Much of the early information about exercise and medicine appeared in the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance medical literature in the context of the "six things nonnatural." These were the things that were under everyone's own control, directly influenced health, and became the central part of the new "physical education" movement in the early 19 century in the United States. They were known t...

Martial arts are ancient forms of combat, modified for modern sport and exercise. Participation in the martial arts is increasing, particularly for youth. Martial arts provide health-promoting and meaningful exercise for millions of practitioners. Benefits from this practice include better overall health and balance, as well as an improved sense of psychological well being. They do not promote ...

Our understanding of the evolution of domestication has changed radically in the past 10 years, from a relatively simplistic rapid origin scenario to a protracted complex process in which plants adapted to the human environment. The adaptation of plants continued as the human environment changed with the expansion of agriculture from its centres of origin. Using archaeogenomics and computationa...

The medieval Norsemen or Vikings had an important biological and cultural impact on many parts of Europe through raids, colonization and trade, from about AD 793 to 1066. To help understand the genetic affinities of the ancient Norsemen, and their genetic contribution to the gene pool of other Europeans, we analysed DNA markers in Late Iron Age skeletal remains from Norway. DNA was extracted fr...

Recently, the study of ancient DNA (aDNA) has been greatly enhanced by the development of second-generation DNA sequencing technologies and targeted enrichment strategies. These developments have allowed the recovery of several complete ancient genomes, a result that would have been considered virtually impossible only a decade ago. Prior to these developments, aDNA research was largely focused...

Phylogenetic analyses of ancient DNA data can provide a timeline for evolutionary change even in the absence of fossils. The power to infer the evolutionary rate is, however, highly dependent on the number and age of samples, the information content of the sequence data and the demographic history of the sampled population. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Sheng et al. (2014) analysed mitoch...

Ancient cultures and physicians in past centuries spoke about the existence of a higher power named "life force". The inquiries about the possibilities and effective limits of this power touches more and more people today, even medical circles. Bruno Gr?ning (1906-1959) one of the best known healers in Europe, had a deep intuitive understanding and knowledge of this power. He pointed out the fo...

This article focuses on cesarean section carried out after the mother's death to rescue the living infant and on embryotomy, a medical procedure to save the mother described as early as the Hippocratic writings (5th to 4th century B.C.) and practiced until the times of Paul of Aegina (7th century A.D). The available sources do not mention cesarean section on a living mother to save the infant. ...

THE Osler Club was founded to commemorate the name of one of the greatest and best-known physicians of all time, and it seemed fitting that at the Society's first meeting in Dublin the opening paper should try to pay tribute to some other physicians who, given the time, place and opportunity might have become just as well known, but were fated to work in relative obscurity, 'great' only in the ...

Understanding the decline in the autopsy rate can be furthered through analysis of Foucault's idea of the medical gaze and the ancient Greek idea of theoria. The medical gaze has shifted over time from the surface of the body to the inner organs to the cellular and subcellular levels. Physicians and loved ones of the deceased person are not likely to "gaze" at the same levels. Patients' loved o...