The Persian sorceress of Greek myth, Medea, understood arcane pharmaka (drugs and poisons) and knew how to concoct unquenchable “living fire” (volatile naphtha from natural petroleum wells of Baku, Azerbaijan). Medea, whose name means “to devise,” also knew the secrets of rejuvenation and resurrection. She used magical formulas and quasi-scientific procedures to achieve power over life and death.

According to myth, Medea first demonstrated her uncanny ability to recapture youth when she appeared as an old woman and suddenly transformed herself into a beautiful young princess. Jason, of the Argonauts, became her lover and asked Medea to restore the youthful vigor of his aged father, Aeson. Medea’s treatment recalls twentieth-century celebrity rumors about miracle youth cures in secret Swiss labs. In the first example of fabled “whole-body blood replacement,” Medea drew out all the blood from the old man’s veins and replaced it with the restorative juices of certain plants. Old Aeson’s energy and glowing health amazed everyone who saw him.

The daughters of Pelias, hoping to rejuvenate their father, too, begged Medea to reveal her procedure. But Pelias was an old enemy of Medea’s. The sorceress set her special bronze cauldron boiling over a fire, reciting incantations and sprinkling powerful pharmaka. Amid great clouds of smoke, Medea dramatically cut the throat of an old ram and placed it in the big kettle. Abracadabra! A frisky young lamb magically appeared in the pot. Pelias’s gullible daughters attempted the same technique with their elderly father, with horrible results.

The earliest image of Medea in Greek art is on a vase painting of about 630 BC. As she stirs her “cauldron of rejuvenation,” a sheep emerges from the pot; a similar scene appears in many other ancient paintings of Medea. Looking at these archaic images today inevitably brings to mind the world’s first genetically engineered sheep, Dolly, who emerged from the first successful cloning experiment in 1997. Medea’s mythic method for renewing life—creating a younger version of an older creature—anticipates by more than 3,000 years modern advances in cloning, stem cells, high-volume blood and non-sanguineous transfusions, and other scientific techniques for renewing organs and achieving artificial life.

About the author: Adrienne Mayor is a Research Scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University. She is the author of “Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World” (2009) and “The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy,” a nonfiction finalist for the 2009 National Book Award.

Q: You have an A.B. in Classics from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Medieval Italian literature from U.C. Berkeley, you teach Italian at Vanderbilt University, and you’re also an award-winning author. Could you tell us a little bit about your career trajectory? How have these two seemingly different lives intersected?

A: Actually, there are many similarities! My favorite activity is poking around dusty old books that nobody else has looked at since 1951, finding an intriguing fact that makes the past come alive, and communicating that fact to a receptive audience. That’s what I did when I investigated the medieval poet Cecco Angiolieri for my dissertation, and that’s what I do now when I find out something about Bronze Age Crete to round out a character in a novel.

Q: Of the many books you’ve written, which one has been the most interesting to write?

A: Like most authors, I usually find my most recent book the most interesting, so for me, that would be Dark of the Moon, releasing—ta-da!—tomorrow! It’s a retelling of the myth of the Minotaur, which is itself a Greek retelling (or misunderstanding) of now-lost Cretan rituals, most likely concerning the worship of a bull-god, whose priest might have worn a bull costume during rituals. It’s possible that Greek travelers garbled the story and came up with the marvelous tale of the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull who devoured human children. Their inaccurate but exciting retelling gave the world one of its most popular myths.

In my imagined Minoan civilization, Crete is ruled by a moon goddess and Asterion is no monster, but a deformed and nearly mindless man who has to be confined under the palace for his own and others’ safety. Everyone is terrified of him except his beloved sister Ariadne, and eventually, Prince Theseus of Athens, who has been sent to kill him.

Told in alternating points of view by Ariadne, a lonely teenager who is also priestess of the moon, and Theseus, who has rediscovered his father only to be sent by him to almost certain death, Dark of the Moon explores the issues of love, faith, and betrayal. Ariadne must decide what her obligations are toward her heritage and her religion. Theseus must discover how much he owes his absent father, his neglectful mother, and his kind stepfather. It’s been getting some great reviews, including a star from Kirkus Reviews.

I’d love to share the book with you! I’ll send signed (or unsigned, if you prefer) copies to two people who comment on this post over the next week.

Q: You’re “retiring” from Vanderbilt at the end of this year to focus on your fiction writing. How will you start transitioning to life as a full-time teacher to life as a full-time writer?

A: I’m weaning myself from teaching and amping up my writing while not shortchanging my students and colleagues at Vanderbilt, which means that I’m working at one or the other job pretty much all the time. Life will be difficult for the next seven months, but I care a lot about both teaching and writing too much to want to do less than my best at either one.

I’m blogging about my last year at Vanderbilt at Goodbye, Day Job!. Guest posts alternate with my own posts about preparing to leave a “regular” job with a paycheck, benefits, social contacts, and interesting coworkers (I’m including my students in that group!) for the uncertain world of working for myself. A new post every Wednesday!

