Written By Brianna Ansaldo
 

Have you ever had a curiosity so strong that you’ve considered staying awake for 180 hours, tapping your spinal column with cocaine, consuming deadly parasites or pumping 6L of hydrogen gas up your bum?

Probably not. And that is most likely because you are not an idiot.

But… there’s a fine line between idiocy and genius, particularly in medical science.

And so today we explore some of the most extreme stories of heroes and scientists who have experimented on themselves in the name of science (though some of these experiments will make you wonder - in the name of… science?).

These experiments are daring, shocking, hideously painful and, at times, absolutely the last thing you would want to do to yourself as a human.

(And it will come as perhaps deeply unshocking that just 12 of 465 cases of self-experimentation over the last 200 years were women).

These experiments weren’t all pain without glory, however. Seven documented self-experimenters went on to win Nobel Prizes for their self-experimentation work. And incredibly, in 89% of instances, the self-experimenters obtained positive results in support of a hypothesis or produced valuable data. 

But not all of them. Some saw catastrophic levels of failure. Some died. And some held science back by decades by their work.

Is this kind of testing ethical? Can you be the designer/conductor/subject/analyst in an experiment all at the same time? And how far is too far?

The heroes, the idiots and the sad stories are all here.

 
 
 

  • Rod 00:00
    So there's a fine line between genius and idiot. I think we all know that and certainly in this show, we maybe represent that a little bit. Not so much genius or idiot. But nowhere is his line. So fuzzy, as it can be in medical research, particularly when the guinea pigs are the people who are doing the research themselves. So in this episode, you're gonna get a rogues gallery of people who are possibly brave, possibly stupid, or possibly something in between, let's go with maybe misguided.

    Will 00:29
    The 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia was pretty bad. So straight definition of number of people, like 10% of the city's inhabitants died. That's sort of definition that's just a number. Yes. Number 5000 out of 50,000 people died. Oh, over the course of that summer from August to November, like a bunch of people don't second like COVID in Canberra, quite still. And then another 20,000 left the city so everyone, everyone who's not dying is bugging out with yellow fever. I assume they're not with or without their bugging out.

    Rod 01:03
    I'm gonna go with at least x percent habit and they're like we're leaving and bringing it to you possibly welcome possibly Adelphia land for

    Will 01:11
    what was it was the seat of George Washington's government at the time. So George Washington bugged out, Congress bugged out. Everyone's just I'm getting I'm getting out of them. But I leave the bill. Yes, they probably did leave the bill. You know, it's a horrible disease, your skin turns yellow, you vomit black blood, and you bleed from your organs until you die so you can understand why people are leaving

    Rod 01:33
    vomit, black blood, we'll come to that. We really hope so because boah

    Will 01:39
    anyway, by winter, the epidemic sort of faded as people stopped dying and they didn't forget about it, but they were traumatised, but it came back in following years 1797 1798 1799 And so when it came time in 1803 for the young medical students Stubbins Firth,

    Rod 01:59
    I want the conversation between the parents. So, Joe, not what about Keith

    Will 02:05
    Stubbins fuck yes sold on stuff and found straightaway Stubbins is the name and it's gonna have three B's listener. If your first name is Stubbins, I applaud you. So I salute you what an awesome first name it is Stubbins. So you're called stubby or bins when I read this name, I thought there is no other time in history other than like early settler America when you had names like Stubbins

    Rod 02:27
    so did we wouldn't false teeth otherwise no one's called Stubbins.

    Will 02:31
    It no three he's choosing his thesis to do for his Doctor of Medicine degree. Sure. And you know, the topic was pretty obvious. He's like, yellow fever pandemic. We need to know more about what arthritis. No, he did. Not arthritis. I don't want to do yellow fever epidemic. So right in the dedication pages of his thesis to the inhabitants of Philadelphia fellow citizens, you who have felt who have seen who have trembled at the dire progress of a malignant epidemic, and it's March characterised by disorder, dismay, desolation and death, who by your fear and forebodings have accelerated the advances, there have hastened its termination and added force to its malignancy and alone can judge whether this work which is intended to obviate those evils, be worthy of your patronage.

    Rod 03:13
    So two things love the alliteration to none of the people dying of yellow fever, gonna read your thesis meet the people worried about yellow fever, might how many people worried about COVID have read PhD theses on COVID. But they might have been helped by science. I'm not saying they can't be useful. I'm saying it's a nice thing to devote it to people who will never ever, ever even know it exists.

    Will 03:34
    Stubbins had a mission. His goal was to clear up one thing about yellow fever in particular, whether it was contagious. People didn't know at the time, what caused it. And I'll tell you now, it's a bit of a spoiler. It's mosquitoes. But they they thought at the time, you know, do we pass this to each other? Do we not how does this flow around? If you can prove that it's not contagious, then the number one thing about that is then people are not so worried about treating each other?

    Rod 03:56
    Yeah, it's okay to lick people who've got it. We'll come to that. As long as you don't get bitten on the tongue.

    Will 04:03
    Yeah, but I mean, the key thing is, you're not so worried about catching the disease. If it's not contagious, you know, you can you can go and treat people. Yes. So the question for Stubbins Firth was, how do you prove it's not contagious?

    Rod 04:17
    I've got a few ideas, but they're not great.

    Will 04:18
    You've probably tried them. So Stephens laid out in his, in his thesis, a plan of 15 different experiments that he tried

    Rod 04:25
    14 That would not get past ethics, and one that might screech or none.

    Will 04:30
    Yeah, I gotta tell you about these 15 experiments. So experiment one, a small sized dog was confined in a room and fed upon bread soaked in black vomit harvested freshly from a dying yellow fever. Patient dogs love that. After three days, the dog became so fond of it, that he would eat the objective matter without the bread. The bread was therefore discontinued, and he was fed exclusively there on for a week, calling it fed. So this is again the black vomit that came from the dying low fever patients that had not slipped my mind. After the first day he had black discharges per annum per annum bumhole you put annum which continued for two days after he fed on other substances. No other effects was produced upon the animal. He enjoyed his good health after the experiment as before.

    Rod 05:22
    Just food, oil puke blood,

    Will 05:25
    He just pood some black poos, and he really enjoyed eating the black vomit experiment to a small size cat was confined in a room and kept without food. At the end of three days, I gave her three ounces of the black format so the cat is discerning you've got it, you got to wait until the cat is ready to eat, which she ate with avidity. The same quantity was given her daily for five days without her evincing any signs of disease, the discharges were of a darker colour.

