Invented as a nineteenth-century surgical antiseptic, Listerine is named after Joseph Lister (the “father of antiseptic surgery”) who successfully used the antiseptic chemical phenol in surgery for the first time. Listerine was marketed for use as a floor cleaner, a dandruff treatment, and a cure for gonorrhoea. But the “solution looking for a problem” found its market by exploiting the social anxieties of those looking for romance. Listerine popularised a then-obscure term, halitosis, presenting it as an embarrassing medical condition while advertising itself as a cure.

Another medical solution looking for a problem is Q-Tips. Leo Gerstenzang watched his wife stick cotton balls on the ends of a toothpick to clean their child’s ears. He went on to sell this invention under the name of ‘Baby Gays’ (which later changed to Q-tips, meaning “quality tips”). ‘Baby Gays’ cotton swabs were dipped in boric acid to enhance their reputation as a personal hygiene product and were marketed for babies’ ears and nostrils. I would say that the Q-Tips most useful personal hygiene contribution is in the domain of psychological hygiene. Q-Tip is as an acronym for: Quit Taking It Personally.

Whenever a patient consults me for warts, my internal monologue screams: “Let’s turn on the juice and see what shakes loose.”

This snippy Betelgeuse quote has a layered meaning because the treatment I use is, well, beetle juice; and it works by loosening cellular connections (acantholysis), thereby forming a skin blister which heals without scarring.

The defensive poison, called cantharidin, is harvested from blister beetles. It is a toxic chemical that blisters human skin on contact and protects beetles from predators.

Only male blister beetles produce cantharidin, which acts as a currency in reproductive transactions. Males secrete cantharidin from their joints and transfer it to females during mating (a nuptial gift). Females prefer males that are well-endowed with cantharidin because higher concentrations of the chemical provide a stronger protective coating for unhatched eggs. Prior to mating, female beetles sample the male’s secretions. If she is unimpressed with his cantharidin offering, she will reject his advances.

Not only humans find cantharidin useful. Nuthatch songbirds use blister beetles as a squirrel repellent. They grab the beetles in their beaks and rub the unfortunate insects against tree cavities which form the entrance to their nests.

You may have heard of cantharidin being referred to as “Spanish fly”–a folk medicine prepared from crushed beetles. Spanish fly has been used for various ailments but, most famously, established its popular reputation as an aphrodisiac. It is rumoured that the Roman empress Livia (58 BC – 29 AD) would put Spanish fly into the royal family’s food to grow their sexual appetites in the hope of catching them in disgrace and using the scandal to blackmail them. In reality, cantharidin is highly toxic to humans. The aphrodisiac myth probably started because ingestion of toxic doses irritates the genitourinary tract and can lead to priapism (persistent and painful erection) in males.

When 19th century French Legionnaires in North Africa were hospitalized for priapism, French Foreign Legion physicians discovered that the soldiers all ate frog-legs from local amphibians that had eaten blister beetles. [We don’t know if the frogs ate the blister beetles to protect themselves from the French.] A century before that, cantharidin was already in use among French aristocrats as an aphrodisiac. The Marquis de Sade famously laced sweets with Spanish fly. When it led to the poisoning of two prostitutes, he was sentenced to death. Almost 200 years later, in 1954, history repeated itself when Arthur Kendrick Ford was convicted for the deaths of two women when he secretly laced their candies with cantharidin in the hopes of firing up their libidos.

The French chemist, Pierre Robiquet, was the first person to isolate cantharidin. I don’t know whether he ate frog legs or not but Robiquet is best known for discovering codeine.

The inventor of Vaseline, American chemist Robert Chesebrough, marketed his product by publicly burning his skin with acid or an open flame and then applying Vaseline to the wounds. During a bout of pleurisy in his 50s, he instructed a nurse to rub him down with Vaseline from his head to his feet.
Chesebrough lived on to be 96 years old and claimed to have eaten a spoonful of Vaseline every day.

