This is a clear little writeup about current research on inherited acquired traits. I think this is one of the most exciting (and frustrating) frontiers in the science of the past. We’ll never be able to quantify the effects of, for example, the dozens of famines reported in Livy on the health of Republican Roman farmers — but each individual famine may have…
Month: July 2014
Trusting doctors, past and present
The New York Times reports some troubling news from Guinea: Health workers here say they are now battling two enemies: the unprecedented Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 660 people in four countries since it was first detected in March, and fear, which has produced growing hostility toward outside help. On Friday alone, health authorities in Guinea confirmed 14 new…
A note on Roman demography and transdisciplinary envy
I recently spent quite a lot of time looking at this 1898 infographic over at CityLab, which was making the rounds on the internet last week. Because I hail from the Northeast and spend a lot of time gawking at old architecture, it gave me a sense of completely unearned pride to see the names of now-quaint cities I know…
A note on the Vienna Dioscorides
The cover image above is an illustration of mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) from a 6th century AD manuscript commonly known as the Vienna Dioscorides. Created for Juliana Anicia, daughter of the Western Roman emperor Anicius Olybrius, the manuscript consists of a copy of Pedanius Dioscorides’ pharmacological text De materia medica (On medical substances) as well as a copy of Rufus’ Carmen de herbis (Poem about plants), both of…