    Rod 05:49
    just feeding things. Once I'm not hungry, I'm not that hungry. When do you think you will be never I'm going to start on my fingers.

    Will 05:57
    Ok let's ramp up. Experiment three. Having made a large incision into the back of a dog and dissected the skin off from the cellular membrane and muscles thereby forming a cavity into which I poured one gramme of fresh black vomit obtained for a patient in the city hospital who has in the last agonies and during the skin together kept it in that situation by means of a dry suture. The dog was confined and prevented from irritating his back by rubbing it, the incision heals by the first intention the black vomit was absorbed, and he continued perfectly healthy.

    Rod 06:26
    I love the description. Basically, I dug a hole in a dog. Well, you can sign it or you want to cover it up. I dug a hole in the dog, and then I stapled it shut with some vomit in there. We've all done that. Some dogs need more discipline than others.

    Will 06:38
    Things get a little bit dark next. Now it's gonna take it to the jugular vein of a dog was opened and one ounce of black vomit injected into it. He immediately showed signs of great uneasiness, puked and purged violently became convulsed and expired in 10 minutes in great agony.

    Rod 06:54
    So when I say opened the vein that might have an effect to Yes, yes, I mean a tiny hole enough to pour puking because otherwise I'm going to say it probably was upset because it was bleeding out

    Will 07:07
    it could be well his experiment five is testing that because experiment five. Well, so experiment four proves it is deadly if you put the puke straight into your jugular experiment five. You could have guessed the same experiment was repeated with water with precisely the same result is therefore self evident that water injected into the blood vessels produces the same effect as the black vomit. So basically don't open your jugular inject strike.

    Rod 07:30
    That's only liquids they should have tried solids. Then we tried sand. Then we went with leaves. We got to be sure. Gas. Plasma?

    Will 07:40
    Well, no because you know what he wants to be sure about is the contagion of yellow fever. So putting it in dogs

    Rod 07:45
    that come through sand or leaves or dogs like I think I think he was dog or you will get the yellow fever

    Will 07:51
    experiment six on the fourth of October 1802. I made an incision in my left arm midway between the elbow and the wrist so as to draw a few drops of blood into the incision, I introduced some fresh black vomit. Yeah, a slight degree of inflammation ensued, which entirely subsided in three days and the wound healed up very readily.

    Rod 08:09
    I will give any medical practitioner dodgy or otherwise who says I'm going to do it to me. Like that's, that's a hat tip. That's a good on your champ.

    Will 08:17
    I'll come back to that later. It's actually a thread throughout this whole episode.

    Rod 08:21
    And many I mean, the number of people went Fuck it. I'll do it on me. I'll do it on me. I'll do it on me. We just covered an episode where a gentleman did it on him, indeed, but it will indeed.

    Will 08:31
    Experimen seven, four days after the above experiment, having obtained some fresh black vomit, I made a considerable incision in my right arm, into which I introduced five drops of it have enclosed the sides of the wound and applied an adhesive plaster over it with a bandage around the arm. It was left for two days, where upon examination it appeared that no more inflammation had taken place than would have occurred had not the black form had been introduced.

    Rod 08:52
    So what's Plan B when he goes oh, fuck now I've got a poultice. Mercury tinctures of Loudon

    Will 08:59
    Yes. That that hope,

    Rod 09:02
    but no. Like, Oh, good. It is infectious. Oh, wait.

    Will 09:05
    I think he's working off the basis here that he really believes it's not. He's really working from the No, this is not infectious.

    Rod 09:11
    So he's not testing he's trying to prove Yeah, he is. That's not science.

    Will 09:15
    Experiment eight is basically repetition. Yeah, I've repeated experiments six and 720 times on various parts of my body with precisely the same results.

    Rod 09:23
    Except by it by about seven times. I think I quite like it. Kind of into this.

    Will 09:29
    Don't give me the bread and blood. Just Just give me the ball.

    Rod 09:32
    My problem is, how do I get enough vomit? That was as everyone's left

    Will 09:36
    There was a lot of vomit around there was a lot of experiment nine. This is where it gets fun. Cool. Two drops of fresh black vomit were dropped into my right eye.

    Rod 09:47
    See, I can't do eyedrops they don't bother me. I just no matter what I literally have to hold my eye open like a beast closes too quickly. It closes on its own no matter what I do and people are Why are you scared? So I'm not scared. I just cannot convince my eye to stay open. My wife conducts cardio stoop looks slightly tinged, it's seen and she was wanting to do that. It's like I try. So I don't care whether it's vomit. I just can't get eyedrops in to smear it all over my face. You couldn't do this bit I have to blink it and I need a litre of black vomit would be fine with selling the vomit onto your skin. That's easy, but nothing I dropped. My skin can't resist the scalpel no matter how much flinches.

    Will 10:23
    Well he says it's roughly like normal eyedrops. It felt a little bit uneasy for a minute, but producing no pain or inflammation. I have frequently had cold water produce the same effect can when we're getting ready to come on experiment in three ounces of recent black vomit were put into an iron skillet and sit on the fire that the fluid may evaporate. Everybody clear the room during which time I frequently held my head over it and inhaled the gas or steam without experiencing any unpleasant situation.

    Rod 10:47
    Except for wanting to throw up on an inhale hot vomit gas. I don't care if it's got yellow fever, it's hot vomit.

    Will 10:57
    It is it's hot vomit gas. It's not good.

    Rod 11:01
    Or no ill effects like Okay, now here's the problem this guy is not representative of humans. He's really not isn't you cannot generalise from this robot.

    Will 11:08
    Okay, experiment 11 basically the same as the last one, but he got a lot of it and boiled it in a pot for a few hours. Yes, in a confined room. So he sat in the room sucking in the fumes, while it reduced down to like a hard paste.

    Rod 11:23
    Or like vomit hash.

    Will 11:24
    Yes. Yes vomit hash. He got rid of all of the liquid. So the experiment 11 was first sitting there and getting the fumes. No result. Experiment 12 Now I have a paste of black vomit from the last experiment. The extract procured during the previous experiment was made into pills. And these were all swallowed on the same day without the least effects produced by them. Why? What just while he made little pills, I'm going to turn the doctor bills. Doctor. I've made some little vomit

    Rod 11:52
    My buddy's a pharmacist he needed something to do Can you encapsulate these

    Will 11:56
    after repeating the last two expect this is number 13. After repeating the last two experiments several times, and with precisely the same results, I drank half an ounce of the black vomit immediately after it was ejected from a patient spoke passionate puking patient and sucked it down and diluting it with an ounce and a half of water. Look I'm not a monster

    Rod 12:13
    Direct me to the hot ones because the thing that grosses me out is what if I don't find them attractive enough?

