“Expands into a fluffy cloud when microwaved”

In yesterday’s New Yorker crossword puzzle, clue 27 Down was:

Brand-name bath bar that expands into a fluffy cloud when microwaved

I’ve already stated my claim to be the first person to try microwaving bars of soap, or at least the first person to publish the eye-opening results of the process on one well-known brand, in my 1993 book Soap Science.

But I haven’t mentioned that I told that story for a short comic drawn by Dan Mazur in the Boston Comics Roundtable anthology Boundless, edited by Olivia Li, Jordan Stillman, and Neil Johnson in 2016.

That comic includes depictions of me and my dad in the 1970s and 1990s. In fact, the editors told me that the script won them over as soon as it called for pictures of me as a child. 

“Comics and Medicine” Coming to MICE, Oct. 21

The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) is coming up this weekend, and on Saturday I’ll moderate a panel on “Comics and Medicine.”

This session is being organized by Matthew Noe, the Graphic Medicine Specialist for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region. He wrote about it here on the agency’s blog.

Here’s an extract from Matthew’s posting:

In anticipation of this panel, I asked each panelist to say in a few sentences what graphic medicine is to them. Here are their responses – a bit of a teaser of the panel to come!

Cathy Leamy: Graphic medicine is anything involving comics/cartooning and health and illness. I love that it’s not rigid and nailed down; the door is open for all kinds of explorations and investigators. Health education comics, illness memoirs, analysis of comics for medical themes, art therapy, teaching self-expression and empathy through comics making – so many applications are possible, and we all benefit from the cross-pollination of being exposed to them.

Kriota Willberg: My goal as a cartoonist making GM is to normalize medicine and the body. I hope to make illness, anatomy, and science a benign and familiar trio of actors in our lives, thereby mitigating the anxiety and confusion that often effects patients and their families, and stigmatizes the ill.

Iasmin Omar Ata: [To me, graphic medicine is] using unique mediums to heal through the power of art. Particularly in comics and games, there exists such an opportunity for those with illness to speak, be heard, listen, and heal.

Matthew Noe: Graphic medicine, beyond the strict definitions and the difficult task of reigning in what exactly it means to be a comic, is about communication. Patients communicating with physicians. Physicians communicating with patients. Family communicating with family. Comics can give voice to the voiceless, clarity to the unclear, and can help us refocus medicine on the human.

I’m looking forward to hearing more! Our session is at 11:00 A.M. on Saturday in the Auditorium of University Hall, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.

Crowdsourcing Archeology

I caught this interesting story from the Guardian earlier in the week.

It seems that back in September 1954, some archeologists were exploring a site in London before an office building went up there, and in the last hour of a Saturday afternoon they discovered a Roman temple. The Temple of Mithras, to be exact.

It’s almost unfathomable to me as a New World native, but the British authorities apparently have so many Roman ruins to oversee that they decided this one couldn’t interfere with the construction project.

To be sure, there was a lot of press attention, and crowds so large that police had to be called in, but in pretty quick order the temple ruins were simply “moved and haphazardly reconstructed on another part of the site.” Without good documentation or preservation.

The Guardian picks up the story:

Now Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) experts are trying to recover as many memories of the site as possible, and hope to discover colour photographs or even paintings to help with the project to reconstruct it yet again, this time accurately and back on its original foundations.

Site records say the stones were originally joined with pink mortar, but apparently no samples were kept. They hope a visitor may have left with a souvenir piece of mortar in a pocket, and that it’s still out there in a cardboard box on top of a wardrobe.

Already a ticket has turned up that suggests some of the visiting public were allowed to help with the digging. A startling letter, evidently from the friend who secured it for the donor’s aunt, said: “One has to get a ticket from Humphreys of Knightsbridge. We did this and got one for you too because they say today is the last day! So do go along … We found bones and a tooth.”

So this is a project to recover memories and artifacts of an event sixty years ago, in order to better preserve a site (already disturbed) from somewhat less than two thousand years ago.

Dense Thoughts

Water has the very unusual physical property of expanding as it turns from liquid to solid. Most substances take up less volume as solids than as liquids, meaning they become denser when freezing. Frozen water, in contrast, is less dense and thus floats on liquid water.

