Grants and Oddities. This patient is shown to have sprouted vegetable offshoots after taking 132 boxes of vegetable pills. The caption is full of vegetable puns. / Wellcome Collection, Creative Commons James Morison’s campaign against the medical establishment inspired a wave of caricatures mocking his quack medicine. Wellcome Trust Pharmagraphics / 11.01.2017 In the 1830s, the[…]
Frontispiece, most likely by Robert Cruikshank, to The Life and Prophecies of Mother Shipton (1823) / Internet Archive Said to be spawn of the devil himself and possessed with great powers of prophetic insight, Mother Shipton was Yorkshire’s answer to Nostradamus. Ed Simon looks into how, regardless of whether this prophetess witch actually existed or not, the[…]
The Pope, as the head of the Catholic Church, led the single most powerful institution of the Middle Ages. / British Library, Public Domain Cycles of Medieval church corruption coincided with the growth of strong secular rulers and were only tempered by the appearance of reformist popes and church orders. Introduction The level of church[…]
An equestrian statue of a Julio-Claudian prince, originally identified as Caligula / British Museum, Creative Commons Looking, with late Italian historian Guglielmo Ferrero, at the facts cited by the ancients as examples of corruption in the Roman Empire. By Dr. Guglielmo Ferrero (1909) Early 20th-Century Historian Two years ago in Paris, while giving a course of lectures[…]
Young Jews praying at the Kotel, the Western Wall, in Jerusalem (Image © Bigstock/kirill4mula) There are approximately 175,000 to 250,000 messianic Jews in the U.S, and 350,000 worldwide. By Dr. Ingrid Anderson / 11.13.2018 Associate Director of Jewish Studies Lecturer, Arts and Sciences Writing Program Boston University Introduction Messianic Jews consider themselves Jewish Christians. Specifically they believe, as[…]
Tachara Palace of Darius I, Ancient Persepolis / Photo by Hansueli Krapf, Wikimedia Commons The Persians serve an almost unique function in the Western narrative. By Dr. Ali M. Ansari / 01.16.2015 Professor of History University of St. Andrews ran has long had a difficult relationship with the West. Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 overthrew the[…]