failed the whole quarter for that topic.
    She still hates me to this day and picks on my younger sister.

    • @Is-wunny
      @Is-wunny Před 2 lety +19

      Send them Correct Human Embryos Pictures printed full color on mail 24/7

    • @Sliferslacker21
      @Sliferslacker21 Před 2 lety +26

      I know this was posted 2 years ago but teachers like that have no reason to be in the educational field.
      If she mistreated your sister because of her hatred for being corrected by you, failed you for simply pointing something out, she needs to honestly be fired. Her actions can cause students some psychological harm that prevents them from trying their best in the future for fear of being yelled at and ridiculed. You and your sister should have totally set her up to be fired.

    • @jetoler7379
      @jetoler7379 Před 2 lety +12

      Your biology teacher needs to be fired.

    • @roscosanchez4649
      @roscosanchez4649 Před rokem +4

      On this episode of stories that never happened...

    • @melissapyle7879
      @melissapyle7879 Před rokem

      Not ALL the embryo pics r wrong..

  • @Master_Therion
    @Master_Therion Před 5 lety +702

    I'm not ready to discount the Humoral Theory, I think bodily fluids are very humorous.

  • @coryc123
    @coryc123 Před 3 lety +3

    When he said, "I am so glad, I'm alive NOW", I felt that.

  • @Blue_Spirit7
    @Blue_Spirit7 Před 5 lety +97

    When i was 9, i had no idea of science. BUT i made up a theory that people shoot "vision light" out and then it came back at the sppeed of light. So i made up an ancient theory when i was 9 and i had no idea.

    • @Blue_Spirit7
      @Blue_Spirit7 Před 5 lety +4

      @YoungD3mon314 yeah, but by that age the most i did was see disney movies, to think that at such q young age i could make sort of the same theories as the smartest people of that time makes me think that i must have been pretty smart for my young age, it wasnt till 8th grade science that i got sort of corrected. And then scishow corrected me completly in one of their videos.

    • @Blue_Spirit7
      @Blue_Spirit7 Před 5 lety +5

      @YoungD3mon314 oh. Got it now, yeah makes sense, we all observe the same things, the one thing that changes is the interpretation.

    • @cookeymonster83
      @cookeymonster83 Před 3 lety +3

      By the age of like 5 I theorised that images travel into the eyes and recorded by the brain like how a video camera works. Being wrong never makes you smart.

  • @DkKombo
    @DkKombo Před 5 lety +59

    This makes me wonder how if we had magic in our world, how it might be misunderstood and understood in our modern day.
    "Necromancy, was considered to be done by use of bringing back the spirit of the undead and using its body parts.
    We know now, however, that necromancy is caused by the intense vibration of gamma rays to two very specific parts of the users brain and torso upon a corpse, which reignites the past homodyn processes and envigorates the cysix tissue, causing a relapse of intense negative thoughts which takes shape of the percieved ghost or body into physical form and replicates past movements of the corpse."

    • @annie123e
      @annie123e Před 5 lety +8

      I feel like this premise would make for a very interesting sci-fi/fantasy mash up novel.

    • @DkKombo
      @DkKombo Před 5 lety +2

      Thinking about how the gamma rays have to refract upon the torso, would that mean that negative energy could potentially cause erectile dysfunction or "defunct" offspring?
      Also if I find John Green stealing my ideas HE IS DEAD. Lol jk idc he probably has more writing discipline than I do he can have it.

    • @myman7589
      @myman7589 Před 4 lety

      Gotta love your brain.

    • @alexcalvin2624
      @alexcalvin2624 Před 2 lety

      I want this concept in a book so bad.

    • @toyamwarr
      @toyamwarr Před 2 lety

      This sounds like a great tv show premise. “Harry Potter” meets “Grey’s Anatomy” or something on that vein.

  • @onemadscientist7305
    @onemadscientist7305 Před 5 lety +191

    I can understand where we got most of this stuff, but extramission ? Like, if our eyes are emitting stuff to make us see, how come we see better during the day than during the night ? There's litterally a giant ball of light during the day and it's not there during the night for some reason. Also, shadows are a thing. And they're always on the side of objects that's facing away from the sun. I don't understand how this wasn't immediately dismissed. But hey, I guess the greeks had a different mindset.

