While we are currently experiencing COVID-19 social distancing, we decided to get creative. In this episode we dive into new territory for our podcast by exploring the histories of pandemics past and Maria Sibylla Merian. We talk about how the course of history has changed via the outbreak of disease and take a closer look at how the study of Entomology has evolved due to this dedicated artist scientist.
While we are currently experiencing COVID-19 social distancing, we decided to get creative. In this episode we dive into new territory for our podcast by exploring the histories of pandemics past and Maria Sibylla Merian. We talk about how the course of history has changed via the outbreak of disease and take a closer look at how the study of Entomology has evolved due to this dedicated artist scientist.
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Hi, I'm Renee. Hi, I'm Sam. And this is laboratory podcast nine Clack tending. And then yesterday I won one game and Mom won one game. And now I just want to play Mah Jong all the time. Welcome to laboratory podcast. Exploring the human side of science with
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recorded interviews of emeritus and
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retired scientists on the evolution and history of scientific research throughout their careers. I think this is a lab oratory podcast now recording from our fourth different studio.
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Yeah, I feel like there's going to be so many over time, but this is the most prepared we've been.
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So, um so it is currently April 2nd as we record this and we are
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entering into our third week of quarantine
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with my parents in Orleans, Massachusetts. So we've been having a fun time getting used to not seeing other human beings, um, hanging out and trying to do work from afar and working from home and getting things done. And we decided that this was a great time to dive in to our idea that we've wanted to do for a while, which was we want to each dive into a different story and share it with one another, whether it is a topic in science, a person who used to do signs way back when or anything in between. And we wanted to each look up our own topic that were interested and share it with the other person.
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Yes, I have always been interested in stories from the past that's this podcast and thus trying new things and expanding our range,
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especially when we have yet to get the capacity to do interviewing over Zoom. And also, I feel exam is a little overwhelmed right now. So
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but also thank you, Zoom for being there for us. In these times, we appreciate it. But in the meantime, I mean, what better way to experiment than do what
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we can with the two of us,
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right? Especially when we're in one space for the next couple
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undetermined amount of time.
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Question Mark. We hope that you are also doing well out there and not going stir crazy. Um,
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taking care of yourself so you could be taking care of others. Yeah, that's why you do this. So what's our topic today? That's a great question. So Sam has a story on a topic I have a story on a scientist and the other person does not know what the other person is talking about. Um, so this will be their first time hearing this story. Who wants to go first? You want me to go first? Do you want to go for us?
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I want to go first. Okay. Okay. So I dove into the topic of disease and pandemics through history and the understanding of how we got to where we have got to today with quarantining methods and just generally learning from the past for disease outbreaks. So as long as humans have lived in close proximity to one another, they have also had to deal with another cohabitate er called disease disease. The name who's their origins date back to medieval times the name, and if you look at it more closely, it separates into dis ease, Meaning you're not at ease. Your body does not know how to rest. And when it does not know how to rest, the energies become chaotic. And I love this part, especially referring to the Middle Ages, because largely what people understood the body to have in it that cause disease was the four humors and this idea was thought to be originated by Hippocrates. In the fourth century B. C. He was born, uh, and for 4 60 BC, Hippocrates was a great position. Known as the father of medicine in recognition of his contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine, his intellectual school revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece and established it as a discipline distinct from other fields. And he had this theory that, uh, he believed that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstitions or gods. