Distillations magazine
Something Old, Something New
Humans owe a huge medical debt to horseshoe crabs. Now there’s an opportunity to pay it back.
Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.
Holy Smoke
The monks, nuns, and friars at the forefront of alchemy in early modern Europe.
The Thinking Plant’s Man
Jagadish Chandra Bose and the contentious search for plant intelligence.
Disorderly Persons
What are laws against fortune-telling really meant to do?
Gerson’s Magic Bullet
Why have so many rejected established cancer therapies for juice cocktails and coffee enemas?
The Ingenious Arctic Cooking Pot
Rediscovering the clever chemistry behind a ceramic tradition that had all but vanished.
The Trials of Lavoisier
Tracking the Reign of Terror through a revolutionary chemistry journal.
Linus Pauling’s Vitamin C Crusade
The path to a dubious cure.
Under Pressure
Walthère Spring and the legacy of a contentious life.
Hatching a Legend
Audubon and the Bird of Washington.
Sesame Plots
Diaspora in twenty-one openings.
Datos ‘proxy’ que hagan justicia
La historia climática de las regiones tropicales ha sido crónicamente poco estudiada. Corregir el rumbo exigirá nuevos métodos y puntos de vista.
The Ripe Stuff
In pursuit of the perfect fruit.
Of Mummies, Moss, and Magic
A conversation on the weapon salve, a sensational cure.
Collect Call
In early modern Europe, collecting was a way to press order on a world made increasingly strange.
An Absolute Good?
Paul Berg, controversy, and the engineering of life.
The Comet Panic of 1910, Revisited
A recent discovery in a remote Puerto Rican cave sheds new light on the hysteria that greeted Halley’s Comet a century ago.
As Good as Gold
Why do we still study the color of urine?
Proxies for Justice
The climate history of tropical regions has been chronically understudied. Correcting the record will require new methods and new perspectives.