Ash & Honey: The Root and The Road

We told you to take everything with a grain of salt—including us. If you disagree with the history, have a question about a formulation, or want to share what your own grandmother kept in her medicine cabinet, our inbox is open. Keep it honest. Hippocrates called it his medicine chest. A 17th century Dutch physician raised his hat every time he walked past one. John Evelyn wrote in 1729 that you c...

We told you to take everything with a grain of salt—including us. If you disagree with the history, have a question about a formulation, or want to share what your own grandmother kept in her medicine cabinet, our inbox is open. Keep it honest. The Incan empire used maca root as currency. Warriors ate it before battle — and had it deliberately withheld afterward, because the Incas already knew abo...

We told you to take everything with a grain of salt—including us. If you disagree with the history, have a question about a formulation, or want to share what your own grandmother kept in her medicine cabinet, our inbox is open. Keep it honest. The Pechoti gland doesn't exist. It has never appeared in any anatomical text — pre-industrial or modern, Eastern or Western. And yet right now, milli...

We told you to take everything with a grain of salt—including us. If you disagree with the history, have a question about a formulation, or want to share what your own grandmother kept in her medicine cabinet, our inbox is open. Keep it honest. Two thousand years ago, Hippocrates combined honey and vinegar into a single remedy called oxymel — and modern researchers just confirmed what he already k...