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Greenland Unicorns and the Magical Alicorn

- September 19, 2019 in alicorn, cabinet of curiosities, caspar bartholin, Featured Articles, folklore, greenland, iceland, magic, narwhals, ole worm, Religion, Myth & Legend, Science & Medicine, thomas bartholin, unicorn horns, unicorns, wunderkammer

When the existence of unicorns, and the curative powers of the horns ascribed to them, began to be questioned, one Danish physician pushed back through curious means — by reframing the unicorn as an aquatic creature of the northern seas. Natalie Lawrence on a fascinating convergence of established folklore, nascent science, and pharmaceutical economy.

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Brilliant Visions: Peyote among the Aesthetes

- July 25, 2019 in aesthetes, Arthur Symons, drugs, early use of mescaline, early use of peyote, early use of psychedelics, Featured Articles, Havelock ellis, mescaline, peyote, psychedelics, Science & Medicine, Silas Weir Mitchell

Used by the indigenous peoples of the Americas for millennia, it was only in the last decade of the 19th century that the powerful effects of mescaline began to be systematically explored by curious non-indigenous Americans and Europeans. Mike Jay looks at one such pioneer Havelock Ellis who, along with his small circle of fellow artists and writers, documented in wonderful detail his psychedelic experiences.

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Flower Power: Hamilton’s Doctor and the Healing Power of Nature

- January 24, 2019 in alexander hamilton, botanic gardens, botanical gardens, botany, Science & Medicine

Rebecca Rego Barry on David Hosack, the doctor who attended Alexander Hamilton to his duel (and death), and creator of one of the first botanical gardens in the United States, home to thousands of species which he used for his pioneering medical research.

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Mesmerising Science: The Franklin Commission and the Modern Clinical Trial

- November 20, 2018 in animal magnetism, baquet, benjamin franklin, Featured Articles, Franz Mesmer, history of clinical trials, hypnosis, magnetism, mesmerism, placebo, Science & Medicine, suggestion

Benjamin Franklin, magnetic trees, and erotically-charged séances — Urte Laukaityte on how a craze for sessions of "animal magnetism" in late 18th-century Paris led to the randomised placebo-controlled and double-blind clinical trials we know and love today.

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The Poetry of Victorian Science

- July 26, 2018 in poetry, robert hunt, Science & Medicine, the poetry of science, victorian, victorian england, victorian science

In 1848, the mineralogist, pioneer of photography, and questionable poet Robert Hunt published The Poetry of Science, a hugely ambitious work that aimed to offer a survey of scientific knowledge while also communicating the metaphysical, moral, and aesthetic aspects of science to the general reader. Gregory Tate explores what the book can teach us about Victorian desires to reconcile the languages of poetry and science.

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Bringing the Ocean Home

- June 21, 2018 in anemones, aquariums, Art & Illustrations, Books, fish, inventor of the aquarium, philip henry gosse, Religion, Myth & Legend, Science & Medicine

Bernd Brunner on the English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse and how his 1854 book The Aquarium, complete with spectacular illustrations and a dizzy dose of religious zeal, sparked a craze for the "ocean garden" that gripped Victorian Britain.

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Darwin’s Polar Bear

- February 21, 2018 in arctic, arctic bears, bears, charles darwin, Comte de Buffon, evolution, James Lamont, natural selection, oliver goldsmith, polar bears, Science & Medicine

Musings upon the whys and wherefores of polar bears, particularly in relation to their forest-dwelling cousins, played an important but often overlooked role in the development of evolutionary theory. Michael Engelhard explores.

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The Dreams of an Inventor in 1420

- January 24, 2018 in Art & Illustrations, automatons, engineering, Featured Articles, inventions, inventors, Renaissance, Science & Medicine

Bennett Gilbert peruses a sketchbook of 15th-century engineer Johannes de Fontana, a catalogue of designs for a wide-range of fantastic and often impossible inventions, including fire-breathing automatons, pulley-powered angels, and the earliest surviving drawing of a magic lantern device.

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Pods, Pots, and Potions: Putting Cacao to Paper in Early Modern Europe

- December 7, 2017 in Art & Illustrations, botanical art, botanical illustrations, cacao, chocolate, cocoa, colonialism, Culture & History, food, illustration, Science & Medicine

Christine Jones explores the different ways the cacao tree has been depicted through history — from 16th-century codices to 18th-century botanicals — and what this changing iconography reveals about cacao's journey into European culture.

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Pods, Pots, and Potions: Putting Cacao to Paper in Early Modern Europe

- December 7, 2017 in Art & Illustrations, botanical art, botanical illustrations, cacao, chocolate, cocoa, colonialism, Culture & History, food, illustration, Science & Medicine

Christine Jones explores the different ways the cacao tree has been depicted through history — from 16th-century codices to 18th-century botanicals — and what this changing iconography reveals about cacao's journey into European culture.

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