The Vaseline-chomping Chesebrough also helped launch the mascara industry. Eugène Rimmel invented the first commercial non-toxic mascara when he added coal dust to petroleum jelly (Vaseline) in 1872.

How does a sperm cell know where to go? Does it simply follow its nose? Maybe. The same odour detection receptors located in your nose are also found on sperm cells. Sperm cells navigate via chemical attractants through a process known as chemotaxis. The exact function of spermatic olfactory receptors remains speculative.

In 1567, the mayor of Braunau am Inn, on the Austrian-German border, died when he tripped over his beard and broke his neck. Hans Steininger boasted a beard over four and a half feet long. He usually kept it rolled up, but when a fire broke out, the fleeing Steininger stepped on his free-flowing beard and tumbled down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck. Steininger’s epitaph survives on the wall of St. Stephan’s church in Braunau am Inn, while his preserved beard resides in the town museum. Braunau am Inn is also the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.

Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) refers to a sudden and permanent change of speech, perceived as a foreign accent, after a brain injury. Stroke is the leading organic trigger of FAS. The typical FAS patient is a monolingual, right-handed female in her early 50 s.

A pregnant villager in rural Mexico performed a Caesarean section on herself using a kitchen knife. She and her baby both survived.

Inés Ramírez Pérez had successfully birthed seven children, but on the eighth occasion, her baby died because she was unable to reach a hospital in time for a Caesarean section. In March 2000, pregnant again, she endured hours of painful contractions. Far from medical assistance, and fighting through unbearable pain, Ramírez was determined not to let tragedy repeat itself. After swallowing a few glasses of hard liquor, she used a kitchen knife to open herself up. The lucky mom made a full recovery, despite eventually having to undergo surgeries to repair complications of her unorthodox procedure.

You see the back of your eyelid more than anything else.

It’s quite entertaining too. You can see stars and flashes of light called “phosphenes” while appreciating the distinct colour of eigengrau.

Unless born blind, humans experience phosphenes as sensations of light when there is no external light source. It happens because our eyes produce light particles called biophotons. Even though we can’t shoot lasers from our eyes like Superman, atoms in our retina emit light like dim fireflies. And we produce far more biophotons than we end up seeing as phosphenes. You can trigger the stars and flashes of light behind your eyelids by rubbing your eyes. This action generates pressure phosphenes. Other events that trigger pressure phosphenes include sneezing, forceful coughing, a blow to the head, or standing up too quickly.

The phosphene light signals produced by your own body are converted into electrical signals by retinal cells and sent to the visual cortex via your optic nerve. Your brain builds images from the data.

What colour do you see when there is no light? That dark grey colour perceived by the eyes in perfect darkness also results from signals in the optic nerve. Modern researchers speak of “visual noise” or “background adaptation” to describe the perception of an ever-changing field of tiny black and white dots in the absence of a light stimulus. I prefer the German term ‘Eigengrau’ which dates back to the nineteenth century. Eigengrau means “own gray” ( Eigenlicht, meaning “own light”, was also used). In my native language, we would translate it to “eie grys” or “eie lig”. If I could coin a name for it, I would prefer “eie gloei” which means “own glow”.

What happens to composers when they die?
They decompose.
And how do they die?
From staff infections. 🎼
But how do they get infections in the first place?
Well, sometimes, they get played by a lyre.

The great composers Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel were both blinded by the same quack eye surgeon, John Taylor. Bach also died as a result of the surgery. Taylor, however, declared both operations as complete successes. More spin doctor than a real doctor, John Taylor was a flamboyant oculist who treated celebrities and boasted being royal eye surgeon to King George II. Although never being awarded knighthood, he introduced himself as “Chevalier” and wrote a colourful autobiography to float his ego to new heights. While touring Europe in a coach decorated with painted eyeballs and the motto: “Qui dat videre dat viver” (He who gives sight, gives life), Taylor advertised his impending arrival to town with placards. He then drew large crowds and performed procedures publicly but hastily left town before his patients could remove their bandages or ask for their money bach. Ironically, “Chevalier” John Taylor–like his famous patient, Handel–also died completely blind.