A Trusted Name in a Dubious Drug Market
Amid the fraud and flimflam of early drug markets, Shakers stood for purity, creating a brand others were eager to exploit.
Sassafras: From Scent to Science in American Medicine
How did sassafras go from cure-all to carcinogen? Its history links Indigenous knowledge, colonial trade, and modern scientific debate.
The Pharaoh’s Curse or the Pharaoh’s Cure?
A toxic fungus from King Tutankhamun’s tomb yields cancer-fighting compounds.
Wilhelm Reich: Twice Burned
A psychoanalyst and physician, Reich fled the Nazis only to be detained by the US as an “enemy alien” during World War II. And then came the sexual revolution.
Dubious Medicine on the Texas Frontier
If you got sick in the Texas frontier area in the decades before the Civil War, your options were all pretty bad.
Second Opinions: On Intellectual Humility and Medicine
What happens when doctors admit they don't know everything?
The Home Science Labs of English Noblewomen
In the eighteenth century, elite women with a scientific bent often turned to distilling medicines, a craft that helped them participate in experimentation.
Stevia’s Global Story
Native to Paraguay, Ka’a he’e followed a circuitous path through Indigenous medicine, Japanese food science, and American marketing to reach the US sweeteners market.
Medicalizing Domestic Violence
What happens when experts position domestic violence inside a biomedical model of care?
“There’s Gold in Them Thar Fungi”: Cordyceps as Cash Crop
A fungus in the genus Cordyceps has us running scared. But some of its species are worth more than their weight in gold.