Blasts from the past: how ice age ponds are coming back to life: Ecologist Will Watson is hunting for Britain’s largest blood-sucking leech in a 14,000-year-old pond in Herefordshire. The elusive medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis), grows up to 20cm long and has only officially been recorded three times in the county in the past two decades.
That ( Read more... )

Toxic masculinity is built into the fabric of our urban spaces: okay, I have walked around certain cityscapes and thought 'urgent phallic look, what' and 'mi patriarkle thrust, I show u it', but you know, I could live with a certain amount of upthrusting architecture providing there was an adequate provision of public loos, which are not mentioned ( Read more... )

- which is up there with all those 'I was [being offensive] ironically' defences of being, well, grossly offensive.
Not that we actually believe this anyway.
We are honestly surprised that there has not yet been any suggestion of bleeding, possibly by means of the deployment of leeches to get rid of the 'bad blood'.
Maybe mercury?
One is alas ( Read more... )

I was a bit boggled by this: New medical procedure could delay menopause by 20 years.
And there have subsequently been various articles about the Hell That Is Female Midlife by various women columnists, which I suppose may be about their generation reaching that point. Though whether it is actually Ye Hormonez or wider strains and pressures of ( Read more... )

What I read
I did, finally, get through By Demons Possessed. Maybe it's me, but somehow I was reminded of ES Turner writing of serial fiction in boy's magazines around the turn of the C19th/20th, whereby if a serial/character was popular, if they had gathered up x-1 of the necessary plot coupons, there would be some misfortune leading them to lose ( Read more... )

Allergies: the scourge of modern life?. Ummmm: how can we actually tell? How do we know whether it's not that more people are surviving long enough to develop allergies? How do we know they were so rare in the past (because honestly, you are grossly over-estimating how many people even saw a doctor in past centuries, never mind the state of ( Read more... )

[A] century since “leech mania” saw blood-letting used to tackle everything from headaches to strangulation - would not, I think, be this year of grace? I really don't think leeches were standard issue in field-emergency kits for battle surgeons in World War I, though I daresay they still had their uses.
An interesting enough article (O, the poor ( Read more... )

This morning it was overcast and a bit cool, by this evening via mildly drizzly has become colder and wetter.
Nontheless, we have managed some flaneurserie around the Old Town, a visit to St Mary's Cathedral with its massive gothic altar, and several museums:
The Gallery of C19th Polish Art at Suikiennice
The Jagiellonian University Museum ( Read more... )

The Charlie Gard case.
And okay, besides the honking irony monster that is people whose intended policies demonstrate massive disregard for infant life and welfare getting all on to this, I wonder how many of the contributors to their crowd-funding effort and people squawking about the Evil Fascist Institution That Is Great Ormond Street Hospital ( ( Read more... )

Leading doctors list dozens of procedures that 'give no benefit'.
40 things you can stop doing right now: A group of senior doctors has released a list of 40 procedures it considers to have little or no benefit. Could we apply similar thinking to everyday life?
Some medical treatments are pointless. But will patients want to know? The truth is that ( Read more... )