    Will 12:19
    Let's use saying that he hasn't made any comment he said from a dying patient. I will take the black vomit that you have ejected and I will drink he poo it could

    Rod 12:28
    I'll can get someone in the cup.

    Will 12:32
    He says the taste was slightly acidic. No more effect was produced than if I had taken water alone. Again, not a human having satisfied myself that the black vomit itself does

    Rod 12:43
    not. So you come to me with a cup of puke and you move it towards me. I'm topping that up immediately. I'm topping that cup up like it's not like the it's not that bad. Like in a mixer. It's puke. No, I mean I'm topping up as in blergh.

    Will 13:00
    So so you're not you're not the vomit drinking scientist.

    Rod 13:02
    No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm more of your faecal transplant going on vomit drinking science. Yeah, I'll eat capsules of other people shit, obviously, but I'm not going to drink vomit. I have my standards,

    Will 13:12
    fresh vomit as well. Why don't you try the fresh and the cooked vomit, stilled. He made a cure. Having satisfied myself that the black vomit could not communicate the disease I thought of desisting from any further experiments, but upon mature consideration, I thought it best to continue them which I did, repeating them a great number of times and varying them as much as possible with precisely the same results. But what if it's not the vomit but the sweat or the blood or the saliva or the urine,

    Rod 13:37
    so they're another 100 Whatever divisible by 15 and other 193 experiment starts combining the experiments here experiment 14 caught myself and piss in it.

    Will 13:45
    I got the blood from a dying patient and injected it into my leg cool result. So he finished up with experiment 15 He got the saliva the sweat and the bile from a sick patient and then rubbed it into his eyes and incisions in his body. And then finally he got the patient's urine and then rubbed it into obits of his body as well which again, produce no difference at all except for some minor irritation when he rubbed the urine into his eyes.

    Rod 14:09
    Well, that happens to the best of us.

    Will 14:12
    You'll be pleased to know that Stubbins passed his thesis.

    Rod 14:15
    Oh fuck I forgot this just to get a PhD. Like you and I both done those. I barely had to do any of that. Did you do any of that? Almost nothing

    Will 14:25
    how much urine did you rub into your face, your own your own or are dying patients here?

    Rod 14:28
    It's fair to say but none of it was to do with my my subject like like, that was not a requirement. That was as part of the experience.

    Will 14:36
    He was eventually shown to be wrong. His idea about yellow fever was kind of it was okay, but it's carried by mosquitoes. And he'd taken blood and vomit from patients that happened to be just passed their contagious state.

    Rod 14:48
    But are you shitting me so that was the whole happenstance so that it's not contagious anymore. I never thought to change that up.

    Will 14:55
    But that's not really what I'm interested in today. What I'm but I am what I mean. As your steam is as you've painted throughout this, the scientists who do it to themselves the ones who take it on the chin and do the self experimentation themselves, I want to revel in the heroism and explore its ethics, all of the scientists who experimented on themselves

    Will 15:36
    Welcome to The Wholesome Show,

    Rod 15:39
    The podcast that explores our own holes for the whole of science.

    Will 15:43
    The Wholesome Show is me Will Grant.

    Rod 15:45
    And me brave whole explorer Rod Lamberts.

    Will 15:48
    So what I've got I've got a bunch of stories for you here like little mini stories of scientists. I want the bookstore doing them themselves. I think there might be some other puke stories in here. I've got a little jar here. Do you pull a name out of the hat? I'll tell you that story. There's there's basically a collection here of heroes, idiots and sad stories what colour paper the idiots because I want the idiots there's a bunch of sources for this. They a lot of different places. And I'll talk about them at the end. But I did want to flag Alex Bowsers work electrified sheep, particularly for this hood Archie wills, Horace Wells. Not quite a hero not not quite an idiot. But he's isn't the indeterminant character. He's He's a dentist in the mid 19th century in America

    Rod 16:29
    self exploring dentistry. Yes, I'm hearing hero,

    Will 16:33
    big phase here. And we'll find a lot of people in this exploring anaesthesia. A lot of the people that have done self experimentation. It's about anaesthetics .

    Rod 16:42
    An excuse to get high.

    Will 16:42
    So his first go was with nitrous oxide. He was one of the earliest to explore the use of nitrous oxide in dentistry. So in 1844, he got his assistant John Riggs, to dose him with nitrous oxide, and then extract one of his teeth.

    Rod 17:00
    So it was going well at first, I want my assistant to give me some of the giggle gas. I don't know why he needed to get one of these teeth out. We'll find out the effect on dentistry. I'm going out on a limb here.

    Will 17:12
    He it was successful. He didn't mind having his tooth pulled out straightaway. He also experimented with ether and chloroform. And he eventually became addicted to chloroform due to excessive use.

    Rod 17:23
    Oh, what a shit thing to be addicted to

    Will 17:24
    I have not heard of anyone previously addicted to chloroform

    Rod 17:28
    doesn't just make you feel like like you've got brain damage and then you wake up feeling worse?

    Will 17:32
    I think so I think so. He inhaled chloroform as an aesthetic shortly before his suicide four years later, so I put him in the sad category.

    Rod 17:40
    So it's shortly before do you mean as in a way to make it happen?

    Will 17:43
    I think so. You used it. Give me another one.

    Rod 17:45
    Oh, this one better be the lucky one. Herbert Woolard.

    Will 17:52
    Okay. As I said before, heroes, idiots and sad stories. Fuck me. These guys. These guys are the idiots. Habit will odd and Edward Carmichael. Yes. So the key thing about these guys is we know they were both involved in the experiment. But we don't know which one did which job. So they published the paper together. And they said that one of us was involved in one bit and the other was involved in the other didn't say who? The perfect crime in 1933. anatomists Herbert will odd and Edward Carmichael wanted to study referred pain, pain in one part of the body comes out somewhere else.

    Rod 18:25
    Yeah, you get poked in the eye and your knee falls off.

