World’s Strangest

(YouTube link) Max X is not catering to his cat properly. That all changes when the cat gives him a taste of his own medicine! -via b3ta Previously: More in the Max X series.

Photo: David Boyle/Phnom Penh Post The Jarai minority of Vietnam is converting to Christianity, but they’re not motivated by eternal salvation? No, they’re choosing Jesus because, well, he’s cheaper: In the village in O’Yadav district’s [...]

If you’ve ever seen the World Health Organization or American Medical Association logo, or the “star of life” on the side of an ambulance, you might have wondered what a snake wrapped around a stick has to do with those who fix what ails us. Well, that stick is the asklepian, or rod of Asclepius. In [...]

The technology could lead to personal medicine dispensers that can be operated from one’s own home. Researchers at Glasgow University used a type of 3…

Pill bottle image via Shutterstock ℞, sometimes transliterated as “Rx,” is an abbreviation of the Latin recipe, the command form of recipere, “to take.” Back in the days when most everyone in Europe used Latin, a doctor’s orders usually began with ℞ as an instruction to take specific ingredients and combine them to make a medicine [...]

Asthma Curing From asthma Attack : A 166-year-old Indian medical practice has sparked the ire of a children’s advocacy group, which claims the controversial tradition is potentially hazardous to youngsters’ health.As the BBC is reporting, Balula Hakkula Sangham wants children under the age of 14 to be exempt from a procedure which involves swallowing small live [...]

We use the term “snake oil” for anything promoted as a cure-all that doesn’t work, whether it is medicine or political policy. But back in the 1860s, Chinese immigrants who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad used oil from the Chinese water snake to treat sore muscles, and it worked! A 2007 story in Scientific American explains [...]

Placebos work because people who take it believe that they’re actually medicine, right? I mean, that’s the basic tenet of every modern medical studies, which use placebos as controls. But can placebos work without any deception? Here’s an intriguing study from Harvard Medical School that discovered the surprising healing power of sugar pills: “Not only did we [...]

Advertiser-supported entertainment is nothing new. Since medieval times, people could see free entertainment right in their hometown as long as they listened to a sales pitch for dubious remedies along with the singing, dancing, and side show acts. Sales of snake oil and other patent medicines paid for the show and then some. Like other [...]

I’m a little late in posting this, but it’s too awesome to pass: Shaun Usher’s Letters of Note has a copy of a 1905 letter sent by Mark Twain to a patent medicine salesman who tried to sell bogus medicine. Twain was furious to have received the pitch as he was recently widowed after his [...]