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion. And he believed and argued that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods, but rather the product of environmental factors, diet and living habitat. He's a smart man. Yes, thank goodness for Hippocrates, because we'd all be subject to the gods and not understand diseases. We know it today, um, and what he writes. So he goes into the nature of what these four humors are in the nature of man. He describes them before humors as follows. He says the human body contains blood, flem, yellow bile and black bile. Those with four humors. And these are the things that make up its Constitution and cause. It's pains and health. Health is primarily that state in which these constituents substances are in the correct proportion to each other, both in strength and quantity, and are well mixed. Pain occurs when one of the substances presents either deficiency or an excess or is separated in the body and not mixed with others, so that causes disease. Your four humors not gonna go not getting along and going into further depth with the four humors. So we have blood or sang green, phlegmatic, flim caloric, yellow bile or melancholic black bile, and how they were composed in the body were considered a determines the person person's personality and health concerns. And everybody was thought to contain some measure of each of these humors. Since all these humors were believed to be in the blood and since it was believed that the disordered complexion or dis ease, the humans could transform into unwanted secondary humors if they were dis eased, so people thought bloodletting or flip bottom e leeching. All of this ancient practices allowed the unwanted humors to be removed from the body before the liver could produce more clean pure blood. All right, get all of
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that. So the leeches air sucking out your melancholy from your blood,
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or you're saying we got it? Yes, but I also in the vein of trying to be as accurate as possible. And I am an amateur historian. I don't know scientists. I want to make note that I saw that gallon. Another notable Greek master of medicine is really responsible for influencing the whole medical world and the regulation of humorous, um, and its understanding of how to deal with diseases up through the Middle Ages. Hippocrates put this idea out there. But Galan was the one that was like, guys, we need to actually do this. And he was the one I guess identified is making it really a thing. All right, so up through probably up to the mid, like 19 hundreds be did bloodletting, and I'm not gonna get into what happened. Then I'm gonna keep going with this. So Ah, Hippocrates Born ther ah, for 60 BC, And about 30 years after he was born, one of the earliest recorded mass diseases or pandemics of human history ran rampant during the Peloponnesian War and 4 30 BC and Ashton's. This disease, uh, most likely typhoid fever, because I had symptoms of fever, thirst, bloody throat and hung bloody throat. Yeah, I know. Gross, right? Redskin and lesions. It weakened the Athenians greatly and was a major factor in their defeat by the Spartans. A cz much as 2/3 of the population died in that pandemic and after that fit their 15 plus notable pandemic outbreaks that changed the course of human history. It's not just everyone's talking about the Spanish flu that was the most recent big outbreak, but there were countless others that has has been around for a while, so I'm not gonna go into all of them. I'll just hit a few of them and keep going. So ins. Ah, 1 65 a d. We had the Antonin Plague began with the Hans infecting the Germans, who passed it to the Romans, and eventually the plague continued for about 15 years until about 188 D, and the lives lost counted to five million, you know, Then you have 2050 a. D. The Siberian plague named after the Christian bishop of Carthage. I like all the gory details, but I won't give you these with details. Um, basically, people will start it living in cities and in really closer proximity is those in the cities fled to the country to escape infection but ended up spreading the disease further. It allegedly started in Ethiopia, passed through northern Africa into Rome and then into Egypt and northward. Then, in 5 40 80 of the Justinian plague, it changed the course of the Empire. The Roman Empire stopping Emperor Justinian plans to bring the Roman empire back together and caused massive economic hardship can also be credited by creating an apocalyptic atmosphere that spurred the rise of Christianity. So all these people were dying. There's a lot of plagues. People were fighting over Christianity and this outbreak change the course of that. No way of Christianity. To Ray, it's This is believed to be the first significant appearance of the bubonic plague, too, and was carried by rats and spread by fleas. And it killed about 2 25 to 50 million people, roughly 26% of the world population. It's a lot. So then we get to the 13 hundreds, 13 50 black death Everyone has probably heard of this. At some point in their life, there were actually several cases of the black death. Um, the black death overall was responsible for the death of 1/3 of the world population and its alleged to have started in Asia than moved west. And caravans enter three entering through Sicily and 13 47 a. D. When plague suffers arrived in the port of Messina spread throughout Europe, rapidly and dead bodies became so prevalent that many remained rotting on the ground and created a constant stench in cities. You know, all the good stuff.
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I'm glad we do not do that anymore.
