A few years ago, I was walking through Regent’s Park in London, heading towards Primrose Hill where I had a book signing at the lovely bookstore there. On another occasion, I was invited to visit the zoo to examine the skin lesions of some animals! This is because over the years I have built up […]
The taking of various supplements—derived from plant or animal—is as old as mankind itself. The ancient Greeks had cures for everything. Earwax, taken from the sufferer of the ailment—but for more efficacy, some texts suggested that the earwax must be extracted from the ear of a freshly executed person! —and applied to treat human bites, […]
First, they took our liberty by attaching us to trackable mobile devices; next, they destroyed our attention spans with social media. And now, they are after our brains! Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be aptly described as the next big thing. Everywhere since the advent of ChatGPT, tech bros have been outdoing each other in releasing […]
In measuring environmental impacts on health, we sometimes can confuse morality and science. About ten years ago, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, Amherst College, MA, wrote an article about the effects of lead exposure on population health. Higher amounts of lead in the water supply unfolded a series of […]
Whenever I drink Bailey’s Irish cream, irrespective if it is the original version or one of the new-fangled flavoured versions, I have nightmares. Therefore at home I call it “nightmare Baileys” and avoid the damn drink! What I also know is that it was the creation of a guy called David Gluckman, a South African […]
Cats have been pets or living around humans for around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. This first began in the fertile crescent, a moon-shaped grouping of countries that include the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. In modern geography, this includes countries like Lebanon, Turkey, Israel and Iraq. As nomadic humans left Africa, their turning to […]
Photo by Sam Kimber on Unsplash No city is perhaps prouder of its taxis than London—alright, New York’s yellow cabs may disagree—with its black automobiles for hire. Still officially called The Hackney Carriage, these were horse-drawn since the 17th century and became petrol-powered in 1903. Never mind that in the spirit of globalisation, it is […]
In Greek mythology, Daedalus was an inventor. His inventions—in various iterations from Homer to Pliny—include the axe, plumbline (architectural tool to measure how “plumb” or vertical a line was), glue (fish glue or isinglass, from the floating bladders of fish like sturgeon), and even a colourful dance floor (for Princess Ariadne). However his creative genius […]
The gastronomic science of the gut is always interesting. Full of science—and sometimes—pseudoscience. Like I was told—when I was in Hong Kong to deliver a lecture a few years ago—that beef and chestnut, two foods considered “warm” in traditional Chinese medicine, could be harmful in summer due to hot body temperatures. I was told that […]
Five centuries before Christ, Greece was in its elements. Athens, emboldened after defeating the Persians, was particularly prosperous. With economic comfort, art and literature flourished. But so did philosophy. It was the era of Greek thinkers whose ideas shaped Western civilizations. Patients who have been to my consulting room often comment on my degree certificates—apart […]