FARRAGO

These recipes are paraphrased from 17th-century Dutch chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont. Luckily, he is remembered for discovering gases such as carbon dioxide, not for conjuring mice and scorpions.

During iso, I’ve bounced aimlessly through Wikipedia long enough to land on an article titled the ‘List of Discredited Substances.’ It includes the Philosopher’s Stone, a universal solvent, and even a unicorn’s horn. With each entry, is an explanation of how the substance was discredited, usually through various experiments (We apparently know unicorn horns don’t […]

In science class we only celebrated successes. But for every scientific superstar there’s a generation of equally intelligent scholars who got it wrong.