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And that affected the world. Because England and France were so incapacitated by the plague that the country's called a truce to their war that they had going on, the British feudal system collapsed. When the plague change the economic circumstances and demographics. It ravaged popular populations in Greenland, Vikings lost their strength to wage battle against native populations, and the exploration of North America halted. So after that, then we get the Columbian exchange that counted as a pandemic, basically that in 14 92 Westerners, well, I guess Europeans were arriving to the Americas And that's when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That's it. 49 todo eso Ah, long story short. Christopher Columbus arrived on the island of Hispaniola. He met with the Taino people who had a population. I'm sorry if I mispronounced that room. Uh, they had a population of about 60,000 but by 15 48 the population stood at less than 500 because of all the smallpox and related diseases that Europeans brought. Not comforting whatsoever. Yes, Um, and also just want to make a note that research in 2019 even concluded that the deaths of some 56 million Native Americans in the 16th and 17th centuries their deaths largely through disease, may have altered the Earth's climate as vegetation growth on previously tilled land drew more co two from the atmosphere and caused cooling event. So not only did it affect human history, it affected the world climate history interested, right? So I'm gonna speed through the rest of these because this is probably the most of what people know. In 13 hundreds through the 16 hundreds, we have great plagues in London, like death robotic legs Chris, Chris Rose. They killed millions of people. Then you get into these this idea of quarantine Oh, I'm gonna talk about. But that's when people started to identify the quarantine was a beneficial thing. Um, and in Britain, people were isolated to their houses. And then if you went out, you had to carry a white pole in public, notifying that your family had the disease in their house and cats and dogs were believed to carry the disease. So we're talking about the bubonic plague ravaging London from the 1300 through the 16 hundreds. So there was a wholesale massacre of hundreds of thousands of animals on the River Thames in 16 65. That was one of the last of the worst centuries long outbreaks, killing 100,000 Londoners and seven months. Uh, and people were forcibly shut into their homes to prevent the spread of the disease. Red crosses were painted on their doors along with a plea for forgiveness. Lord have mercy upon us. So if you saw that on someone's door, that family had a disease. That outbreak tapered off around 16. 66 around the same time that another destructive event, the Great Fire of London, began in a bakery so London could not catch a break for 300 years, and yet they still became a world powers. So, uh, then we go through the 18 hundreds. You have cholera, pandemics, love in the time of cholera. I don't read that. I haven't read that book. I would like to. I
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never heard of
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it. Yes, you should read it. Um, and then we get to the 1918 spent Spanish flu. Um, and that resulted in 50 million deaths worldwide. Funny little side note. So, um, Renee, do you know why it's called the Spanish flu?
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I'm now, assuming this is a trick question, and it has nothing to do with Spain. It does have to do with Spain now. I have no idea. So what was going
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on in 1918 was World War one, and a lot of the countries participating in World War one had a censorship law for their newspapers that anything other than the news, or like, positive things. Um, I'm generalizing here, um were able to be printed, but in France and specifically in United States, in Kansas, they discovered this flu and, like, started reporting on it. But they weren't allowed to give it to the press, so they discovered it like February, March of 1918. But it wasn't until um, this spring, when Spain, who is neutral in World War, they started noticing a massive outbreak or just a couple more people than usual and began reporting in their news. And they were, um, I guess recognizes the rest of the world by being really like a whistle blowing about it or just they were hyping it up. So they in Spain, they believed it to have come from France, so they called it the French flu. But the rest of the world was like, Oh, Spain's reporting on this What is going on, this disease coming out of Spain, And then it locked on and got its name, the Spanish flu. Just unfortunate. No sad and leads me into, he said about the naming policies. And don't hate the people that these diseases are named after. If it's named after a group of people, don't be mean to them, especially into the 19 toe corona beer. You can be mean to Corona beer. Okay, just don't be mean to Chinese people. I have no intention of doing so. So Ah, speeding through all of that because now I'm talking. Take talking for a really long time. I wanted thio also identify quarantine. I brought it up before, um, in the 16 hundreds. Don't know. Sorry in the 14th century. So, like I said, between the 13th and 1600 um, the practice of quarantine began. 14th century begin in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. The Venice sport in particular. Ah, the They required authorities to have ships from infected ports to sit anchor for 40 days before landing. And the origin of the word quarantine comes from Corentin Cariou. And with
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what is quarantine R e o stands for 40 days. All right, that makes sense.
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Your numbers, right? What? The waiting period. That's what the waiting period in because they were waiting for fork. So quarantine, Dario, Um quart, Corti? Yes, quarter. For. And then as the opinions of the disease changed, the isolation period shrank from ah, 40 to 30 days. Trend scenario. 30 days. But by that time, the originally stuck. So we have quarantine
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that Trent, a teen got it exactly. And then I have some
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stories about, Ah, yellow fever in Philadelphia and 1917 93. Um, where that was one of the first times, I guess in United States history that people were quarantine, um, trying to teen yester entity, uh, the faced this disease. And then they also bled their patients of infected blood and gave them wine as a way to help them with their ills. Um, and also a popular theory on stopping the disease was quarantine sailors at the Lars of Red Oh ah, hospital outside the Philadelphia City. But this disease spread through mosquitoes, so quarantine was not so effective. But the
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mosquitoes didn't listen to the quarantine room.
