Olivier Ameisen, a French cardiologist, found his own cure for alcoholism through a bout of pharmacological self-experimentation 鈥� a story related in his book, The End of My Addiction. While editing our review of Ameisen鈥檚 book, I started thinking about other scientists who鈥檝e become their own test subjects 鈥� and my colleagues were quick to chime in.
Many of the stories we turned up proved hard to verify, and others too scurrilous to publish 鈥� but here are eight extraordinary (and occasionally disgusting) stories of medical self-experimentation.
Experimenting on yourself very rarely leads to scientific glory 鈥� it鈥檚 much more likely to result in swift admission to the casualty ward, or even to the morgue. So New 杏吧原创 doesn鈥檛 recommend you try these experiments on yourself, or anyone else for that matter.
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The vomit sauna
A special place must be reserved in the annals of self-experimentation for medical student , who conducted in the early 19th century to prove that yellow fever was not contagious.
Ffirth started off by pouring 鈥渇resh black vomit鈥� from a patient with yellow fever into cuts in his arm. He didn鈥檛 get yellow fever.
Emboldened by this success, Ffirth graduated to dribbling the vomit into his eyes and smearing assorted other bodily fluids from yellow-fever sufferers over his person 鈥� including blood, spit, sweat and urine (see Top 10 bizarre experiments, if you really want to). He even sat in a 鈥渧omit sauna鈥� full of heated regurgitation vapours, which caused him 鈥済reat pain in [his] head鈥�, but left him in rude health.
Finally, he took to actually ingesting the vomit 鈥� first in pill form, then straight from a patient鈥檚 mouth. Since he still didn鈥檛 get ill, he considered the case proven. Presumably others did too, since he was in due course awarded his medical doctorate.
But they were wrong: yellow fever is contagious, albeit only if directly transmitted into the bloodstream. That was proven by another self-experimenter, US army surgeon Jesse Lazear, who allowed himself to be bitten by yellow fever-infected mosquitoes in the early 1900s.
Ironically, the mosquito whose bite proved fatal to Lazear was , but a wild specimen.
August Bier鈥檚 leaking spine
In 1898, German surgeon invented spinal anaesthesia, which involved a small dose of cocaine being injected into the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the spinal cord. That was a great improvement on existing methods of general anaesthesia, but how effective was it?
To find out, Bier decided to be anaesthetised himself. But things didn鈥檛 go as planned for Bier 鈥� or for his hapless assistant, Augustus Hildebrandt.
Hildebrandt was supposed to administer the cocaine but, thanks to a mix-up with the equipment, Bier was left with a hole in his neck from which cerebrospinal fluid began to flow.
Rather than abandon the effort, however, the two men switched places. Once Hildebrandt had been anaesthetized, Bier stabbed, hammered and burned his assistant, pulled out his pubic hairs and 鈥� presumably eager to leave no stone unturned in testing the new method鈥檚 efficiency 鈥� squashed his testicles.
Once the cocaine had worn off, the pair went out for a boozy dinner, despite their injuries. Both suffered terribly in subsequent days but, while Bier took it easy as he recovered, Hildebrandt had to stand in for his boss at work.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he subsequently fell out with Bier, becoming one of his fiercest critics and denying his discovery of 鈥� which rapidly caught on.
Pierre Curie鈥檚 arm
In June 1903, physicist rolled up his sleeve and revealed a burn-like wound on his arm to a packed audience at the UK鈥檚 . The wound had been caused by a sample of radium salts, which he had taped to the skin of his arm for just 10 hours, more than 50 days earlier.
During the course of his demonstration, Curie dropped some on the desk. The resulting contamination was still detectable, and in need of cleaning up, half a century later.
Curie and his wife, Marie, hoped that radium鈥檚 burning effect might prove useful in the treatment of cancer. But ironically, the radiation that the sample gave off 鈥� which was also emitted by various other chemicals to which the Curies routinely exposed themselves in the course of their work 鈥� were actually having a catastrophic effect on their health.
Both Pierre and Marie were constantly ill, tired and in pain, but their experiments did pave the way for the use of radium in medicine. Later in 1903, they shared for their research on radiation.
JBS Haldane鈥檚 smoking ear
One self-experimenter whose work had long-term personal consequences was the polymath .
