water deities

vsauce! kevin here. spit out your gum, put down that toad andfollow a rainbow to the wishing well. swallowed chewing gum doesn’t stay in yourstomach for seven years. since your teeth don’t break down gum like food, fears arosethat stomachs had similar trouble processing it. but it really just passes through yoursystem like the outside fiber shell of corn.

water deities, swallowing several pieces of gum a day, however,could develop a bezoar - a hard mass that clogs the digestive tract. in severe cases,surgery is needed to remove the blockage, and the disimpaction procedure is describedin a medical journal as like a taffy-pull. touching a toad will not give you warts. toadsare covered in wart-like bumps that help them

blend into their environments, but warts onhumans are a virus. the problem was that no one before 1892 knew what a virus was, sothe transmission of warts through toad-handling was a common explanation. methods for gettingrid of warts often involved rubbing something on them like a bean pod, piece of beef oryour mother’s dish rag and then burying it - and as the item rotted away - so apparentlywent the wart. in reality, warts can suddenly disappear on their own due to the nature ofthe human papillomavirus, so many bizarre wart remedies like dripping eel blood or blowingon it nine times under the full moon were believed to really work. tossing coins in water fountains and pondsfor good luck comes from the tradition of

wishing wells. ancient germanic and celticpeople thought that by offering gifts like pins or coins to the water deities that livedin wells, they would be granted their wish -- which often was about finding a sweetheart.and while the wishes may not have always been granted, pure silver and pure copper coinstossed into wells may have been making the water safer to drink. silver kills bacteriain water - it’s been used as a water disinfecting agent on the international space station.and a 2012 study shows storing drinking water in copper pots can also kill certain harmfulbacteria. therefore, helga’s wish for a boyfriend may have prevented her village fromgetting diarrhea. but silver and copper coins are no gold. accordingto irish folklore, just visit the end of a

rainbow to find a pot of gold guarded by aleprechaun. unfortunately, you can never reach the end of a rainbow because seeing a rainbowrequires you to be a distance away from it so that sunlight can refract off water dropletsand hit your eyes. after vikings invaded ireland around the 10th century they left behind hordesof treasure which are supposedly guarded by

leprechauns to prevent greedy humans fromfighting over it. a metal detector recently uncovered over a hundred silver and gold vikingartifacts near the coast of the irish sea. so a bit of science and technology were allthat was needed to get those lucky charms. and as always - thanks for watching!