culture

  • United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, 241 U.S. 265 (1916)

    United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, 241 U.S. 265 (1916)

    United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, 241 U.S. 265 (1916), was a federal suit under which the government unsuccessfully attempted to force The Coca-Cola Company to remove caffeine from its product. Context In 1906, Harvey Washington Wiley was the head of the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Chemistry when Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. The

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  • Castoreum

    Castoreum

    Castoreum is a yellowish exudate from the castor sacs of mature beavers. Beavers use castoreum in combination with urine to scent mark their territory. Both beaver sexes have a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands, located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail. The castor sacs are not true glands (endocrine or exocrine)

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  • This guy (1745 – 1821) was a German physician and hygienist who wrote about ‘medical police’…a lot

    This guy (1745 – 1821) was a German physician and hygienist who wrote about ‘medical police’…a lot

    Johann Peter Frank is considered a pioneer in the field of social hygiene and social medicine as well as public health and the public health service and was one of the founders of hygiene as a university subject.  The six-volume (some say six, some say nine) system of a complete medical police is his main work. It took Frank almost four decades to compose it.  It was the most comprehensive

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  • medical police

    medical police

    Medical police, originating in 18th century Europe, particularly Germany, was a far-reaching concept that blended public health, social control, and governance. It wasn’t just about controlling venereal diseases or regulating prostitution—it was an ambitious attempt to manage nearly every aspect of public life that could impact health and social order. Picture this: It’s the 18th

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  • Female husbands

    Female husbands

    A female husband is a person born as a woman, living as a man, who marries a woman. The term was known historically from the 17th Century and was popularised by Henry Fielding who titled his 1746 fictionalised account of the trial of Mary Hamilton The Female Husband. Prosecutions involving women living as men and marrying other women were reported in

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  • Public Universal Friend aka Jemima Wilkinson

    Public Universal Friend aka Jemima Wilkinson

    The Public Universal Friend (born Jemima Wilkinson; November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819) was an American preacher born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, to Quaker parents. After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and gendered pronouns. In androgynous clothes, the Friend

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  • Lili Elbe, Danish painter and trans woman who was castrated by one nazi (1930) and dead a short time later after a womb transplant performed by another nazi (1931)

    Lili Elbe, Danish painter and trans woman who was castrated by one nazi (1930) and dead a short time later after a womb transplant performed by another nazi (1931)

    Lili Ilse Elvenes (1882 – 1931), better known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish painter, trans woman and among the early recipients of gender-affirming surgery (sex reassignment surgery). They say that about all of them…that they were the first or one of the first or some kind of pioneer. I suspect the truth is closer to ‘they have been castrating everything

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  • Ludwig Levy-Lenz, German doctor, sexual reformer and pimp compiled the first medical book on abortion

    Ludwig Levy-Lenz, German doctor, sexual reformer and pimp compiled the first medical book on abortion

    Ludwig Levy-Lenz (born 1 December 1892 in Posen (now Poznań), German Reich; died 30 October 1966 in Munich) was a German doctor of medicine and a sexual reformer, known for performing some of the first sex reassignment surgeries for patients of the Hirschfeld institute. Life Ludwig Levy took on the double name Ludwig Levy-Lenz early on, and after the Second World War and his

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  • Sexual intermediacy

    Sexual intermediacy

    At the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Magnus Hirschfeld championed the doctrine of sexual intermediacy. This proposed form of classification said that every human trait existed on a scale from masculine to feminine. Masculine traits were characterized as dominant and active while feminine traits were passive and perceptive. The classification was further divided into the subgroups of sex

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  • Eugenics Department for Mother and Child and Experimental Treatments for Impotence

    Eugenics Department for Mother and Child and Experimental Treatments for Impotence

    One focus of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft‘s research and services was sexual and reproductive health. A subdivision of the institute called the Eugenics Department for Mother and Child offered marital counseling services, and the Center of Sexual Counseling for Married Couples provided access to contraception. It was especially a goal of the institute to make contraceptive services accessible to

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