    Will 18:28
    Something like that. But you know, they were most interested in like a heart attack sort of thing. You know, you get pain down your left side, your left arm kind of thing. They're thinking, what is the idea of referred pain? So what they're gonna have to do is trigger some pain and see where it pops out in the body. I'm listening, one of the doctors lay spreadeagled on a table with his genitals out.

    Rod 18:49
    Well, even though there's obvious of course.

    Rod 18:52
    The other stood over him, gripped his scrotal sack and stretched it out. Then he put like a little I guess, some sort of flat surface a pan like a pan a little frying pan sort of thing on on the ball

    Rod 19:07
    that has lip as well as the scrotum was leaving over the edge of the lip of the pan and the ball was in the pan that.

    Will 19:13
    they just wanted to get one ball. Yeah, he just wanted a monster. And then he gradually stacked weights on it to see what the pain was like

    Rod 19:21
    BAD. They're taking a fetish and they're trying to make it look like science.

    Will 19:25
    They published it in the journal Brain, which is a very important journal what you know 1933 They did the experiment. So let's say they published the year after.

    Rod 19:33
    brain being a word for scrotum. So that's quite a coincidence.

    Will 19:38
    300 grammes produced slight discomfort in the right groin 650 grammes cause severe pain to the right side of the body. They confirmed that injury to the testicles does indeed cause pain to be referred throughout the body. For instance, as the weight on the testicle increased to over two pounds the subject reported pain of a sickening character, not only in his groyne but also spreading across his back.

    Rod 19:59
    So I don't know if that's referred pain. I think that's just pain. If they'd squashed his ball and his hand started hurting, I'd go okay, that's unusual. But he's like, my ball hurts and everything that radiates from it as the weights increase. That's not revealed. I'm sorry. Let's start with military.

    Will 20:18
    Just there are some real heroes in this batch,

    Rod 20:20
    but I'll come on those.

    Will 20:22
    Those guys are well up in the idiot front.

    Rod 20:24
    Ball in a fry pan with bricks on it. Heroes. absolute heroes.

    Will 20:28
    Give you another one.

    Rod 20:29
    Nicholas Senn

    Will 20:31
    Ah, Nicholas Senn. Okay. He's one of my favourites.

    Rod 20:34
    Hope it's for the wrong reasons.

    Will 20:35
    Yes. Good. Nicholas, and I've broken into two parts.

    Rod 20:38
    So the next part is next week.

    Will 20:40
    You'll get Nicolas Sen. again later. Nicolas Senn. He was a an army surgeon working in America at the end of the 19th century. He rose to be pretty prominent in the like, he became Chief Surgeon of the Sixth Army Corps in 1898, founder of the Association of military surgeons in the United States and president of the American Medical Association. 1897 - 1898. So average achiever. Yeah, yeah, he's done. Right. Okay, so, one of his experiments in 1901 He wanted to work out of cancer is contagious. And we're really excited and he draws a little bit from old Stubbins is he does he got the lip cancer from patient and extracted a lymph node from that the cancer from that and then surgically inserted a piece of that cancerous lymph node under his own skin don't after two weeks the transplant started to fade and send concluded that cancer is not contagious.

    Rod 21:37
    Done. That's cool fuck repetition. I took one bit from one person stuck a tiny bit in me and one part of my body didn't get me cancer job done.

    Will 21:45
    Repetition might be one of the interesting things here. John had kept on Hunter Hunter, remember? Oh, okay. Okay. Not really much of a hero bit of an idiot. Excellent. Finally, well, I can get on board with 18th century London. London's population is booming. Also booming sex work and also booming with all the sex work in London.

    Rod 22:09
    Diseases?

    Will 22:09
    sexually transmitted diseases coincidence all over the place. Correlation is not causation. Few people knew how sexually transmitted diseases work. They knew that there was the sex isn't and then there's the disease, the

    Rod 22:20
    Didn't the name give it away?

    Will 22:21
    I don't think they knew that.

    Rod 22:23
    They don't call it that those kinds of diseases.

    Will 22:24
    They didn't have good ideas of viruses or bacteria back then. I don't know science existed on how they developed or if if the sexually transmitted diseases are related to each other. They just knew they turn off on your dog or your vagina. And it's like, something's not great here. Yeah, it's not supposed to be that colour. John hunter. He actually did a lot of other good science he helped out in the smallpox vaccine with Edward Jenner. It was like Edward Jenner supervisor. But anyway, he believed that Gonorrhoea was just an early stage of syphilis. So he theorised that if Gonorrhoea could be treated early, it would prevent its symptoms from escalating and becoming syphilis. What he did he put fluids from one of his patients with Gonorrhoea into self inflicted cuts on his penis. So he could.

    Rod 23:08
    I'm already delighted.

    Will 23:10
    So he could see how the disease would run its course because the problem is he couldn't he couldn't fully see, whereas he can monitor this one nice and closely.

    Rod 23:17
    Let's not pretend the method doesn't have issues. So first up, put cuts in your dingdong you know, that's where I go. I want a different method. I'm already out cut your peepee and then put in it. I mean, maybe I'm in the wrong tribe. You know, like there was not a lot of where's your mail rituals to make me a man. Okay, damaging my pants area.

    Will 23:41
    Problem was the problem. He started showing symptoms of the disease. So started showing symptoms of gonorrhoea, and he thought he made a breakthrough, except for all those who because he'd been running before he saw the progression from Gonorrhoea to syphilis. But the problem was the patient he got the pus from both had both.

    Rod 23:57
    Had both. Yeah, it's like Gonorrhoea doesn't protect you from syphilis.

    Will 24:01
    Hunter gave himself painful sexual disease and hindered STD research for nearly half a century as well. Yeah, because they continued to think after that the syphilis was the flow on from Gonorrhoea

    Rod 24:13
    that's my favourite bit. Not only that, I fucked it up. I stopped anyone else from getting it right for half a century.

    Will 24:19
    He also convinced physicians to use mercury vapour and cut off infected sores, believing it would stop syphilis from developing so catastrophic failure there.

    Rod 24:28
    No, there was more than fail. That was active active damage. That's genius. I'm getting a lot this guy, Johann Wilhelm Ritter

    Will 24:37
    Ritter is a hero or an idiot?

    Rod 24:39
    Ritter. Idiot.

    Will 24:41
    Alessandro Volta invented the world's first battery in 1800. And Johan Wilhem Ritter heard about it he's he's like, I need to try this for myself and

    Rod 24:51
    strap it on my head.

