Category: C

A nostrum that became the subject of the first court case under the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Cuforhedake Brane-Fude was developed by Robert N. Harper around 1888 while a student at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. Earlier in the decade, a coal-tar derivative, acetanilid, had been discovered to have some effect…

A specific technique in divination that uses a crystal ball to focus the attention of the “scryer” (the name given to this kind of fortune-teller). A real crystal ball is a polished globe of rock-crystal or clear quartz, but these are costly and most scryers now use a less expensive, commercially available ball of molded…

A controversial branch of zoology focusing on animal species that have been reported to exist but are as yet unknown to science. The most famous hidden or unknown species include lake monsters (such as the loch ness monster), obscure hominids (such as bigfoot), and sea serpents. The term cryptozoology was coined by French zoologist Bernard…

The storing of dead bodies through the process of cryogenics for the purpose of later reviving individuals. Some patients elect to have only their heads frozen and stored, believing that when revival occurs, this will be sufficient for reconstructing the whole person. Two firms in the United States, Alcor and the Cryonics Institute, have put…

A form of communication from the dead through mediums; these are believed by many psychical researchers to be among the best evidence of survival after death. The correspondences are established by bringing together the meaningless utterances of two or more mediums working independently of each other, utterances that only become meaningful when combined. Classical cross-correspondence…

Strange circular depressions in fields of grain crops. In England during 1976, patterns of unknown origin were observed, impressed on fields of grain. At first the patterns were simple circles but, as years passed, the number, locations, and complexity of these circles increased. The idea that some human agency might be responsible was dismissed: There…

The idea that there is a gene that predisposes its possessors to criminal or aberrant behavior. In the 19th century, Italian physician Cesare Lom-Broso claimed to have identified features that characterized criminals: “the enormous jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped ears,” characteristics shared…

A facility to promote the teachings of creation science. The Creation Science Research Center was founded in 1970 by Nell Seagraves, her son Kelly Seagraves, and Henry Morris as a division of Christian Heritage College, the independent fundamentalist school associated with Scott Memorial Baptist Church, San Diego, California. Shortly after the founding of the center,…

A therapy promoted by Dr. William Garner Sutherland in the 1940s. The skull is formed of several plates with slight separations between them. They are displaced during birth and may not return to their proper positions subsequently, sometimes causing a misalignment of the facial bones, especially the jawbones. They also may be displaced later in…

A gathering of witches or practitioners of the Wicca religion. Covens usually have a fairly constant membership often, according to some traditions, of 13 members. This number supposedly relates to Christ and his 12 apostles, but this idea probably arose during the Inquisition, when witches were persecuted as heretics; the idea of witches perverting Christ’s…