S cientists have uncovered traces of cocaine in 17th-century brain tissue found in a crypt in Milan, Italy, revealing a surprising chapter in the history of drug use in Europe. This discovery ...

This discovery pushes back the timeline for introducing this potent plant to Europe by nearly two centuries. The findings come from a forensic analysis of human remains found in a 17th-century ...

Of course, this perplexing answer leads to the next logical question: Just how far did coca’s influence reach in 17th century Europe?

Reports say that some graves in Eastern Europe also had skeletons with metal rods through the ribcage. In the 17th century, these burial practice became commonplace “across Poland in response to ...

Still, the 17th-century variola virus DNA detected by Duggan ... where people were susceptible to it. Meanwhile, in Europe, the virus mutated into something more lethal, causing terrible outbreaks ...

According to a familiar story, science was born as a pastime of seventeenth-century European gentlemen, who built air pumps, traded telescopes, and measured everything from the size of the earth to ...

How many who piously lament the “disenchantment” of the secular world would have been able to bear ordinary life in, say, seventeenth-century Europe? We are bereft, the elegy goes, because ...