    • @onemadscientist7305
      @onemadscientist7305 Před 5 lety +12

      I know right ? It's pretty weird. Humans are bad at thinking sometimes. Actually, I think we're bad at it most of the time.
      Blame it on those stupid psychological biases.

    • @Onychoprion27
      @Onychoprion27 Před 5 lety +25

      That sort of reasoning was how Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn am-Haytham reasoned against it. It hurts to look at the sun, or at bright lights at night. That wouldnt happen if sight came from the eyes.

    • @Onychoprion27
      @Onychoprion27 Před 5 lety +20

      Tolyngee blame it on the tedency to revere people of the past. It held on for so long because Plato believed it, and great thinkers of old can't be wrong.

    • @piteoswaldo
      @piteoswaldo Před 5 lety +8

      There are many religions that say it is holy to study and acquire knowledge. For example, Islam; and that is why during the medieval period in Europe, the Islamic world was having its golden era of science.

    • @jheanelltabana8713
      @jheanelltabana8713 Před 5 lety +9

      Exactly! And wouldn't you be able to see the light beams coming out of other people's eyes? Maybe they thought it was a special type of light, because I can't see how they'd explain night.

  • @fluffysxangel
    @fluffysxangel Před 5 lety +11

    Laughed out loud at the delivery of: “when I have too much phlegm, I do not want to do things”

  • @checkmyplaylist6879
    @checkmyplaylist6879 Před 5 lety +321

    1. Muscle Hank is secretly The Rock

    • @TheReZisTLust
      @TheReZisTLust Před 5 lety

      Muscle bank is a kid from 13 to an adult maybe 27 with access to whats used nowadays... Photoshop still?

    • @inhumanfilth681
      @inhumanfilth681 Před 5 lety +1

      @@TheReZisTLust nah probly a 400lb 37 year old computer gamer with access to google images lmao

    • @lakesheppard5466
      @lakesheppard5466 Před 5 lety

      Go to his page if you're curious.

  • @SAMURIADI
    @SAMURIADI Před 5 lety +154

    if our eyes shot out light we could see in the dark, BAM PROBLEM SOLVED

    • @arth8265
      @arth8265 Před 5 lety +17

      We need to recharge them when nightime comes.

    • @qiaomeizhang3932
      @qiaomeizhang3932 Před 5 lety

      SAMURIADI lmao

    • @Aleks6010
      @Aleks6010 Před 5 lety +6

      their idea of light was probably way different and thought that eye beams and light interacted with each other in order to enable you to see, and when you go into the dark you can't see anything but after 10-15 minutes after your eyes have adjusted they must've thought that the eye beams got stronger enabling you to see better

    • @TheReZisTLust
      @TheReZisTLust Před 5 lety

      Nobody said it was a nightlight

  • @Honeybreee
    @Honeybreee Před 5 lety +803

    Of course John Snow knew nothing.

    • @Evan94045
      @Evan94045 Před 5 lety +35

      Bree Evans He did know some things

    • @jonson97rus
      @jonson97rus Před 5 lety +8

      Evan Wolfla whoosh, that went over your head

    • @Evan94045
      @Evan94045 Před 5 lety +56

      jonson97rus check again. You whooshed yourself. “I do know some things” - Jon Snow to Ygritte.

    • @jonson97rus
      @jonson97rus Před 5 lety +2

      Evan Wolfla sorry, I have watched GoT with Russian dubbing, so I must've forgot the exact lines

    • @bergonius
      @bergonius Před 5 lety

      Зря, пересмотри в с оргинальной озвучкой и субтитрами, оно того стоит.

  • @musclehank6067
    @musclehank6067 Před 5 lety +1894

    I can tell you something I got right about my body 💪💪

    • @dominicesquivel3901
      @dominicesquivel3901 Před 5 lety +118

      Whats your secret Muscle Hank?

    • @drewdurant3835
      @drewdurant3835 Před 5 lety +26

      Dominic Esquivel his secret is being a bad ass!!

