does being slowly poisoned by the government sound like a dream job if so you have two choices move to Russia or travel back to the early 1900s that's when the US Department of Agriculture enlisted a group of men to voluntarily ingest meals laced with a variety of contaminants from formalde to sulfuric acid to borax a mineral now commonly used as an ant killer this lousy job was necessary because at the time food manufacturers were free to put anything into their edible items the government need needed to establish a baseline for safe levels of these additives
and the so-called poison Squad was formed hi I'm Ain McCarthy editor-in chief of Mental Floss a job which hopefully won't become obsolete before I finish this video eating meat laced with bug poison is just one of the many now extinct jobs we'll highlight on this episode of the list show let's get started if my job were to become obsolete well at least I lasted longer than the poison squad team which worked from 1902 to 1907 under the department of agriculture's Bureau of chemistry and its Chief poisoner Harvey Washington Wy Wy fed his men three nutritious
yet dangerous meals per day and recorded their symptoms as he increased the levels of preservatives and other artificial ingredients in exchange for the food the men reported their symptoms including headaches stomach aches and general Mala despite the dubiousness of the work it did lead to the government cracking down on Rogue food producers and banning harmful ingredients since the offending substances were no longer allowed there was no more need for these human barometers and hardly anyone died as a result of the pioneering work we say hardly because the family of one participant claimed his tuberculosis was
the result of consuming too much borax sounds like a workers's compensation case except that probably wasn't a thing then either those living in Victorian era London celebrated the Finer Things in life and what could be more elegant than a leather satchel or finely crafted leather shoes all prepared with a rich helping of dog poop to treat leather Tanners used dog excrement which softened the hi and made it more flexible but the Tanners didn't collect the feces duty duty was delegated to Pure finders a charmingly fanciful term for pooper scooper the poop was known as pure
probably because it purified the leather and finder was just a euphemism for retriever the process was also known as puring how does one get such a coveted position many people were already scouring the streets for anything to resell so moving for to dog poop wasn't such a big deal the pure finders or entur tended to congregate where stray dogs were known to be found presumably since they wouldn't have considerate owners cleaning up after them if a pfinder got really lucky they could get friendly with a kennel owner and exploit those lumpy riches and the job
wasn't really all that despised in 2015 vet times a popular Veterinary publication quoted this old timey rhyme I am an old pure finder when folks say how do you do says I well I do do do and do do well don't you I do do do so well when the doooo I do sell but could do do do better if the doo dooo didn't smell believe it or not a kind of Brown Gold Rush developed with pure finders competing against each other for the valued resource pure finders eventually went the way of the dooo sorry
the dodo as modern science allowed us to apply relevant enzymes to the leather without the dog digestive tract step and while it may sound unpleasant keep in mind that pure finders managed to make a living selling literal crap that's actually kind of impressive and a business model that was later adopted by Hollywood have you ever gone for a haircut and wish you could have your stylist take a look at the weird mole on your back or or go to the doctor and have them trim your bangs Once Upon a Time in the Middle Ages you
could this One-Stop grooming and health checkup was the purview of the barber surgeon a barber who could practice medicine though we use that term very Loosely the job came as a result of Priests of the 13th century being prohibited from performing surgery a task that had once fallen in their hands instead the reasoning went Barbers could probably handle all the gru some surgical treatments since they knew how to handle a razor when the black death rolled around and wiped out actual doctors Barber surgeons were once again in high demand you could count on them for
shave as well as all your amputation needs as you've probably guessed Barber surgeons fell out of favor once people realized it was better to leave surgery to trained medical professionals France for example banned barbers from cutting people open in 1743 but there is a theory that there's one lingering reminder of this grizzly occupation the red blue and white Barber Shop polls seen outside barber shops might have once represented the blood and bandages that such businesses once relied upon the blue that was was for the veins they'd attack in the course of bloodletting so maybe that
unfortunate haircut you got as a kid wasn't truly the worst thing that could happen at a barber shop these days you can call pretty much anyone you like and talk for any length of time for a monthly service charge but not long ago if you were out and needed to give someone a buzz that's old persons lying for making a call you needed to find a pay phone pay telephones were once a common site across the country with an estimated 2.6 million in use at their peak in 1995 each one accepted coins typically quarters in
