If you have a fireplace and have ever had to clean it out, you are familiar with creosote. As well, if you’ve ever taken a walk on the tracks, and noted the sticky black coating on the railroad ties, you’ve discovered creosote. It is a by-product of the burning of wood or coal, which leaves […]
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Will We End Aging In Your Lifetime?
Although CulinaryLore is primarily concerned with food-related topics, once in a while I deviate a bit beyond food science, food history, or cooking and write articles on other things besides food-related topics. However, even most of these are tangentially related and could be said to fall under the umbrella of food science or to be […]
Before There Was Bayer Aspirin There Was Bayer Heroin
Although Bayer, or Freidr. Bayer & Co. of Elberfeld, Germany, had already created its first aspirin product by 1894, the company decided to hold off on moving forward with it in favor of another product: heroin. The company introduced their heroin product in the Autumn of 1898. It was a hydrochloric salt of heroin, soluble […]
Blood Poison: So Easy To Cure!
Blood poison was often used during the 1800’s and into the early 1900’s as a general wastebasket diagnosis to explain many common non-serious and serious conditions. Although blood poison, in those days, could mean the same thing as an infection of the blood introduced through a wound, it was just as often a way of […]
Radithor Certified Radioactive Water – The All Too Real Thing
During the last part of the 17th century, a curious thing happened. Folks began to distrust medicine, which was becoming more and more complex and hard to understand while embracing cures that were based on new and emerging science. This period saw the rise of radioactive remedies based on radioactive isotopes like radium. There were Radione […]
Were Old-Time Patent Medicines Really Patented?
The term patent-medicine, used to refer to the unregulated quack remedies of the 1800’s, such as those featured in traveling medicine shows, may be confusing. How could these medicines have been patented? Does this term refer to the United States Patent Office or any other patent-granting organization? In reality, the term patent used in patent-medicine had […]