    Will 24:53
    Close, close.I need to not just try this for myself but on myself.

    Rod 24:59
    Oh, Wondering how many batteries you can eat before you get bad side effect?

    Will 25:04
    He started by exposing his tongue to the current

    Rod 25:06
    of course he did enjoy that immensely. He moved on.

    Will 25:09
    It had an acidic flavour then he shoved the wires in his nose. Yes, he did. And this made him sneeze.

    Rod 25:16
    Anything like this has the word shoving it. Like where this is going

    Will 25:19
    his eyeballs. This cause strange colours to swim in his vision. Next up, come on, you know it don't let me down. Straight to the dick. Yep. So I can't believe he took that long. Okay, he wrapped his penis up in a cloth soaked in lukewarm milk.

    Rod 25:35
    Well in his defence who doesn't do that at night anyway? Okay.

    Will 25:40
    He's zapped it with the wires coming out of the battery. And he got erect.

    Rod 25:46
    that's called a fear boner. Because he doesn't

    Will 25:49
    And then he came. He simply seems to be the world's first electro stimulated orgasm.

    Rod 25:55
    How strong is the battery just asking for science?

    Will 25:59
    I don't actually know. I have no idea like old school battery. It's

    Rod 26:02
    it's not a car battery.

    Will 26:03
    It's not far off the house. It's plates of metal and acid.

    Rod 26:06
    I think the milk might have had a role as well, though

    Will 26:08
    it could have done. But the problem was he quite liked this.

    Rod 26:13
    What's the problem with it? It's beautiful man.

    Will 26:15
    After this, he would tell people he was going to marry his battery. He kept going. He increased the current more and more, forcing himself to endure longer and longer periods and using OPM to dull the pain. That's his clever, repeated electrification caused his eyes to grow infected. He injured frequent headaches, muscle spasms, numbness and stomach cramps, his lungs filled with mucus he temporarily lost much of the sensation of his tongue. dizzy spells overcame him causing him to collapse. At one time, the current paralysed his arm for a week. And yet he continued boasting I have not shrunk from thoroughly assuring myself as the in variability of the results through frequent repetition,

    Rod 26:54
    best orgasm you've ever had, regardless of the cost?

    Will 26:58
    I know that he definitely did on on the genitals. But I think he went all over the body. He's just zapping himself.

    Rod 27:04
    This wasn't just increasingly it was a little bit was good. A lot must be great.

    Will 27:08
    He's just seeing how far he can go. And he just keeps going. This is like 80. No, no doesn't. Sure one reviewer of his work commented never has a physicist experimented so careless physicists his body? Yes, he is described as a physicist.

    Rod 27:26
    I'm waiting for physiologist at least. But no. This is a guy who should be calculating what happens when kids spin around on the playground equipment

    Will 27:35
    or the movement of the sun or electrons? Yeah, he's seeing what happens when you electrify bits of your body not coming from a battery. His weakened condition is believed to has contributed to his death from tuberculosis at the age of 33. Not one of the good ones. No, it's not. There's other things going on. But I don't think he was made healthier by his habits.

    Rod 27:54
    It sounds a little bit like a moral judgement, though. Like, isn't he the guy who used to electrocute is dict. And you're like, Yeah, that's what a killed him. It's like no, TB kills a lot of people.

    Will 28:02
    Are you. Are you on his side here.

    Rod 28:04
    I think he's been misrepresented. I think it's prejudice. All right. You got David Pritchard

    Will 28:11
    in the 1980s UK parasitologist David Pritchard was travelling through Papua New Guinea,

    Rod 28:16
    no bad story starts with parasitologist. All good from here.

    Will 28:20
    I'll come to some general trends in this later. But one of the things is very clear. parasitologist you're not a real parasitologist unless you've had some parasites, like I've always said that travelling through Papa New Guinea, and observed that locals who had hookworm infections had far fewer allergy symptoms than their peers who didn't have the hookworm worth it. He thought about this for a while and in 2004 he came back he taped 50 parasitic hookworms to his arm and let them crawl through his skin to infect him. He did end up demonstrating that mild hookworm infections could reduce allergy symptoms by calming the body's immune response to allergens, okay, and might be something in asthma or something like that might be useful there. But there's others that have given sort of mixed results. So 2017 study showed that hookworm secrete a protein that can train your immune system not to inflame tissues when you inhale allergy or asthma triggers, but another study is less promising looking, but it didn't seem to be 100% clear that hookworm is a solution. And you can still get injected with hookworms.

    Rod 29:22
    Mild is doing a lot of work there when you sit on a mild infestation or mild infection with how do you keep it mild? I got 49 of you can come in but 15 not mild.

    Will 29:36
    I have no idea.

    Rod 29:37
    I have no head count every day. Anything that starts with first infect yourself with the thing that people avoid like the plague I think ah, are we know about Barry Barry Marshall? Look,

    Will 29:46
    I had to put a few of these. Yeah, because we have talked about these before. So Barry Marshall. You know, he did drink a potion, probably not a potion, Helicobacter pylori, to demonstrate that it was the cause of stomach ulcers. Went on to win a Nobel Prize and get a wholesome Show episode for his efforts.

    Rod 30:06
    And to this day, he still says I don't really remember the Nobel Prize, but when I heard you guys covered me, that's when he actually stopped doing any research.

    Will 30:14
    He fits clearly into the hero category. He did something and got deserved accolades for

    Rod 30:20
    8 million kronor. And one of those really fancy tuxes with the ties white and you wear tails,

    Will 30:26
    and I like them. I know that you have to sometimes but why don't you like a nice tux? I do I do. You don't like tails? Oh my god. Rosalyn Yalow. Can't find much of her story. I included her because she's the only woman that I've got in the list here.

    Rod 30:42
    Are you saying men are more renowned for being idiotic self experimenters than women?

    Will 30:47
    Vastly? So I'll tell you the numbers shocked an American medical physicist. She collaborated with Solomon Burson to develop radio immuno assay. So radio isotopes, injected into your blood to measure tiny quantities of biological substances. They flow around the around the body. So nuclear medicine, yeah, like a nuclear imaging type thing. And she tested it on herself and won the Nobel Prize for her efforts in this space. So she's hero.

