If you find yourself wondering whether you have gone back in time, you are not alone! The evidence is everywhere. Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder what century it is? Do the headlines, your lifestyle, the things you see on the street remind you of a simpler time when nobody went to the doctor — because there weren’t any? Your...
Avicennae As an apothecary during the first Middle Ages, I treated croupy children, aching joints, gout, leprosy, elephantitis, and plague. None of these had an actual cure. The best I could do was to pestle some herbs into a salve, and send them on their way. I watched helpless as people died of everything that has since been solved by vaccines...
We had moved to Northern California from Chicago, where the crime had begun to feel overwhelming and the weather seemed almost punatively harsh. I didn’t mind these things so much for myself. I was, as any Midwesterner will tell you, ‘used to it”. But now we had little children, and a small town in a moderate climate seemed ideal...
