You know the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton: His ship the Endurance is trapped in ice, so he takes one of its lifeboats to sail across the Drake Passage to Elephant Island where he makes contact with a whaling community and returns to Antarctica to save his entire crew. Well, now another Brit is trying [ more... ]

What did the men who raced to the bottom of the Earth at the beginning of the 20th century pack in their medical kits? Lots of cocaine. Cocaine was “dripped in the eye to cure snowblindness.” Diarrhea was treated with “chalk ground up with opium.” Colic called for “tincture of cannabis” mixed with “tincture of [ more... ]