Distillations magazine
Early Science & Alchemy
Science in all its strangeness before the 18th century
Controversy, Control, and Cosmetics in Early Modern Italy
In a society that damned women for both plainness and adornment, wearing makeup became a defiant act of survival.
William Dampier, Revered and Reviled
The pirate-turned-naturalist-turned-pirate-again inspired generations of British writers and scientists.
Chasing the Clues in Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts
The tricks and tools book sleuths use to date the undated.
The Newton Mess
What a manuscript can tell us about an iconic scientist and the history we’ve built around him.
Dr. Butler and the Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone
How searching for alchemy’s secrets helped create modern science.
Would a Book Lie?
The clues that betray a book’s disreputable past.
Paracelsus, the Alchemist Who Wed Medicine to Magic
Historian Bruce Moran reveals the life of an itinerant doctor whose work influenced modern science.
The Anatomy Riot of 1788
When New York’s poor revolted against the city’s grave-robbing medical establishment.
Hennig Brandt and the Discovery of Phosphorus
An engraving hints at the ways art and science were intertwined in the Age of Enlightenment.
Snakes and Letters
An ancient work on toxicology gets a 16th-century makeover from a master of fonts.
The Language of Alchemy
Alchemists once wrote of chaos, dragons, and spirits, but did they know more about chemistry than we give them credit for?
Isaac Newton and the American Alchemist
A manuscript reveals the mark a mysterious American alchemist made on Isaac Newton and other early chemists.
Tryals and Tribulations
Doctors battle for supremacy in the 17th century.
Making and Knowing (Fake) Coral
Watch historians re-create a recipe for imitation coral, a popular material in early modern jewelry and home décor.
Gold, Secrecy, and Prestige
Did alchemists disappear from history, or did they just change their coats?
Albertus Magnus, Mineralogy, and the Secrets of Women
What connects a founder of the Western model of university education to the secrets of women?
Pumped Up
More than 350 years ago the very first air pump changed how science was done.
Cloth of the World
In Renaissance maps geography becomes an art form.