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They didn't, but they listened to the cold snap that eventually killed them.
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That's useful. Thank you. Climate. And that moment,
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Yes, yes, yes. Um oh, um, the other story that I got really excited about was Typhoid Mary and everyone's probably I've seen a lot of people put this up on their websites, Mama, but I've never actually known the story of Typhoid Mary and the quick and dirty version of Typhoid Mary was in 1907 Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish born cook who carried the bacteria that causes typhoid fever, which is a form of salmonella that can cause fever, diarrhea and death, like she herself was immune to the disease. But when authorities figured out that her work is a cook had caused the city's typhoid outbreak, she was sent to North Brother Island for a three year quarantine, and she promised never to cook for others ever again. But she broke her word, and she was especially fond of making peach ice cream for people. So she he was a baker and Short can understand. So then again, when she was apprehended in 1915 she was sent back to the island for the rest of her life. 23 more years were Mary.
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She just wanted to cook. You don't want to give you your share her food with people,
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right? Right. Um, I am going to end because I found some little excerpts of people's, I guess first account stories from the CDC. They do a little storytelling. They have, uh, what is it called on the CDC website? You can find the pandemic influence a storybook, and it's a series of first account stories of the 1918 flu. I'll do two of them. So the first is Betty, some P who is from Pennsylvania and who has little biased because I was like Pennsylvania. So here's Betty's story. My family was living in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1918. My mother told me when I was almost four years old in February 1919 that I became ill with influenza. My condition was critical, and I had been delirious for many hours. When our family doctor was able to get an experimental medication described as a shot for me, he told my parents he could offer no other hope. My parents agreed to the treatment. At the time, a neighbor child was also sick with influenza, but his family refused the treatment offered by the doctor. Neither one of us was expected to live through the night. He didn't. My mother called the doctor the next morning because I was awake and asking for something to eat. But she was afraid to feed me. He told her he would be right over. Doctors made house calls back, though the boy who died was in kindergarten with me. We already had a kindergarten for four and five year olds because our school was a training facility for a nearby teacher's college. This is the story the way it has always been told to me. Since I am the only member of my family still living, I have no further confirmation accept the outcome. I am still here at the age of 92 to tell the tale you got the 1st 1 of the first shots. That's crazy, right? Um, and then they're the final story. Want to tell is about cures, finding a cure and all. There's so many different stories about what people thought cured these things. Course say we've gone from the four humors and blood leading to modern day technology having a shot. Um, so this story comes from Elmer Bud Pancake, and he is from Wyoming, the storyteller in particular. It's Marguerite of Pancakes. So she's storing, telling the story about Elmer. It goes. My father, Elmer Bud Pancake, grew up around Lusk, Wyoming, During the great flu pandemic of 1918 there was a country doctor who boasted that he had never lost a patient. His secret weapon was rot gut whiskey. He would pour the whisky into a patient to get them to cough up the flim. During the pandemic, he ran out of whiskey, and there was none other to be had in the community. The only whiskey and Lusk was locked up in the sheriff's office as evidence for a bootlegger's trial. The sheriff refused to release the liquor, so the doctor got a few prominent citizens together for a kind of vigilante committee that promptly seized the whiskey, depriving the sheriff of its evidence. Sees the whiskey right,
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sees the whiskey pit medicine for science.