Haldane wanted to build on work done by his father, , on the physiology of working Navy divers in the early 20th century. But whereas Haldane senior restricted himself to observation and measurement, his son took a more direct approach, repeatedly putting himself in a decompression chamber to investigate the physiological effects of various levels of gases.
Haldane was motivated by concern , and his work led to a greatly improved understanding of nitrogen narcosis, as well as the safe use of various gases in breathing equipment. But he paid a high price, regularly experiencing seizures as a result of oxygen poisoning 鈥� one resulting in several crushed vertebrae.
He also suffered from , but he was sanguine about the damage. 鈥淭he drum generally heals up,鈥� he said, adding, 鈥渋f a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.鈥�
Nathaniel Kleitman鈥檚 cave
In 1938, the eminent sleep researcher , accompanied by his research assistant Bruce Richardson, moved into Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.
Kleitman wanted to find out if humans could adapt to a longer, 28-hour day. The cave, 120 feet underground, offered : there was no natural light and the temperature remained constant, so there were no clues as to when it was day and night.
It was not a comfortable environment, however: as well as being isolated and claustrophobic, the researchers found themselves sharing their beds with rats.
A month later, they emerged, having discovered that while Kleitman had struggled to change his sleeping patterns, Richardson had adapted to the 28-hour cycle. Their studies , and spawned practical recommendations for shift-workers.
Kleitman didn鈥檛 confine himself to caves: he later spent two weeks on board a submarine and a spell in the Arctic, with its long periods of darkness and daylight, in both cases studying sleep patterns.
Albert Hofmann鈥檚 bicycle ride
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who while looking for medically useful derivatives of the ergot fungus, is also credited as the first to .
Hofmann took his first trip, in 1943, by accident, apparently as a result of accidentally spilling the chemical on his fingertips in his Basel laboratory. He went home and 鈥渟ank into a not-unpleasant condition鈥�, a dreamy state in which he saw psychedelic images.
His second experience was less agreeable: he deliberately took a dose that he believed to be light, but which led to intense effects while riding home on his bicycle 鈥� an episode that has become notorious in recreational pharmaceutical circles.
While the chemical may have uses in psychiatry, its impact to date has arguably been more cultural than medical. Hofmann himself continued to take LSD, and advocate its careful use, for the rest of his life.
Hofmann wasn鈥檛 alone in testing out psychedelic drugs on himself: US chemist Alexander Shulgin ingested many chemicals, including MDMA (ecstasy), leading to , and Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary experimented with LSD on himself, to test, among other things, whether it could be used to treat alcoholism.
Leary eventually lost his job after he began touting psychedelics as a .
Barry Marshall鈥檚 bad breath
Junior doctor Barry Marshall was sure the medical establishment was wrong about the cause of stomach ulcers. The received wisdom was that they were caused primarily by lifestyle factors, but Marshall and pathologist Robin Warren were sure that the bacterium was to blame.
To prove their hypothesis, they needed to examine how the bacteria affected a healthy human volunteer 鈥� but as Marshall explained to New 杏吧原创 in a 2006 interview, 鈥淚 was the only person informed enough to consent鈥�.
Marshall didn鈥檛 tell the hospital鈥檚 ethics committee what he had in mind, for fear of being turned down, or even his own wife, until after he had swallowed the bacteria.
He was fine for three days, but then began vomiting; his wife complained that he had 鈥減utrid breath鈥�. A biopsy taken 10 days later confirmed the bacteria had infected his stomach and that he had , which can eventually lead to ulcers.
It still took another eight years for Marshall and Warren鈥檚 theory to be widely accepted, but their work eventually earned them the .
David Pritchard鈥檚 itchy skin
Various researchers have infected themselves with parasites. One such is biologist , who in 2004 allowed fifty hookworm larvae to burrow through his skin.
Hookworms seem able to modify the body鈥檚 immune response in ways that may be useful in treating immune system disorders, such as asthma and Crohn鈥檚 disease. Such disorders are comparatively rare in places where hookworm infestation is common.
Other members of Pritchard鈥檚 lab also infected themselves with the hookworms, which can survive for up to a decade but are easy to kill off with drugs. 鈥淭hey itch quite a bit when they go through the skin,鈥� , but become really troublesome only when they reached his stomach.
Fifty turned out to be too many: ten was a safer number. Trials are continuing to evaluate the treatment, including a test to see if the hookworms can help multiple sclerosis sufferers.
Are there any notable medical self-experimenters you think we should have included? Tell us about them in the comments.
