What do people who have a dull singing voice, contract syphilis, and die suddenly have in common?
Well, according to a book (with the longest title EVER) published in the 18th century by James Morison, the answer was quite simple. Not enough poo.
Born in Aberdeenshire in 1770, James Morison was a bit blocked up. Well, more than a bit. For 35 years, he lived in inexpressible suffering. Having tried every course of treatment known to the medical establishment at the time and still no relief, Morrison’s agony forced him to take matters into his own hands.
Using a secret mix of herbs and spices, including aloe, a Mexican climbing plant, cream of tartar and myrrh, Morrison took to medicating himself in the form of little pills. Turns out they had quite the laxative effect and soon enough, he was feeling like a new man! Nice and empty.
Morison kept his cure a secret for a while, sharing his squirty poo pills with some friends now and then. But within a few years, he decided that everyone, young and old, ailment or none, needed to take his medicine. He boasted that the squirts would cure everything. And we mean everything.
So in 1825, he went to market selling his Vegetable Universal Medicine. Pills to purge yourself healthy! With claims to cure anything and everything from teething to whooping cough and sudden death, Morison started a crap-yourself-to-health campaign that went far and wide. The universal medicine was sold everywhere. You couldn't go into any apothecary, pharmacy, or even a library in England and not see Morrison's poo pills.
Not only did Morison claim that his pills would cure absolutely anything, he stressed that people shouldn’t stop taking them when they felt worse, but rather, increase their doses! The more shit the better. And you should take the medicine even if you don’t suffer from any ailment. Give yourself diarrhoea just in case.
Spoiler alert, this guy was a quack. Just in case you didn’t pick that up.
But despite Morison's belief that you could take 40 of the pills without any ill effects, you guessed it, there were some unfortunate deaths. See, Morison sold the pills to agents who pretended to be doctors who then sold them to everyday people. One ‘agent’ named Robert Salmon was convicted of manslaughter for administering over a thousand pills over the course of 20 days to a man named John Mackenzie... for knee pain. He had taken 72 pills the day before he died a presumably excruciating death.
With another 12 deaths investigated a year later, the medical establishment, whom Morison thought were a bunch of idiots, fought back fiercely. But although Thomas Wakley, editor of The Lancet, spearheaded a campaign to discredit Morison's pills and theories and warn the public about the dangers of Morison's "cure-all" remedy, The Universal Medicine pills still remained popular until the 1920s.
Did Morison ever pay for his outlandish and irresponsible claims?
And hey, we all love a good purge. But perhaps in the case of turds, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
SOURCES:
• Morisoniana, by James Morison
• Graphic battles in pharmacy, Wellcome Collection
• James Morrison: The Doctor Who Made His Patients Poop Themselves To Death, by James Felton
• Meet James Morison, The 19th-Century Quack Doctor Who Tried To Cure Everything With Laxatives, by Marc Hartzman
• The pills that cured all ills; James Morison the Hygeist (1770-1840), Kensal Green Cemetery by David Bingham
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[00:00:00] Will: His life involved a fair bit of travel for someone who had the non shits,
[00:00:04] Rod: the lack of purges, the chronic, this is before he shat himself.
[00:00:07] Will: Yeah, this is before he shat himself healthy. That magic day for him in 1822, when he got the stuff from his garden, he got the stuff from the catalog or from his merchant friends and rolled it together into these magic pills.
[00:00:20] Rod: Did he have a science or did he just kind of go picture this, a life of that. I smell bad news.
[00:00:24] Will: Yeah. There were some deaths. Thing is, there's nothing wrong with a laxative, but there is something wrong with saying that the only path to medicine is shitting more. Yeah. And once you're shitting... Shit harder.
[00:00:38] Rod: Just shit harder. There's one takeaway, people. You can never poo too much.
[00:00:45] Will: Oh my god. Yes, you bloody can. James Morrison was probably pretty legitimately frustrated. He described it that it had been 35 years of Inexpressible suffering.
[00:01:05] Rod: So he described it, but it was inexpressible.
[00:01:07] Will: Yeah. I think he had a fair bit of pain, a fair bit of the agonies. Yeah. And it'd be like from the age of 16 to the age of 51, like just the whole time he'd had this sort of agony, suffering. Well more than 10, 000 days in the fire. Now we don't quite know what his condition was. I think it hurt all over, but specifically in the tummy area, in the digestive region. Yeah. In there. And you know, the frustration was compounded, of course, because he'd tried every course of medical treatment. He tried everything that the medical establishment had offered.
