Doctor Wood, modern wizard of the laboratory: The story of an American small boy who became the most daring and original experimental physicist of our day--but never grew up

About this book

Much of the book is devoted to pranks Wood pulled. Often these pranks were played on German police when Wood was a student. Elsewhere in the book, Seabrook describes Wood's contribution as a member of the Bureau of Inventions in the previous war against the Germans, World War I. On pages 33-35, Seabrook recounts Wood's experiments with hasheesh. Chapter 16 details Wood's analysis of King Tut's purple gold, using some techniques that would still be used by archaeologists.. Chapter 17 is titled in part "Wood as a Debunker of Scientific Cranks and Frauds," but this, too, shows Seabrook's bent. Much of the chapter is actually about debunking mediums in seances. Seabrook, like Huxley and J. B. Rhine and many others in his day, was fascinated with paranormal phenomena, and considered their study to be science. Wood used his X-ray machines and any other trick he could think of to outwit false mediums, even grabbing a poor woman's ectoplasm. Chapter 18 describes Wood's aid to the police in various explosive cases. Wood liked to blow things up, so he was well-equiped to aid the police by reconstructing bombs. He reconstructed the Wall Street Bomb of 1920, and helped put behind bars the bomb-killer of pregnant Naomi Hall. ( on line review) William Buehler Seabrook was a journalist and explorer whose interest in the occult lead him across the globe where he studied magic rituals, trained as a witch doctor, and famously ate human flesh, likening it to veal.