Hi guys, we've got a seriously special guest on the podcast today.
It is Sarah Pasco and you're about to hear
that she is brilliant and funny and fascinating and has a book out which is also all of those three things.
It's called Animal or
if you want the full unedited title it's called Animal colon the autobiography of a female body and it's out right now.
Go and get it!
Okay on with the show!
Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish,
a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden.
My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with Andy Murray, Anna Chasinski,
James Harkin and Sarah Pasco and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go.
Starting with you Sarah Pasco.
Okay in the 1920s scientists concluded that menstruating women wilted flowers.
So a proper scientist and so his name and it's a he but his name's Bella Schick I think I've only seen it written down and he's a proper scientist he cured diphtheria and I think apparently he was the first person to use the word immunization so he's a proper guy but then one day his maid was passing him some flowers so she was
like I don't want to pass you the flowers and then he's like do the flowers and then the next day they were all wilted these red roses and she was like oh I knew that was going to happen I'm on my period and he was like what and she's like yeah women are poisonous when on their periods they can't look at bread or dogs or children or touch flowers or go swimming and he was like oh my god I'm a scientist I didn't know about this so he ended all these experiments with women holding flowers and baking bread and he gave it the term menotoxin which were emitted by women in their tear glands and their sweat glands.
So his study showed reading between the lines and hang on I'm no conspiracy theorist but reading between the lines it sounded like the women held the flowers for quite a long time outside of water and then they wilted whereas flowers in water the control group they were fine there was an experiment with bread as well and one maid who was on her period I mean it must have been such a lovely house to work in so she made everyone make bread and hers didn't rise as much she was holding it in a hand and the other one didn't rise as much for that exact reason and then he was
like it's true we were in bread and so it was kind of supporting all of the really really old taboos and taboo means menstruation that's where the word comes from no yes I mean sacred or it's a word
for menstruating yeah amazing right
because it is it's one of those things where throughout history the idea of menstruating women around certain things did affect things plenty the elder oh he wrote so many crazy things yeah like dogs would go mad or the caterpillars would fall out of the leaves of trees and my favorite
because they're all wilted and also my favorite is that even ants wouldn't pick up the grains if you'd