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This program is a double journey,

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one back into history
and the other across India,

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looking for the origins of that feeling

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you sometimes get,
you know, of depression,

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when you want to grab a map
and find somewhere exotic, like this,

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just to get away from it all.

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And the extraordinary thing is,

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because of the strange way
history goes,

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the map and the depression
will come together here in India.

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I suppose the best way to describe
this particular holiday trip

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is as a criminal, heavenly,
colorful, precise,

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transparent, medicinal, electrifying,
but above all sentimental journey.

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Here's where we start our journey:

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in Vienna with Sigmund Freud.

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Because if you do
happen to be feeling a bit low,

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he's the guy to blame,

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because Vienna's
where Sigmund Freud

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changed the way we think
about the way we think

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about the way we think.

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Upper-crust 19th-century Vienna
was one long party.

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You went from receptions
to banquets to grand balls

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to champagne at dawn

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then got up next afternoon
and did it again.

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In 1882, into this
nonstop insanity comes Freud,

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who joins
an upmarket society doctor

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who's doing financially very nicely
with more cases than he can handle

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of the single most frequent condition

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suffered by Vienna ladies:
their lifestyle.

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Liebchen, mein Liebchen.

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Symptoms are tears,
hysteria, sleepwalking,

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exhaustion, and being generally,
well, off-the-wall.

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After a while, Freud
leaves these problems for Paris

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to learn the latest techniques.

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Then he comes back,
sets up on his own,

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and starts treating his patients
with a totally new kind of therapy.

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At first, he gets his patients
to lie down

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and talk about themselves
in their dreams

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while he applies a little
light pressure to their heads.

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Then he drops the pressure thing
and just lets them talk.

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Seems to work.

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Now, at the time,
the new wonder cure is electricity.

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Touching a live wire is known
to make you breathless

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and give you spots before the eyes.

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So obviously it's doing something.

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So on the basis that something
is better than nothing,

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which is what medicine
at the time does for you,

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doctors get busy
shocking their patients.

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One of the things Freud saw
in Paris, for instance,

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is still used today:
electroconvulsive therapy.

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Back then, nobody knew
how it worked,

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but that didn't seem
to matter too much.

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But the real cutting edge in medicine

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involved something they thought
was related to electricity,

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something they called
animal magnetism.

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Look me right in the eyes,
Liebchen,

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right in the eyes.

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If you can really tell my--

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Okay, here comes
the animal magnetism bit now.

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Watch the eyes.

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In 1776, Mesmer qualifies
as a doctor,

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marries a wealthy widow,
becomes very fashionable

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with the Viennese upper crust--

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strokes his patients
in darkened rooms

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wearing flowing robes
and a feathered hat

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and has magnetic baths.

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Don't laugh.

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It might not have been
the dawn of modern medicine,

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but it was better than
bloodletting and enemas, right?

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Of course, Mesmer
didn't just dream it all up.

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This, don't forget,
is the Romantic Period,

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when even
hard-boiled scientists believe

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the earth is a giant magnet,

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so there ought to be
magnetic fluid around

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that would, well, seep into people
from bushes and trees

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and generally, well,
flow everywhere.

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Well, fluids do flow, don't they?

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And, of course, this magic fluid
is also invisible.

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Well, it would have to be,
given that you can't see it.

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These dancing Indian gods
would really have turned on

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the next characters
in our historical journey,

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because they were
a couple of doctors

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who believed
that the invisible fluid

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ran around your body in tubes

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and worked all the different
bits of you,

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no matter how many bits you had.

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These two guys,
Gall and Spurzheim,

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believed that the vital fluid
had to originate in the brain.

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Where else?

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And since the brain
was obviously controlling

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many different parts of you,
it had to be able

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to do many different jobs.

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So maybe there were
many different control centers

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up there in your head.

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This idea went over very big
with some very big people,

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including, among others, the lady
controlling this place at the time.

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Victorian England was like one
of those wild west film towns.