    • @creliat
      @creliat Před 5 lety +166

      I'm so glad this account exists

    • @Why_It
      @Why_It Před 5 lety +116

      Has normal Hank ever noticed you, Muscle Hank?

    • @checkmyplaylist6879
      @checkmyplaylist6879 Před 5 lety +16

      Man, I wanna touch your muscles!

  • @freelanceopportunist559
    @freelanceopportunist559 Před 5 lety +230

    Born prematurely, I have the brain of a lizard

  • @gunslinger2566
    @gunslinger2566 Před 5 lety +92

    Muscle Hank is gonna love this one.

  • @corebroth8793
    @corebroth8793 Před 5 lety +67

    _“I have too much phlegm. I do not want to do things.”_
    - Hank, 2k18

    • @louk6848
      @louk6848 Před 3 lety

      I think it's a French /English pun, "avoir la flemme" (pronounced as phlegm) means you can't be bothered 🙄

  • @Psiberzerker
    @Psiberzerker Před 4 lety +9

    My favorite so far is that the brain is for cooling the blood. Which admittedly, happens to be true, but isn't exactly it's most important function.

  • @misterbubbles6389
    @misterbubbles6389 Před 5 lety +32

    I love videos like this, involving obsolete scientific theories. It's so fascinating to see where we came from and where we are now.

  • @msoda8516
    @msoda8516 Před 5 lety +15

    As a brain tumor survivor I’m glad I was born in a time with medical treatment that could save my life.

  • @fromscratchauntybindy9743
    @fromscratchauntybindy9743 Před 5 lety +18

    Runs screaming to bathroom to immediately clean teeth with Enamel repair toothpaste... 😨

  • @juliantheivysaur3137
    @juliantheivysaur3137 Před 5 lety +26

    I used to believe that our eyes emit beams, when i was 9 years old. Where i also thought that, old films with no color were made in a time when there was no color. I also thought that cartoon characters really existed because "How else would they make those cartoons?".

    • @barneymiller7894
      @barneymiller7894 Před 5 lety +2

      I remeber thinking the world had no color in the past! lol kids are dumb AF

    • @pseudo3100
      @pseudo3100 Před 5 lety +1

      how did you believe this when you were 9...

    • @vivimannequin
      @vivimannequin Před 5 lety

      When I was little I always wondered why the world looks the way it does and why cartoons didn't

    • @myman7589
      @myman7589 Před 4 lety

      I made the same mistake too. Not just with monochrome. I also thought that the world in the 70s and 80s were grainy and saturated as portrayed on the photographs made in those days lol.

  • @Kittyhalk
    @Kittyhalk Před 5 lety +12

    I was really expecting the whole "womb roaming the body" thing to make an appearance lol

  • @NiraSader
    @NiraSader Před 5 lety +74

    "You know something, John Snow"

  • @tass466
    @tass466 Před 5 lety +46

    Oh God this whole tooth section is so uncomfortable

    • @scottmantooth8785
      @scottmantooth8785 Před 5 lety

      as surprising as it may sound..i'm not a dentist

    • @Miinish
      @Miinish Před 5 lety +1

      I've actually had the tooth and "worm" procedure done on me before. It was a root canal, The tooth was so infected that they cut open my gums and took the root and the nerve out.

    • @jennag3226
      @jennag3226 Před 4 lety

      @@Miinish Thats not a root canal and they most likely only removed the apex of the root, which is called an apicoectomy.

  • @livstibal3852
    @livstibal3852 Před 4 lety +3

    I didn't look at the thumbnail, and I barely read the description because I'm listening to this as background noise. But the second I heard hank's voice, I'm immediately paying attention. This man taught me everything I know about psychology, AP chemistry, and so much more. I know nobody will see this, but Hank, you're my role model and I aspire to be just like you when I grow up

  • @peterg76yt
    @peterg76yt Před 2 lety +9

    Miasma theory was on the right track and was pretty insightful for a time without microscope technology. I think everyone would agree that air containing infectious particles like SARS-CoV-2 would qualify as bad.

