Contents

Prefatory Note

Going Viral

    1. Arrowsmith and CRISPR at the Marine Biological Laboratory

    2. Ebola and the Cabinet of Dr. Proust

    3. Zika, Kale, and Calligraphy: Ricky Jay and Matthias Buchinger

    4. Ike on Orlando: “Every Gun Is a Theft”

    5. Nobel on Columbus Avenue

    6. Lupus and the Course of Empire

    7. Groucho on the Gridiron

    8. Apply Directly to Forehead: Holmes, Zola, and Hennapecia

Science Fictions

    9. Swift-Boating Darwin: Alternative and Complementary Science

    10. Spinal Irritation and the Failure of Nerve

    11. Galton’s Prayer

    12. Dr. Doyle and the Case of the Guilty Gene

Two for the Road

    13. Swift-Boating “America the Beautiful”: Katharine Lee Bates and a Boston Marriage

    14. Alice James and Rheumatic Gout

    15. Free Radicals Can Kill You: Lavoisier and the Oxygen Revolution

    16. Dr. Blackwell Returns from London

    17. Call Me Madame

Beside the Golden Door

    18. Welcome to America: Einstein’s Letter to the Dean

    19. Modernism and the Hippocampus: Kandel’s Vienna

    20. A Taste of the Oyster: Jan Vilcek’s Love and Science

    21. Richard Dawkins Lights a Brief Candle in the Dark

    22. Eugenics and the Immigrant: Rosalyn Yalow

    23. Cortisone and the Burning Cross

Ave atque Vale

    24. Lewis Thomas and the Two Cultures

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index