[00:01:42] Rod: Leeches, some kind of herb. Yep. Gravel up the bum. Yep.
[00:01:46] Will: Yeah, but he thought, you know, fuck them. They're all scams men. They're mercury pushes. Nothing has worked for me. But one day in 1822 after years of misery, years with no solution, he took matters into his own hands.
[00:01:59] Rod: Is this the invention of the first fire hose?
[00:02:02] Will: A little bit. A little bit. I don't know quite how he came up with the recipe. I don't know. I don't know why he chose those plants or what.
[00:02:12] Rod: The word recipe doesn't bode well in maybe any episode we've ever done.
[00:02:18] Will: He took a pot and he mixed up a bunch of garden and and exotic plants and rolled them into little pills. And then he downed a few with a glass of lemonade and then he shat himself.
[00:02:30] Rod: Cool. Was this a goal?
[00:02:33] Will: Yes. The thing is though, not just shat himself, he he shat himself to what he thought he says was good health, but also into the largest quack medical empire that we might have ever seen. Welcome to the wholesome show.
[00:02:56] Rod: the podcast that purges the bad science, so we can hold on to the good.
[00:03:01] Will: I'm Will Grant.
[00:03:01] Rod: I am Purge Lamberts. I love a purge. Don't you love a purge? So you finish a purge and you go, oh fuck, that was worth it. I just feel, I feel like I've exercised.
[00:03:11] Will: Yeah, no one is against it. I mean, it's part of nature. It's a thing we gotta do.
[00:03:14] Rod: I don't know, we should talk about it. Oh, we are? Oh, yeah.
[00:03:18] Will: Well, this guy loved a purge more than most. More than just about anyone.
[00:03:24] Rod: It's fair to say you can love a purge too much. I've heard rumors.
[00:03:29] Will: So who was James Morrison? Born in the small village of Bogny in Aberdeenshire in 1770. He was the son of the local Lord, Laird Alexander Morrison. And he went to university. So off he went to. Aberdeen University. And then he went really quite international after this. For the times, he was a pretty international living gent. His life involved a fair bit of travel for someone who had the non shits. The non shits.
[00:03:52] Rod: The lack of purges. This is before he shat himself healthy
[00:03:54] Will: yeah, this is before he shat himself healthy.
[00:03:57] Rod: To be fair, that makes anyone angry.
[00:03:59] Will: Totally. I am with that. Nothing worked. He tried, you know, everything that the medical people had said, and then we come to that magic day for him in 1822, when he got the stuff from his garden, he got the stuff from the catalogue, or from his merchant friends and I rolled it together into these magic pills.
[00:04:16] Rod: Did he have a science of these kind of go picture this life of that.
[00:04:20] Will: So, okay. What was in his pills? Now he kept the recipe secret for quite a long time. And I've seen a couple of different descriptions, but these are the things that we know are likely to be in there. So there's aloes, like aloe vera, stuff like that.
[00:04:33] Rod: So that's good. Kind of like a mucus
[00:04:35] Will: look. These are all vegetable. I think so. It's a mucusy thing. Jalap from the Mexican climbing plant which is known as a purgative. gamboge, a yellow pigment that comes from Cambodia. It's the yellow pigment that they use over there to dye the Buddhist robes. colocynth, which is another climbing plant with fruit sometimes called the bitter apple. Cream of tartar, it's a by product of winemaking. It's a thing people use in baking soda and stuff like that
[00:04:56] Rod: not the shit from your teeth. Because that would be horrible. No our favorite ingredient with a flavor like,
[00:05:02] Will: well, I looked it up. It's a gum resin from a tree in the near east. And then a bit of rhubarb.
[00:05:07] Rod: Obviously in flavour and colour.
[00:05:08] Will: Exactly. And now he would call these later, Morrison's vegetable universal medicine.
[00:05:16] Rod: Morrison's poo pills.
[00:05:17] Will: So yeah, after taking the pills and shitting himself happy. Yep. He developed a theory of what was going on.
[00:05:24] Rod: He did stop shitting though. Because like a lot of biology, there's a curve and at the top of the curve, things are great. But when it increases again you imagine shitting horrible, better better, happy. Please stop.
[00:05:33] Will: Oh no, he he does not believe that the curve ends. He quite literally believed the curve kept going up.
[00:05:42] Rod: Basic physics. There's only so much in it. Okay.
[00:05:45] Will: So he published his theory in a book and sorry to every other 18th century book title ever. We've got a winner. We've got a winner.
