True Weird Stuff

Today's True Weird Stuff - Revisiting Human Product 12 - The Man Secretly Injected With Plutonium



In 1945, Ebb Cade survived a car accident near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, only to become part of a secret experiment. Without his consent, doctors injected him with plutonium to study how radiation moved through the human body. Also known as "Human Product 12,” Cade became the first of 18 victims of one of the most disturbing human radiation experiments in American history.

Today's True Weird Stuff - Revisiting The Enema King: Louis XIV's Strangest Obsession



Louis XIV was known as the Sun King, but history gave him another, far less majestic nickname. At Versailles, doctors prescribed them for everything from headaches to digestive problems. Convinced that enemas were the key to good health, Louis XIV received them by the thousands, making enemas both a medical treatment and a status symbol.

Today's True Weird Stuff - Revisiting Shock Doc - Inside Bellevue’s Horrific Child Psychiatry Experiments



Dr. Lauretta Bender became one of the most controversial child psychiatrists in America. At Bellevue Hospital, she used electroshock therapy on children diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia. Her work became tangled in the dark history of government-backed mind control research and society's terrifying faith in experimental psychiatry.

Today's True Weird Stuff - Revisiting Corpse Medicine - When Doctors Prescribed Human Remains



Before modern medicine, some cures came from the grave. For centuries, Europeans swallowed powdered skull, drank human blood, and consumed ground-up mummies in the belief that the dead could heal the living. It sounds like folklore, but corpse medicine was once accepted as a real treatment for everything from headaches to epilepsy.

Today's True Weird Stuff - Revisiting King of Quacks: The Greatest Medical Fraud in American History



Curtis Howe Springer claimed to be a doctor. He wasn't. He also claimed to be a minister. That was questionable, too. Yet somehow he convinced thousands of people to trust him with their health, their money, and their dreams. Selling miracle cures from his desert empire, Springer built a fortune on deception and became one of the most successful medical frauds in American history...the self-crowned King of Quacks.