Category: History

James Reston’s Tooth of Gold

One of the fathers of critical thinking and skeptical inquiry, the French philosopher Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) recounts in 1687 in his Histoire des oracles–a debunking book on popular beliefs, myths and superstitions that caused tremendous stir in theological and philosophical circles of his time–a colorful story that could very well illustrate the flurry of interest and research in acupuncture...

/ August 25, 2009

Acupuncture is astrology with needles

A guest post that demonstrates that acupuncture and astrology have a lot of things in common.

/ August 3, 2009

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Not every post will be an in-depth, authoritative review of a topic like yesterday’s on Dr. Sears.  A change of pace can be nice, and I have always liked history. JAMA likes to run articles called “JAMA 100 YEARS AGO” and the reprint from the July 24, 1909 issue is interesting. It...

/ July 31, 2009