ever since the mccarthy period, most of the experience were left in the american government. they were hounded out of the state department in mccarthy's days and led among others by the likes of nixon. the best talent for analyzing china was at the cia and it's those people that i sought out. i was largely interested in the biographies of the people i was likely to be covering. i was right with the kowledge of who these people were. what role they played in the cultural revolution, etc. what the relationship might be between joe and mao.

representing different factions of outlook on the world. in so far as i can tell, they had it right. >> i had a point. the cia was quite public about briefing people on the geography and the economy and so forth. i have an atlas that was published by the cia that was not unclassified. very detailed and informative. 98% of the information that was gone based on public sources.

>> when i repeat the answers, thank you very much. . >> we have a question right here. >> what could be useful is to add a few more words about the context in the 1960s that led to the trip. the idea for the secret trip of henry kissinger in july of 1971 didn't come out of the head of zeus, but brewing beginning with

the full bright hearings of 1966 that showed what max frankel said. despite the beginning of the cultural revolution and the irony. a growing american support for a new china policy. that's why we had the national committee on u.s.-china relations formed at that time. that's why nixon had a brief mention in his 67 foreign affairs. in 68, our harvard group. they are trying hard to be the first in china. the democrats were split. the administration was we are in vietnam because china is behind it. on the other hand govern and ted kennedy said we need a new china policy. jim thompson and others who saw the need for this were pushing it.

henry and company were trying gingerly to take this issue away from the democrats. teddy kennedy went up in may of 71 to see the new ambassador in the hope of being the first to go to china and before nixon and kissinger. the chinese were not having any, especially because ted kennedy refused to say that taiwan was part of china and under beijing's jurisdiction. had he been willing, he might have had a chance to go. this was part of the democrat republican preparation for the 72 election and it was all part of a rising american opinion for china change. they told a group of us in late 66 it was only the full bright committee hearings that showed american support for a new chi policy.

i said to him, you mean it's the function of the congress to lead public opinion and the function of the state department merely to follow? we had to say this in the context of the democratic party people trying to take over this issue and nixon and kissinger very cleverly took tarks way. >> the price was to give taiwan away and they were willing to do that? how ironic. >> if you head the transcripts, it's amazing how blunt they are and how cavalier they are. they fuss about it and really ready. of course kissinger came back for the president and nixon and kissinger said we will maintain the relationship and even though five indicated that they were

going to -- >> they were giving it away too. >> as an issue. they claimed this as their birth right internally and saying we will let this thing ride for generations. and they have. >> taiwan remained in charge of its own destiny. not a bad strategy. he said it's okay if it takes seven years? >> i think we have time for one more question. who has the question to end-all questions? maybe right here? i'm pretty sure. >> one element mentioned in the film that i never heard a good explanation of was the low key reception. the cars zipping through and i would have thought more of a staged event was more of the

chinese. what was going on that cawed it to be so low key and what did it symbolize? >> the chinese people who are running the trip wanted to downplay until they found out what it was going to be once mao met nixon and they relaxed, there were a lot more people around. you can see there were a lot of people halfway down the various blocks that we passed who were being held behind barriers and so on and so forth. i think there was a sense of holding their breath. it was a laying on of hands.

one of the most amazing things was the number of small children frightened to death at the sight of me. this hairy character with a big nose, they would literally bury their faces in mama or grandma's skirt and go away crying. as i walked in the villages that were surrounded by a wall of every block or so with an entrance, as i walked along that wall, i could see through the opening there was a crowd of about 50 youngsters on the other side of the wall following me along and i could only see them every time there was an opening. we were from mars as far as they were concerned.

the strangeness the both days. you can't get enough of this. it's available on the website. >> before we sign up, i want to thank laura chang and they are pumping us quickly. thanks to our panelists for a wonderful thing. you are watching american history tv.

48 hours of people and events that help document the american story. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. >> who all are vetted? >> none of them. obama can change the entire dynamic. >> the best selling book with the inside story on just what happened with the 2008 presidential campaign. >> i love the hockey moms. the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick. . >> today with the coauthors. >> the expectation out of that speech was that she was an asset and the week or ten days, she was. the democratic side, there was a lot of concern as the ticket came out that was as much as five or sixpoints, the people

were sort of freaking out. >> this weekend american history is in shreveport, louisiana. ex-panting the reach from washington, d.c. for programming on american history. shreveport is the third largest city in louisiana and is the former home of the louisiana hay ride. a radio show that helped many celebrities like elvis presley get their start. all weekend long on american history tv. near medicine is a long stretch from today. modern medicine has evolved over a short amount of time where as the pioneer medicine stayed stagnant for a while without a lot of changes.