    • @kristianferencik8685
      @kristianferencik8685 Před rokem

      The microscope was invented in 1585, bacteria were discovered in 1665, the link between bacteria and disease wasn't discovered till 1876-1886.

  • @menstilo9172
    @menstilo9172 Před 5 lety +30

    If we could shoot light beams out of our eyes, couldn't we then perfectly see at night? I mean we'd always have a reliable light source

  • @sailorarwen6101
    @sailorarwen6101 Před 2 lety +2

    I love how people seem to think we’re all knowing now. Take everything with a grain of salt because before you’re dead what you thought you knew growing up will have changed.

  • @camgood2437
    @camgood2437 Před 5 lety +19

    So, when they at first ignored his research, did anyone ever say "you know nothing, Dr. John Snow"? I need to know.

  • @beckijameson3844
    @beckijameson3844 Před 5 lety +10

    Spoken like a true intellectual: "I've learned a great deal and I'm very excited to be sharing it with the world."

  • @MrMielke
    @MrMielke Před 5 lety +34

    I think you are being a bit hard on the followers of the smell theory. We find a lot of things that carry diseases smelly, because it made evolutionary sense to stay away from that, so they were on to something. It's basically a case of "correlation != causation," a mistake that many people make today. :)
    EDIT: Going through the comments, I think it might be worth pointing out that people in the future won't be as hard on us because of the scientific method. You could perhaps link to your video on that somewhere. (watch?v=i8wi0QnYN6s)

    • @zxb995511
      @zxb995511 Před 5 lety +5

      Most of the people the people that watch something like this and criticize how they could have thought that, do not appreciate the power of modern education and information sharing. Any person with even a high-school diploma has been exposed to thousands of years of cumulative human knowledge in a comprehensive form, and if you have an internet connection you have access to what amounts to the sum of all human knowledge consensed in a searchable library...The ancients could not even dream of something like that.

    • @scottmantooth8785
      @scottmantooth8785 Před 5 lety

      so there is a direct link between the phrase "pull my finger" and the spontaneously generated gaseous emissions that result in highly localized miasma event

  • @nanabird4073
    @nanabird4073 Před 5 lety +4

    Hank's reactions to something horrifying are just about the best thing ever.

  • @woodfur00
    @woodfur00 Před 5 lety +58

    Anyone else feeling like brushing your teeth right now?

  • @TheScholesie09
    @TheScholesie09 Před 5 lety +101

    I really can't wrap my head around it. How did people think we could see because of light from our eyes and not other sources? If you cover the light source, it gets dark, you can't see.
    I must not be understanding it because these great minds cant be THAT stupid.

    • @massimookissed1023
      @massimookissed1023 Před 5 lety +20

      Maybe part of the problem came from Aristotle favouring the (correct) idea of external light entering the eyes.
      Aristotle was wrong about almost everything else.

    • @nightlightabcd
      @nightlightabcd Před 5 lety +7

      If you cover you eyes,that restricts the beams from your eyes! That just gives more evidence to their theory, however erroneous it may be!

    • @supremereader7614
      @supremereader7614 Před 5 lety +42

      nightlightabcd she’s not talking about covering the eyes, she’s talking about light source. If we had a light beam coming from our eyes wouldn’t we be able to see in a dark room?

    • @9308323
      @9308323 Před 5 lety +8

      James Batchelor They're probably thinking that a dark room is just colored black. Remember, they're not thinking of vision the way we do today. They're not thinking of the visible spectrum, it's more of a (super)natural force being emitted from our eyes.

    • @entropyzero5588
      @entropyzero5588 Před 5 lety +2

      +930 8323 So the light supplies the colours to objects and our "eye beams" then register said color? Hm…

  • @alexnndder
    @alexnndder Před 5 lety +9

    *Everyone around Dr. Snow was like:*
    *"you know nothing, John Snow"*
    *........ I'll go home.....*

  • @normalpeopleboreme
    @normalpeopleboreme Před 5 lety +8

    Honestly, miasma theory seems to have helped scientists do what was best without having to understand germs or anti biotics.

