by Brian Thomas, M.S. and Frank Sherwin, M.A.*

Imagine going to a doctor with a flare-up of gout or a migraine. To your utter shock, the physician calmly instructs you to reach into a water tank and hug an electric fish. This is what Roman physician Scribonius Largus prescribed in his Compositiones Medicae in 46 AD, and it worked too well, probably killing the patient.

Why do men have beards and women do not? Deep in the brain, the hypothalamus produces surges of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, a small chemical that acts like a key to turn on the manufacture and export of follicle-stimulating hormone and leutenizing hormone (LH) from the pituitary gland.