they were doing things that modern medicine frowned upon and has come full circle as well. the things that we take for granted today when we go to the doctor, things like the instruments being as germ-free as possible. or the doctor washed his hands before he decides to work on us. the tools are sterilized. modern pain killers and anesthetics. a lot of these things were nowhere on the radar yet for these doctors that were practicing. we use the term loosely for doctors for early medicine. they were self-taught and worked under somebody else who were self taught and getting ready to retire. they were learn as they went,

this would be the room that you would come into for possibly a tooth pulling or removing an appendix or delivering a baby or eye exam. you came to the one exam room that they had. warmer weather and better days and people sat outside and waited. if it was cold or nasty or middle of winter. everybody could be crammed into the exam room with maybe a sheet pulled across the patient. privacy was not that much of an important thing for them to have when you went to the doctor. other things that make it scare to come to the doctor is if you look at the exam table we have, the exam table is all metal. this is a metal table with a sterilized? no. would you have the clean paper that we have today? no. we have the mannequin on here.

under the mannequin, there was a groove bend into the center tray of the exam table and the groove runs into a pan. that's called the blood pan and the groove. the blood would run around the side of the patient. the smaller pan would allow it to drip into the larger pan on the floor. a bucket of water and a rag would wash it off. that would be about as clean as they get it. a good doctor would have something similar to this. a wash basin where they have the water for washing their hands and a basin for rinsing and a bar of soap that was not aspect bacteria. it was homemade lye soap. it was better than nothing. they would start to do their

work. no x-rays and nothing to render you unconscious for surgery and nothing to give you for pain. at least really good pain killers. you think our mannequin here was outbreaking horses and got thrown off the horse and landed wrong. the unfortunate thing when he landed he broke his leg. we know it's broken because it's pointed in the wrong direction. we bring him in or seven miles on a tough bumpy road. they get him to the doctor and the doctor gives him his best medical opinion. he goes yes, it's broken. the doctor said well, the first thing we have to do is try to get his boots off. our mannequin doesn't have the boots on, but they have to remove them. the first thing they have to do is rotate the leg back into the

right position. that would entail the doctor rotating the leg back with him screaming and hollering the entire time. something else the doctors would do that they don't today is ask his buddies that brought him to help. their job would be to pin him to the table while the doctor did his work. say i was the person who brought him in. my job is to do this and pin him to the table while the doctor rotated the foot. the doctor gets ready to take his boot off. he may pull his pocket knife out and go to cut the leather on the boot and he may ask the doctor not to cut his boots off. why not? the simple reason. it may be the only pair of shoes he has. the doctor would then have to make the decision, do i cut the boot off or go by his wishes. so the doctor with a broken leg

in the boot manages to wrestle the boot loose. then he hears a nice sound and when it does, he gets the boot off and the pant leg is bloody and the boot is full of blood. the reason for that is the bone is exposed through the skin. the doctor does his best. remember, no pain killers. no x-ray. a doctor has to try to set this bone and the only way he knows how is the first effort to take the heel and the foot and apply pressure and pull and see if he can pull the bone back under the skin. that works somewhat, but it doesn't work as well as it should. then he will grab the ankle and take his pngs and push it back through the hole that it made through the skin. then push his finger in there so he can feel the bones and rotate

the bone and foot around until he thinks he feels the bones come back together. at that point he is going to bandage it up with no plaster cast presideat this time. splinting involves two boards. he would take two boards, one on each side of the leg. the wound would be bound. he would take the two boards and lay them side by side and take dressings and tightly wrap the board on and that would become the cast. within days or longer, the house starts getting this foul odor to it. they notice there may be flies buzzing around the wound and the biggest fear is maybe it's infected. an infection is not something you wanted to get on any major scale because with gang green setting in, they didn't have

antibiotics or even give him orally to fight the infection. you had to hope your body was strong enough. the cure all for a major infection was amputation. you bring him back to the doctor and they were afraid it was going to happen. it would get infected. why? because the doctor had his fingers in the wound. he had to do what he had to do to save the leg. now, the infection is there and the doctor would have to come up above the infected area and remove the leg and it would generally be at the knee. they would come up to part of the thigh and use something very crude and it would be an amptician kit. the kit would have everything needed to remove the limb. most doctors would be pretty

practiced in amputation because they had hundreds of thousands of patients po to work on. they would take the take the am tools and the first one that they would have to use would be the scalpel. and these are not nice and delicate tools, as you can see. it's long. it's very narrow with a very sharp edge on it and the reason for the length is because this blade here would have to be pushed completely through the thigh. through the top and out the bottom. then they would take the bone saw and the bone saw, very small teeth on it. it would be used to just like it says, to saw through the bone and they would saw the bone as close up to the top as they could. what they would do is cut the bone higher than the flesh would be when they folded it back over the shortened bone and stitch that and that would make the

