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.
Early Doctors Diagnosed Disease by Looking at Urine
When uroscopy became trendy, it caused a minor scandal within the early medical profession.
Lichen Latte, Anyone?
Irrigation and antibiotics might be appropriate treatments for an animal bite—but maybe you’d prefer to sip a steaming lichen-and-pepper latte instead.
The Allure of Chinese Medicine
Capitalizing on stereotypes earned Chinese-American practitioners patients, but it also helped keep them confined to the margins of American society.
Plant of the Month: Cretan Rockrose
Cretan rockrose has been used as a medicine for millennia. Its unusual harvesting methods were documented by the ancient historian Herodotus.
Mesmerizing Labor
The man who introduced mesmerism to the US was a slave-owner from Guadeloupe, where planters were experimenting with “magnetizing” their enslaved people.
Plant of the Month: Elderberry
The recent entrance of elderberry into mainstream success is marked by an increasing popular desire to engage with traditional, “natural” remedies.
Abortion Remedies from a Medieval Catholic Nun(!)
Hildegard von Bingen wrote medical texts describing how to prepare abortifacients.
The Bitter Truth About Bitters
A bottle of bitters from about 1918 had significant amounts of alcohol and lead—and not a trace of the supposed active ingredient.