If water behaved like most other chemicals in the universe, water that froze at Earth’s poles would sink to the bottom of the ocean, made up of the water that remained liquid. And most of that ice would remain frozen, out of reach of the Sun’s rays. Gradually more and more of the planet’s water would turn solid, building up on the ocean’s bottom and interfering with the processes of life. In other words, if water weren’t so weird, we wouldn’t exist.

I try to keep this thought in mind as I navigate around another result of water expanding as it freezes: potholes.

Back Into the Wild with Chromatography Analysis

Earlier this year Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, published a follow-up article on the New Yorker website. That book described the death of Christopher J. McCandless in the Alaska wilderness in 1992; it prompted widely varying reactions.

Krakauer’s article suggested that a hitherto unrecognized factor in McCandless’s death is that he had been eating seeds from the wild potato Hedysarum alpinum. People thought this plant was non-toxic, but Krakauer wrote that new laboratory testing showed it contained large amounts of an amino acid that cripples the nervous system. He shared the lab’s report.

Last month Chemistry and Engineering News asked experts to review the lab findings. They replied that the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) results don’t show what Krakauer understood they did. Certainly my untrained eye sees stark differences between the HPLC charts for another seed known to contain the amino acid and the Alaskan samples tested. That’s not just what different compounds appear but the quality and complexity of the readout.

The C&E News experts don’t say the neurotoxin theory is untenable; they say the lab test didn’t offer results good enough to interpret one way or another, so it’s far from proven. They also suggest that a mass spectrometer and other tests would be more reliable.

The journal spoke to an Alaskan professor who’d analyzed the same type of seeds for Krakauer years back and found no toxins; he seems relieved that his findings haven’t been contradicted after all.

Me and the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, 28-29 Sept.

This weekend brings the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo in Cambridge’s Porter Square, a free show featuring independent and small-press comics from the region’s top creators.

See new mini-comics, original art, and fine graphic novels. Special events for the kids! Hands-on workshops!

And if that’s not enough to get you interested, I’ll be moderator for two panels.

Saturday, 11am to 12 noon
Educating with Comics
A conversation with artists who create comics that entertain and inform, on topics including anthropology, primatology, astronomy and zoology. What are the approaches and techniques that cartoonists use to translate fact into fun? Featuring:

• Maris Wicks
• Rosemary Mosco
• Kriota Willberg
• E.J. Barnes

Sunday, 2:30pm to 3:30pm
Reinterpretations of Classics
Comics provides infinite opportunities to adapt, re-vamp and update classic texts, for readers of all ages, from the reverent to the ridiculous. A panel of writer-artists and editors talk about their work in this area, including adapations of Shakespeare, fairy tales, myths and the great works of literature. Featuring:

• George O’Connor
• Chris Duffy
• Gareth Hinds
• R. Sikoryak

In addition, I’ll be the volunteer designated to help out at this panel, to be moderated by Brigid Alverson (which is my way of making sure I won’t miss it).

Sunday, 11:30am to 12:30pm
Why YA Comics?
The challenge of creating graphic novels for teens and tweens is finding an authentic voice—one that comes from within rather than above. How have independent creators managed to connect with teens at their own level? What sorts of stories resonate with then? And can anyone over 20 really be trusted? Featuring:

• Robin Brenner
• Mike Cavallaro
• Nick Abadsiz

How could you plan to be anywhere else?

A New Angle on Narrative Momentum

A few days ago, author Gail Gauthier raised the topic of “momentum” as it applies to narrative on her Facebook page. In physics, an object’s momentum is defined as its mass times its velocity. Velocity, in turn, is defined as distance traveled over time.

During the discussion, I realized that all those physics concepts can be metaphorically applied to narrative.

• “Distance” is a measure of change in a particular direction. Not just random activity or events, but action along a particular vector, usually defined by characters’ desires and plans.
• “Time” relates to narratives in two ways: the passage of time experienced by the characters and, probably more important, that experienced by readers.
• “Mass” is a good equivalent for the significance of events, determined mostly by the stakes for the main characters.