    Rod 31:14
    She's here, but that's not very interesting. I mean, well done on the Nobel Prize, but like, come on, can you do something dumb as well? Can she dress weird? Look? I mean, you know, I want to track from a Nobel I mean, I'm still waiting for my Nobel Prize in podcasting. Yeah, it's coming Science category. Nathaniel Kleinman.

    Will 31:32
    Nathaniel Klietman is a physiologist and sleep researcher, and he's considered the father of modern sleep research. He opened the world's first sleep lab in 1925. He published like the major textbook on sleep in 1939.

    Rod 31:45
    I started reading it. I dozed off, he just, you're welcome.

    Will 31:48
    That's beautiful. He discovered an REM sleep. But early on, he's doing a lot of the work on himself.

    Rod 31:54
    doesn't sound terrible. I'm a sleep researcher. What are you doing? experimenting.

    Will 32:00
    He tracked above the Arctic Circle. a two week stay underwater in a submarine during World War Two to see how it affects his sleep.

    Rod 32:06
    Did the claustrophobia have anything to do with it? I don't know. I think if he's screaming 24/7 It's harder to sleep.

    Will 32:11
    He and his research assistant spent 28 days in an underground cave in Kentucky where there's no natural light to see how that would affect their circadian rhythms. This is 32 days. Yeah, at home it was 140 feet below ground, sleeping for nine hours working for 10 and resting for another nine hours. So Klietman, who was 43 at the time, was unable to adjust his 24 hour internal clock over the course of the month. Whereas his assistant who was only 20 adjusted to the new 28 hour day within the first week underground, so interesting. It's it's the first sorts of studies that lead into the idea of circadian rhythms. He spent years using himself as a guinea pig in his experiments now he's not there's not worms or anything like that. He's just having a nap for science. One time he kept himself awake for 180 hours straight to study the effects of sleep deprivation. He lives to be 104 180 hours I'm dead.

    Rod 33:04
    I'm bad at 17 hours. How long you've been awake for? August Bier. Yeah, man.

    Will 33:15
    Yeah, these guys are idiots. Beginning of the 20th century, August Carl Gustaf Bier was a German surgeon was a German working on methods for spinal anaesthesia. Oh, this is gonna go well, his idea was injecting cocaine into cerebrospinal fluid.

    Rod 33:33
    That's what I told the judge and they did not buy it.

    Will 33:37
    He volunteered himself Of course he's so his assistant had him down on the table. Got the spinal needle in into the into the spine. cerebrospinal fluid was flowing out freely from it cool. He discovered the needle they had with the cocaine was the wrong size cool, couldn't couldn't get it just blew it in with a stroke. During the efforts to fit the syringe into the hub of the needle. A great deal of cerebrospinal fluid oozed out Feck me most of the cocaine to be injected was lost and the spinal anaesthetic was considered a complete failure. However, that sounds great beer decided not to miss the occasion. No So later that same evening, they switched around and be performed a cocaine spinal anaesthetic on his system, Hildebrand after the injection Hildebrand was temporarily unable to move or feel any sensation in his legs. So relaxing. Well, that's the that's what they're looking for. The profound anaesthesia of his legs was demonstrated using increasingly painful stimuli including a needle inserted down to the femur. A blow with an iron hammer to the shins, ripping out his pubic hair

    Rod 34:40
    that wasn't on the protocol is like this would be funny,

    Will 34:42
    strong pressure and traction to his testicles. Later that evening, they celebrated with wine and cigars. They both experienced severe post spinal headaches. The loss was lasting for days and days. They himself lost what eight litres of spinal fluid and apparently apparently they never worked to get Other after that

    Rod 35:00
    wonder why the things that happened? We don't talk about it anymore. cocaine into the cerebrospinal fluid.

    Will 35:07
    I think it worked. I think it worked. It's it's probably a pretty good

    Rod 35:10
    one. Yeah. James Young Simpson.

    Will 35:15
    Oh, thank you very much to listen. Darren Saunders for this one, listener and friend of the pod. So James Young Simpson, Scottish obstetrician, and significant figure in the history of medicine, like he did a lot of things. But what he and his friends used to do is like we're looking for anaesthetics. And so he and his friends every time they could get one, they would go to Simpsons house sit around in the evening and trying new chemicals to see if they had any anaesthetic effects

    Rod 35:43
    so people don't do it anymore. That's the problem with video games people don't they don't use their imaginations. I know sitting around seeing if you can increase the size. You're gonna do it. There's no Nintendo. Let's get loaded. Do a little bit of surgery. See what people do still get loaded. But but only you can play video games on anaesthesia. It's not well,

    Will 35:59
    he's getting loaded for science. Yeah, so they finally found some chloroform, as we mentioned before for motor drive the others, and on the fourth of November 1847, Simpson and his friend decided to try the chloroform themselves, which they had obtained from a local pharmacist. On inhaling the chemical they found a general mood of cheer and humour had set in. But suddenly, all of them collapsed only to regain consciousness the next morning. He knew as soon as he woke up that he'd found something that could be used as an as an anaesthetic,

    Rod 36:24
    that in the flower and his butt, he knew this arose he didn't know where that came from. Werner Forssman

    Will 36:33
    he says some strange things about the ethics of this does he a he says it all his story is a story that just things German physician and researcher German again 1929 He hypothesised that a catheter, one of my favourites, which had been at the time being used urinary catheter, could be inserted directly into the heart for subset applications as directly delivering drugs, injecting dyes if you need like, the radio dyes, or measuring blood pressure, but at the time, everyone was like, No way. No way you put anything in the heart. You are You are dead, it explodes and that's the end of it. But he said, Well, alright, I'm gonna try this myself. His department chief said No, don't. But anyway,

    Rod 37:14
    let me put that in writing. No, don't.

    Will 37:18
    Forssman persuaded the operating nurse to assist him. She agreed with and said, Only if you do it to me, but not to yourself. And Forsman is like, Yeah, cool. Cool. I will do it to you.

    Rod 37:30
    Well, I know she's a keeper.

