Medicine and Science

Love Potion Number IX

by CarolineLawrence September 15, 2012

by Caroline Lawrence In the steamy hot room of the Roman baths, a muscular gladiator sighs as a slave scrapes the sweat, oil and dirt from his skin. The slave uses a strigil, a curved metal tool that performs the same task as the modern loofah. The strigil – or stlengis (στλεγγίς) as it’s called [...]

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Seeds, wombs and ‘legitimate rape’

by Helen King September 10, 2012

By Helen King! W&M Contributor Last month, in a much-repeated comment, Todd Akin recently claimed that ‘if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down’. Not surprisingly, he has been ridiculed for the lack of knowledge of biology that this comment betrays. It didn’t take [...]

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Was There Any Truth in Truth Serum?

by JackEl-Hai September 9, 2012

by Jack El-Hai Remember the routine from black and white espionage dramas of the 1940s and ‘50s? The bad guys detain a suspected spy, who won’t talk even after a rough interrogation. Soon, after receiving an injection of a colorless liquid, he’s muttering uncontrollably, spilling the details of an entire network of agents. The truth [...]

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WARNING: TOXIC! The Deadly Dead

by Lindsey Fitzharris September 2, 2012

By Lindsey Fitzharris (W&M Contributor) When a person thinks of anatomical specimens from the past, he or she may think of disembodied remains floating in glass jars filled with alcohol. The Hunterian Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons in London is full of such specimens—unborn foetuses suspended in time as if still incubating in [...]

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An Unsung Hero of the Proto-Wiki

by Marc Merlin August 22, 2012

By Kelly Servick (Atlanta Science Tavern Contributor) This story begins with an expert in his field donating his time to an ambitious encyclopedia project. The work would be an unprecedented collaboration of authors and editors, relying on new technology to distribute it on an enormous scale. If you’re picturing a devoted Wikipedian at his laptop, [...]

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Medieval Women as Physicians

by tracybarrett August 20, 2012

by Tracy Barrett Since at least Classical times,[i] European women have generally been in charge of their family’s health. In Medieval romances and lais, women are often portrayed as healers, not only in their homes but also in the community. Nursing the sick fell within the purview of the charitable work that nuns (and monks) [...]

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A Modern Exercise in Making an Old Herbal Remedy

by Lisa Smith July 30, 2012

By Lisa Smith Earlier this month, I attended the newly revived Fairlop Fair, lured by the promise of dogs in silly costumes, bearded ladies, and Georgian medicine. My companions were leery of attending a medical herbalist’s workshop on eighteenth-century remedies, but the ominous clouds decided us: the workshop was undercover. I have studied early modern recipes for [...]

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Pipes, Reins, & the Cerebral Winepress: Mechanical Metaphor in Vesalius’ Fabrica

by marrilynn July 4, 2012

By Marri Lynn (W&M Regular Contributor) In the thousands of years of medical history preceding CAT scans, X-rays, and endeavors like the Visible Human Project, medical professionals often relied on two-dimensional drawings to inform their visualization of the inner workings of the human body. But drawings were often expensive to reproduce even with the advent [...]

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Imagining Vampires

by Lisa Smith June 30, 2012

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Vampires were the flavour of the month, with two very different types of vampires on show: the staked skeletons of an archaeological discovery and the sexy beasts starring in a new season of a certain TV programme. The division of these two types can be traced to the eighteenth century. [...]

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Torturing the Dead: The Prevention of Premature Burial and Dissection

by Lindsey Fitzharris June 9, 2012

By Lindsey Fitzharris (W&M Contributor) In 1746, Jacques-Bénigne Winslow wrote: “Tho’ Death, at some Time or other, is the necessary and unavoidable Portion of Human Nature in its present Condition, yet it is not always certain, that Persons taken for dead are really and irretrievably deprived of Life.” Indeed, the Danish anatomist went on to [...]

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The Puppy Water and Other Early Modern Canine Recipes

by Lisa Smith May 31, 2012

At first I thought it was a joke when I read a recipe for “The Puppy Water” in a recipe collection compiled by one Mary Doggett in 1682. “Take one Young fatt puppy and put him into a flatt Still Quartered Gutts and all ye Skin upon him”, then distill it along with buttermilk, white [...]

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The Senator, the Scientist and a Country Worth Defending

by Marc Merlin May 22, 2012

By Marc Merlin It was April 17, 1969, Richard Nixon was three months into his first term as President of the United States, the homes of the inner-city were crumbling, the Vietnam War was raging and $250 million was still a whole lot of money. $250 million was the price tag attached to the construction [...]

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Images of Invisible Ink

by Marc Merlin April 22, 2012

By Kristie Macrakis (Atlanta Science Tavern Contributor) When Marc Merlin, the Atlanta Science Tavern host, asked if I’d be willing to write a blog for Wonders & Marvels, I jumped at the chance. I always thought of my current topic – invisible ink – as a wonder, a marvel of nature. It would fit perfectly. [...]

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The World’s First Aviator?

by PamelaToler April 18, 2012

By Pamela Toler Photo courtesy of the Smithonsian Institute ‘Abbas Ibn Firnas is not well known in the west but he’s a hero to little boys and aviation buffs throughout the Arab-speaking world. The Andalusian scientist was court poet and astronomer to Abd al-Rahman III in the days when Cordoba was the wealthiest and most [...]

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Contributor Q & A: Marri Lynn

by Holly Tucker April 10, 2012

As editor of Wonders & Marvels, I have the pleasure of introducing our monthly regular contributors. On the docket today is Marri Lynn… Holly Tucker: Hi Marri. So glad to have you on the W&M. Could you tell readers a little bit about yourself? Marri Lynn: I’m glad to be a part of [...]

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