Today Machiavelli is known almost exclusively as a political thinker, but to his contemporaries he was also an expert on herbs and poisons. Though his medicinal writings no longer exist, Machiavelli is cited twice in 16th-century manuals as an expert on spider poison. Likely, he would have been extremely familiar with the early modern…
Category: History of Medicine
Calories: The measure of nurture
The date was October 28, 1935. The night could have been peaceful and relaxing for 26-year-old Fukuda Katsu living in Tokyo if her husband did not complain about dinner. After quibbling about her cooking of rice, he rebuked Katsu for lack of knowledge: “You are too indifferent about calories.” His words were like a slap…
With Regard to the Pubic Hair of Women
Have you wondered what a society that holds young women’s pubic hair in high regard looks like?
Stunning and Stirring: A Theory on the Symbolic of Spirit Ectoplasm in the Early 20th Century
The purpose of this article is to interweave the history of spiritualist phenomena and that of sexuality in the 19th century, in order to demonstrate that a mixture of fascination and desire may have played a significant role in the observations made by the esteemed scientists who studied the case of “ectoplasmic mediums”.
Humanizing Black Patients
Misconceptions and Fallacies on Race and Medical Treatment The Health Humanities is the study of the intersection of health and humanistic disciplines (such as philosophy, religion, literature) fine arts, as well as social science research that gives insight to the human condition (such as history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.)* The Health Humanities use methods…
Searching the Supernatural: Cause and Cure in Mental Illness
In 2020 alone, approximately 21 million adults in the United States suffered from at least one major depressive episode (that’s 8.4% of all American adults). If anything, that number is an underestimate. To make matters worse, treatment options aren’t great. While traditional allopathic relief is available, people regularly turn toward alternative options in treating mental…
Rice in Bowls
It was the mixed rice again. Four months had passed since the Japanese soldiers of the First Regiment of Imperial Guard first saw such staple in November 1886. Instead of shining white rice, their bowls held some yellowish rice with barley kernels. They heard that soldiers in the Second and Third Regiment had the same…
Tale of a Colonial Tonic: or the Pharmacy of the Supernatural in Bengali Literature
What does a fledgling Bengali periodical for paranormal tales in early-twentieth-century Calcutta have in common with a contemporary anti-malarial tonic? Both sneak across the colonial divide in their formal heterogeneity. On the pages of the periodical Aloukik Rahasya (literally, Mysteries of the Supernatural), edited by the Bengali playwright Kshirode Prasad Vidyabinode from 1909 to 1915,…
Boccaccio’s Two Little Pigs: Animal Deaths during the Black Death
In his account of the 1348 plague outbreak in Florence, Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio described the deaths of two pigs who had been exposed to the clothes of a plague victim. He explained: One day […] the rags of a pauper who had died from the disease were thrown into the street, where they…
The Appeal of a Royal Procession, Diagnosed
What drove people to interrupt royal processions, could it be mental illness? What political purposes could a psychiatric diagnosis serve, could it be more than dismissing a petitioner?