Contrary to recent debate on the internet, these days we are fairly confident that the Earth is not flat and that we are in fact inhabitants of a spherical planet. This however, was not always the case, with a widespread belief that if you reached the horizon, you would simply fall off into space.
Along with assumptions about the health benefits of heroin, the advantages of injecting monkey glands into the human body and bumps on your head being indicators of personality and temperament, science has a colourful past. In this entertaining and informative look at a dubious history, Graeme Donald examines the origins of some of the most extraordinary and mind-boggling scientific theories of the past.