This late 15th-c illustration shows a man preparing a mixture called “Theriac,” which for over a millennia was perhaps the most valued curative substance (or so it was advertised) across Eurasia. You can see the snakes unfurling under the man’s feet: they’re there representing the serpentine venom the ancient recipe demanded. Another crucial ingredient was […]
Mithridates and His Antidote Testing Read More »
One of the most important tools in the history of medical diagnosis has been urine. The examination of pee can legitimately be used to figure out whether a person is pregnant, or has diabetes, or kidney failure. For Medieval people, it was also thought to indicate widened “channels” into the kidney, which accidentally let blood
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Five thousand years ago, ancient Middle Eastern Mesopotamian civilizations developed the written word, and this invention galvanized other areas of culture such as literature and the visual arts. And so we see seals — such as the one here made of shell from the Akkadian period (2334-2154 BCE) — which often showcased religious and political
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Medieval Europeans lived far more isolated lives than we, and consequently, existed knowing there were vast tracts of lands and cultures to which they had no access. Tales about places necessarily depended on word-of-mouth, supplemented with rare but extremely popular travelogues. And so came to pass stories and legends about an unusual living thing, half-plant
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The smallpox vaccination has been one of the greatest contributions science has made to better the human condition. Although Edward Jenner has justly earned credit for his development of the vaccine, an 18th-century British aristocratic woman named Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) also deserves recognition. Montagu was a “Turkophile,” and published many writings critiquing the confining
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The Musee Horta (1898) embodies the style of Art Nouveau of the late 19th century. Known for its attention to beauty and incorporation of nature, Victor Horta designed this building in Brussels originally as his home. You can see the pronounced use of glass and steel – typical elements of his construction. The fluctuating movement
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A strange relationship between mathematics and the occult began early on in Western history, and some of the most advanced intellectual minds fostered the study of numbers primarily as a stepping stone for understanding hidden truths about the physical world. This tendancy goes as far back as Pythagoras, but flourished notably in Early Modern Europe.
John Napier and the Relationship of Math and Occults Read More »
Slippery reasoning that produces horrible results is unfortunately a regular occurrence in human history. While the 17th century witnessed the Scientific Revolution in Europe, sloppy logic (mixed with lack of information) led to some gruesome human experimentation. William Harvey had recently discovered (for Europeans) that blood circulates in our bodies, pumped by the heart, but
Arthur Coga and Sheep’s Blood Transfusions Read More »
Ching Shih might have been the most powerful and successful pirate in history. Born in 1775, she was brought up as a prostitute in the wanning years of the Qing Dynasty. As the ability of the central government to provide stability dissolved, ad-hoc mafia-esque alliances among profiteers arose, and piracy proved to be one of
Ching Shih – The Most Powerful and Successful Pirate in History Read More »
Medieval maps did not share modern objectives with cartography: the _mappae mundi_ (“maps of the world”) were not designed to find one’s way with landmass shown to scale, but rather to convey a schematic idea of the major parts of creation. The map here (Bartholomeus Anglicus, _De propriatatibus rerum_, Ahun 1480 (BnF@gallicabnf, Francis 9140, fol
Medieval T-O Maps – “De Propriatatibus Rerum” Read More »
Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1729-1796) is part of history’s extremely small club of super talented and successful female political leaders. She considered herself both a fan of the Enlightenment and an autocrat – like other women in her situation, she was aware her position would constantly be threatened because of her gender,
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Here are the Indian deity Krishna and his beloved gopi (milkmaid) and constant companion Radha, playing the ancient Indian board game known as chaturanga. In Sanskrit, “chaturanga” means “four-limbs,” and in this game, the name refers to a millenia-old Indian military setup that included four branches: elephants, chariotry, cavalry, and infantry. Chaturanga was the predecessor
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These gold dentures from the Ancient Etruscan culture seemed to have been popular on the northern portion of the Italian Peninsula from the late eighth through the mid sixth centuries. Even though extant Etruscan writings are limited to inscriptions, archaeological evidence suggests that they were worn to show off the wearer’s elite status, and those
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Leaders in the European Middle Ages issued coins as a kind of aspirational statement of stable power. After all, currency is only as successful as a community’s faith in its worth. But what happens when a leader goes out of favor, or dies? This is a photo of coins issued by two English kings, one
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During the nearly half a millenia that the Ottoman Sultans governed their Empire, leaders’ talents of course varied, and predicting what sort of ruler the next Sultan might be could be guesswork. Two phenomena that developed at the top levels of state governance, however, tended to throw the odds in the negative direction. The first
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Religious traditions across history have commonly developed rituals around purity and how to properly bury the dead: quite often, these areas overlapped. In the ancient period of the Zoroastrian religion (developing in modern Iran), records of disposing human corpses in a non-polluting way were documented as early as the fifth century BCE. Zoroastrians thought that
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This is Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel-prize-winning architect of the famed equation with his name — along with silhouettes of his famous alive-and-dead cats. Born in Austria on 1887, Erwin’s chronic struggles with tuberculosis had him confined in a sanitorium in the 1920’s: it was during his stay that he developed his famous wave equation. Many conclusions
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Suicide has been met with approbation, criticism, horror, or distain, depending on the culture and circumstance of the act. In the Ancient Mediterranean world, elite people who were condemned to death by the state – or facing eminent death by political opponents – thought of suicide as a more honorable path. Pictured here is “Sofonisba
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Although popular culture promotes an idea that the belief in magic flourished mainly in the Medieval European past, maybe declining with the onset of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th-century, this is not necessarily the case. As Owen Davies, author of _Grimoires: A History of Magic Books_, relays, the so-called “Modern” era of Western history
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There is an idea that personal hygiene declined along with the fall of Rome in Western Europe. Unlike the Romans, this line of thinking goes, the Middle Ages constituted “a thousand years without a bath” (as one popular textbook summarizes). In fact, Medieval washing is a well documented practice, and you can read all about
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