    Will 37:31
    She looks she's a strong volunteer. No, sir. You are too important. Forssman tricked her by restraining her to the operating table, and pretending to locally and anaesthetise and cut her arm while actually he's doing it on himself. Then once he's got it in, he lets her go and says, Okay, you're gonna need to help me now. Because he's already got the urinary catheter into the vein in his arm. And he's like, Alright, can you push it all the way through into my heart. So up it goes, slide it through. And she's like, Alright, I guess I'll help now that you've, you've made me do this. Thanks, buddy. slid it all the way through. And then he says, Can you now call the X ray department? So they walked down to the X ray department with the catheter, go live in as long as you can. And then you would? And the X ray department guys like what do you what are you doing here, buddy, right. But he took an x ray and showed that the catheter was 60 centimetres up his arm and all the way into his heart. And Forssman was fired twice. For you're not just

    Rod 38:29
    fired, your double fired. Get out,

    Will 38:32
    he was fired. And then they kind of gave him his job back. And then they're like, No, you

    Rod 38:37
    Don't do that again. And you did that again.

    Will 38:39
    Now look at how he was doing this in the 1930s. stuff in Germany on a since 1929. stuff in Germany got really weird. He was fired for a while he became a Nazi. I don't think he was involved in the worst. He was like an Army doctor during you know, helping out troops and stuff like that. Then he was a lumberjack for a while after the war. He couldn't really get a medical medical job. I think while he was a lumberjack in 1956. They rang him up and said, Dude, you got the Nobel Prize. Oh, what I know. So he got the Nobel Prize for it. And he's probably not a perfect person. No, but a bit of a bit of a hero there.

    Rod 39:16
    That's a that's a tricky one. He's a double edged sword. Isaac Newton, who's, who's she?

    Will 39:21
    Isaac Newton. We've talked about Isaac Newton before. And he's not famous in the world of self experimentation. This is one of his experiments when he's trying to work out how colour works. And sounds good. There was a debate. I don't know. I don't know if this is a debate in Isaac Newton's head or with the rest of the world where the colour was something that was out there in the world. You know, your your tree is green and brown your apple is red, or if it's a product of your eye. Yeah,

    Rod 39:46
    so what he did oh, that's that whole Do you see read the same way? I see.

    Will 39:49
    You know how I can't do eyedrops? This one they got even find harder. Although to be fair, it doesn't matter if you blink I suppose

    Will 39:49
    Yeah, like that. He said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to change the curvature of my eyeball and see what happens well, so he got he got a bodkin which is like a thick wooden sewing needle and put it down beside his eyebrow. This is I think this is when he's a teenager as well. I took a bodkin betwixt my eye and bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could. And so he's sort of squeezed, squeezing and deforming his eyeball.

    Will 40:10
    he's not normally found as physically heroic, but the idea of squeezing your eyeball from the inside of

    Rod 40:26
    fricking bodkin and why don't you do sales and shit with that, like you saw a blank canvas with basically I don't know, whale tendons or something and bits of rope that's not a sort of delicate device.

    Will 40:36
    He saw some spots. And that's called panic. When you poke yourself in the eye, you disrupt your vision. He didn't blind himself. And the experiment and subsequent related ones led him to some big discoveries in optics.

    Rod 40:49
    yeah, he did do a lot of optics. I didn't realise it didn't like that. Justin, oh, Schmidt ah, old one may

    Will 40:57
    not my code again. I just had to include him because we did talk about talking about him on this podcast a while ago and in fairness, all of these stories like this sort of stories that is crack. But a while ago, Ron told me the story of Justin Oh Schmidt, who invented the Schmidt pain index, which describes the stinging pain of different ants, bees, wasps and sore flies, basically by getting them to stink him and then he would describe it. The worst was the tarantula hawk, tarantula hawk, wasp wasp. The sting of the artistic Wasp which was a number two on this four point scale was described as pure then messy then corrosive love and marriage followed by divorce.

    Rod 41:36
    That was yes pretty ballsy doing that I'm going to steal myself instead myself and then describe them carefully. Edwin Katskee

    Will 41:45
    Oh, he is well down on the idiot front.

    Rod 41:47
    Excellent. Finally an idiot. Finally the hero emerges.

    Will 41:52
    1936. Like many others, Edwin Katskee is thinking about anaesthetics. Yeah, is proctologist working in Nebraska. Cocaine was the the idea here, not of November 25 1936. He took what I've seen described, and we can't find any of the actual numbers on this as a large injection of cocaine, and then recorded the clinical course of his symptoms in notes that he wrote on the wall of his office.

    Rod 42:18
    Which was coincidentally added and had no window.

    Will 42:21
    Well, dear. Yeah. Katskee, scrawled the notes in no apparent order, but it's possible based on how crazy the handwriting gets to kind of work out an order. So an early note that is written in decent handwriting is like eyes, mildly dilated vision. Excellent. Then there's other things and you can see like bouts of paralysis and convulsions. So partial recovery, smokes a cigarette high up on the wall, he scribbled now able to stand up and elsewhere. After depression is terrible advice, all inquisitive MDs to lay off this stuff. Probably the last thing that he said was in a shaky hand towards the end clinical course over about 12 minutes. This ended with the words paralysis, which tapered off in a wavy scroll, you can see some of this writing here. That's what most of my first year anthropology notes look like descending to the floor. So the word that's the last word that he ever wrote, oh, he died. That was a death due to self experimentation. Nikolas Senn again, too. So part one, he inserted that piece of cancer under his skin to see if it was contagious. Yeah, Part Two was it's a very different task. He ate a whole cancer patient around 1886 Sen pumps nearly six litres of hydrogen through his anus. He used a rubber balloon, holding four gallons of hydrogen gas connected to a rubber tube and inserted that into his anus. The assistant sealed the tube by squeezing the anus against it. So push really hard, I think I think put the tube in, and then squeeze or not probably the bolts, cheeks, pull the cheeks together, tighten them up. The hydrogen was was inserted. I remember this guy went on to become AMA president was inserted by squeezing the balloon while monitoring the pressure on a manometer. Jesus Christ. He had previously done this experiment on dogs to the point of rupturing the intestine. So we didn't want to go that far. So that's what he's got. He's got a pressure monitor. So why did he want to do this?

    Rod 44:17
    I don't know. Curiosity. Well, they wanted to recall blue sky research, right? Just want to know that could be spin offs. Look, Wi Fi who knows?

    Will 44:29
    He knows his he wanted to know if bullets in gunshot wounds, if you can tell if they've perforated the intestine. And so what happens is so the next step is blow gas up your butt. Well, he did it with dogs. He could show that gas escaping from the wound could be lit on fire. If If so,

    Rod 44:50
    and if the fires lit anywhere other than from the anus,

    Will 44:54
    if you've got a bullet hole, so he didn't do the whole bullet hole thing but he did to a dog. I think you You shoot the dog? Yeah, obviously, most experiments start that way. And then insert the hydrogen gas and pump the dog full of it. And then if you can light a light around, it's like look, the bullet went through the intestine.

