biomedicalephemera:

The Lion (Panthera leo)

Uses of the lion, according to Albertus Magnus (13th century encyclopedia author):

• Eat the flesh to cure paralysis.
• Rub its fat on your body to outrun any animal.
• Wrap your clothing in lion pelts to protect from moths.
• Give a child a lion’s-tooth necklace before they lose their first teeth, to prevent toothache when the second set emerges.
• Cure cancer with its blood.
• Consume its gall to cure jaundice. [This may have actually worked.]
• Eat its brain to cure madness.

Click through to read more, from Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 87, edited by J. McKeen Cattell and published in 1915.

Image: Brehms Tierleben. Frederich Wilhelm Kuhners, 1927.

amrpost:

After the touch down of the Curiosity rover, NASA held a press conference. Professor John Holdren and the Curiosity team talked to the world about the mission. I remembered the first time I met professor John Holdren months ago at the White House. I remembered what he said about Curiosity, its…