order for people to make a call collecting those quarters was up to the telephone companies who dispatched coin collectors to go from site to site collecting the change from the boxes while this job wasn't typically hazardous it could occasionally get exciting in 1962 a man named Robert Smith was gathering change in San Francisco when a thief forced him into a car at gunpoint and ran off with $1,000 and collected currency payon collectors actually did okay toward the end with one newspaper quoting a salary of up to $40,000 in 2003 which would be roughly $68,000 today
but not long after that came the rise of the smartphone and the obsolescence of not only collectors but payones themselves today there are less than 100,000 in use many owned and operated by small local businesses the next time your child complains about having to mow the lawn you can give them the old back in my day speech or maybe back in your great great great grandparents day that's about the time people signed up to be leech collectors these brave but Unfortunate Souls gathered leeches for medicinal purposes by waiting into leech infested waters and allowing the
the parasites to latch onto their skin depending on how well the work was going these people might experience fatigue from blood loss leeches were used when Physicians believed blood letting would prove useful for ailments that was based on the theory that most illnesses were the result of inflammation that could be cured by having your blood sucked out and while blood leting isn't really a thing anymore leeches have made a comeback in 2004 the FDA approved the use of leeches for facilitating blood flow following reconstructive surgery today's leeches are harvested in special labs and snack on
blood filled sausage until they're ready to clamp onto someone's reattached ear let me know in the comments which collector you'd rather be dog poop or leeches I know it's a really tough question but there is a right answer when British royalty ascended to the throne they needed a guiding hand and we don't mean that Throne we mean the other throne in the 1500s to 1700s Kings including Henry VII tasked underlings with being their groom of the stool or bathroom attendant these men were charged with chatting with their betters as they went about their business but
the job title didn't refer to that stool the close stool was the name for the portable velvet cushion toilet they rested their Royal buttocks on and yes we know what you're wondering but there's no direct evidence the groom was responsible for wiping at the time it wasn't so unusual to be accompanied during one's most private moments and grooms could even learn some hot Royal gossip in the process female monarchs tended not to have a groom of the stool or stole as it increasingly came to be called so Victoria didn't have one her son the Future
King Edward iith did have one as Prince of Wales but the job didn't make the transition when he became king and the Grooms of the stool were relieved of their duties man these Duty jokes are almost too easy if a job is dangerous at least it comes with a little respect or it could be dangerous and you could still be openly mocked and forgotten in death the river pig falls into the latter category prior to the Advent of Long Haul Trucking or wider railroad distribution River pigs were responsible for steering giant pieces of lumber down
rivers to Sawmills but we're not talking riding a single log down a river like a surfboard River pigs are often associated with what are called drives what loggers would do is keep piling logs into a lake or other body of water waiting for the spring runoff one book on the subject called River pigs and kayes says that logs kept piling up all summer until the Log Jam would be about 30 ft high at the lower end and 5 miles long that's what the river pigs had to break up when they started driving in the spring
as you can imagine it's incredibly difficult to command that amount of Fallen trees and it was all too easy for a river pig to slip off and drown a mishap could also create a chain reaction if one log got jammed that would create a pile up the river pigs used a giant stick to try and control the logs and wore spikes to maintain traction while straddling them in North Idaho the pigs were working as late as the 1970s by then the logs had caused River diversions and other environmental damage while new technology has made the
river route unnecessary as most movies from the 20th century will tell you smoking was once everywhere everyone smoked some babies probably smoked and in the 1930s and 1940s one could acquire cigarettes from cigarette girls hostesses whose sold job was to Pedal tobacco at nightclubs bars and other establishments usually the sellers wore a tray secured with a neck strap and a JY bellman's hat so what happened that job was outsourced to technology in this case cigarette vending machines which grew in popularity in the 1950s though some clubs have employed cigarette girls as a kind of retro