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It only looked good from the front.

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Behind all these posh facades,

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the place was
on the edge of revolution.

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The rich were rolling in it,
and the poor were starving.

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Gall and Spurzheim offered
their amazing new social science

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of phrenology.

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The bumps on your head
covered your control centers,

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so they were a guide
to your character--

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useful when it came to
self-improvement for the poor.

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And then phrenology was
to take a turn for the criminal.

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As the material wealth
of industrial manufacturing society

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left more and more goodies lying around,

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more and more criminals
started helping themselves.

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In 1839, this rising crime rate spurred
the invention of the cops,

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who promptly caught the robbers
and started putting them away for good

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in places that can best be described

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as shut-'em-up-and-forget-'em
hell holes--

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until this:
Pentonville Prison, London,

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one of the new-look
reformatory prisons

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first started in England and the U.S.

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called a panoptican,
because, as you can see,

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you can see
every prisoner cell at a glance

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because of the layout.

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the cell blocks radiate out
from a central control room.

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So now with this
new open plan stuff,

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you could bring
some enlightenment to p-nology.

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You could call it p-nology
for a start.

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So now the phrenological
social reformers

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could actually study the bumps
on criminal heads, close up,

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in large numbers--

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and under completely
controlled conditions.

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Well, they are, aren't they?

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Now, by this time,
Darwin was coming up

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with all his stuff
about human beings

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being distantly descended
from the apes.

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Well, according to one Italian
phrenology freak called Lombroso,

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in the case of criminals
"distantly" was hardly the word.

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Lombroso was convinced criminals
were a good deal closer to apes

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than law-abiding folk.

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So he went around the prisons
and measured 9,000 convict heads

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and announced
you could identify villains

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because they looked like
throwbacks to the apes.

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In fact, that's when the idea
of throwbacks started.

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Criminals had great big ears.

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They also had very broad sinuses.

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Another crooked characteristic
was heavy jaws.

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They had broad cheekbones
and above all sloping foreheads.

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So maybe you could finger
a criminal

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before he committed the crime.

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And then into Lombroso's lab
came a guy

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who was to knock phrenology
right on the head,

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because he decided to dig down
under the bumps

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to see what was really there.

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His name was Golgi,

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and I'm going to show you
an amazing picture he took.

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Golgi left a slice of brain
for several hours

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in a solution of silver nitrate.

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Because if there was anything there,
the nitrate would stain it,

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and then,
just like photographs did,

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the stain would show up
when you develop the picture.

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Here it comes now,

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because what you're looking at
is what Golgi found

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under the bumps inside the brain:

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brain cells.

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Golgi's amazing pictures
gave us neurophysiology

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as we know and love it today.

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So if you're ever in
for a brain op, thank Golgi.

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And just as my Indian journey
has brought me

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to this colorful cloth market,
the program takes a turn for the blue,

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because Golgi
got his brain stain ideas

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from a German who changed
the world with this color--

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and got himself in deep trouble
with some rather orthodox types

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here in Moscow.

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His name was Paul Ehrlich,

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and he was a colorful
medical research type

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whose work ran him up against
the Russian Orthodox Church.

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See, Golgi's basic idea
of staining tissue

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had come from Ehrlich
when he'd accidentally dropped

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some new synthetic blue dye
on one of his tissue cultures

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and discovered it stained
only the bacteria in the culture.

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Over the next few years,
this amazing technique

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made it possible to identify

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virtually all the killer bacteria

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causing epidemics:
cholera, T.B., gonorrhea.

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Ehrlich found that some of his dyes
would actually kill specific bugs

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without harming
the rest of the patient's body.

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We call the technique chemotherapy.

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And the first of these
new wonder drugs

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Ehrlich was to produce
was called salvarsan.

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It cured syphilis.

