Benjamin Franklin is a figure of historic importance. He is what used to be called a “man of letters” and a polymath, but this only goes so far in explaining how important he was during his life, and how important he remains after his death. Franklin is a founding father of the United States, for a start. He was one of the writers of the Declaration of Independence, and his signature appears at the bottom of the document. Putting aside his political contributions, he was also a prolific inventor. Fascinated with electricity, he constructed a lightning rod to harness the energy in thunderstorms, and came up with a crude battery fully fifty years ahead of Alessandro Volta and his pile. He invented bifocal glasses, and a special “Franklin” stove designed to reduce smoke and promote efficient heat generation. None of his inventions were patented, all were free for anyone to use who so wished. He was fascinated with population growth both within the fledgeling United States and elsewhere, feeling that an understanding of population trends was essential to good governance. He turned his hand to oceanography, naming the Gulf Stream across the Atlantic. He was a successful newspaper publisher by the age of 23, and would serve the United States as her first postmaster general. He even invented a way of making decision by writing out a list of pros and cons and weighing them up, something which seems commonplace and obvious today. He travelled extensively, living for a time in London while America was still a colony of Great Britain. It was here that workmen stumbled across fifteen dead bodies that had been buried in his basement, all while he had lived there. Wait, What? It is a troubling detail to attach to the great man’s life, isn’t it? What does it mean? The bones certainly come from Franklin’s time as occupant of the house, situated at 36 Craven Street, near the Strand in the heart of London. It was not just adult bodies which were found, either. The bodies of at least six children were found in the relatively loose clay earth which makes up the floor of the basement. And ironically, it was Franklin himself who caused the discovery. Not in his lifetime, to be sure. The first body was not unearthed until 1998, when the building was undergoing restoration as the only surviving house in which Franklin had lived. It was to be opened as a museum to the great man. The find was entirely unexpected and raised many questions as to a potential hidden part of Franklin’s life. Could he have been a serial killer, stalking the streets of London before making good his escape? Sadly, the reality is likely to be much more prosaic. Although Franklin himself was not particularly interested in matters medical, he had an associate who was, named William Hewson. Hewson is remembered today as the “father of haematology” for his isolation of the protein fibrin in blood and his work on coagulation. He was a close acquaintance of Franklin, living in the same house for two years and marrying Franklin’s friend Mary Stevenson. Hewson also ran a small private anatomy school from the back rooms of 36 Craven Street, which is believed to be the reason for the bodies. It is thought that he would take receipt of cadavers for his classes and then, once they were too far gone to be useful as test subjects, he disposed on them by burying them downstairs. This is supported by the bodies themselves, several of which show evidence of dissection. It seems beyond belief today that human corpses would be buried in a house amongst the living, but for Hewson it was done simply for convenience’s sake. Franklin, of course, must have known of the bodies beneath his feet but for some reason this prodigious man of letters never thought to mention it in any of his copious correspondence, much of which survives. An odd omission, that even in passing. Was there something untoward about Hewson leaving the bodies down there? Had he come into possession of them through underhand means? Graverobbers and unscrupulous mortuary attendants could make good money passing on corpses to medical students. And, of course, this is only the explanation which most readily fits the facts. We do not know for sure why there are dead bodies buried in Benjamin Franklin’s basement, and although it does look like they were anatomy subjects all we can truly say is that when Franklin left the house to return to the colonies he left behind fifteen more dead people than were there when he arrived. Header Image: When Benjamin Franklin moved out of his digs in London, he left behind fifteen bodies buried in his basement. Source: Joyofmuseums / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Bezoar Stones, the Universal Antidote: More Than a Mistake?
