You know those drops they put into your eyes at the eye doctor, the ones that dilate your pupils? The dilating stuff is called atropine sulfate, and it’s extracted from the Atropa belladonna plant (known as deadly nightshade). I don’t… Read More
The artist Benvenuto Cellini (1500 – 1571) was a goldsmith and musician, and also one of the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance. He seems also to have been kind of a thug. He killed quite a lot of people, first… Read More
Recently I visited the Poison exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It included a toxicological explication of the witches’ poem in MacBeth, which, by happy coincidence, my son is reading in English class right now… Read More
I’m researching a new book, and have been spending a lot of time reading about the history of medicine, and various methods that were used to cure ailing patients. Sometimes the treatments did a lot more harm than good (see… Read More
I was in New York last week, walking along a street in Soho, when this picture on a salon door caught my eye.
No, this is not a picture of a crime scene. It’s a hollow candle, and they light… Read More
The 10,000-man Greek army, led by its general, Xenophon, was heading home from a battle with Persia in 401 BC when the weary men pitched camp in a lovely area called Trabzon, near the Black Sea. There they feasted on… Read More
When you write a book about insects and their effect on human history, as I’ve just done, you find yourself reading a lot about pesticides, and their dangers. Which leads to reading about food additives and industrial farming and inhumane… Read More
Disturbing details have emerged about the recent public health drug disaster, where a meningitis outbreak killed 25 people, sickened hundreds, and may have put as many as 14,000 more at risk. A federal inspection of the company that made the… Read More
There’s a major mystery surrounding the death of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. According to most accounts, he died of cholera in 1893, after drinking a glass of unboiled tap water. Which would have been a reckless thing to do,… Read More
I’m sure most families have standard phrases they use with one another, inside jokes that others might not necessarily get. One of my family’s is from the 1968 musical version of Oliver Twist. There’s a scene, in Fagin’s lair, where… Read More