Thus, narrative momentum is the product of significant stakes and change in a particular direction, both as sensed by readers. When readers see more change happening along the main narrative vector, they sense more momentum. When readers can read those scenes faster, they sense more momentum. And when the stakes are higher, they sense more momentum.

Our Cancers, Ourselves

Today Nature announced an agreement between the National Institutes of Health and the heirs of Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cancerous cells, denoted “HeLa,” have proved remarkably long-lived and therefore useful for medical research.

As described by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Lacks had a hard life even before developing that virulent cancer. Her family received no compensation and minimal recognition for her contribution to modern medicine. Under the new agreement, family members will be on a committee that considers requests for research and publication of genetic data using the HeLa cells, restoring the principle of people being in charge of their own tissue and biological information.

There’s an irony in this situation, of a sort I first noticed in another case of horrible medical care given to an African-American in Jim-Crow America. In 1947 San Francisco doctors diagnosed Elmer Allen, a Pullman porter, with bone cancer. Considering his leg (or simply Allen himself) untreatable, they injected that leg with plutonium in order to study how the radioactive element affected the human body. Three days after the injection, the doctors amputated that leg and sent him home to die.

Allen lived for forty-four more years. He died in 1991, one year before reporter Eileen Welsome connected him to the records of the plutonium experiment. He never knew how badly his doctors and government had treated him, but Allen was reportedly bitter all his life about having lost his leg and career. Yet that amputation, as heartless as it was, may in fact have saved him from the bone cancer.

Similarly, Henrietta Lacks’s descendants view her undying cells as a surviving part of her, yet if she had had the option of killing or getting rid of that cancer she would surely have been glad to take it, and to think of those cells as something apart from herself.

Why Thompson Oz Books Smell a Little Like Vanilla

Back in 2009 I wrote fondly about the smell of Ruth Plumly Thompson’s Oz books, as originally published by Reilly & Lee in the 1920s and ’30s. Lots of American books of that era shared the same perfume, though perhaps not as strongly, given that publisher’s low budgets.

This summer the Smithsonian blog noted an article from the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers on the chemistry of that smell:

Scientists say that “old book smell” is more than just mustiness; it contains hints of grass and vanilla. That’s because all the compounds used to make the book release distinctive odors as they break down. For example, lignin, which is present in all wood-based paper, is closely related to vanillin. As it breaks down, the lignin grants old books that faint vanilla scent.

It’s even possible to approximate the age of a book based on its smell. Chemists have identified 15 substances often present in books (known as VOC’s) that degrade (and therefore emit a gas) at a predictable rate.

The abstract of the underlying scientific paper, published in 2009, goes into more detail:

The main volatile degradation products of paper, constituting the particular “smell of old books”, were determined using headspace analysis after a 24 h predegradation procedure. Using supervised and unsupervised methods of multivariate data analysis, we were able to quantitatively correlate volatile degradation products with properties important for the preservation of historic paper: rosin, lignin and carbonyl group content, degree of polymerization of cellulose, and paper acidity.

Those scientists, some working with the Centre for Sustainable Heritage in Britain, appear to have been most interested in the preservation and dating of books. But I can also imagine interest in their findings from people who wish to create books as luxury items. What could be more luxurious than a book that smells wonderfully old but is actually in great shape?

An Election Doesn’t Even Slow Them Up

For over a year, the FBI says, a man named Scott Crawford worked on building an X-ray device which he described as “Hiroshima on a light switch.” He wanted to use this nuclear weapon on Muslims and sought out support from groups he thought would be sympathetic to that sort of mass murder. One of them alerted the federal authorities instead.

This scheme is a product of OIP Derangement Syndrome. Crawford reportedly identified himself as a former member of the “United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” The Albany Times-Union said he’s active in Americans Demanding Liberty and Freedom, a “Tea Party” group. The New York Times reported that the FBI’s complaint quoted Crawford as saying, “You know what? After this last election, the electoral process is dead.” Because, obviously, most American voters didn’t see things his way.

