Many elements were discovered through spectacularly dangerous trial and error

James recounts how early chemists routinely risked poisoning, explosion, and disfigurement in pursuit of isolating new elements, often without any concept of the invisible hazards they were courting. Phosphorus, for instance, was first isolated from boiled-down urine in a smelly, multi-day process, and its discoverers had no way of knowing it would later be weaponized in incendiary devices. Fluorine proved so reactive and toxic that a string of chemists working to isolate it in the nineteenth century were seriously injured or killed before it was finally isolated safely.

James uses these accounts to puncture the sanitized textbook image of chemistry as tidy and safe, showing instead a history built on chemists who often didn't know what they were handling until it hurt them. The eventual payoff — understanding an element's properties well enough to use it deliberately — came only after this long toll of accidental self-experimentation.

Takeaway: nearly every element on the periodic table has a body count somewhere in its discovery story.