  • @faceshed
    @faceshed Před 5 lety +10

    On number 4. As a kid I use to think that my eyes would cast the sight on something to let me see. The idea was wrong, but at the time I just didn't have enough information to say for sure that it was wrong or why. I remember thinking about a drawing where a dotted line would indicate someone looking at something. My brother started the dotted line at the object. I started at the eye.
    You might think it was silly that I didn't realize that the "eye beam" would have no way to get information back to me, but I did think about it and I didn't consider that a problem. As a child I didn't see any reason to suspect that information needs work physically. I reasoned instead that because it took the act of moving my eye at something and opening my eye to cause vision, that it would be more likely I was the source.

  • @AidanRatnage
    @AidanRatnage Před 5 lety +25

    At 4:43, that physician knew nothing.

    • @blacksalena0
      @blacksalena0 Před 5 lety +1

      Aidan Or unfortunate for the people around him, the unsung hero actually knew everything yet everybody keeps telling him that he knows nothing and rejected him

  • @bethanyishappy5830
    @bethanyishappy5830 Před 5 lety +6

    Could they have thought tooth worms were a thing because of cavities? When you see a hole in an apple you think a worm might be in there, so maybe they used that same logic.

  • @DarthBiomech
    @DarthBiomech Před 5 lety +2

    I honestly can't believe that the emission theory wasn't gutted in it's infancy by the simplest counterargument of "if this is true then why do we cannot see at night?"
    So much for the "ancient wisdom", apparently.

  • @Lucky10279
    @Lucky10279 Před 5 lety +9

    I wonder what people hundreds of years from now will think of our current medical practices. Obviously, we've come a LONG way even in the past couple hundred years, but there's still a lot we don't know or could have wrong. I'm reading a series right now that takes place several hundred years in the future and they have something called "biofoam" which heals even deadly wounds in minutes to hours depending on the type of injury. That's science fiction, obviously, but maybe we'll eventually have something like it. Interesting to hear how far we've come and to wonder where we'll go from here.

    • @josiwho1203
      @josiwho1203 Před 5 lety

      What's the series called? Sounds interesting!

  • @pancreasnostalgia
    @pancreasnostalgia Před 5 lety +10

    Snow did contribute greatly to the understanding of cholera during the Broad Street epidemic, he also had help from curate Henry Whitehead. Really the two men's work combined solved the problem. I also think that while the miasma theory was wrong, it led to more good than trouble. Whereas the humoral theory led to way more harm and modern face-palming.

  • @steve1085
    @steve1085 Před 2 lety +3

    I've worked in behavioral health for a while and have heard horror stories of treatment modalities from the early 1900s. I often wonder if the same things will be said about treatment modalities today.... probably will

  • @armyof2ninjas381
    @armyof2ninjas381 Před 5 lety +1

    Good video love your content keep it up sideshow

  • @MiceNine9
    @MiceNine9 Před 5 lety

    Possibly my favorite episode of SciShow ever.

  • @possumbly
    @possumbly Před 5 lety +7

    I remember learning "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in school and I'm not terribly old. So, this makes me question other things I learned from that class.

  • @gendoll5006
    @gendoll5006 Před 4 lety +4

    Omg number 3!! Yes I totally get it!!! I had a cavity that freaked me out because it felt like a tiny worm moving around! It really was odd and horrible. It was just nerve pain of course but omg I thought the worst things!!!

  • @kitvalentine7593
    @kitvalentine7593 Před 5 lety

    this is the best, the history of science segments are always my favorites

  • @perrysamuels7597
    @perrysamuels7597 Před 5 lety +2

    Hi!!!! Love ya’ll’s work💕💕

  • @Schmidteren
    @Schmidteren Před 5 lety +20

    I like all the presenters of this channel. But you are my fav.. Please don't tell the others!

  • @JustinY.
    @JustinY. Před 5 lety +518

    How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?

    • @matteussilvestre8583
      @matteussilvestre8583 Před 5 lety +80

      How many lightbulbs does it take to change people?

    • @zucchini_zucchini
      @zucchini_zucchini Před 5 lety +44

      If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth.

