From its roots in ancient Greek herbal medicine, the popular spirit we now know as gin was established by the Dutch in the sixteenth century as a juniper-infused tincture to cure fevers. It gained notoriety during the London 'gin craze' in the eighte...

Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In "Appetite and Its Discontents", Elizabeth A. Williams explores contemporary worries about eating through the lens of s...

In the late nineteenth century, extraordinary changes in food and agriculture gave rise to new tensions in the ways people understood, obtained, trusted, and ate their food. This was the Era of Adulteration, and its concerns have carried forward to t...