The company Vaev claims to be selling tissues that have already been sneezed into. For about $80 it seems that you get a box containing one infected tissue. The idea apparently is that you can infect yourself with a cold, and this will somehow strengthen your immune system, thereby protecting you from further colds or the flu. Although the company's website is very vague on details, offering only this:
We believe that when flu season comes around, you should be able to get sick on your terms. We’re not about chemicals or prescription drugs here at Væv. We believe using a tissue that carries a human sneeze is safer than needles or pills. This isn’t like any tissue you’ve used before, but we love using them, and you will too.
The idea is so odd that I wonder if it isn't some kind of hoax. Note that it isn't actually possible to buy these things because the company's online store claims to be sold out.
Norman Lake's cure for the common cold. Otherwise known as the "IND".
the temperature in the nose normally is around 91 degrees, making it an ideal breeding ground for the rhinoviruses, he said. Lake contends that this is where his idea has merit. By clamping the nose for up to an hour, the temperature inside rises to around 98 degrees and the cold never gets a chance to take root.
Artist Ben Taylor drew a painting that featured “psychedelic colors and wormlike patterns inside a perfectly round circle.” Only later did he realize that he had parasitic worms in his eye, and he thinks they might have subconsciously inspired him. From The Durango Herald:
"I definitely believe that the worms had a hand in that painting,” he said, adding later: “When you kind of look into the nitty-gritty of how much of the human body actually contains your DNA versus the billions of different bacteria that live within us, you start realizing that you’re an ecology of beings that live within us.
He later adapted his painting to make it more obviously an eye infected by parasitic worms, and as a result it’s been chosen as the cover art for this month’s issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
They're called SEETROËN glasses. They were designed by the French car company Citroën, which claims that they're the first glasses that eliminate motion sickness. Apparently the blue liquid in the glasses simulates level ground, which helps stop the vertigo feeling that some people get while traveling.
Interesting concept, but they look a lot like "crazy straw" glasses.
Death by breathing in dung fumes. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to go, though perhaps not the worst since apparently before it kills you it paralyzes your sense of smell. But it's definitely a weird way to die.
The French scholar Arsene Thiebaud de Berneaud liked his coffee black. So much so that he "opposed with ferocity the then comparatively new custom of adding milk or cream to black coffee."
"He seems to have had an obsession that all mixtures of fluids were injurious... Sustained by this preconceived notion, he was able to publish a long diatribe in 1826, in which he accuses cafe au lait of causing almost every derangement known to medicine."
I've been able to find almost no other information about de Berneaud, so this one odd theory seems to be the most enduring thing he left behind.
Doctor Cites Worth of 'Impact Therapy'
LONDON (AP) — Dr. John Tracy says if you can't cure it any other way, hit it.
Tracy explained in today's issue of the Practitioner Medical Journal that he uses sandbags to bash his patients into shape. He calls it "impact therapy."
Tracy says that repeated blows with a 20-pound sandbag, carefully timed and judged, send pressure waves through joints that cure aches and pains.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.