In January 1613, workers at an estate in the Dauphiné, in southeastern France, unearthed a number of large bones. They included two mandibles with some teeth, a couple of vertebrae, what seemed to be a sternum, a shoulder blade, the heel and instep of a foot, the top of a humerus, and (the prize) a …
19 November 2014, Berlin When I was in France last weekend the big news was the sighting of a tiger outside Paris. A blurry picture of the beast itself circulated widely, and pictures of its footprints seemed to indicate, at the least, some kind of big wild feline. Some 200 police and a helicopter were …
Montpellier surgeon Barthélémy Cabrol (1529-1603) first published his Alphabet anatomic in 1594. A series of tables that graphically represented the parts of the body, it was immensely popular, with eleven editions in the seventeenth century as well as translations into Latin and Dutch; the Dutch translation in 1633 was by Descartes’s friend and correspondent Vopiscus …
Paris, 4 December The first world anti-foie gras day was a few weeks ago, on November 21. It was not noted by any French newspaper that I could find. Yet there was a demonstration in front of Fouquet’s, a renowned (and very high-end) restaurant on the Champs-Elysées, that attracted around fifty people. The animal rights …
Marseille, October 27. Bougainville, end of the metro line, past stations named for colonial heroes, socialists, and Desirée Clary, who was once Napoleon’s fiancée. In the far north end of Marseille, an area of car dealers, oil pressers, shabby apartments and even more graffiti than the rest of city, is Les Puces, the flea market. …
Anita Guerrini 