Talking Points Memo reported that on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, before any suspects or motivation had been identified, Crawford sent a series of messages that added up to:

Well, tell it to your treasonous bedwetting maggot in chief. He started bringing the scumbags have wholesale as he got in charge. He directed the ins to start bringing muzzies here without background checks. Your background was scrutinized more to join the army than any muslim scum gets to come here. They don’t have to follow any laws, and this administration has done more to enable a government sponsored invasion than the press can cover up. Be pissed, but get the word out that obamas policies caused this.

By that time, undercover officers were already inside Crawford’s bigoted little conspiracy, which was aimed at killing many more people.

(Cartoon by Charles Addams, of course.)

“I’m going to see that tornado one day.”

Last week tornado chaser Tim Samaras died chasing a tornado in Oklahoma. The same storm killed his son, twenty-four years old, and a colleague.

National Geographic then ran an interview with Samaras about his work, some of which had been funded by the society:

How did you get into it?

My background is in engineering. And I've always had a fascination with weather.

I watched The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid and vowed to myself, "I'm going to see that tornado one day." Tornadoes have pretty much become a focus of my life.

Rationally, that makes as much sense as deciding to breed monkeys with wings.

Taking Inspiration and Making It Chittier

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography comes this life of Louis Vorow Zborowski, a racing-car maker and driver active in Britain in the early 1900s.

Zborowski provided the inspiration for one children’s adventure novel with his post-World War I application of aeronautic technology to automobiles:

The end of the war led to the ready availability of large capacity aero engines, exactly the type Zborowski needed to build his own racing cars in the stables at Higham Park. . . . The first car, powered by a 23 litre 6 cylinder Maybach aero engine used in Zeppelin airships, and fitted with an angular body made by Blighs, was christened Chitty-Bang-Bang. A second car, Chitty-Bang-Bang II, was powered by an 18.9 litre Benz aero engine. . . .

Chitty-Bang-Bang was driven up from Kent on trade plates to make a winning début at the opening meeting of the Brooklands season in March 1921, attracting much attention as the ‘mystery’ car (The Times, 29 March 1921). . . . The novelist Ian Fleming, who had seen Zborowski’s car at Brooklands in the early 1920s, and who was later a visitor to Higham Park, used elements of it in his children’s fantasy Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964–5).

Both Zobrowski and his father died in racing-car accidents.

Fooling Ourselves: Are We Hard-Wired for Optimism?

A while back I read about a couple of studies in medical decision-making by Lucas S. Zier, Douglas B. White, and colleagues. In particular, they looked at how medical surrogates responded to doctors saying that there was very little that they could do for a dying patient.

In 2009 the team reported in the journal Chest:

Sixty-four percent of surrogates expressed a reluctance or unwillingness to believe physicians’ futility predictions. They provided the following four main explanations for this belief: a skepticism about physicians’ ability to achieve complete prognostic certainty, a need to see for themselves that a patient was incapable of recovery, a need to triangulate multiple information sources before believing physicians, and a belief that God could intervene to change the course of an illness. . . .

Surrogates who doubted physician’s futility predictions clustered into the following two general groups: those whose doubt was based on religious beliefs (n = 18); and those whose doubt was based on secular considerations (n = 15), such as past experiences with inaccurate prognostication, a secular belief that future-telling is inherently inaccurate, and a need to triangulate physicians prognostications with other sources before accepting the prognosis as true. Surrogates who doubted physicians’ futility predictions on religious grounds were more likely to request continued life support in the face of a very poor prognosis…, whereas those whose doubt was based on secular concerns were not…

Three years later the researchers published further findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also looking at how medical surrogates responded to doctors’ good predictions:

Participants’ interpretations of prognostic statements expressing a low risk for death were relatively accurate, but interpretations of statements conveying a high risk for death were more optimistic than the actual meaning. . . . Interpretations of the statement “90% chance of surviving” did not differ from the actual meaning, but interpretations of “5% chance of surviving” were more optimistic and showed substantial variability.

If I interpret the abstract right, people hearing “90% chance of surviving” generally interpreted that as 90%, with only a slight spread to 95%. People hearing “5% chance of surviving” spread that out into 15%, with the center of the bell curve going as high as 40%.

In interviews, the researchers found two reasons for the distortion of bad news: “surrogates’ need to register optimism in the face of a poor prognosis and surrogates’ belief that patient attributes unknown to the physician would lead to better-than-predicted outcomes.”

