The Disappearing Spoon Ch. 15

Summary

Mad science has been popular on books and movies, but this chapter explains how sometimes this scientific madness can be beneficial. William Crookes was a writer based on science publicizing “Chemical News”. He got accepted to the World-Class science club, but his fall due to the death of his brother Philip nearly got him out. Crooks became very spiritualistic and even invented a device to maybe detect his brother. He became very obsessed with the paranormal sciences. The people from the Royal Society reproached Crooks saying that he had let himself be surprised with cheap tricks and even though Crooks tried to prove them wrong, his attempts were in vain. Apparently Crooks had been studying Selenium, an element that in large doses becomes toxic. Some argued that he was intoxicated by an element he had discovered, thallium. Pathologists have encountered chemistry on their findings as well. AN example would be the shark tooth covered in manganese.

Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann intended to do plenty of experiments that would form part of cold fusion, but became a dead end causing a scientific error, but they kept on going, and arose the curiosity of more scientists. A scientist by the name of Wilhelm Rontgen tried to prove himself wrong about the discovery of invisible rays, but could not do so. He did experiments and his colleague Per-Ingvar Branemark with a Crookes tube covering it black with just a strip of foil so that the rays would go through and after a few fails and arrangements he discovered that he could suddenly see through things including the bones of his own hand. He thought he was going mad, but was actually helping with the discovery of X-rays.

Reflection

The first thing that caught my eye as I began to read this chapter, was the mention of one of my idols: Sherlock Holmes. It was used to demonstrate the level at which spiritualism had reached England, but the mention of the wise and observant Detective Holmes and his author is paradoxical since these books are mostly based on logic. I found it sad that Crooks work was used to prove he was crazy when he only tried to prove that he had found and discovered a paranormal world. The origin for the word lunatic it very amazing. Since Crooks had been intoxicated by Selenium which comes from the Greek word that means moon “selene”, and in Latin this words is “luna” leading to the word that we now know as lunatic. When the author mentions how many people deep down inside wish that the Megalodons are still alive, I can totally connect, specially like the Jurassic Park fans.