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Sounds great to you and me--

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caused an almighty row
with the synod

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of the Russian Orthodox Church,

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who reckoned that syphilis
was heavenly punishment

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for doing
what you weren't supposed to

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and as such shouldn't be cured
by any medicine,

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00:12:04,917 --> 00:12:07,010
thank you very much--

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none of which cramped
Ehrlich's style.

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Chemotherapy went on to become
the answer to many a prayer.

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Now, the English had invented
the first artificial dye,

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but they'd done nothing about it,

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because their idea
of a good education

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was giving civil servants
a background in Latin literature

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so they could run India
and the rest of the empire,

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not teaching them stuff
like chemistry.

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That was strictly
for the lower classes,

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not really the kind of thing
a gentleman did.

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The Germans weren't that stupid,

205
00:12:46,225 --> 00:12:48,216
which is why Germany
was so full of chemists,

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00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:51,227
one of whom, a fellow called Caro,

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00:12:51,363 --> 00:12:53,729
was to come up
with the next synthetic dye,

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00:12:53,866 --> 00:12:55,561
the one that Ehrlich would use.

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00:12:57,269 --> 00:12:59,863
And he was to do it
in the lab of a chap

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00:13:00,005 --> 00:13:04,305
who would make every school kid's
chemistry lessons hell ever since

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00:13:04,443 --> 00:13:06,240
here in Heidelberg.

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00:13:11,717 --> 00:13:15,813
Back in 1855,
a guy called Bunsen

213
00:13:15,955 --> 00:13:19,391
came up with a hot new gizmo
called the Bunsen burner.

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00:13:24,830 --> 00:13:27,628
He'd been looking at ways
to save fuel in iron foundries,

215
00:13:27,766 --> 00:13:29,893
where a whole lot
of unburnt coal gas

216
00:13:30,035 --> 00:13:31,468
was going up the chimneys.

217
00:13:31,604 --> 00:13:34,835
And he found you could get
a much hotter flame from the gas

218
00:13:34,974 --> 00:13:37,602
and because of that use the gas
a lot more efficiently--

219
00:13:37,743 --> 00:13:39,404
and because of that
save a lot of money--

220
00:13:39,545 --> 00:13:42,378
if you mixed air with the gas
before you burned it.

221
00:13:42,514 --> 00:13:48,111
If you did that, you also got
a clear, nonluminous flame

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00:13:48,254 --> 00:13:49,983
that was free of impurities,

223
00:13:52,691 --> 00:13:55,421
which meant that if you wanted
to take a close look

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00:13:55,561 --> 00:13:58,291
at how some material behaved
when you burned it,

225
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you could be sure that all
you'd be looking at in the flame

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00:14:01,867 --> 00:14:04,768
was what you were burning.

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00:14:04,904 --> 00:14:06,838
Bunsen's sidekick, Kirchoff,

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00:14:06,972 --> 00:14:11,341
discovered that if you shone light
through the burning stuff in the flame,

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00:14:11,477 --> 00:14:13,638
the flame would absorb
the wavelengths in the light

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00:14:13,779 --> 00:14:16,304
that matched the wavelengths
of the burning stuff.

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00:14:16,448 --> 00:14:19,383
If you then looked at the light
through a prism,

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00:14:19,518 --> 00:14:20,883
you'd see a spectrum.

233
00:14:21,020 --> 00:14:23,215
And at the missing wavelength
where that matching

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00:14:23,355 --> 00:14:25,846
between light
and burning material happened,

235
00:14:25,991 --> 00:14:27,481
you'd get a line.

236
00:14:27,626 --> 00:14:29,753
And you could work out
from the position of the line

237
00:14:29,895 --> 00:14:32,329
on the spectrum
what the burning stuff was.

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00:14:32,464 --> 00:14:35,433
Kirchoff called this trick
spectroscopy.

239
00:14:39,672 --> 00:14:43,403
Now, Kirchoff had heard of these
mysterious lines before

240
00:14:43,542 --> 00:14:45,737
thanks to what happened
to a bit of a loser

241
00:14:45,878 --> 00:14:49,006
called Fraunhofer,
who lived near Heidelberg

242
00:14:49,148 --> 00:14:50,775
and who had a weird obsession.