In other words, our brains may not process bad medical news rationally or accurately.

My Gift to the Current Generation of Kids

Around 1993, as I explained in this posting, I was looking for new science activities for kids that involved soap. I tried microwaving a bar of Ivory soap and was, so far as I know, the first person to see the strange results. I published my findings in a book called Soap Science.

Twenty years later, and I’m finding online videos of families doing that very activity (and in some cases wearing eye protection, too!). In fact, those families go further than I dared to tell kids to try on their own; I couldn’t know if parents would be present or would handle the aroma. And those videos are getting tens of thousands of views.

Such a strange thing to take pride in.

New Light on Mary Ingalls’s Blindness

CNN reported on a paper in the latest Pediatrics coauthored by Dr. Beth Tarini, which had its genesis in this conversation:

“I was in my pediatrics rotation. We were talking about scarlet fever, and I said, ‘Oh, scarlet fever makes you go blind. Mary Ingalls went blind from it,’” recalls Tarini, who is now an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan. My supervisor said, “I don’t think so.”

Which is the sort of exchange an intern never forgets.

Tarini was thinking of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books and television series. But those turn out not to be medically accurate. Scarlet fever might produce temporary blindness, but its hallmark is a rash. No letters or newspaper stories about Mary Ingalls’s illness described that symptom. Instead, contemporaneous sources said she suffered from “severe headaches” and partial paralysis of the face.

Finally, and perhaps the most important piece of evidence, in a letter Wilder wrote to her daughter, Rose, right before her book By the Shores of Silver Lake was published, she makes reference “some sort of spinal sickness”. The letter also mentions that Mary saw a specialist in Chicago who said “the nerves of her eyes were paralyzed and there was no hope.”

Diagnosis by these disease detectives: viral meningoencephalitis, which causes inflammation of the brain and the meninges, the membrane that covers the brain. In severe cases, it can cause inflammation of the optic nerve that can result in a slow and progressive loss of sight.

The study ends by suggesting why Wilder, her daughter and collaborator Rose Wilder Lane, and/or the book’s editors decided to identify Mary Ingalls’s illness as “scarlet fever”: because it already had a literary pedigree. And the book and TV adaptation have been misleading future doctors ever since.

Fast Food and the Caped Crusader

I recently read a study in Pediatric Obesity titled “What would Batman eat?: priming children to make healthier fast food choices.” Unfortunately, it left me with a lot of questions.

The study was small, involving only 22 children. (Interestingly, just six of those were non-Hispanic whites.) During weekly lunches at Burger King the researchers asked the kids, “Do you want apple fries or French fries with your lunch?”—“apple fries” being the chain’s term for apple slices.

At the outset only 9% of the kids chose the fruit. But when shown “12 photos of (6 admirable and 6 less admirable) real and fictional models” and asked what those folks would choose, the kids’ choice of apples went up to 45%. Not even half, but still a significant jump.

Alas, the study doesn’t list all the people in those photos. Two of the admirable figures were Batman and Spider-Man (spelled without the hyphen in the abstract). One of the “less admirable” figures was the Penguin—a villain whom Dick Grayson chuckled at in 1941 (see below) and who has only gotten more roly-poly and villainous since.

The other nine figures remain unknown. Did they include the Hulk, an embodiment of id with no regard for body issues—yet usually on the “admirable” side? What about Bouncing Boy of the Legion of Super Heroes, chubby and heroic? What about Stephen Hawking? What about a villain in excellent physical condition, like Deathstroke?

(One of the early Bruce Wayne’s brief attempts to be mature and parental. Within a few panels he was referring to the Penguin as “that fatty.” But then the man turned out to be a criminal, so it was okay to look down on him.)

Oz from Oz

You’ll be pleased to know you can get this cartoon as a t-shirt from Mike Jacobsen’s Neato Shop.

Jacobsen is also the creator of this Superman brilliance.

And this warning about the dangers of science going too far.

Jacobsen shares new work regularly from Australia at See Mike Draw.

Prince Bobo’s Place in Nature

This is the frontispiece from Thomas Huxley’s Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863). It shows the skeletons of four apes and a human being.

