Posts by Amboceptor:

The high-carb milky lifestyle of Inuit infants (1878)

The Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris’s Bois du Boulogne, now a children’s amusement park, was founded in 1860 as one of Europe’s first major zoos. In 1877 the directors followed the lead of Carl Hagenbeck and started incorporating ethnological exhibits, of humans indigenous to the strange lands being opened up by imperialism. These attracted huge crowds as […]

Case report: Big guy dies

A Case of Polysarcia, reported by Dr. Ira D. Hopkins in the Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal (November 1861), volume I(4):114-115: Richard Holmes, colored, a cook, aged 41 years, was admitted into the Utica City Hospital on the 14th of August, 1861, suffering from polysarcia, of which he died September 3d, 1861. He was 5 1/2 feet […]

The man who drank enough beer to drown 275 men

This unattributed piece in the Brooklyn Medical Journal (1888) (Volume 1, No. 5, pp. 406-408), reporting on C.A. Crampton’s magisterial USDA report on beer, wine and cider adulterants, contains several odd comparisons. First we learn that Americans’ consumption of beer has risen tremendously since the Van Buren administration, though it still lags that of competitors. […]

Improbable Research