An Invisible Fire

During a scene in the movie Alien, crew members are startled to see a fist-size hole in their spaceship’s ceiling, still sizzling from some substance that has just burned clear through the metal. That metal-eating stuff is, of course, the blood from the alien. I have met the closest thing there is to that alien’s blood. It came in a small plastic bottle, and it was eating its way through my patient’s hand. On an otherwise ordinary evening, William Turner, a 37-year-old truck driver, noticed a paint stain on his coat. Looking for something to remove the stain, he wandered into the basement of his rented house and rummaged around. At the back of a dusty shelf stood a small bottle labeled Industrial Laundry Rust Remover. The side of the bottle carried the warning CAUTION: DO NOT USE WITHOUT GLOVES. William didn’t read that bit, however, and he removed the ...