The cinchona tree, whose bark yields quinine for malaria treatment, is native to Peru. However, the Dutch and British exported seeds and trees to their…
“The Richmond Times of October 18, 1864 reported that the Manchester [Virginia] town bell would be rung three times a day to remind people to…
The unlimited and easy procurement of opiates troubled 19th century pharmacists…. Opium was a must in the pharmacy of the nineteenth century, as a painkiller,…
Ginger was used in nineteenth-century medicine to treat everything from scurvy to cholera to impotence to lead poisoning. And, as in TR Hummer’s poem “Whitman’s…
A late nineteenth century advertisement for condoms reveals that safe sex and contraception were considered as important then as they are now. A flyer advertising…
The exquisite hand-painted tarocchi (tarot) cards of medieval Milan display neither titles nor numbers. Yet “The Fool,” as he will be called in later decks,…