Month: July 2025
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The Carpathian wolves of Saki
The relationship between wolves and humans is old and complex. It oscillates between hostility and cooperation and eventually results in domestication as dogs. In Norse mythology, wolves were a powerful force destined to bring about the end of the world. To scientists today, wolves offer an invaluable window into the complexities of mammalian physiology, as…
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Eating goat
The goat was among the first animals to be domesticated, around 10,000 years ago, in Western Iran and the Euphrates River valley, reflecting its importance as a reliable source of meat and milk. It is primarily eaten in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and it is particularly popular in India, Nigeria, and Mexico, where it…
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Gerhard Armauer Hansen’s unethical person-to-person leprosy transmission experiment in 1879
Douglas LanskaMadison, Wisconsin, United States Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen (1841–1912)1 is remembered for his discovery in 1873 of Mycobacterium leprae as the causative agent of leprosy. However, Hansen’s legacy also includes unethical behavior for which he was convicted and lost his post at the Leprosy Hospital in Bergen, Norway (although in a legal-political compromise…
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Artists at war
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author and poet, served as a nurse during the United States Civil War. In 1862, she worked at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, Washington, DC, where she found appalling conditions. She attended the wounded, fed them, and assisted at operations until she contracted severe typhoid fever herself. She…
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More than a meal: How school lunch became a lifelong lesson
Scarlett SaittaJonesboro, Arkansas, United States I first began to question the US food system when my friend’s father died of a heart attack in his late thirties. A few days after the funeral, my friend’s mother kindly served us boxed mac and cheese stamped “low sugar.” She was grieving, overwhelmed, and trying her best to…
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Book review: Galen: An Anthology
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Galen was born in 129 AD in Pergamon, an important Greco-Roman city of the Hellenistic period in Asia Minor. Today the remnants and ruins of this ancient city are sited in Bergama, a city in northwest Turkey. Galen started learning his medical craft in Pergamon while simultaneously attending lectures in philosophy.…
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Dame Nellie Melba, the great Australian coloratura soprano
The name Melba comes up nowadays mainly in the context of two popular food items. The first is a widely popular desert, Peach Melba, created in 1892 by the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier for a dinner party given by the Duke of Orleans at the Savoy Hotel to honor the success of the opera…
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Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor of all time
Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) possessed a voice so remarkable for its power, range, and emotional expressiveness that its distinctive timbre was instantly recognizable. His versatility is illustrated by an incident in Philadelphia when the baritone about to sing the “Coat Song” in La Boheme suddenly lost his voice. Caruso stepped in and sang the aria with…