Faeces are big news: every few months another story appears pointing to the potential benefits of faecal transplants in a range of bowel conditions. The internet includes DIY advice along with suggestions of banking our own poo so that we can reboot our digestive system from it if anything goes wrong. Examining the patient’s bodily products,… Continue reading Constipation in History
Category: food
Beans at bedtime? How to dream well
Why did Pythagoras advise against beans at bedtime? and what do dreams mean?
Hippocrates – and watercress?
The name of ‘Hippocrates’ is still being used to sell products – alternative medicine, weird diets, and ... watercress?
Roman Medicine: Those Cabbages…
I'm a great fan of the British TV comedy series, Plebs, which follows the adventures of two young Roman men and their slave in the big city. In one episode, one of the many interesting remedies of ancient medicine was featured, although not in a standard role! The series is built on finding entertaining parallels between its… Continue reading Roman Medicine: Those Cabbages…
Bed, Bread and Dead: The Dummies’ Guide to Herodotus
Herodotus has to be my favourite ancient historian. Hailed as both ‘father of history’ and ‘father of lies’, he wrote a history of the time of the Persian Wars that was everything the later Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars was not: racy, dodgy and fond of tangents. It’s from Herodotus that many of the best… Continue reading Bed, Bread and Dead: The Dummies’ Guide to Herodotus
Mistaking histories 