    • @jl8417
      @jl8417 Před 5 lety +24

      I thought you were Justin. Y, not Jaden. S

    • @HeroDark98
      @HeroDark98 Před 5 lety +30

      How can I write this comment if words aren't real?

    • @El-RaShahzad
      @El-RaShahzad Před 5 lety +5

      This is not a pipe

  • @rogersledz6793
    @rogersledz6793 Před 3 lety +1

    Thank you so much for uploading this video. It is helping me get through the pandemic!

  • @mxRian4
    @mxRian4 Před 3 lety +1

    It’s alarming how often I think of trepanning after an especially rough day at the office.

  • @alexanderschestag3247
    @alexanderschestag3247 Před 5 lety +25

    The ch in Robert Koch is pronounced like the ch in the Scottish Loch.

  • @annj60
    @annj60 Před 5 lety +6

    I wish I had something like torches in my eyes. Much easier to knit in the dark! Would save a lot on the electrical bills to!

  • @disappointmentjuice8676
    @disappointmentjuice8676 Před 5 lety +2

    To all the awesome crew members at Scishow, I want to clarify something.
    Bloodletting isn't as stupid as many people think. It isn't stupid for people with too much iron. Leeches suck blood to thin it out and reduce the chance of it clotting, for people with blood clots. That's bloodletting, and it is a common practice today. Using maggots to eat away at dead and infected tissue may be absolutely disgusting, but it reveals some promising results. But they weren't entirely genius. We use it for specific reasons, they used it for general things, like a cold. So it isn't 'yeah they were kinda right,' but more of a 'they were completely wrong but we just happened to find practical use for it.'

  • @blondwiththewind
    @blondwiththewind Před 5 lety

    PHEW!!! This video sure covered a LOT of territory. :D Fascinating.

  • @TavernBrawler
    @TavernBrawler Před 5 lety +5

    I, too, am also glad I am alive *today*, Hank

  • @WitchVulgar
    @WitchVulgar Před 5 lety +11

    #4: Emission Theory is called Ray-Tracing

    • @darkestkhan
      @darkestkhan Před 5 lety

      True, but we use ray-tracing only because it is way cheaper on computational resources than actual physical simulation of light.

  • @Crosshill
    @Crosshill Před 5 lety +1

    my favorite misconception is the one where the grey wrinkly stuff in your head was pretty much useless and its just so fun cause like, you live in there mate

  • @Articulate99
    @Articulate99 Před rokem

    Always interesting, thank you.

  • @sailordolly
    @sailordolly Před 5 lety +3

    The "worms cause cavities" idea still persists in the naming conventions in some languages--for example, the Japanese word for a dental cavity is "mushiba", which means "worm-tooth".

  • @annabellewilson0101
    @annabellewilson0101 Před 5 lety +25

    I wonder what we're wrong about now..

    • @jenniferferguson1517
      @jenniferferguson1517 Před 5 lety +2

      Cold air makes you sick
      Vaccines cause autism
      “Holistic” medicine does anything
      “Organic” food is better for you.
      There are a few to start with that are WRONG

    • @UrbanClimber
      @UrbanClimber Před 5 lety

      Illegal drugs are bad and they are the reason why people get addicted. Or maybe people want to get addicted and use illegal drugs? Who knows at least we got the most harmful drug legal thats the most important thing.

    • @scottmantooth8785
      @scottmantooth8785 Před 5 lety

      lots of things...popular political environmental theories...bigfoot not being real...that sort of thing

    • @myman7589
      @myman7589 Před 4 lety +1

      @@jenniferferguson1517 I have a feeling that those who claim vaccines cause autism are the same kind of morons who once rejected science because they prefer life to be "simple and pure as intended by God" lol.

  • @zen3881
    @zen3881 Před 4 lety

    Your hand gestures are phenomenal

  • @JanBabiuchHall
    @JanBabiuchHall Před 5 lety +2

    Yep, I was taught Ernst Haeckel's theory in high school biology. Still remember those exact embryo drawings.

