- Welcome Dr. Alok Patel, world renowned pediatrician
and specialist in debunking misinformation.
- And we're in the same outfit.
- Bam!
(growling fiercely)
- We're about to fight misinformation
by looking at old medical instruments.
I don't know if that's misinformation.
- Just be thankful you live in today's time.
- Seriously, what we're about to see,
I'm scared for, he's scared for,
we're all scared, you should be scared.
- [Both] Peewoop!
- [Doctor Mike] Whoa.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] Ooh.
- You're pulling, that's a,
that's like the lawnmower, dude.
- I'm excited just by the look of this thing.
- Oh, we like gore.
- And how many possibilities.
How many possibilities.
This is a finger relocater.
- Yes, that's what I was thinking too.
I swear to God, I was thinking that.
You put your finger in there and you pull.
- Somebody was either lazy or just wanted to sell some-
- I think it's a dental device.
- I think we both agree that it's extracting.
- It's an extractor.
- [Both] Dental Key.
- [Doctor Mike] To pull a tooth, the bolster was placed
against the root of the tooth,
and the claw over the crown.
The key was then turned, dislocating the tooth.
- Oh, so you go in like this.
- Cool.
- Could not cool, they didn't have sedation back then.
Remember? You know what?
I'll never forget about tooth extractions. Cast Away.
(painful screaming)
- I thought you were saying, you remember the toy box
at the dentist office.
It was like the one thing I remember.
- I got no toys.
- You went to like the old Russian-
- I went to a Soviet dentist.
(Dr Patel laughs)
That was like, you, no lidocaine for you.
- Mine was like, you want toy? You could have toy.
You have toy, you have toy.
- Oh, this is beautiful.
- It is pretty. It's a suction or an air blower.
- I think that's sort of, I agree with you, suction.
- And then, where do you put it?
- Any hole.
- [Both] A Lithotome.
- [Doctor Mike] The instrument consists of
a handle and blade.
That's a blade?
- Apparently.
- [Doctor Mike] Thus an incision can be made through
the prostate gland and bladder of six different breadths.
- What on earth?
- 1722. Bro, they don't know what they were doing.
- No.
- Oh my God. You insert it in the urethra?
- [Dr. Alok Patel] I think so.
- And then, hold the blade out,
and then open the blade inside and then, oh my God.
- But this is, there's-
- Oh my God. No.
Dude, do you see what I'm saying?
- No, I don't wanna see it.
I don't, I don't, I'm like, there's no way that that
is small enough to put in your urethra.
- Oh my god, I think it is.
- I'd say, keep the stone.
This is, I think-
- Oh wait, wait, do you see the middle thing?
That looks like a foot pump. You're blowing air.
- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- It looks like an Ambu bag.
(Doctor Alok laughs)
- It could be.
- To inflate lungs
and that thing takes the fluid out of the lungs.
What other thing can you blow into the human body?
- I mean, they were doing some stupid stuff back then.
- You think this is like the old colonoscopy,
but then where's the bottoms.
- No.
- Because you blow air into a colonoscopy, before you do it.
- I don't know if they knew to do a colonoscopy,
(Mike laughs)
in the days they were doing this thing,
- [Both] Tobacco Smoke Enema.
- I knew it. Look at the picture.
- Oh, he's blowing in his butt.
- I could see this coming back.
- They already have it.
- They have Coffee Enemas.
- They sell Coffee Enemas. It's the same thing
- Oh my God.
- [Doctor Mike] Indigenous people of North America
to stimulate respiration.
Wait, wait, wait, they help people breathe?
- By putting smoke.
- They know that the butt is not connected to the lung.
- They may not have.
- [Both] Ugh.
- [Doctor Mike] Yeah.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] They looked like headphones, but-
- It kind of looks like an apple device.
Is it a helmet? A testicular device.
- I see coils on it.
- Coils mean electricity.
- It could mean electricity or it could mean hot water.
- Okay, so maybe it's a fever stimulator
to treat meningitis.
- You've taken a deep dive on that one.
This is a brain freeze device. You put this on your head.
You plug this thing in.
- Well, there were no plugs then.
- I don't know, what that, what is that white thing then?
