medicine

Robert Hooke Compound Microscope

Robert Hooke and Micrographia

Here you are looking at the compound microscope developed by Robert Hooke (d 1703), a Renaissance scientist more famous for dabbling in academic fields as disparate as physics and palaeontology than a particular discovery. Nevertheless, his microscope allowed him to illustrate things he included in _Micrographia_, which utterly captivated his British audience. Samuel Pepys the […]

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snake oil went from traditional Chinese medicine to huckster

Origins of Snake Oil

“Snake Oil” earned the connotation of being a huckster’s fake medical treatment in the early 20th century thanks largely to the efforts of one Clarke Stanley, whose infamous product is featured here. However, the actual origins of snake oil as a medicinal product have a different and more legitimate background in Chinese traditional medicine. Clarke

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