It was thousands of years ago when people of the Americas learned to isolate cocoa from the cacao plant. They drank it as a liquid for energy and nutrition, and even though it wasn't sweetened, we can imagine that some of them just liked it. Cocoa came to Europe, where it competed with coffee and tea as an energizing drink. Then someone got the bright idea to add sugar. Score!
While chocolate has been used as a medicine off and on, it was mainly useful for masking the awful taste of opium, cocaine, and other everyday medicines. The easiest way to blend it with these drugs was to make chocolate into a syrup. When medicine stopped being elixirs and became pills, all the pharmacists needed to find new ways to use the chocolate syrup they were already making, and that's how we got all kinds of soda fountain treats. Weird History Food weaves together the history of chocolate and chocolate syrup with the history of medicines, which intersect at several points. Even today, chocolate is an easy way to make yourself feel better.
Tuesday, August 04, 2026
Chocolate Syrup Was Once Medicine
Friday, July 03, 2026
Friday, May 08, 2026
Wednesday, May 06, 2026
Friday, April 03, 2026
Thursday, March 19, 2026
We Don't Know How Tylenol Works
Tylenol has been sold since 1955, but its history goes back much further. The underlying medicine's fever-reducing talent was discovered purely by accident, and I mean an accident at a pharmacy that could have been much, much worse. But it worked, not only to reduce fever, but to squelch pain as well. Testing has deemed it safe and effective, but scientists still don't know the exact mechanism of that effectiveness. It's possible that we might never know, because there are much more important problems than the exact mechanism of a drug that's already safe and effective. This video from Half as Interesting is a minute shorter than it looks, because that last part is an ad.
Saturday, January 17, 2026
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Amphetamines
If you only watch the first five minutes of this video from Kurzgesagt, you might start to think that we should all be taking some form of amphetamine all the time. What could be better than taking a drug that helps us focus, be more productive, and deal with the mind-numbing drudgery and boredom of the modern world? Those qualities are exactly why so many people take some form of speed, both legally and illegally. Amphetamines have legitimate medical uses, like getting kids with ADHD through school. They have fueled armies in war. But there are enormous costs associated with such drugs. If we were all using them, we wouldn't be able to get along with each other, and they eventually lead to disability and death. Besides that, productivity shouldn't be the biggest goal in our lives, because society is about more than winners and losers. The video is 9:45; the rest is ads.