- I'm going one of two options.
Fever stimulator, makes your head warm to prevent infection
of some kind of, meningitis probably,
or two, some kind of ECT machine
that causes electric shocks to your brain. Let's see it.
- Brain freeze device.
- Cool.
- I also heard something outside.
- Has it ever happened?
- And we also have one light going.
- Whoa.
- MRI "Jedi" Helmets.
- Du. Du. Du.
You're gonna get us demonitised.
To take MRI scans of the brain,
these helmets were worn by children and adults.
Coils are aerials for picking up MRI signals.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] Old school.
- Do you think this works?
- Worked, maybe?
(both laughs)
But I gotta give a shout out
to the end of this description.
They named it a Star Wars toys
so that kids weren't afraid to put it on, I like that.
- That's smart actually.
- This looks like a Rinne and Weber test.
- Okay, wow. Yeah, perceptive, 'cause there's a bell on top.
- I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
- There's something restrictive about this, right?
- But why the teeth with the angry teeth?
- Like maybe it's a, you can't really open your jaw,
but you can still get food in.
- But what's the purpose of putting the jagged teeth?
- So you don't put your hand on your mouth.
- Okay. It's a psych device.
- This like the psych device, like schizophrenia.
- And the bell so they don't run away
and they can find them.
- I think we solved this.
- I think we did this.
- I'm just saying.
- [Doctor Mike] A Scold's Bridle. It was an instrument
of punishment as a form of torture and public humiliation
functioned to silence the victim from speaking entirely.
Jesus Christ, this isn't a medical device.
It was slid onto the mouth and pressed
down on top of the tongue, with a spike.
This prevented speaking
and resulted in many unpleasant side effects
including excessive salivation and fatigue.
- Nowadays, you just ban someone from Twitter.
- This is the Saw device. This should be in a Saw movie.
You have to tell, like, you know the combination,
(Dr Patel laughs)
you know the combination, and you have to tell your friend,
otherwise, the room is gonna implode.
- That is really good.
- [Crew] You did it Mike. Well done.
- It's a dark morbid, but on point.
- This is a medical video. Next.
(beep)
- [Doctor Mike] Oh.
(Dr Patel laughs)
Look like an endoscopes, like a cheap endoscope.
- Okay.
(Mike laughs)
- No, that's wrong.
- What is the circa timeframe you think we're looking at?
- I didn't do well in art history in undergrad.
- Me neither. Based on the number there,
this is like 1700's? I don't know.
Was the printing press even invented? It was, right?
- Yeah, this could be like some old school ink or something.
- Gutenberg? When was Gutenberg around?
- Who's Gutenberg?
- I don't know.
- [Sam] Johannes Gutenberg, creator of the printing press.
- Look at that.
- What?
My guess would, same page,
I think it's involved in some type of bloodletting.
- I think it's a colonoscopy device.
- Old school colonoscopy.
- [Doctor Mike] Artificial Leech.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] Okay.
- You said bloodletting.
- I wasn't that far off.
- You said bloodletting.
This instrument allowed for more precise bloodletting
and was often used to treat areas
around the eyes or temples.
- Oh my God.
- And how do they know?
- What do you think is gonna be the one thing
that we're doing now that we're gonna look
at this in a hundred years.
Whoa. They did this to people?
- Maybe, it's what you said earlier with colonoscopy.
Maybe in the future when we actually have like-
- We could see like 3D.
- Video, the pills that we've talked about.
- Why did they put cameras inside the urethra?
- [Both] Oh.
- [Doctor Mike] I've seen this image before.
I'm hope, I'm right here 'cause I'm gonna give a little nod
to the power of vaccines. I think these are Iron Lungs.
- Oh, you might be right.
- The fact that we don't see these any more,
speaks to the fact that vaccines work.
That's a microphone I dropped.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] Iron Lung.
- [Doctor Mike] Iron Lung. You got one.
No device is more associated
with polio than the tank respirator,
better known as the Lung. People who treated the acute,
early stage of polio saw that many patients were unable to
breathe when the virus's action paralyzed muscle groups
in the chest.
Wow. So this was the initial intubation.
