Alright, so pop quiz Hank: Do you know what this is? Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday.

So I'm at the Indiana Medical History Museum in, like, the room where they would do the autopsies where all the students could watch. Because we're filming a new kind of CrashCourse, where we take a deep dive into one particular topic, and you'll never guess what my one particular topic is unless you guess it's the oldest, deadliest, and, in my opinion, least understood infectious disease in human history: Tuberculosis. 

Hank, you pointed out on your video announcing that you had cancer that lymphoma was originally believed to be a type of tuberculosis, which makes sense because they have some similar symptoms, right. Night sweats, fevers, sometimes you get coughing with both. Not as young as I used to be. This is an iron lung for infants who got polio.  That's the little mattress. This is a very helpful thing for me to look at because it reminds me that progress is possible. Laboratories have come a long way in the last hundred years. 

They sure have.

Oh, I didn't know that you would be here.

Oh, yeah no, I’m-I'm always here. 

Right I guess that is kind of the issue. Wherever I go, I bring myself with me. The other symptom that TB and lymphoma have in common, of course, is swollen lymph nodes. In the case of TB, when it invades the lymphatic system it's called scrofula, and it can actually cause the lymph nodes to become so swollen that they rupture through the skin. 

Good God, TB sucks. 

I know.

Alright, let's go get a check of the weather. Hank, I know you're a microscopy enthusiast so I just wanted to make sure you got to see this fella. People are always like, “Oh, we're the worst.” And sure, but look how hard we've worked to get better. I'll let you in on a little secret. The 30-foot microphone cord never stops being funny to me. It's the funniest thing in the world. Is it-is it gonna be enough? It's close…but I made it. By the way, I'm not gonna explain all these costume changes.

Initially, I thought this graffiti said “Sad Time” and I liked it more because you know it is kind of a sad time. But right, the weather report. Yeah, it's a nice day. Let's talk about swollen lymph nodes. So yours turned out to be lymphoma, which of course is-is not ideal. Almost all the time when you have swollen lymph nodes, it's no big deal. You may not even feel sick, it's just your body kind of dealing with an infection. But, um, in your particular case…phbbh not great. But people whose swollen lymph nodes turn out to be TB also have a significant problem, of course. Especially if it ruptures a-a-and it wasn't that long ago, Hank, that at least in Europe, it was widely believed that the number one most reliable cure for scrofula was, wait for it, being touched by the king. It was called The King's Touch. The king would, like, touch your head or else your wound a-a-and then you would be magically cured because, of-of course, the king got healing powers through his direct apostolic line that-that could trace all the way back to Jesus. 

If you're ever in Indianapolis you have to go to the Indiana Medical History Museum, it's just awesome. Being here reminds me that, yes, history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake, Stephen Dedalus famously put it, uh, but it's also much else. History can also be an encouragement. We no longer treat scrofula through The King's Touch, which I would argue is good news on a few levels. Both because we no longer think kings are that powerful and because we now have much better treatments.

So yeah, Hank I'm not gonna lie, I'm super pissed off that you got cancer, but I am really grateful to the people who accumulated and shared and built upon each other's knowledge so that we could share a better and healthier world. 300 years from now, I hope we look back on a lot of things the way today we look back on The King's Touch.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday, hopefully. But if you're not feeling good, that's fine, no worries.