Patricia Fara

Surgeons trying to eliminate pain eventually arrived at anaesthesia – but not before a contest with older, more unusual therapies. Why was mesmerism so magnetic?

How many planets are there? As with the discovery of Uranus, the answer depends on who you ask.

An enfant terrible shook up Renaissance medicine by denouncing experts and debunking accepted wisdom. Was Paracelsus as radical as he seemed?

In the 18th century the existence of extraterrestrial life went from debatable hypothesis to fundamental tenet of Enlightenment thought.

The Queen of the Night, rendered in clay in ancient Babylon, was evidently an important goddess who enjoyed considerable status – but who is she?

What are stars made of? When a young astronomer upset standard explanations for the formation of the solar system, the establishment told her she was wrong – then stole her findings.

Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor revels in the tangles of Victorian thought.

Was the Earth flatter around the poles or the Equator? In 1735 two expeditions set out to settle a matter of national pride.

An earthquake in Chile and the observations of eye-witness Maria Graham caused open hostility among 19th-century geologists.

Where does new life come from? According to one theory that held sway until the 18th century, it’s all been there from the very beginning.