In 1890, a German scientist named Robert Koch thought he'd invented a remedy for tuberculosis, a substance derived from the infecting bacterium itself that he dubbed Tuberculin. His substance didn't truly remedy anybody, nevertheless it was finally extensively used as a diagnostic skin test. Koch's profitable failure is simply one of many many colourful instances featured in Dead Ends! Flukes, Flops, and Failures that Sparked Medical Marvels, a brand new nonfiction illustrated kids's ebook by science historian Lindsey Fitzharris and her husband, cartoonist Adrian Teal.
A famous science communicator with a keenness for the medically macabre, Fitzharris revealed a biography of surgical pioneer Joseph Lister, The Butchering Art, in 2017—a fantastic, if sometimes grisly, learn. She adopted up with 2022's The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I, a couple of WWI surgeon named Harold Gillies who rebuilt the faces of injured troopers.
And in 2020, she hosted a documentary for the Smithsonian Channel, The Curious Life and Loss of life Of…, exploring well-known deaths, starting from drug lord Pablo Escobar to magician Harry Houdini. Fitzharris carried out digital autopsies, experimented with blood samples, interviewed witnesses, and performed real-time demonstrations in hopes of gleaning contemporary insights. For his half, Teal is a well known caricaturist and illustrator, finest recognized for his work on the British TV collection Spitting Picture. His work has additionally appeared in The Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph, amongst different retailers.
The couple determined to collaborate on kids's books as a technique to mix their respective abilities. Granted, “[The market for] kids's nonfiction may be very troublesome,” Fitzharris informed Ars. “It doesn't promote that nicely typically. It's very troublesome to get publishers on board with it. It's such a disgrace as a result of I actually really feel that there's a starvation for it, particularly after I see the youngsters choosing up these books and loving it. There's additionally only a want for it with the decline in literacy charges. We have to get folks extra engaged with these matters in ways in which transcend a 30-second clip on TikTok.”
Their first foray into the market was 2023's Plague-Busters! Medicine's Battles with History's Deadliest Diseases, exploring “the ickiest sicknesses which have contaminated people and affected civilizations by the ages”—in addition to the medical breakthroughs that took place to fight these illnesses. Useless Ends is one thing of a sequel, focusing this time on historic diagnoses, experiments, and coverings that had been ineffective at finest, often dangerous, but finally led to sudden medical breakthroughs.