stump. you would think that a lot of patients would die with this type of surgery but it was a very effective surgery because it was done properly. we talk about doctor's offices but a lot of times these doctors were tenant farmers. they farmed and they did, but also what they called "saddle bag doctors." saddle bag doctors not only stayed homebound at their doctor's office but they would go out and roam the countryside and go to these small communities. we have a great example of what they would carry. not only would they have a amputation bag with their kids and whatnot but they have a great example of a saddle bag doctor's kit that has all the medicines he would have had and needed at the time. and you see they're each individually held by a leather strap and whatnot. there's vials and the bottles and the bottles lean out so the doctor can gain access to them. the top would have been areas

where he would have kept response and maybe, smaller portions of medicines and whatnot. and this would have been all closed up and carried by the doctor on horseback and this would be his medical bag. a lot of the medicine during the time had cocoa-based. they were opium based. so sometimes they didn't really have true medical properties. it just made you feel real good that there were there. so -- locally, things they would use for medicines, they would use things like dandy lions which was great for if constipated. and it was an early painkiller. one of my favorites they used was a tree called tickle tongue. tickle tongue was what they would use prior to dental work.

you can suck on it and it makes your mouth go numb. as good as novocaine? no, but it was better than nothing. moving to the back, this was the doctor's dental office and also, the pharmacy. there would be jars and vials of ground-up powders and whatnot and he would make his own pills and his own medicines that way. and, of course, like i said, they used things that would grow naturally. some of them actually did have some medicinal purposes and actually worked. some of them did not. a lot of these recipes, they'd call them prescriptions that they used for medicines, called for things that are poisonous. so there are recipes that called, believe it or not, that require that you put three drops of heck lock in it. that's very poisonous. several called for crushed up buckeye seeds. the buckeye is poisonous. so the rule of thumb was a

little could cure you and a lot could kill you. so the doctor had his pharmacy. his scales for weighing the powders and whatnot and weighing everything the way he would have needed it. we mentioned this would become to dentist office, too. dental work, outside of surgery, is one of the scare request things people had to do during this time period. we have our dental chair and drill and our dental drill is what's referred to as a treddle drill. it runs off this with a series of belts and pulleys on it. ours is missing a few pieces. you would use foot power to get the belts turning and you can hear it nice and squeaky. you can imagine that dental drill sound. it -- this is a true dental and

medical chair. this one was used in around 1856 by a local doctor, dr. g.a. fryerson. and that was south of town here. true-blue dentist and medical chair and we know is, number one, by the design and by its function. if you foot pedal here the chair can lean back. i mean, you can get a lot of angle to the patient who's laying in the chair. but the big thing is, is the absence of any arms built on the chair. because in order for the doctor to be able to pull a tooth, he had to keep you as immobile as he could so the patient would sit in the chair, back against the back, of course, the doctor himself, would step over the patient and pin him to the chair so he could work on the patient's mouth and basically, keep his body from moving around

so much. pulling of teeth? just kind of like today but not the november caocaine they woul. pliers were used to remove an impacted tooth. this is a tool called a "tooth key." it consist of a handle, a shaft and a hook. and it's a hinged hook and it will pretend the finger tip is a tooth and you would hang that at the base of gum, on the edge of the tooth and rotate it around and then, using just manpower and leverage, you would rotate the tooth out of the gumline. we always hear about george washington having wooden teeth. they were not always wooden teeth. as the years would go by, eventually they would start making dentures and false teeth. if we look, we have ivory teeth. they would be used -- or

porcelain. that was used a lot, too. but the unique things about these dentures are that they are toxic. the base that they made and used, they used lead to hold these teeth in place. you pop these in your mouth and your gums are fairly absorbent and they are pulling out toxins left and right. you wear them for a few weeks. you start to feel sickly, doctors didn't know about lead poisoning at the time. he tells you, stay off your feet for a few days and hopefully you'll get to feeling better. you don't wear your dentures while you're in bed. you get to better, you're back on your feet and put your teeth back in and you get sick again. so you could get lead poisoning just from wearing your dentures at the time. we talked about the doctors themselves. regionally, when you look at the 1830s to the 1930s, if we go 1849, the records show that

there were only 87 doctors in the western half of louisiana. that's pretty scarce when you talk about pop laos. these doctors were much needed. i always tell the kids on our tours, the next time you go to your doctor, his his or her neck or shake his or her hand, say thank you because of the amount of time they've spent in schooling and everything they've done to help bring us into this modern world. all weekend long american history tv is featuring shreveport, louisiana. learn more about shreveport and find out where c-span's local content vehicles are going next online at c-span3.org/local content. you're watching "american history tv" all weekend, every

weekend, on c-span3. i'm mark farcas and i head up c-span's ltv project. that stands for local content vehicle. we have three, the purpose of these vehicles to collect programming from outside of washington, d.c. how do we do it? we staff each one of these with one person, with a 1345small vi camera and a laptop editor so they can roll, record, produce and edit things from the road. that's what we're doing. why? do get outside of washington, d.c. and collect programming for all of our networks. we're doing an lcv city tour. we'll descend on a city and one will do historic sites and the other will do book thi one does relation's events. community relations events are importan u in each one of these cities. the last thing is that not only