It is fair to say that the history of medicine has been something of a hit and miss affair. Without modern technology to aid in our understanding of the root causes of ailments, there was a lot of guesswork and outright quackery in the mix for much of the time. This is not to say that it was anyone’s fault in particular. Our understanding of anatomy and biology was limited by technology: we did not conceive of germs, viruses or bacterial infections, for example, because we lacked the ability to find them. We might as well have believed in foul smelling swamp gases carrying disease, as indeed we did. In fact, we had only one proper process for the development of medicine, and that was trial and error. Much of our history of medicine is based on finding out what worked and using that, and as you might expect this was an imperfect science at best. It is true that we sometimes hit the nail on the head, often elevating our greatest discoveries almost to the status of religious doctrine. Our understanding of general hygiene, for instance, found itself intermingled with dogma, with illness resulting from careless hygiene being seen as god’s punishment. As an example. consider the wisdom of a Jewish or Islamic diet in a desert environment without refrigeration where pork and shellfish would be quick to spoil and germs could be easily passed from utensil to utensil. Seen through this lens the dietary restrictions were entirely prudent for the time, and although perhaps less essential in the modern world they survive as relics of ancient necessity. However, amidst these successes there were plenty of misidentifications, which largely came about through misunderstanding or even outright fakery. Sometimes however a mistake endures despite such errors, and sometimes it takes a signal moment or act to finally dispel these myths. So it was with bezoar stones, perhaps the grossest of all antidotes. Delicious! Bezoar stones are not the most appealing dietary supplement. These hard masses form in the intestines of humans and animals. In their simplest form they are accreted collections of undigested foods, but they can be formed by multiple processes, some harmless, some highly harmful. The word “bezoar” gives a hint as to how they were originally perceived. It comes from the Persian word pād-zahr (پادزهر), which literally translates to “antidote” and indeed such stones were seen as medicinal from at least the 11th century in the Middle East. The famous physician Ibn Zuhr considered them to have highly valuable medical properties, and the book of magic known as the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm also mentions them on several occasions. Both sources passed their knowledge to Europe in the 12th century, and it was through these that the west came to hear of these uses of bezoar stones. Bezoars recovered from various animals were used as prophylactics, placed into the bottom of drinking vessels. It was thought that any poison introduced into the drink would be neutralized by the bezoar, rendering the drink safe. The stones naturally became highly prized, and it was several centuries before the idea of them as a universal antidote faced any significant challenge. It only be in the late 16th century that the idea was finally quashed and it took a Frenchman and a practical demonstration to do so. The French surgeon Ambroise Paré, a forward thinking man aided by a more modern medical understanding than the 11th century Persians, had become convinced through his research that bezoar stones could not function as had been described. However to convince a skeptical public he needed something more concrete. Happily, he had a volunteer on which to experiment. A cook in the court of the French King Charles IX had been found guilty of a crime and sentenced to death. At Paré’s request he was permitted to avoid his sentence of hanging provided instead he submitted to drinking poison from a cup containing a bezoar stone. The cook may have expected to survive the poison cup but, if that were true, he was out of luck. After drinking from the cup with the bezoar stone he endured seven hours of gastrointestinal agony before finally perishing. The bezoar had done nothing to save him. In truth by this time there had been much doubt about the efficacy of bezoar stones. Certainly nobody in 16th century France would think to entirely rely on their supposed medicinal properties, but it took this final demonstration to, largely, consign them to history. But the question remains: why? Why had anyone assumed that a gastrointestinal blockage would have the power to render poisons harmless? Why had such a concept endured for so long, and so far into the modern age? Sometimes an old wives’ tale is just that, easily disproved. But sometimes at the heart of a myth there is a kernel of truth, a demonstrable core which survives even the microscopic examination of modern science. And so it is, or at least might be, with bezoar stones. In 2013, Gustaf Arrhenius and Andrew A. Benson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography revisited the idea of bezoar stones as an antidote to poison, and the conclusions they drew were surprising to say the least. Could bezoar stones neutralize poison? Amazingly, while ineffective against most poisons, they seemed to work when introduced to a liquid containing that most invisible and deadly poison of all: arsenic. Bezoar stones which had been immersed in a solution containing arsenic were found to react chemically with the lethal element in the liquid. The two actively toxic compounds in the drink: arsenite and arsenate, were both rendered harmless by the bezoar. Bezoars commonly contain undigested hair which work as nucleation sites for the stones, and the proteins which make up the hair contain compounds of sulfur. Arsenite in the solution will bind itself to these compounds, removing the toxic compound from the liquid. Bezoar stones also often contain something called “brushite”, a crystalline compound containing phosphor. The arsenate
