Distillations magazine

The pirate-turned-naturalist-turned-pirate-again inspired generations of British writers and scientists.

The tricks and tools book sleuths use to date the undated.

What a manuscript can tell us about an iconic scientist and the history we’ve built around him.

How searching for alchemy’s secrets helped create modern science.

The clues that betray a book’s disreputable past.

Historian Bruce Moran reveals the life of an itinerant doctor whose work influenced modern science.

When New York’s poor revolted against the city’s grave-robbing medical establishment.

An engraving hints at the ways art and science were intertwined in the Age of Enlightenment.

An ancient work on toxicology gets a 16th-century makeover from a master of fonts.

Alchemists once wrote of chaos, dragons, and spirits, but did they know more about chemistry than we give them credit for?

A manuscript reveals the mark a mysterious American alchemist made on Isaac Newton and other early chemists.

Doctors battle for supremacy in the 17th century.

Watch historians re-create a recipe for imitation coral, a popular material in early modern jewelry and home décor.

Did alchemists disappear from history, or did they just change their coats?

What connects a founder of the Western model of university education to the secrets of women?

More than 350 years ago the very first air pump changed how science was done.

In Renaissance maps geography becomes an art form.

The magnetic connection between sailors, adultery, and garlic.