[00:05:53] Rod: Should I sit down?
[00:05:54] Will: Probably. So first of all, the first bit of the title was his name. He called it Morrisoniana. So after himself, he's like, this is the thoughts for me. It's Morrisoniana. And then he went, Morrisoniana, or family advisor of the British College of Health, being a collection of the works of Mr. Morrison, the hygieist, comprising origins of life and true causes of diseases explained, important advice to the world, letter on cholera morbus of India, anti Lancet, I'll come to that in a bit, in six numbers. I don't know what that meant. And more new truths forming a complete manual for individuals and families for everything that regards them preserving their health and curing diseases at the whole tried and proved by the members of the British college of health as the only true theory and practice of medicine and thus furnishing ample testimony that the old medical science is completely wrong
[00:06:41] Rod: colon with an appendix
[00:06:45] Will: printed and sold at the college of health, which is what he calls his shed, in London. And he sold it for 10 cents a pop, but I think he might've given it away for free as well. But it wasn't short. It wasn't like a pamphlet. This is, I actually looked through this book quite a lot cause it was fascinating. I think it was like 700 pages long.
[00:07:03] Rod: Of course it was because the cover took up nine pages. So you wouldn't be surprised.
[00:07:07] Will: So firstly let's grab his theory. What is he thinking that's going on? I'm not, I'm going to turn like any good science communicator to his metaphor. He's got, he's gone straight to a nice metaphor for what he thinks is going on in the body and why you can poo yourself healthy.
[00:07:22] The present theory and practice of medicine may be compared to that of a watchmaker who would be entrusted to put for rights a watch of excellent workmanship, but dirty and clogged up. If this watchmaker mistaking his business and instead of cleaning the works says, Oh, I'll soon make this watch go. It only requires a stronger spring and that will force everything into motion and make it go. Silly Watchmaker.
[00:07:45] Rod: That's why I don't go to watchmakers when I feel sick. Silly.
[00:07:48] Will: Just a stronger spring. We know what we need, the watchmaker needs to do. I believe it need not inform my readers that it would not go long. Some part soon breaking, there would be an end of the watch. Even so, with the human body. Oh. By the system of our practitioners of bracing and giving tone, some part breaks or gets clogged up. With this difference, the watchmaker can give his watch a new wheel, which the doctors cannot do. Long story. You want to clean the watch? Clean the watch. You want to clean the body? Purge.
[00:08:16] Rod: You could have said that.
[00:08:17] Will: That was shorter. But anyway, he likes thinking about the body as a watch.
[00:08:20] Rod: There's junk in your body. Get it out. Yeah.
[00:08:23] Will: Yeah. His theory was that impurities, dirt, bad blood that was the cause of literally everything fell. Literally everything going wrong. So I looked at his table of contents and it's wild. He's got every single like malady that you can think of consumption, fainting, ossification of the heart, whooping cough, teething vomiting, blisters or anything, ruddy complexion, measles, syphilis, all of them fixed by the vegetable universal medicine.
[00:08:53] Rod: Yeah, of course.
[00:08:53] Will: When these diseases are raging, parents should always anticipate and give to their children the universal medicine. Yes. And not wait till the diseases attack them. Suppose the child or young person should not catch the disorder, you'll nevertheless have improved his state of health.
[00:09:06] Rod: This is what I do with most medicines, I take them anyway. I got antibiotics, painkillers, I take kind of heart medicine, I take diabetic, I take it all, just in case.
[00:09:13] Will: But if your child does catch the smallpox, the disease will thereby be rendered much slighter and more innocent because the body is clear and purified, a disease cannot take much effect.
[00:09:23] Rod: Yeah. But I mean, in his defense, it's no surprise and we still have it today. If you are pure, you can't get ill. Turns out not a hundred percent true.
[00:09:33] Will: It's almost like, you know, spoiler, this guy's a quack. And his ways of thinking might be alive today. If your singing voice is not quite as good as you might hope it might be, yes. Shitting yourself won't won't make it perfect, but guaranteed it will make it more agreeable. You'll have a more agreeable voice. Purging is the only thing that can purify and improve the organs of speech and restore them to their natural melody.
[00:09:57] Rod: Oh, not only does it improve them, it's the only thing.
[00:09:59] Will: It's the only thing. It's the only thing.
[00:10:00] Rod: So you won't necessarily sing better, but what, you'll be more
[00:10:02] Will: or something, you know, it just, it will improve the organs of the speech, that they won't have any more impurities. Sudden death.