Huxley’s point was that these skeletons had so much in common that they showed a common ancestry. However, it was easy for Englishmen, reading left to right, to view this lineup as the track of evolution itself rather than the present state of five parallel species. (In other words, to come away with the understanding that the human was supposed to have evolved from the gorilla rather than the human and gorilla having a common ancestor in the past.)

For an article in progress, I’m wondering whether I can make the case that that illustration inspired this lineup of characters drawn by John R. Neill in Rinkitink in Oz (1916).

.
These drawings show the series of transformations that Glinda performs to ***SPOILER*** turn Bilbil the Goat back into his rightful form as Prince Bobo of Boboland.

In that scene L. Frank Baum defined the Tottenhot as “a lower form of man,” closest to animals, echoing a racist western belief about the “Hottentots” almost two centuries old by that point. That idea connects to the medieval concept of the Great Chain of Being. But did it also link, perhaps by parody, to the late Victorian understanding of human evolution?

When Batman and Robin Went Sci-Fi

“The Isle That Time Forgot,” from Batman, #10, is one of the first Batman stories that definitely borrowed from science fiction. Earlier tales of the Caped Crusader had touched on the fantastic, but through the genres of Gothic horror and even fairy tales rather than science-inspired tropes.

That story from April-May 1942 showed the Dynamic Duo landing Dick’s new miniature batplane on an island that appears—to the Boy Wonder at least—to be infested with living dinosaurs. Robin keeps saying he’s seen the giant creatures; Batman keeps telling him to stop talking nonsense. (More specifically, he snaps, “Don’t get gay!”) As shown above, Robin also falls down a bit. I’m not spoiling a good story when I ***SPOILER*** this one: there really are dinosaurs on the island, but they’re mechanical.

In Batman, #24 (Aug-Sept 1944), the Dynamic Duo had their first real time-travel adventure. That is, if we accept that Prof. Carter Nichols could actually send Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson back to ancient Rome through nothing but hypnosis. That story has lately been credited to Dr. Joe Samachson. The Nichols character appeared in several more Batman time-travel adventures as recently as this decade’s “Time and the Batman.”

Joseph Greene is credited with scripting “The Year 3000” in Batman, #26 (Dec 1944–Jan 1945). This is an unabashedly futuristic adventure featuring Bruce Wayne’s distant descendant (and his young pal Ricky!) fighting an invasion from Saturn.

Finally, Batman, #41 (June-July 1947), went all out with Batman and Robin running into real extraterrestrial visitors, and on the cover yet. Gardner Fox is usually credited with writing “Batman, Interplanetary Policeman!” He wrote some of the earliest Batman scripts and continued to work for DC Comics until 1968.

Thus, within a decade of his invention, Batman was involved in science-fiction adventures on top of his usual crime-fighting. The idea of Batman in space is usually associated with the “Silver Age” of DC Comics, starting in 1956. And indeed Pat Curley at Silver Age Comics has mapped the peak of stories in which Batman and Robin meet aliens (not including Superman himself) as from 1958 to 1963. But the tradition goes back to the 1940s.

At that peak time, Julius Schwartz was reinventing DC’s superhero universe with new sci-fi versions of old trademarks like the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom. Superman editor Mort Weisinger was reportedly leaning on Batman editor Jack Schiff to shift toward science fiction. When Schwartz took over the Batman books in 1964 with the “New Look,” he reversed course back to goofy crime stories, but he also integrated Batman and Robin into the larger, now sci-fi-driven DC Universe.

Thus, it was only a matter of time before Dick Grayson would have a hot alien girlfriend.

Finally an Explanation for Dorothy’s Strange Dream

Caleb Crain alerted me to the existence of this public safety poster from the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Health Department:

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor, and a roof, which made one room. One day after returning from the outhouse, Aunt Em forgot to wash her hands, which caused a bacterial infection to spread among the whole family, including the dog. In addition to severe stomach cramps and a dreadful fever, Dorothy started to have some really strange dreams.

Okay, there are less appealing Oz stories than Dorothy Return to Oz.

This poster was part of an award-winning public health campaign. There are also germ-driven versions of Treasure Island; Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret; and other classics.