Q: I know that you’re deeply connected to the YA writer community. What are the benefits of engaging with author writers? And what’s the best way for a new author to reach out to others?

A: You’re asking this at a very good time. I just spent the weekend at the annual conference of the Midsouth (Tennessee/Kentucky) chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, a 22,000-member international organization. As always, the conference was stimulating and educational, but above all a wonderful networking opportunity. Children’s writers are the most generous and interesting people I’ve ever met, and I’m thrilled that I’ll be able to spend more time with them. You don’t have to be published to join, so if this is something that interests you, I highly recommend that you join.

Q: Inquiring minds want to know. What do you have in the works? What can we look forward to?

A: I’m working on a YA manuscript set in the Roman Empire. It’s still too new and fragile to talk about, but it involves an Etruscan slave girl, a mysterious prophecy, a guilty secret, murder, love, teen angst—I’ll share more when I think it’s sturdy enough to bear a little scrutiny without bruising!

I look forward to posting here on the 20th of every month on all aspects of young-adult historical fiction.

By Tracy Barrett

“…and so, children, the first time the Greeks saw people riding horses, they thought that they were some strange half-man, half-animal.”

Really? And the Greeks came up with satyrs when they saw men riding goats? And what about sphinxes—men riding lions?

While someone at a distance might not see the legs of mounted men, it would be hard to miss that big head, yet centaurs are pictured as having a man’s torso instead of, not in addition to, a horse’s long neck and head. And the Greeks used horses to pull chariots long before they rode them, so it’s not as though horses were unfamiliar to them the first time they saw a mounted rider. No, it’s much more likely that the Greeks told tales about centaurs to symbolize the side of human beings that likes to drink, carouse, break the laws of society, not because the sight of men on horses confused them.

The sidekick for the protagonist, Telemachos, in my young-adult novel King of Ithaka, came to me as a centaur. Perhaps I was remembering a favorite bronze miniature in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I had always thought showed a man resting an affectionate hand on a centaur’s shoulder (the man is actually killing the centaur). Perhaps it was the presence in my house of numerous adolescent boys, whose behavior often bordered on the beastly. But for whatever reason, the centaur Brax quickly became a major player in the story, and one of my favorites.

About the author: Tracy Barrett is the author of numerous books for young readers, most recently King of Ithaka (Macmillan, 2010). She lives in Nashville, TN, where she teaches at Vanderbilt University.

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Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Mark Collins Jenkins

Not all vampires clamber out of coffins to go about their nightly depredations. In folk belief, the dead could prey on the living without ever leaving the grave.

In 16th century Europe, for instance, there was the nachzehrer, or “after-devourer,” a buried corpse that chewed its shroud, gnawed its fingers, and by some mysterious process thus killed its remaining family members. Not only were the horrible smacking sounds audible aboveground, they were also believed to herald—if not actually cause—outbreaks of bubonic plague. In 1581, as one such epidemic raged through Marburg in Germany, sepulchral grunts and gurgles were reportedly heard all over town. To forestall the plague, such “chewing dead” were to be exhumed and their gaping jaws stopped with stones, coins, or handfuls of dirt to prevent them gnawing.

A close association between vampires and epidemic disease is deeply rooted. Tuberculosis, or consumption, for example, once wiped out entire families. In parts of 19th century New England there lingered a belief that the heart and lungs of recently-buried tuberculosis victims still flickered with a malevolent afterlife, somehow consuming their next of kin’s vitality and so killing them in turn. If such a corpse was disinterred and those organs found to be fresh then they were ripped out of the carcass and burned to halt the contagion. As an 1884 magazine article picturesquely put it:

“Among the superstitions of those days, we find it was said that a vine or root of some kind grew from coffin to coffin, of those of one family, who died of consumption, and were buried side by side; and when the growing vine had reached the coffin of the last one buried, another one of the family would die; the only way to destroy the influence or effect, was to break the vine; take up the body of the last one buried and burn the vitals, which would be an effectual remedy…”

Mark Collins Jenkins, a former historian with the National Geographic Society, is the author of Vampire Forensics. His other titles include The Book of Marvels: An Explorers Miscellany and Worlds to Explore: Classic Tales of Travel and Adventure from National Geographic.

IMAGE:The Premature Burial by Harry Clarke (1889-1931), published in 1919.

By Elizabeth Bland

In 1997, British author J. K. Rowling introduced the world to Harry Potter and a literary phenomenon was born. Although a fantasy story, the magic in the Harry Potter books is partially based on Renaissance traditions that played an important role in the development of Western science, including alchemy, astrology, and natural philosophy. At the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry not only learns magic spells, charms, and potions, he is also taught about the natural world and its uses. This knowledge helps Harry and his friends survive innumerable adventures and ultimately defeat the villainous Lord Voldemort. For example, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry’s knowledge that the fangs from a basilisk can destroy the hidden fragments of Voldemort’s soul helps the young wizard ensure that, in their final battle, his opponent will lose his immortality.