[00:10:09] Rod: Huh. The problem with that is once it's happened, it's hard to take the pill. We're talking prophylactic, I assume. Otherwise I think his thinking's broken.
[00:10:17] Will: Well, he's quite clear on that. He does not believe in miracles. He's not a miracle. Once penetrated with the sane idea of the human body, the reader will easily comprehend that all sudden death must proceed from a previously neglected state of body.
[00:10:30] When disease is so far advanced, it's too late. Prevention is the true prudence. I'm no advocate for miracles, nor do I prescribe specifics, but the vegetable universal medicine would prevent many a sudden death. If you've taken only six hours before, the dose should be large. So,
[00:10:44] Rod: I like a precise measure too.
[00:10:45] Will: Yeah, just, just have a large dose. Take lots. He's like, you know, he's looking at people dying suddenly, not pooing enough. People who can't sing, not pooing enough. People who have whooping cough.
[00:10:57] Rod: People who can't get a job.
[00:10:58] Will: Syphilis.
[00:10:59] Rod: Problems socialising.
[00:11:00] Will: It's wild how many things. He even went Early, this is well before eugenics, but he had an affection called perfecting the human race.
[00:11:08] Rod: White pooing.
[00:11:09] Will: He didn't actually, there was a bit of racism somewhere, but not a lot of right. If we want to perfect the human race you need to give your kids the universal medicine from birth so that they poo nice and regular and that will make us all better.
[00:11:23] Rod: I haven't had the babies. But my impression is strong that they got pooing, they got that. It's one thing they're born with a knowledge of.
[00:11:31] Will: Well, it varies. Let's just say that's, it varies
[00:11:35] Rod: but you shouldn't feed the McDonald's in the early months.
[00:11:38] Will: He did stress there's no danger in his vegetable universal medicine. To convince the world I'm ready to take them in any doses for any length of time and numbers of other persons have done the same thing and always to great benefit. The more that are taken, the greater the good. Are the blood letters and here he means like the leech people ready to do the same thing, having their blood drawn off.
[00:11:59] Rod: Fucking quack. I'm calling you.
[00:12:01] Will: You fuckers won't take 10 kilos of your medicine. I would take it like,
[00:12:05] Rod: yeah, why don't you drain all your blood out if it's so good for you?
[00:12:10] Will: just the idea that more medicine, just more would be better.
[00:12:14] Rod: Look, it's true. And we're finding that out today.
[00:12:16] Will: So he's saying, yeah, I'll take 30, 40, 50 of these pills. No, I don't know how strong they were.
[00:12:21] Rod: How do you measure strength? I mean, how much mehr is too much?
[00:12:24] Will: I have no idea.
[00:12:26] Rod: I'm thinking a lot of aloe, because it's so mucosal, and when you're putting it through a system that is also a bit gooey. I mean, it's really like, why don't you drink a vat of, you know, automotive lube? I bet you'll poo. You're like, I bet I will too.
[00:12:42] Will: One of the things I loved is A lot of people might be worried at this, you know, maybe you could be pooing too much. But he was like, ignore the people that worry, that frighten you about super purgation
[00:12:56] Rod: super purgation. I haven't got the shits. I'm super purgating.
[00:13:00] Will: This is his opinion on diarrhea. The diarrhea is, as everyone knows, a natural purging, and has most salutary effects. It should never be stopped. On the contrary, one will do well to assist it by taking the universal medicine, as is effectually to carry off the morbid humours.
[00:13:17] Rod: That's what I do. If I got diarrhoea... Strong black coffee. Double down. And whatever you don't take too many fluids in. Cause they bring poison.
[00:13:26] Will: He deeply believes diarrhea is is the body doing the good thing?
[00:13:30] Rod: It's not wrong. It has a purpose.
[00:13:31] Will: Yeah, absolutely. But he's like, this is the path to Nirvana, the path to the perfection of the human race.
[00:13:37] Rod: Squirty poos and lots of it. The idea that's like, Oh God, I got diarrhea. What I need is more incomprehensible.
[00:13:50] Will: It's a brave person that takes a strong laxative in the middle of some diarrhea. But I guess you get. You're empty. Maybe he loves the feeling of empty.
[00:14:00] Rod: Maybe. Look, I having, you know, you've had a colonoscopy. Right. And the preparation for that is very cleansing.
[00:14:06] Will: Yeah, no doubt.
[00:14:07] Rod: And you know, you feel what, nine kilos later on average. . But do you want that every day?
[00:14:12] Will: Maybe Morrison is like every day. How good would your singing voice be?
