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  • Article

The doctor who challenged the unicorn myth

Our era of fake news and medical misinformation is nothing new. Estelle Paranque relays the thrusts and parries of a 440-year-old row over a magical cure-all, the unicorn horn.

  • Article

Medieval doodles

Fish, lute players and defaced demons: marginal doodles in some of Europe’s first printed books provide a tantalising glimpse into the late-medieval mind.

  • Book extract

The shape of thought

Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s description of the moment in 1887 when he saw a brain cell for the first time never fails to move neuroscientist Richard Wingate to tears. Here he captures that enduring sense of wonder.

All stories (3)

Images

  • Lucifer's angels tumble out of heaven, their limbs entwined. Etching by R. Pranker, 176-.
  • Lucifer [the morning star]. Engraving by G.H. Frezza, 1704, after P. de Petris after F. Albani.
  • The hierarchie of the blessed angells. Their names, orders and offices / The fall of Lucifer with his angells. Written by Tho. Heywood.
  • An enthroned king, wearing three crowns and with a sword in his mouth, having vanquished a green seven headed hydra; an archangel with a key imprisons Lucifer in chains by a roaring fire; representing the culmination of the alchemical process and the sublimation of base matter. Coloured etching after an etching, ca. 17th century.
  • The Devil and Dr. Faustus meet.
  • C. von Linne, Amoenitates academicae, seu di
  • Astronomy: Venus with Cupid, and an angel above looking downward. Engraving by N. Dorigny, 1695, after Raphael, 1516.
  • Type 1 ganglion cell in hamster retina
  • "loose" gamma ganglion cell from the retina
  • "loose" gamma ganglion cell from the retina
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Catalogue

All works (50)