laboratory

Back when I started this blog, I hadn't yet become aware of the phenomenon known as quackademic medicine. This phenomenon, as you recall, is the infiltration of academic medical institutions that should be bastions of science- and evidence-based medicine by outright quackery. In quackademic medicine, we see Very Respectable Academic Physicians and Scientists wasting their time studying faith healing like healing touch and reiki, prescientific medicine based on primitive vitalism such as traditional Chinese medicine and (of course) acupuncture, and even sympathetic magic like homeopathy. It's…
Well, wouldn't you know it? Mike Adams thinks he's an actual scientist! Regular readers are all too familiar with Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger, arguably the most quacktastic site on the Internet. Sure, Joe Mercola is probably the most trafficked quackery site on the Internet, but, being number two (or number three or four, I'm not sure), Mike Adams definitely tries harder. In addition, Joe Mercola steers mostly clear of politics and non-medical pseudoscience. Sure, he promotes just as much quackery as Mike Adams does, if not more, but he doesn't delve into Tea Party-drenched New World…
Christmas greeting card, school unknown, circa 1920. Dittrick Medical History Center from Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 Slate has an intriguing new review by Barron Lerner of a book called Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930, by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson. The book delves into the turn-of-the-century practice of photographing medical students with cadavers - photos that today read as weird, grotesque, even offensive. The photos unearthed by Warner and Edmonson depict an astonishing variety of…