243
00:14:50,916 --> 00:14:54,215
He wanted to make
the world's most perfect glass.

244
00:14:54,353 --> 00:14:57,049
In 181 4, he was looking
through a bit of glass

245
00:14:57,189 --> 00:15:00,283
at some fine spectrum lines
to spot if the glass

246
00:15:00,426 --> 00:15:02,326
had the slightest imperfection.

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00:15:05,364 --> 00:15:07,423
At one point,
when he was obsessively

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00:15:07,566 --> 00:15:10,467
triple-checking some stuff
by looking through it--

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00:15:10,602 --> 00:15:12,627
and a spectrum and a telescope--

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00:15:12,771 --> 00:15:14,966
at the very intense light
of the sun,

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00:15:15,107 --> 00:15:18,565
he saw more of those lines.

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00:15:18,711 --> 00:15:21,976
So he took a look
at the other lights in the sky.

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00:15:22,114 --> 00:15:24,912
By the time he'd checked
all the planets and the stars,

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00:15:25,050 --> 00:15:29,384
Fraunhofer had identified
no fewer than 57 4

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00:15:29,521 --> 00:15:32,979
of what are now known
as Fraunhofer lines.

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00:15:49,074 --> 00:15:51,099
Now, since all our old friend,
Fraunhofer,

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00:15:51,243 --> 00:15:53,905
really cared about
was his glass obsession--

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00:15:54,046 --> 00:15:56,412
he could have cared less
about why the lines were there--

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00:15:56,548 --> 00:15:58,812
he kept
his glassmaking stuff secret,

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00:15:58,951 --> 00:16:00,782
but he published a bit about the lines,

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00:16:00,919 --> 00:16:02,910
hence 50 years later
Kirchoff and Bunsen

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00:16:03,055 --> 00:16:04,818
doing their thing.

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00:16:04,957 --> 00:16:07,619
Poor old Fraunhofer did make
his mark in the end, though--

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00:16:07,760 --> 00:16:10,627
ironically, since I'm in
such a heavenly Indian spot,

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00:16:10,763 --> 00:16:13,960
'cause he did it in astronomy
with perfect glass lenses

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00:16:14,099 --> 00:16:16,795
that allowed astronomers
to see deep into outer space

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00:16:16,935 --> 00:16:18,630
for the first time ever.

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00:16:18,771 --> 00:16:20,398
What kind of lenses they were,

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00:16:20,539 --> 00:16:25,806
that's the next stage of our journey,
which takes us back again to London.

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00:16:30,382 --> 00:16:32,043
This is an 18th-century astronomer

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00:16:32,184 --> 00:16:34,618
looking a long way--
the only way back then--

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00:16:34,753 --> 00:16:35,947
with thin lenses.

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00:16:36,088 --> 00:16:39,990
Glass was so bad you went
for thinness to avoid defects.

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00:16:40,125 --> 00:16:42,320
But thin lenses
meant long focal lengths,

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00:16:42,461 --> 00:16:44,725
which meant long telescopes.

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00:16:44,863 --> 00:16:47,423
Shorter telescopes
meant thick lenses--

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00:16:47,566 --> 00:16:52,094
and lousy focus and color fringes
and a lot of interference.

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00:16:52,237 --> 00:16:55,400
Then in 1758
and Englishman called Dolland

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00:16:55,541 --> 00:16:58,101
put two different shapes
of lenses together

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00:16:58,243 --> 00:16:59,835
and solved the problem.

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00:16:59,978 --> 00:17:02,742
A convex lens at one end
cancelled out the defects

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00:17:02,881 --> 00:17:05,111
of a concave lens at the other.

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00:17:05,250 --> 00:17:07,844
Now you could make telescopes
as short as you wanted,

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00:17:07,986 --> 00:17:09,977
like the kind needed by the fellow

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00:17:10,122 --> 00:17:13,455
who married Dolland's daughter:
Jesse Ramsden.