  • @Asynca
    @Asynca Před 4 lety +2

    "I'm so glad I'm alive now." - literally what I was thinking as he said that

  • @faithfuljohn
    @faithfuljohn Před 3 lety +4

    As a man in my early 40s, I can tell you I definitely was taught recapitulation theory even while doing my Human Biology degree.... from a professor of Medicine (around 20 years ago). It seemed ridiculous to me then... So yeah... there is that.

    • @p.s.224
      @p.s.224 Před rokem

      There are still terms like “reptilian brain“ as in some evolutionary “old“ part of the brain being thrown around, I always wondered how scientific that was or how literally it was meant.
      Also: those who invented recapitulation theory kind of had a theory of evolution, but all we ever hear of is Darwin who came much later?

  • @danielstromberg
    @danielstromberg Před 5 lety

    I'm not sure I've ever seen a SciShow I didn't like, but I thought this one was particularly interesting.

  • @uniqhnd23
    @uniqhnd23 Před 4 lety +2

    I love how we went from embryos having gills to seeing inside the human body without any surgery.

  • @milesarcher8502
    @milesarcher8502 Před 4 lety +4

    re: Miasma. the Italian term for "bad air" is "MAL ARIA"!!!

  • @laydieelle7069
    @laydieelle7069 Před 5 lety +11

    SO happy I was born AFTER all those eras.

    • @louk6848
      @louk6848 Před 3 lety +1

      In 500 years, people will look back at us and think the same thing.

  • @icreatedanaccountforthis1852

    Hank you light up my life.

  • @pinkliongaming8769
    @pinkliongaming8769 Před 4 lety +1

    The embryo evolution one reminds me of how the gems go through all their forms when reforming

  • @ianmacfarlane1241
    @ianmacfarlane1241 Před 5 lety +138

    A woman was grown from a rib planted in the ground 😄.

    • @qiaomeizhang3932
      @qiaomeizhang3932 Před 5 lety +2

      Ian Macfarlane lol wtf 😂

    • @HH-lr2zt
      @HH-lr2zt Před 5 lety +11

      @@qiaomeizhang3932 Christians believe that the first woman was created when God took out the first man's rib.

    • @qiaomeizhang3932
      @qiaomeizhang3932 Před 5 lety +3

      Hannah Henderson oh ok. For some reason that sounds silly. Sorry. I shouldn’t make fun of that.

    • @ianmacfarlane1241
      @ianmacfarlane1241 Před 5 lety +14

      @@qiaomeizhang3932 What? "Sorry, I shouldn't make fun of that"
      Why? Are you a Christian? Are you religious?

    • @ethanwagner6418
      @ethanwagner6418 Před 5 lety

      OOF

  • @SuperVstech
    @SuperVstech Před 5 lety +17

    Antibacterial soap... oops

  • @HelgaCavoli
    @HelgaCavoli Před 5 lety

    Thank you, thinkers and scientists.

  • @yourfaceishumerus
    @yourfaceishumerus Před 5 lety

    That picture of Epicurus is perfect. The expression is totally one of someone who just got told something so unbelievably stupid he has to take a minute or two to process it.

  • @davidprodigy5833
    @davidprodigy5833 Před 5 lety +7

    Ouch!!!!

  • @willtrautman6243
    @willtrautman6243 Před 5 lety +30

    6:35 Someone make a gif please

  • @xeera0196
    @xeera0196 Před 2 lety

    i almost didnt recognize you but i found you on tiktok your still fun!

  • @HaNguyen-sf6cb
    @HaNguyen-sf6cb Před 5 lety

    so much humor in one video ;D

  • @randomicko542
    @randomicko542 Před 5 lety +5

    But... if our eyes would shoot out light, wouldn't we be able to see in the dark really well? This makes no sense.

  • @Emcron
    @Emcron Před 5 lety +3

    #6: the belief that antibiotics can fight viruses. >_>

  • @Chloe-zs8ee
    @Chloe-zs8ee Před 5 lety +1

    You should do a video on the history/evolving practices of midwifery! That’d be super interesting I think

  • @alexandercanella4479
    @alexandercanella4479 Před 4 lety +2

    The bad smell hypothesis had some evolutionary evidence. Things that smell bad to us are generally bad for us. Granted they had no idea about that but it was definitely better than blaming it on sin.