Different elements of the pomegranate, both tree and fruit, had a wide range of uses in premodern therapeutics. Pomegranate also had a rich symbolic role in the art, literature, and religion of numerous cultures. In nearly every part of the globe where the pomegranate grew, it came to represent fundamental dualities: life and death, inside and out, many and one. The medicinal purposes for which healers recommended pomegranate at times reflected broader symbolic associations, and those associations are an important part of the therapeutic tradition. The dualistic symbolism that attended the pomegranate in various cultural traditions synergized with dualistic medical concepts, reinforcing the therapeutic power of pomegranate in otherwise diverse contexts. Reflecting this duality, pomegranate was both an astringent and a laxative, an emmenagogue and an antimenorrhagic, an expectorant and an antiemetic, a pyrogen and a febrifuge, a restorative and a soporific. In both literary and medical traditions, the pomegranate mediated transitions—or maintained balance—between opposing states. This essay provides an overview of the rich and sundry uses of pomegranate in premodern therapeutics, revealing how cultural associations both reflected and informed medical practices.

What is a rat doing on a Last Supper plate? Did Jesus and his disciples really eat such a disgusting animal? At the end of the sixteenth century, an anonymous artist positioned a rat in front of Jesus in a Last Supper window of the church of Warwick (UK). The Gospels do not state that Jesus' last meal included rat, and rat was not a common food at that time; so why did the artist include a rat, if it is indeed a rat? The rat could convey a mysterious message. At the Lord's Table, the real “rat” might not be who he seems to be!

What is this thing about? The threesome involved in the creation of the fur teacup (Dora Maar, Pablo Picasso, and Meret Oppenheim) might well have been in their cups when their conversation led to its making. So this collective of painters and photographers of both genders at their best composed this abject object, portraying an erotics gone wild. This vessel, attractive in its loathsomeness, is exactly what you don't drink from at teatime, being the ultimate Dada Thing photographed by Dora Maar. Performing many photographic, painterly, and conceptual feats, none of these three friends were anyone's idea of a polite tea companion. And this fur piece takes the absolute cookie.

Obsession with dessert is widely shared by the residents of Kolkata. Life's passages and religious rituals are all celebrated with sugary creations. Bengali desserts are typically made with some sort of milk product. Among these are mishti doi a custard-like dessert made by adding yogurt cultures to sweetened evaporated milk. However, Bengal is best known for desserts based on chhana. This is a fresh cheese with a consistency similar to ricotta. Some chhana is made into fritters, which include pantua, a doughnut-brown ball about the size of a lime, and kalojam, a nearly jet black sphere of dough. Both of these are soaked in syrup. Rossogolla is made from a similar dough but is boiled rather than fried. When soaked in a milk-based syrup, it is called rossomalai. In a simpler preparation, the fresh cheese is cooked down with sugar and formed into many kinds of sweets called sandesh. One of the city's best know sandesh shops is Girish Chandra Dey & Nakur Chandra Nandy, or Nakur, in the old Shyambazar district. At Nakur they begin with raw milk, process it into cheese, and then cook, form, and flavor it into many types of sandesh of often unorthodox flavors. This artisanal approach cannot be followed by smaller neighborhood confectioners, called moiras in Bengali. They often use ready-made chhana for their confections. Trying to keep up with the times, new confectioners have tried to expand their operations and offer new products some of which are artificially sweetened.