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00:17:13,592 --> 00:17:18,188
In 1788, Ramsden came up
with an amazing new way

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00:17:18,330 --> 00:17:20,764
to point telescopes
better than ever before.

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00:17:22,267 --> 00:17:23,734
Ramsden had come up with a way

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00:17:23,869 --> 00:17:26,929
to make incredibly precise
scale markings on the sextants,

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00:17:27,072 --> 00:17:28,232
which was great.

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00:17:28,373 --> 00:17:30,398
'Cause if you got a star fix
one degree wrong,

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00:17:30,542 --> 00:17:34,069
you were 15 miles off course.

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00:17:34,213 --> 00:17:36,306
So anybody who wanted
to point anything

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00:17:36,448 --> 00:17:40,714
with great precision went crazy
for Ramsden's ability

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00:17:40,853 --> 00:17:42,650
to deal with these fiddly bits.

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00:17:42,788 --> 00:17:45,416
I mean, look at the scale
of this scale.

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00:17:47,426 --> 00:17:50,691
Ramsden did that
with a tiny tangent screw

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00:17:50,829 --> 00:17:52,922
set at an angle
to the metal plate.

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00:17:53,065 --> 00:17:55,659
You'd turn the screw,
and you can move the metal plate

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00:17:55,801 --> 00:17:59,134
by fractions of an inch,

301
00:17:59,271 --> 00:18:03,605
so you can mark your scale
with extreme precision

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00:18:03,742 --> 00:18:06,575
on sextants for sailors,
telescopes for astronomers,

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00:18:06,712 --> 00:18:11,376
and theodolites like this
for people like that.

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00:18:43,615 --> 00:18:46,015
And it was in 1847
when they were surveying

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00:18:46,151 --> 00:18:48,085
their way east
on the final stretch

306
00:18:48,220 --> 00:18:50,916
out along the hills
towards the plain of the Ganges

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00:18:51,056 --> 00:18:55,186
that they saw for the first time
the amazing Himalayas.

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00:18:55,327 --> 00:18:57,887
And being intrepid surveyors,
they measured them

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00:18:58,030 --> 00:18:59,759
with their Ramsden theodolites,

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00:18:59,898 --> 00:19:02,696
because you can triangle heights
as well as distances.

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00:19:02,834 --> 00:19:07,203
One of the mountains in their sights
was unbelievable.

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00:19:50,616 --> 00:19:53,084
They were so impressed,
they named the mountain

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00:19:53,218 --> 00:19:55,209
after the boss
of the whole India survey:

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00:19:55,354 --> 00:19:57,948
George Everest.

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00:19:58,090 --> 00:19:59,421
Well, that's it.

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00:19:59,558 --> 00:20:01,958
Our journey ends here
at the foot of the Himalayas

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00:20:02,094 --> 00:20:03,220
in Everest's headquarters,

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00:20:03,362 --> 00:20:06,058
among the decaying
Victorian splendors

319
00:20:06,198 --> 00:20:08,928
of the hill station of Mussoorie,

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00:20:09,067 --> 00:20:11,627
pinpointed on this modern map

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00:20:11,770 --> 00:20:14,796
made possible
by all that early survey work.

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00:20:14,940 --> 00:20:19,036
So thanks to that
original feeling that I had--

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00:20:19,177 --> 00:20:23,113
that maybe I was a bit depressed,
needed to get away from it all--

324
00:20:23,248 --> 00:20:28,049
thanks to Freud and phrenology,
criminals and brain research,

325
00:20:28,186 --> 00:20:31,246
bug hunting and tissue staining,
Bunsen and spectroscopy,

326
00:20:31,390 --> 00:20:33,722
astronomers and theodolites...

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00:20:37,062 --> 00:20:40,054
I have the map I needed
to get away from it all.

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00:20:48,573 --> 00:20:50,541
So I will.