Distillations magazine

Unexpected Stories from Science’s Past

The Thinking Plant’s Man

Jagadish Chandra Bose and the contentious search for plant intelligence.

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Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.

Health & Medicine

Opioids’ Devastating Return

The latest painkiller revival has left a trail of bodies, with no end in sight.

letter from Eleanor Roosevelt
Environment & Nature

Water Fit for a King

Eleanor Roosevelt thanks a chemical engineering firm in Philadelphia for manufacturing water for the king and queen of England on their visit to America.

Inventions & Discoveries

Gone to the Dogs

A long-running genetics project in Siberia helps us understand how we made man’s best friend.

Inventions & Discoveries

Constructing Life

A historian of science goes searching for meaning in synthetic life.

Environment & Nature

If You Smell Something, Say Something

City dwellers of the 19th century were dogged by a foul terror: miasma.

Environment & Nature

Styrofoam, a Practical and Problematic Creation

The good and bad of an everlasting invention.

penicillin vessel
Health & Medicine

Old Brew, New Brew

Fermentation is the key to many of the lifesaving drugs we have today.

Inventions & Discoveries

Sweating Blood

A misunderstanding of hippo physiology gave rise to one of the most widespread and pointless practices in medical history.

People & Politics

The Rise and Fall of Vannevar Bush

One war made him the most powerful man in science; the war that followed took that power away.

Arts & Culture

The Masters of Nature

The line between science and art was not always so stark.

People & Politics

It’s Nothing New: Sexism in the Lab

Why the recent findings of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine are enlightening, even if they aren’t surprising.

People & Politics

The Mystery of Yellow Rain

After the Vietnam War a mysterious yellow substance rained down from the skies of Southeast Asia. Was it a chemical weapon or something stranger?

Environment & Nature

Tummy Trouble

To slow global warming scientists have tried schemes both simple and bizarre to bottle up cow burps.

Health & Medicine

A Study In Scarlet

Warfarin started life as a rat poison, and for all its success the anticoagulant remains as dangerous as its origin suggests.

Health & Medicine

Hard Work and Happenstance

Where do new drugs come from? And why do so many fail?

People & Politics

Second Chances

Tattoos are more than decoration. But what do you do when the way you look no longer matches who you are?

Health & Medicine

From Barbers and Butchers to Modern Surgeons

How Joseph Lister’s application of germ theory revolutionized surgery in the mid-19th century.

Arts & Culture

What’s That Smell You’re Reading?

Sniffing out a peculiar love of books.