[00:14:16] Rod: The important thing is when you are on the throne, you should get to the point where you can't tell where it's coming from the front or the back. That means purity.
[00:14:24] Will: Any person that comes up with a quack theory, it's just one thing. Yeah. But you gotta push it. Yes. You gotta make your empire. So I said, Morrison made a discovery in 1822. He enjoyed it apparently. And I don't know quite how it happened. I think there's something here where like his friends got in on it. And they were like,
[00:14:41] Rod: let's have a poo party.
[00:14:43] Will: But it wasn't instant. So it was three years before he was like, all right, maybe I should sell this stuff. Yes. So 1825 he's keeping it to himself or to his friends, but it seemed one of those businesses where he's like, you know, he didn't decide instantly. All right. I've crapped my dacks. I can sing better and I'm healthy. Everyone's going to want this. No, it took a few years and I assume it was a little bit of friends saying, Oh, give me some of you, give me some of you to poo pills. By 1825, he set himself up as a vendor of the vegetable universal medicine in the two strengths, pill number one and pill number two. And at that point they took off.
[00:15:13] Rod: Which is stronger one or two?
[00:15:14] Will: Number two's the stronger one.
[00:15:15] Rod: Number two's. For more number two.
[00:15:17] Will: Over the next few years, you couldn't go into any apothecary, pharmacy, library in England and not see Morrison's number one or number two poop pills.
[00:15:28] Rod: Library. While you're here, why not take a dump?
[00:15:30] Will: I don't know. But apparently it's everywhere. Ads everywhere. Ads all over the place, like a lot of them were kind of these really quite glossy cartoon style ads, mostly demonizing the medical establishment, obviously, which, you know, seems a thing that modern quacks still do, you know, they paint the medical establishment as, you know, the mercury pushes or the blood letters or something like that.
[00:15:52] And, you know, here's one where. You know, there's the bad medical establishment tending to your tree. The tree being the body. And they're all cutting it down and putting mercury in it and stuff like that, hanging off the branches and shit.
[00:16:02] Rod: And it doesn't look well. No. It looks twisted and bare.
[00:16:05] Will: Whereas this tree has done a lot of pooing.
[00:16:07] Rod: Look at it. It veritably glows with green health.
[00:16:10] Will: Look at all of those gents looking at how...
[00:16:12] Rod: Standing around pointing at it with admiration. My, that's a majestic tree. I have nothing to do here. So yeah, so... Why be a doctor?
[00:16:18] Will: So that's, you'll feel like the tree after you've purged.
[00:16:21] Rod: I do like the idea of the the medical establishment climbing trees and top hats and spats. I think that's great. Next time I climb a tree.
[00:16:29] Will: And that's when he set up his fancy headquarters in London called the British College of Health, which again, it's like, it's a lot of heavy lifting well, but it's also the the use of names that sound sound legit. I think quacks have been doing it for quite a long time.
[00:16:43] Rod: Are still doing
[00:16:45] Will: but despite Morrison's belief that you could take 40 of the pills without any ill effects.
[00:16:53] Rod: I smell bad news.
[00:16:54] Will: Yeah, there were some deaths.
[00:16:56] Rod: Oh, were they sudden?
[00:16:59] Will: One case was a 15 year old girl who died in horrible distress in consequence of taking the pills. We don't have more of that story. But there was a more publicized incident, and this is the one that just, Oh, Jesus Christ, 1836. So Morrison sort of sold the pills to agents and then the agents would on sell them. I think pretending to be doctors. So Robert Salmon he had administered over a thousand pills over the course of 20 days to one person. Great. Captain John Mackenzie. Now, here's the thing. Captain John Mackenzie was suffering knee pain and desperate for any sort of relief.
[00:17:31] Rod: What you need is a good turd.
[00:17:34] Will: You need to turd more.
[00:17:36] Rod: What the fuck? So they don't even, they're not even trying. They're just like literally anything that empties. If body feel bad, get stuff out.
[00:17:43] Will: Yeah. Yeah. And see, the thing is. A bunch of Morrison's ads at the time had said things like to those taking Morrison's pills, we say, do not stop taking them when you feel worse, rather increase your doses. You must feel worse when the medicine begins to act upon the foul, acrimonious humors of the body, which have often been left to fix themselves. You got to push on through when the pain, and I just
[00:18:08] Rod: So it should be called morrison's double downs.
