WILD NEW JERSEY: New York Times: How Species Save Our Lives
New York Times: How Species Save Our Lives
An enzyme in the venom of the South American pit viper revealed a new mechanism for controlling human blood pressure.
Photo Credit: Daniel Loebmann
By Richard Conniff: "When adding up the benefits from three centuries of species discoveries, I’m tempted to start, and also stop, with Sir Hans Sloane. A London physician and naturalist in the 18th century, he collected everything from insects to elephant tusks. And like a lot of naturalists, he was ridiculed for it, notably by his friend Horace Walpole, who scoffed at Sloane’s fondness for “sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese!” Sloane’s collections would in time give rise to the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum, London. Not a bad legacy for one lifetime. But it pales beside the result of a collecting trip to Jamaica, on which Sloane also invented milk chocolate.
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