A few years ago, there was the “Blood Type Diet” – which the Mayo Clinic says probably is a bunch of bunk.
Now, there is blood type perfume!
Out of Italy, Blood Concept perfumes are a “private celebration of the vivid and fascinating liquid that flows in our veins.” I’m type A. Here’s what I’m celebrating, apparently.
Something major happened during the scientific “revolution” of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries. Telescopes, barometers, blood circulation, air pumps, vacuums, early calculating devices, discovery of planetary systems…yes, yes, we know all about that.
The discovery of the egg and the sperm in 1672 and 1677 changed the way people understood babies – and how. Heated debates took place about whether possibly, just possibly, humans existed preformed in either the egg or the sperm. Animaculists argued that shrinky-dink-sized beings lay wait in the head of each sperm.
There is little doubt that blood can tell a lot of things about a person…and in the case of Ozzy Osbourne, maybe even more than researchers could have ever guessed. The Crazy Train rocker is not only talking of donating his body to science when he dies, he’s offering up a pint – of blood,…
Putting aside all modesty, let me scream and shout to you my excitement about my latest feature article in New Scientist, one of my favorite magazines.
I uncovered this story several years ago as I was writing a book on early pregnancy and childbirth. I tried and tried to find a way to include Pierre Dionis’s detective story in my chapter on “Uterine Legends,” but could never find a way to fit it in.
The question of “fetus in fetu” and the links to testicular pregnancies were too much of a detour from my main point, so I had to let it drop. (Yes, there were claims that a man carried a fetus in his testicles!)
Tales about decades-long pregnancies are actually very common in 16th- and 17th-century medical treatises. I tracked variants of one specific legend from the late 16th century through to late 18th century. In each, a woman went into labor and then the labor stalled – leaving her “pregnant” for decades.