[00:18:09] Will: Oh, but you can see this in modern quacks as well. It's like, Oh no that's it working when you're getting sicker. And it's like, Oh, this is when you're bad. Like, I got no problem with people taking laxative and taking, you know. That's all fine. But going to the point where you're going on a you're feeling worse. Let's take more of the pills.
[00:18:27] Rod: It's something with the whole spiritual thing too. Oh no. The reason you didn't pray it away is because you didn't believe hard enough.
[00:18:32] Will: Exactly. So this guy, like he increased the doses and he was taking like 72 pills on the day before he died. And it's like
[00:18:39] Rod: and he didn't die well
[00:18:40] Will: no, there were a bunch more deaths.
[00:18:42] Rod: I'm assuming it would have been straight up dehydration. Although if this is highly fibrous, I don't know what some of the ingredient or any really of the ingredients can make. I mean, but if it's a lot of fiber, you bloat like a maniac, which is agonizing.
[00:18:55] Will: Could well. Could well. I look. More is not always better.
[00:19:01] Rod: No. I mean, drinking obviously. Yes. And drugs. Yes. But with this, no.
[00:19:05] Will: Those deaths both came before the courts. And there are another 12 more deaths investigated in York a year later. Well, I think one thing we've of people were doing this.
[00:19:13] Rod: So it was only like 0. 1 percent of the consumers.
[00:19:15] Will: I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Well, but there were a lot of people that were investigated. Definitely. There were some people that were convicted of manslaughter
[00:19:24] Rod: I find you guilty. You didn't take enough pills.
[00:19:27] Will: Yeah. Morrison himself. Yeah. He evaded punishment.
[00:19:31] Rod: Of course he did.
[00:19:31] Will: He moved to Paris and kept selling the pills from there over to England and the medical establishment, as you can imagine, fought back, you know, the founding editor of the Lancet, Thomas Wakely, he fought Morrison for decades and Morrison's pills, publishing lots of articles on how bad they were. And how ineffective they were. Other physicians joined in. There's a bunch of cartoons as well, that people were lampooning things.
[00:19:52] Rod: Lampooning. I heard what you did there.
[00:19:54] Will: I like this one. It's this guy saying I grew my legs back. Cause I took the, cause I took the poop pills. It's just like,
[00:20:03] Rod: what did it do for you? Grew my legs back
[00:20:04] Will: but when you read his book he's claiming a lot of things get fixed. I don't think he claimed you grow your legs back.
[00:20:10] Rod: Of all the things I did not expect that might've been in the top three, grew my legs back. I shat my legs back. Any shitting was okay. Or it had to be Morrison's number twos
[00:20:20] Will: oh I think he liked any shitting. He liked shitting. Shitting. Shitting is good. this is the path to getting the shit out.
[00:20:25] Rod: I'm agnostic about how, just as long as you do.
[00:20:28] Will: But I got a good part. And in fact, I did see there was a couple of other people that were selling like knockoff knockoff universal medicines. Like, like the people just went super keen for laxatives. Despite the medical establishment, the pills continue to be sold. He made heaps of money. Yeah. I bet he was making like a hundred thousand pounds a year in old time money. 1830's. So, so this is like Jane Austen. Yeah. When she's like, he has 22 pounds.
[00:20:53] Rod: My God, marry him. Have nine babies. I shit.
[00:20:56] Will: It's like, he's rich. I think that might translate into like three to 5 million pounds a year. So it's in that sort of, that sort of amount.
[00:21:03] Rod: A hundred thousand pounds a year now would make people happy.
[00:21:07] Will: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. He died in 1840 at the age of 70, living in a fancy house in Paris. His sons took over the business and the pills continued to sell strongly. In the decade after his death, another 828 million pills were sold and 1. 5 million given away to the poor.
[00:21:24] Rod: Yes. That's what they need. The problem is you don't shit enough.
[00:21:27] Will: And I don't have full records here but there's ads produced in Chinese and Arabic show and many other European languages. So it seems like they're pushing them all over the world. Well, in 1925, when the company celebrated its centenary, it was still a family firm being run by a descendant of the Morrisons. Oh. And I think the pills remained on sale at least until then.
[00:21:48] Rod: Fuck me.
[00:21:49] Will: Thing is, nothing wrong with a laxative. But there is something wrong with with saying that the only path to medicine is shitting more. Yeah. And once you're shitting, You shit harder. You shit harder.
[00:22:03] Rod: Just shit harder. There's one takeaway, people. Ha. You can never poo too much.
[00:22:09] Will: Ha, Oh my god. Yes you bloody can. Oh god.