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If you are interested in more stories again, you can go to the C. C's websites, CDC dot gov slash publications. Back hand flew for more stories like that. Also, the other, um, the majority of the other information I have done research for his history dot com Um, and New York Times has some really good articles, too. And if you want more stories, ah, a couple of nonfiction books that are good. Um, the Great Influenza by John M. Bury It examines the 1918 flu pandemic, and we have tail. Horse pill. Writer of Katherine Anne Porter is published in 1939. I'm considered such an exceptional depiction of the suffering caused by the influenza that Alfred W. Crosby Jr. Professor emeritus of history Geography, American Studies, also a Boston night, dedicated his book to it. You also have the Hot Zone, a terrifying true story by Richard Preston as nonfiction account about the Ebola virus that has really great reviews on pardons, and Noble was gonna read you one, but I don't want to know, Um, and also one pandemic and what we're one outbreak of the virus we haven't talked about, but I wanted to touch on was the AIDS epidemic. Um, there's a great book called and the band played on Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic. Ah, booked by the San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts and chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome. So with that, I hope that was plenty of fodder for you to learn so much what has happened in the past. Now where we are today, I didn't really get into modern medicine, but
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only so much time. There's future ones. You can do that, and if you want, it's true. But I think knowing
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a little bit about where we've come from in pandemics and recognize that we don't have to walk around with light poles anymore.
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I'm appreciative that we're no longer walking around with white poles. I am appreciative that we have already discovered that quarantines can be useful. It's true. Thank you, Venice and commissions appreciative that we have better sewer systems and we don't have to be piling up people outside of her house is it's
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true. Yeah. One of the stories I did want to get into was Jon Snow. I'm doing the doing the research to figure out that a lot of the cholera epidemics were coming from water outbreaks and he, like, did science sleuthing. And if there isn't a movie about how he's doing that out because he got really into it science loose, right? There
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should be work on it, Johnson. Get on it, Savior. All right, So what do you got? I'm going to make Sam. Guess what? I'm gonna talk about a scientist useful. Okay, that's correct. So that is correct. So why, This is also Corona virus quarantine themed in a way. But in a very ad, drunk theway, um, adjacent way. In the last few weeks, we've been at this house. We have been going through old photos of me and my family trying to sort them. They're so cute on. And Sam learned that I was obsessed with something as a kid. What is it? The beach butterflies. There you go. I was obsessed with butterflies. I was the kid that I think in about 90% of the photos of me up until the age of six or seven, I had butterflies on
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everywhere, owner clothes in her hair outside to there's a lot to her.
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So I was butterfly obsessed, so I decided to talk today. And I'm going to give you two things right now. One, please excuse any mispronunciations, cause I promise you there's gonna be a few in here
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or be kind if you let us know that
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we've given correct me nicely, Um And then the fact that I have a handful of references I got this from So the woman I'm gonna be talking about to set today is Maria Sibella. Marion, You say that again? No. Maria Sibila. Marion. That is her name. I'm gonna be calling her Maria. Sounds great. Um, and I'm gonna just acknowledge all my references right now. Um, there are a handful of websites I got this from. There's Botanical Art and artists dot com. There was Sabella America Marion dot com. There's botanica dot com Wikipedia. And then there's two articles, one from the Atlantic titled The Woman Who Made Science Beautiful and one from The New York Times titled A Pioneering Woman of Science. Re Emerges After 300 Years. Wow. So that's where I got all this information from. So we're gonna go on a little journey about Maria's life. Let's please So Maria was born on April 2nd in 16 47 I'm. She's born in Frankfurt, Germany, and at that time it was a center for silk trade, and therefore the silkworm was very important to the town. She was born to a family of Swiss heritage. Her father was Mathias and her mother was Johanna and her father was an engraver at a publisher. But he passed away in 90 in 16 50 when she was only three years old. It's on 16 51. Her mother remarried to Jacob Marel, and he was a renowned ah still life painter, and he encouraged Maria to be able to paint as well. Um, so he taught her how to paint using watercolors, most likely. And they assumed that because women were not allowed to sell oil paintings in certain cities in Germany back then who in Germany? Um, in 16 60 at age 13 she started to collect insects and raised silkworms. Um, she began to paint the insects and plants from ones that she collected. And through painting, she recorded their life cycles. Noting change and movement, she depicted moths coming from eggs and hatching larvae, Moz and cocoons through being adults and even distinguished the male versus female adults. Um, and it was very unique that she was a girl at that point in time who is not afraid of getting her hands grubby and dirty and doing all this work. Um, and a lot of these articles noted that fact.
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Yeah, and I hate getting my hands.