throwback the job has largely gone the way of smoking itself what's one thing you don't really want to hear when you're getting medical attention well oops is one or how did that get in there here's another Contender the doctor introducing his nonprofessional assistant yet that's what happened in the early days of the United States Navy when sailors dubbed labl boys were tasked with cleaning surgical instruments and restraining patients during procedures in the days before anesthesia if patients had to have limbs amputated they were responsible for disposing of them so why lbl boys Lali was the
term for a thick porridge they were also responsible for serving on ships the job later evolved into the role of Hospital korsman also medical assistants but thankfully not tasked with serving meals between procedures throughout history the living have been very preoccupied with the Dead We want to make sure loved ones are at peace during the 18th and 19th centuries one way of ensuring that was to enlist the services of a sinine eater a person who would attend a funeral and consume food and drink that were meant to embody the deant sins in doing so they
could continue into the Afterlife without worrying about being punished for the transgressions early on sin eaters were not exactly treated with reverence they'd eat bread that had been placed on the corpse and then ushered out of the house because sin eaters were thought to absorb someone's evil Deeds they were often social parias they were after all burdened with the sins of the entire Village some say that over time this custom evolved into families eating and drinking and celebration of someone's life at that point aater was really little more than a stranger who came in and
Freel loaded all that delicious funeral bread and by the way if you're a metal band who didn't pick the name cator huge missed opportunity once upon a time before El El was a thing walking home in the dark was a pretty frightening Prospect that's why londoners of the 18th century relied upon link boys these tiny Tikes carried torches and were summoned by people to walk in tandem with them and illuminate their path home this practice was so widespread that homes often had a link extinguisher attached to their exterior walls that way the link boy could
save his fuel until he got another fair but every once in a while a link boy could turn out to be a link Thief who would snuff out his light and run off with his customer valuables by the time gas fueled Street lamps were appearing in the early 1800s link boys were being put out of business child labor would persist for decades to come everyone loves the ice cream man but few remember the Hokey Poké man that's because this iteration of a jovial dispenser of treats was actually fairly Sinister the Hokey pokem man navigated impoverished
neighborhoods in the 1800s offering cheap desserts like flavored ice and lowquality ice cream his name was said to come from the Hocus Pocus or Hokum that was thought to Hype his crummy offerings whether or not the criticisms of the Hoke Poké man were actual concerns or 19th century moralizing about poor children having ice cream and the largely immigrant men who were selling it to them is a legitimate debate but a lot of this ice cream was made in not exactly sanitary conditions and people were getting sick and not just from hokey pokei in the early
20th century increased food safety standards made the job obsolete though it may have lived on in a sense you're probably familiar with the Hokey pokei a fantastic Jam for toddlers And inebriated adults is there a connection maybe there have been many versions of that song with some of its writers crediting a hoke poke man but one of the earliest versions recorded in 1942 was dubbed The Hokey K confused probably all the bad milk who doesn't love a garden gome to provide some lawn decoration if you were a rich British guy in the 18th century you
might have considered hiring an actual Landscaping hermit ornamental Hermits or garden Hermits were employees of an estate who lived in quaint little shelters known as hermitages and puttered around for the amusement of property owners and their visitors to be clear Hermits were not enslaved it was at will employment but it was still somewhat dehumanizing one 18th century account of the hermit at painshill says they were looking for someone to live the hermit life but it wasn't that easy while the hermit would get food from the house delivered by a servant they couldn't speak one syllable
to said servant and their water came from a stream behind the house the hermit had to wear a wool robe walk around Barefoot not cut his beard or nails or go into the open area of the property for seven years if he made it he'd be paid a substantial lump sum but if he violated Just One requirement he get nothing sounds like a Netflix game show in the making or more realistically Mr Beast next video Hermits fell out of favor when land owners realized it was ridiculous to keep a pseudo Hobbit on the payroll the
concept of subsidizing a Hermit just to keep old traditions alive was too Antiquated to continue it's argued some gnome decorations soon came into favor today the role of a recluse with bad hygiene who wanders around your property can be filled by in-laws Zing those are all the absolete jobs we have for today what very specific job do you have that you think will never go away posting YouTube videos is obviously safe thanks for watching and I'll see you next time
