Health tips from ancient doctors
Too much booze can cause pimples: As Galen -- a Greek physician who wrote medical texts around 150 CE -- explains in the Art of Physick, people with high body heat, red cheeks, and a cheerful disposition have a sanguine complexion. Such people, he argues, are more prone to certain conditions such as fevers and phlegm. Luckily, Galen tells sanguine patients how to achieve an optimal diet and exercise programme for their body type. He warns that drinking too much beer, ale, and wine can cause a variety of maladies, including scabs, abscesses, fevers, and red pimples. "Inordinate drinking of strong beer, ale, and wine, breeds hot rhewms scabs and itch, St Anthony's fire [a skin infection], quinsies [an infection behind the tonsils], pleuresies [pain when breathing], inflammations, fevers, and red pimples." (Source: Mental Floss)
Miss Piggy, I presume?
When interviewed for The Project, Kimberly Crossman asked actor John Lithgow (about when he first came to New Zealand). He said he was seen as a bit of a national joke without knowing why. "The reason was I had just been in The World According to Garp, playing Roberta Muldoon, a transgender woman, whose name had been Robert Muldoon, which happened to be the name of the prime minister!"