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So there is a direct quote from one of her publications here and that I'm going to read, and it says, I spent my time investigating insects at the beginning. I started with silk worms in my hometown of Frankfurt and realized that other caterpillars produce beautiful, broader flies or moths and that silkworms do the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed. So she's really interested in looking at this change of the caterpillars on the silkworms. In 16 65 when she was 16 years old, she got married, and shortly after she had her first child and moved to Nurnberg, which is where her husband was from. Um, she continued to collect caterpillars and playing paint flower specimens that came from gardens. And she also taught painting toe unmarried daughters of wealthy families, which helped her family financially increased their social standing. Um, and this also gave her access to some of the finest gardens that existed of the elite. And so she got to use those gardens as more inspiration for her art. The Butterfly paint her. So in 16 75 she publishes her first collection of engravings called Blooming Book, which is the Book of Flowers. It had three volume, the first, which was published in 16 75 and all three were published by 16 80 and it's called New Blumen Book, which is the new Book of Flowers and It's a collection of 36 engraving plates. Um, and in 16 79 she published her second collection of engravings, and I am going to tell you this in English, And then you could hear me try to muddle through it. Not in English. Oh, boy. But the book is called The Caterpillar Marvelous Transformation and Strange floral food, which the rope in Wonder Bar were Win lug on Sandra pair bloom and frog
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we're looking for German tutors would like to help us sounds wunderbar.
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This is what is considered to be her life's worth. Um, it was a result of two decades of observations. In this set, she demonstrated the life cycle of the butterfly and how it transforms from a caterpillar to a butterfly. She was the first to portray caterpillars and butterflies with the plants that nourished Hm. And with the empirical research, you could confirm what Francesco Redi had already concluded in 16 68 which for that insects were born from eggs and not from spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation was the belief that insects just spontaneously emerged from the mud, and that was the widely held belief at that point in time. Could you imagine? Oh, so at this point, there were other publications on insects, but none with their full lifecycle and their ecological connections, and which Maria did this by showing the relationships of animals on the plants and looking through a wider lens than others. So she was really focused on the connection of the plants and the animals, versus just studying this one organism out of context as to where it lives and what feeds on and how it habitually moves around. In these books, she also had text describing the metamorphosis. Stage illustrated the environmental factors that influenced the growth of the insects and the relationship of plants used as nourishment to the eggs being laid near those plants. Um, so she had a few points that separated her from others. Based on her observations. That's really unique observations such that the larvae wood shed their skin completely 3 to 4 times. She saw that ways in which they could create their cocoon. She looked at their mode of locomotion and that when they would have no food, they would devour one another. They being the caterpillars. Well, um, she also realized that the plants that they laid their eggs on happened toe also be the plants that they fed off of the most because they wanted their food to be near where they were creating new life. Another point that separated her from others is that she enjoyed painting from live organism so she could accurately depict a lot of the color. Since preserving specimens, you often lose the color eso. This resulted in these really gorgeously vibrant paintings that were very accurate. The second volume of this was published in 16 83 and each of them had 50 engravings and these engraving plates would have plans with the caterpillars on it and maybe a spider and something else. So it has, like this whole story on one engraving plate. This publication was popular in certain parts of high society but is largely ignored by scientists since it was published in the vernacular and not in Lakin and Latin was the official language of science back then, and she did not know Latin and there was not published. In 16 85 Maria left her husband. It was not a happy marriage on, and she moved to religious commune. I'm dying. There's the lab Buddhists and She lived there with her mother and two daughters. During this time she lived in a home owned by Cornelius Van Samels. Took God bless you. S o m m e L S D I j k. Sounds about right. Yes. Um and he was the governor of Suriname, which is a South American country, and this allowed her to begin studying the flora and fauna of Suriname and South America. During this time, she also studied Latin again, the official language of science and natural history. In 16 91 Maria's mother passed away and Maria moved to Amsterdam. Suddenly, she was in this world that was fueled by trade on the Dutch empire and hear women could have their own businesses and earn money. So she sold her art to collectors. And through this business, she got to know prominent residents of Amsterdam. Many of these folks worked for the Dutch East India company and Dutch West India Company for the trading companies back then, and that allowed her to explore their exotic collections of butterflies and moths that they collect during their travels doing trade. These are often pinned on wooden trays, like you see collections and museums. However, if you remember, she preferred organisms that were alive and interacted. Yes, sir. Little pits? Yes, in the environment s so she was always motivated to study these creatures alive. In 16 99 Maria was sponsored by the city of Amsterdam to go on a trip to Suriname with her younger daughter, Dorothy a Maria. Which, by the way, at that point, Dorothy A. Was married to somebody from Suriname because they were in that commune together. Yeah,
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and that's how that works.
