This is King Charles II of England and Scotland (d. 1685), dressed in very fancy clothes which made him look very civilized and not at all the sort of person who would consume crushed human skull as part of his medical regimen. But there you are, because, as it turns out, 17th-century English folks did
“The King’s Drops” of King Charles II Read More »
Here’s a reconstruction of the oldest European mummy, called Ötzi, named for a region where he was found in the Alps back in 1991. His body had been preserved by his glacial environment for 5,300 years, and has been extensively studied by scientists who have put together a fascinating picture of the Iceman and his
By the end of this post, you are likely to know more than you ever thought you would about an extremely coveted medical treatment popularized in Early Modern Europe: Human Skull Moss, aka “usnea”.It was made up of exactly what it sounds like — you can see an example here from the Berlin Botanical Museum.
Human Skull Moss – “Usnea” Read More »
This little Beasty comes from an early 15th-century manuscript as just part of a doodle or marginalia. It looks vampire-ish enough to set the mood about a pope who lived in the same century and was accused of vampirism.And I am talking about Pope Innocent (*queue irony for the name*) the VIII. Like other leaders
Pope Innocent and Vampirism Read More »
We’ve all heard about the toxic use of lead in cosmetics in history: it whitened the skin, which aristocrats from Ancient Roman times well into the 1800s thought was a good look. Of course, it also poisoned the users. The Early Modern employment of “Venetian Ceruse” was particularly popular, and was a combination of lead,
Venetian Ceruse in European Aristocratic Life Read More »
This Romano-British mosaic of combating gladiators speaks to the tradition of these bloody contests. It turns out, they were sanguineous in multiple ways — not only with the frequent slayings of the losers, but also in the way gladiator blood was revered for medicinal purposes.First appearing in the records about 260 BCE, gladiator fights originally
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Europeans practiced cannibalism well into the 19th century, and one of the favored ways to consume their own kind happened with beheadings. Here you see close-ups of a 1649 painting by artist John Weesop called “An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of King Charles I”. Notice in the second image the rush of people collecting
Cannibalism in Medieval to 19th-Century Europe Read More »
We who have been raised in a culture with microscopes and electronic microscopes take for granted the existence of a universe of minutiae that shape our surroundings (SARS-COV2, to pick an example we are all exhausted about). Before Antony van Leeuwenhoek developed his microscope around 1668, however, this was impossible.And so it was that a
William Ramesey’s Illustrations of Parasites Read More »
The deep red color you see here decorated the wall of an Ancient Roman aristocratic villa in the first century BCE. The color was known as vermilion, and it was made of the mineral cinnabar, precious to Ancient and Medieval peoples. They loved the hue they could get by mixing it with various bases. But
Cinnibar and Dragons in the Ancient World Read More »
This is Jonas Salk, inventor of the first polio vaccine, ending the childhood disease that had killed or crippled so many Americans — especially children — in the mid-20th century. But Salk was important for other reasons. His approach to designing the vaccine was innovative, using a denatured version of the virus rather than
TIL that 30 million years ago a species of mound-building termites evolved with next-level techniques that we humans could learn from in order to deal with our environmental challenges. These are the Macrotermes, and what makes them particularly special is the very ancient relationship they co-created with the fungus Termitomyces. Neither survives without the
Termites and Mushrooms: A Quid Pro Quo Read More »
The purple color of this Victorian dress testifies to the discovery of “mauve,” the world’s first synthetic dye. And it was a really, really big deal. The color was produced serendipitously by a brilliant 18-year old named William Henry Perkin in 1856, who didn’t start out his career path to become the millionaire founder
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Malaria is, like COVID, a largely preventable death: so long as the patient gets the right treatment at the right time. Many still do not have access to good medical care. For instance, in 2019, 409,000 people in Africa — mostly babies and toddlers — died of this disease. But malaria is not a
The History of Malaria Read More »
Today in my Early Medieval Europe history class, I had one of the funnest discussions ever that bridged from talking about Medieval ideas about sex (“only okay if done to make a baby”) to a 20th-century pregnancy test my students thought sounded perfectly Medieval. And this would be “the rabbit test,” and it involved
Moses Maimonides is not only fun to say (alliteration!), but also the name of one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. Born around 1135 in Spain, Maimonides was influenced by the great mix of religious cultures that made the Medieval Iberian peninsula unique. And this brings me to one of his most
Moses Maimonides, Medieval Mind Read More »
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has emerged as a heroic leader in no small part because of his willingness to endure the dangers and hardships of the battlefield for a cause that seems larger than him. In this, he parallels the popularity of another unlikely ruler of the Middle Ages: King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, aka “the leper
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Today is April 20, aka 4/20, which has been associated in the US since the 1970s with marijuana. Here, we are in a transition phase regarding weed’s medical and recreational legalization, with some states allowing and others forbidding. But in the Middle Ages no regulation or moral questioning of the plant existed. Medieval Europeans
In the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia, the almost 8,000 ft-peak Burkhan Khaldun lies: it is the legendary burial place of Genghis Khan, one of Eurasia’s most ambitious and brutal rulers. From a distance of 800 years, it is easy to allow awe rather than horror to surface as the primary estimation of the Mongolian warlord.
The Khentii Mountains, Resting Place of Genghis Khan Read More »
This is a post about a Medieval folktale that has come to be known as “the Green Children of Woolpit”. It’s also about how sources from the different past can be interpreted in such wildly different ways.Here is what the two Medieval sources dating from about 1189 and 1220 roughly agree upon about what happened:.Sometime
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Yesterday’s post was about a legend of green people who lived in Medieval England. Today I bring to you the true story of blue people who lived in the United States in the 19th-21st centuries. The first group come from a family of Kentucky folks who stemmed from a common ancestor named Martin Fugate. He
The Blue Fugate Family Read More »