You know what's funny? We say this looks bad,
but if you think about how artificial respirations are now,
that looks pretty bad.
Like, inserting a tube into the mouth.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] That's true.
(Patel laughs)
- Keeping people in paralytics.
That could be a barbarian thing that we might look at.
- This one looks more comfortable.
- Yeah.
- It almost looks like a portable iron lunk.
- Dude, it's breast milk pump.
(Patel laughs)
- What? Just from one thing?
- I don't know but-
(beep)
- [Both] Portable Iron Lung.
- You literally shouted it out.
- [Doctor Mike] Centrifuge?
- That was a good quick guess. I mean, okay,
so clearly it's spinning.
- There's a motor, spinning motor rotor.
A person wouldn't go in there, right?
- Unless it was a hamster.
- What about a baby?
- Oh.
- Could it be an incubator?
- Yeah, I don't know if you'd be
[Both] spinning the baby.
- What if it's just something outside,
is spinning for warmth.
- Just seems like, really inefficient.
- Yeah, it does feel inefficient.
- Now that is, first Dialysis machine.
Artificial Dialysis Machine.
Considered by most to be the father of dialysis,
Dr. Willem Kolff constructed the first dialyzer.
That's an artificial kidney right there.
Dude, do you see what he improvise to make it with.
- Sausage skins, orange juice cans, a washing machine,
and other common items to make a device
that could clear the of blood toxins.
- And we say that sausage isn't good for you.
(beep)
- [Doctor Mike] That just looks like a functional CR.
- I'm just gonna say that it's the first x-ray.
- Cobalt Cancer Therapy.
- Well, this is really interesting
'cause now when a patient gets radiation therapy,
it's so targeted, they have physicists in the room
to decide how to get it in there safely.
- The radiation oncologist and the physicists
do so much work to make sure it's safe,
it's right amount, the right time.
- It's a stapler. It's a nail gun.
- You know what? I think you're right,
because look at the top part,
the top part looks like your clamps down,
and then that, that needle,
it looks like it drives a needle down
or something to staple.
- [Both] Hernia Tool.
- This thing looks awful.
Once doctors repaired the tear
in the muscle they would insert the Hernia Tool.
This thing would be in place for about a week
while scar tissue formed on it.
Now, they just put a mesh,
even the mesh gets the scar tissue on it and get strong.
This was the mesh back then.
- So did you walk around, you just had this thing,
and you were like, great so I had a hernia.
- [Doctor Mike] Is he fishing?
- It looks like the worst game of laser tag.
- No, it looks like a vaccine device.
- We see a vial of some sorts. It's upside down. So clear.
That's going into, it's spraying downwards.
- And you see on the back, it has a thing, a recoil thing.
- Maybe it's like an auto-inject, no?
- I think it's a medic. Like IM injector.
I would just stop there.
- Why do you need that for IM injector.
- 'Cause you're doing a million in the military.
- And you're just kind of like.
- Military.
- Okay, so maybe it's like, you just stand there
and you're going in like an assembly line.
(Mike shooing)
- [Doctor Mike] Jet Injector, medical device, high-pressure,
narrow stream of fluid to penetrate
the skin instead of a needle.
- [Both] Ooh.
- These devices were invented in the 1960s
and were used successful in mass vaccination efforts.
So the jet stream was so strong
that you didn't even need a needle,
that it penetrates the skin.
Dude, that's kinda hurt.
- It's gotta hurt, it's also, now you're subcutaneous.
- Subcutaneous with no control.
- And also, is it spreading?
- What part of the muscle does it stop it?
- [Doctor Mike] Oh, that's a cutter.
- [Dr. Alok Patel] This is cutting things.
- Dude, is that a cash trader?
- It's snipping something.
- Tongue snipper, toe snipper.
- [Both] Tonsil Guillotine.
- Oh my God.
- Open wide.
- Can you imagine the pain.
- The bleeding.
- We live in the best time ever.
Appreciate that you don't have the Tonsil Guillotine around.
Follow Dr. Alok Patel.
All his information is listed down below.
And if you wanna see cringey 1950's health films,
click here to check those out.
What they did back then was just not okay. Not okay.
- I believe it.
- Not Okay.
(upbeat music)