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Yes. So, at the age of 50 to her and her youngest daughter headed out on a ship for what was planned to be a five year expedition. Now this was again audacious in many ways, Um, she was a woman doing this in a very male dominated scientific world. This was one of the first expedition solely with a scientific purpose most of that time or political, economic, military driven that happened to do science on the side or discover things on the side. She traveled alone and without protection, and she financed the trip herself through selling her drawings in Amsterdam because again, in Amsterdam, women were able to make money through their own businesses. She's also the first European woman to independently go on a science expedition to South America. Look at her, go get it on. So they settled in Para Mara Bill with confidence. They they settled in Paramaribo, where they collected has studied and composed illustrations of the plants, insects and animals from a wide variety of ecosystems, including vegetable gardens, banks of rivers and sugar plantation. She also worked with indigenous people, paying them to bring her insects and learning how they use thes resource is naturally. Um, there's also a side story about how folks offered her slave labor toe work with her, and she was more interested in learning what they use and how they use this instead of using these people with no gain for their own knowledge. Also good for her. She's great. In 17 01 her trip was cut short, Um, do to Maria becoming infected with malaria. So at this point in this time, she sold the specimen she collected and proceeded to work on producing engravings based on these adventures. Good trade us. Did she get better? You will learn. In 17 05 she published Metamorphosis in SEC Torey um, Serena Museum, which is the insects and metamorphosis of Suriname. Basically, Um, and this book was written in Latin in Yeah, she learned. But it's also published in touch because she wanted to appeal to both audiences. Yeah, um, so this one contains 60 new engravings, and it was the first work on the natural history of Suriname. This text included observations about the ecosystem of Suriname, including discovering a large range of unknown plants and animals for what she noted their habitat habits, their and their uses to indigenous people. She drew images of plants, frogs, snakes, spiders, iguanas, local fruits, one of which she's really known for is the pineapple. There's a very famous picture of a pineapple in the plant with some flies around it, and that was done by her No way beetles and ants. The ecological interactions she included in this work brought back this vibrant and interwoven world of Suriname to England, and she's urged to publish it by folks. And so this work was considered to be her most magnificent piece produced, so she has the metamorphosis caterpillars on their fauna, being her lake, seminal work of what she was known for that was what she's really originally passionate about. And then this one, which is the most impressive and large work that she did in 17. 15 she suffered a stroke. She became partially paralyzed and could no longer work. January 13th 17. 17 she passes away in Amsterdam, a collection of her work. I'm gonna stumble through this one, Yukari. Um, or it is elemental. E paradox. A metamorphosis was published post humorously, her legacy lives on. Oh, yes. And that's what we're gonna talk about right now. Okay, so we're gonna talk about the impact that Maria had in the science world. Let's do it. So Maria's engravings had a major impact in the world of ecology. Most European butterflies did not have a scientific name when she began studying them. And Carl Linnaeus on Lee started to create the universal classifications system for organisms, which is the kingdom file. Um, class order, family genus species that has an acronym. Doesn't kings play chess on fine green silk? Um, so he only started to create that system 20 years after she published her Suriname research. And about 40 years after her death, Carl Linnaeus and others were able to identify 100 or so new species based on her work concern. Now, in 17 35 and 17 53 Linnaeus classified the animal she catalogued in Suriname, using her work to describe 56 animals and 39 plants. After her death, she was so revered for her work amongst biologists that a number of tax A and two genre were named after her taxes. Is any others classifications as well as three butterflies? A moth, a bug with no common name. She also had a bird eating spider named after her. Another spider, a toad, a bird, a lizard and a snail. Also some flowers. So there's a lot of organisms out there that have reference to her last name, her middle name, in their official Latin names. I
spk_0: 42:43
can't wait to come across that bird when
spk_1: 42:45
