“Unlike modern pills, these hard antimony pills didn’t dissolve in the intestines, and the pills were considered so valuable that people rooted through fecal matter to retrieve and reuse them. Some lucky families even passed down laxatives from father to… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“So while Pauling struggled with his model, Watson and Crick turned theirs inside out, so the negative phosphorus ions wouldn’t touch. This gave them… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
So if big enough droplets fell far enough fast enough, someone floating right near the metallic hydrogen layer inside Jupiter maybe, just maybe, could… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
Mendeleev, unlike the squeamish Meyer, had balls enough to predict that new elements would be dug up. Look harder, you chemists and geologists, he… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“Lithium regulates the proteins that control the body’s inner clock. This clock runs, oddly, on DNA, inside special neurons deep in the brain. Special… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general.… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“The irony is too rich not to point out. When arranging the different human races in tiers, from just below the angels to just… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“Think of the most fussy science teacher you ever had. The one who docked your grade if the sixth decimal place in your answer… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“Sir Isaac Newton famously said that he had achieved everything by standing on the shoulders of giants—the scientific men whose findings he built upon.… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“If certain bacteria, fungi, or algae inch across something made of copper, they absorb copper atoms, which disrupt their metabolism (human cells are unaffected).… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“Scarily, cadmium is not even the worst poison among the elements. It sits above mercury, a neurotoxin. And to the right of mercury sit… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
“Somehow, though, life turned that danger around, and this former poison became essential. It may sound trite, but this reversal always reminds me of… — Sam Kean Copy Share Image