Like Harry’s professors at Hogwarts, 16th-century Swiss naturalist and physician Konrad Gesner appreciated the knowledge gained by studying nature. Although Gesner is not mentioned in the Harry Potter series, many creatures the naturalist studied are. Gesner’s most famous work, Historiae Animalium, is considered one of the first examples of modern zoology. Unique to its time, the book included Greek and Biblical descriptions of animals, and also information Gesner had gained from dissections. Like many of his contemporaries, the naturalist believed that basilisks and dragons existed and he catalogued their medicinal uses alongside those of their reptile cousin, the snake. Of the basilisk, Gesner wrote that the “King of Serpents” could kill with its deadly stare, a trait re-imagined in Harry Potter.

To learn more about other Renaissance thinkers, practices, and lore that appear in the Harry Potter series, please visit the National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibition website, Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine.

Elizabeth Bland is the Exhibition Coordinator for the National Library of Medicine

IMAGE: Illustration of Konrad Gesner Courtesy National Library of Medicine

By the way, if you haven’t yet explored the NLM’s online exhibitions, you really should! Among the many highlights, is the “Dream Anatomies” exhibition. A visually stunning and informative look into early anatomy and dissection.

Another NLM favorite for us here at Wonders & Marvels is the “Turning the Pages” project. Where else can you flip through a copy of Conrad Gesner’s Historiae animalium while stretched out on your couch, laptop in hand? The image quality is extraordinary.

And to answer the question about whether mandrakes scream…first-hand experience suggests they don’t. We tried it out at a local nature preserve, where mandrakes grow freely in the lush hills of the south. Darn!

Image: Gerarde, “Mandrake Root” (1636) from another impressive online collection of images, hosted by the University of Colorado: The World of Gloriana: Books and Manuscripts from the Age of Elizabeth I.

Kids, I’ve told you a million times…Quit Dissecting the Dog!

I came across this image quite by accident today in the extraordinary Wellcome Library image collection. I’ve been working on some descriptions of early-modern dissections–and was having a hard time putting into words the tools that anatomists used in their work: their size, shape, and use. Often when I’m stuck, I dip into my favorite arsenals of images to reawaken my creative juices.

It was only after I had flipped through a good hundred images or so that I realized: I’m too jaded. What an odd life it is when you can scan illustrations that are hundreds of years old and think “seen that,” “been there,” “done that” as you hit enter.

And then, just when I was thinking that nothing surprises me anymore: the putti magically appeared.

Putti (putto in the singular) are what those portly little babies are called. While they are regular features in Renaissance religious art, they show up from time to time as well in later scientific, and especially, medical illustrations.

One of my putti favorites has to be the frontispiece to Regnier de Graaf’s De mulierum organis generationi inservientibus (1672), which announced the discovery of the human egg. (Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677–see post on Little Men in Sperm and The Chicken or the Egg).

The putti in the bottom left-hand portion of the illustration have just dissected a hare. They have put its ovaries on a tray and are looking at it close-up through a telescope-like device. Behind them stands a statuesque figure who holds a hand-drawn image of the female reproductive system.

But for as much as the Regnier image is eye-catching, I have to say that this new set of putti amuse and mesmerize me while also creeping me out in no small measure.

Related posts:

Gross Anatomy

Realism in Dissection

Dissection of Syphilis Patients

Anatomy of a Teaching Gig

Image: Etching by Bernard Picart, 1729. Wellcome Library, London.

Is seeing believing? Or does believing mean seeing only what you want to?

A post over at Curious Expeditions on the fascinating story of the Feejee Mermaid, a merman with a long history, made me think about some earlier beasts of the sea. Ambroise Pare’s 16th- century Monsters and Prodigies includes a number of illustrations of aberrant fish monsters, mermen, and this stunning “sea devil” (above).

The Feejee Mermaid was eventually outed as a hoax, and one of several mermen sits in an Austrian folklore museum. I’m having a hard time figuring out which one is ugliest. This guy up here or the one in living color. Care to share your opinion?

For those of you looking for more info on the Feejee Mermaid, Google Books will let you read Jan Bondeson’s chapter in the Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays In Natural and Unnatural History. For the sea devil, Janis Pallister’s translation of Pare’s “Monsters and Prodigies” should give you plenty to marvel at.

“Teratology” is the big word in my class this week. We’re focused on early-modern monsters. The term “monsters” is used very loosely to include anomalous flora, fauna, humans, and other worldly beasts. The ones that fascinate me most are the many creatures–part human, part other–that populate travel writings from Marco Polo to Mandeville; medical writings by Liceti and Pare; popular broadsides; and, of course, fairy tales.

Miss Piggy from Manchester Square up here delights the eyes and tickles the imagination. But I did have to chuckle awhile back at the publicity for one of my talks. Friends, I can tell you that I look nothing like her. She’s much more sophisticated than I will ever be–and dresses much better to boot!

For those craving more: The most impressive book on early-modern monsters and marvels has to be Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park’s Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. Jan Bondeson’s books come in close second. Who knew that there were people who can spontaneously combust or that, still now, there are people who are born with tail-like appendages? A doctor and a sleuth extraordinare, Bondeson is on the case.