we play wingspan. Her paintings of the sternum, animal and plant life were so accurate that entomologists, those are people who study insects, could identify 73% of the butterflies and moths by genius and 66% as exact species. And for those who do not deal with this on a daily basis, sometimes the difference of one species to another is so minute that you need such detailed observations. It is sometimes based on the presence or absence of another set of legs, of a certain in dent in their body of the length of a certain in antenna or something. So the fact that they were able to identify these species just threw for drawings really play to how detailed she was in her art and how on point with the actual organism she waas. The fact that she also had multiple stages of life really help us well, because at some point you can't identify what makes species unique from one another. But later in life or earlier in life, you can. In the last quarter of the 20th century, her work has been reevaluated, validated and printed over and over again. Her portrait was on the 500 d m nute before Germany converted to the euro, and she had a portrait on a stamp, and there's a lot of schools named after her as well. She had a Google Doodle on April 2nd 2013 to Marker 366 birthday in 2005. There is a research vessel Maria S Marion in Germany. And there have been many art exhibits with her engravings. Folks and museums collect them. They're very rare to find these original printed ones. And there's a large collection in the royal collection. Suriname was republished in 2017 with updated scientific descriptions based on things that folks have now discovered about the organisms that she had drawn back then. Great. So it lives on and continues to evolve is on. And you could search her work if you put her name M a r I a space m e r I a n And he searched them. We're gonna post some of the her artwork. Oh, great on instagram because it's really cool. Yes, we should. Especially the pineapple. Oh, yes, the tight, awful. Um And you can see how beautiful, destroying czar she included holes and leave. She included spider webs and insects flying around. And you really get a picture of the environment that she was looking at in that point in time. So there is a story of a artist scientist. I love that story. Oh, she just
spk_0: 45:26
got really in the painting. Her
spk_1: 45:27
little random on it in self worms. Yes. And all started with those silkworms and those caterpillars poking and prodding at those cocoons to figure out how they formed in there and what was happening.
spk_0: 45:40
So if you two find yourself painting anything of that nature, keep going. You
spk_1: 45:47
manage the boat, leave after you and share with us. Yeah, so, yeah, there's my quarantine, a Jason story, I like Thanks. Welcome. So this has
spk_0: 46:00
been our first endeavor into our own research in science history and sharing the stories that we have learned.
spk_1: 46:07
I already have somebody. I want to do it on next. So let's do another. I would love to do another.
spk_0: 46:12
If any of you have any suggestions, a lot
spk_1: 46:14
of snow. I think that for right now we are going to continue doing this for a little bit. We're still putting out some other episodes of interviews we have backlogged that we need to produce. Um, but in the meantime, let's see how this goes and go on this Corona virus adventure with all of you and make do with what we can and see what we could create. In the meantime, exactly.
spk_0: 46:37
I'm taking an advantage of a of Ah, situation.
spk_1: 46:42
Take advantage of the fact that we're here together. Yeah. So
spk_0: 46:47
without further ado, we'll wrap this up by saying Thank you so much for listening. We're still do what I asked You were still a new podcast and were ever expanding in these
spk_1: 46:58
trying times. You can find us at Instagram at laboratory podcast, where you will soon hopefully see some really pretty photos that Maria has drawn. You
spk_0: 47:10
can check out our website at laboratory
spk_1: 47:12
dash podcast dot com. We have Twitter and maybe I'll tweet something today. So I don't know if you see that I treated on April 2nd because I said this and I feel like bounded myself to doing that. We have a twitter at laboratory pod
spk_0: 47:27
were also on Facebook, and you should look us up. Laboratory
spk_1: 47:32
podcast. We have an email laboratory podcast at gmail dot com. You can shoot us an email. Yeah, and honestly,
spk_0: 47:40
if you if you feel like reaching out, we'd love to hear from you, Um, and hope that you are doing well. I can't say it enough that you are. Stay
spk_1: 47:51
safe. Please stay healthy. Please check in on your friends and family from Afar and
spk_0: 47:55
thank you to all of the health workers, all of the people on the front line and essential businesses, everyone and anyone who's putting themselves out there. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. We appreciate it. And thank you to science for helping us. Yes, I get those far and not bloodletting anymore. Although I don't know if that's helpful in any other particular area.
spk_1: 48:20
But this disease is not that there's a little fire risks anyway. Reach out. Thank you. Stay safe, everybody. I need to water my plants. Please remember me to water my plants today because Because I brought them up last week and I was like, I'm gonna change their water every few days and then I keep not doing that.