Tag: agriculture
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The organic food movement
The word organic in the context of chemistry refers to a substance built around a skeleton of carbon (unlike an inorganic substance that most often has no carbon in its formula.) In the world of food, however, organic means that the produce was grown under “natural” conditions, without antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, fertilizers, sewage sludge,…
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Dr. Samuel Sarphati
Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands Times of confusion and uncertainty can also be fruitful grounds for seeds to root, rise, and bloom. One such seed was Dr. Samuel Sarphati, who created New Amsterdam on the banks of the river Amstel. Amsterdam in the early nineteenth century was already renowned for its prosperous canal belts, streets lit…
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Anne McLaren, transfusion, transplantation, and the nature of blood
Matthew HolmesCambridge, UK Anne McLaren, Oxford-trained zoologist and first female Officer of the Royal Society, once claimed that “History may be circular, but the history of science is helical: it repeats itself, but each time at a deeper level.”1 To see the helical nature of the history of science in action, we need look no…