    Rod 45:12
    I'm gonna call it an experiment that didn't need to happen. I feel like pretty easy to verify without God he just wanted to put gas off his bum I'm convinced

    Will 45:22
    with his assistant there to help well that was paid. I don't understand why he needed to do that. But just these people

    Rod 45:29
    like the nurse with the with the heart catheter and this assistant here like I don't really like my job anymore.

    Will 45:36
    I suspect though, that he's, he's a military surgeon. So battlefield surgery. So sure, there may come a time when a bullet has gone in and they're like, Okay, did it go through the intestines? Or is it just gone through the summer? Somebody wants to match other? Yeah, let's put some hydrogen in and light a match and see.

    Rod 45:50
    So you've been shot potentially in the guts and someone goes Look, just to be sure we're gonna blow a bunch of gas off your bum. Before we do anything else. Like yes, I want a different field hospital. I want Hawkeye I don't want this. That's that's dreadful. I'm sure there's a reason and he's your hero. And I don't mean to diss on you here it is my hero. I just think this is this is gonna look pretty glistening. I'd there when I got him again. JJacques-Joseph Moreau. Dr. Moreau so he turned people into half animals or something?

    Will 46:24
    I think so no, he was just not a huge story. This guy, French psychiatrist, I just want to raise this because he's a member of the in the mid 19 century, Club des Hashischins as a student. So it's club where, where go for long runs, know, elite French society would would go around and experiment with hash. And so he was the first physician to do systematic work on the drugs effects on the central nervous system. And he published his work and he and he said, it's critical for us to do this self experimentation with a whole bunch of people around watching and seeing how we get on it.

    Rod 46:58
    So that was my mistake. So like I did a lot of the systematic stuff in uni, but it forgot to write it up.

    Will 47:05
    That was my mistake. Systematic by being repetitive.

    Rod 47:08
    Yes. very repetitive and under controlled conditions under

    Will 47:12
    controlled conditions. Yeah, on the same couch. Yeah, I get it.

    Rod 47:15
    Sometimes a friend's car. But you just got to write it up. That's it. Nobel could have been mine. He wrote it up. He wrote it. I asked a jerk and then we'd be talking about me. Yeah, exactly. William Stark from Stark Industries.

    Will 47:26
    I'm surprised that I didn't talk about this guy a few weeks ago because he was an early experimenter on scurvy.

    Rod 47:32
    Well, there's a lot in the scurvy story, though.

    Will 47:34
    London during 1769 stock wanted to find the cause of scurvy exploring a series of dietary experiments on himself. 24 dietary experiments and kept accurate measures of temperature and weather conditions, the weight of all the foods he consumed, and the weight of all daily excretions

    Rod 47:49
    so again, this is another person like he's gonna He's gonna happen. He's looking for an excuse to make it seem okay. Yeah, I just like to bag it up.

    Will 47:56
    He started with a diet of basic bread and water and became dull and listless. He continued to experiment by gradually adding various foods one at a time, olive oil, milk, roast goose, and others.

    Rod 48:07
    So I was wondering how far up the list raw scoops would be. It's make sense.

    Will 48:11
    I had weird diets back then. Like, when does the roast goose come back in surely number four

    Rod 48:17
    Panther cinnamon. I mean, I'm just not sure.

    Will 48:21
    After two months, he had symptoms of scurvy because the goose didn't fix them, but he didn't know what to add back in to fix the scurvy. By November 1769. He was living on nothing but honey puddings and Cheshire cheese.

    Rod 48:34
    Doesn't sound terrible.

    Will 48:37
    He considered testing fresh fruits and vegetables when he died in February 1770

    Rod 48:41
    I was going to try it. Alright. Let's go. I nearly got to the thing that mattered. scurvy. Hmm. What a rascal Joseph Barcroft

    Will 48:52
    Okay, this guy did a whole bunch. He was he was considered prolific in self experimentation. So mega radiate his British physiologist, and he worked in particular, they've got a great reputation. Yeah. In the First and Second World Wars as the chief physiologist at the gas warfare centre. Oh, you can say he's he, you can see you can see what's coming here. In the course of his research, he regularly used himself as a test subject, calling these his Borderlands excursions which I love that

    Rod 49:21
    just go into the Borderlands shall be back

    Will 49:24
    During World War One he was carrying out experiments on a spectating gas. Yeah, and understand, so he shut himself in a chamber with a dog and pumped it full of hydrogen cyanide cool. After a few seconds, the dog went into convulsions and appeared to die. But Barcroft continued for another two minutes until they dragged him out. The next morning, the dog was found to be alive and apparently fully recovered. It's not known why dogs are more susceptible. In 1920, he spent six or seven days in a sealed glass chamber to investigate respiration at altitude and the minimum quantity of oxygen required for human survival. So he got to the equivalent altitude of like 18 1000 feet and came out suffering severe hypoxia. Yeah, 1936 or seven days. Yeah, six or seven days. I don't know how big the jar was, but it really starving himself a voxel.

    Rod 50:09
    If they're describing it as a jar. I'm guessing it's not roomy

    Will 50:13
    Okay, maybe jar was me. He wanted to find out freezing temperatures, so he stripped naked and lay down on a table in a refrigerated chamber in the Woods Hole Research Centre. At first he shivered and curled up to stay warm, he found it difficult to maintain the willpower to remain in the room. He kept thinking I could just walk out of here right now. But he persevered. And after about an hour, a strange mental change occurred, all sense of modesty disappeared. Suddenly, he didn't care if someone unrelated to the experiment might walk in and find him naked. But even more strangely, as he described to an audience few years later, the sense of coldness passed away, and it was succeeded by a beautiful feeling of warmth. The word bask most vividly describes my condition. I was basking in the cold Just before I died. Yeah, exactly. Towards the end of the experiment, he showed signs of final stages of hypothermia. He was thought to be close to death. And then he was rescued by a colleague. He was nominated for the Nobel prize but didn't win,

    Rod 51:07
    because he was rescued by a colleague.

    Will 51:09
    Now you can't win the Nobel Prize. posthumously. Yeah.

    Rod 51:12
    And also, if you pick out that's true, if it's self experiment, you can't pick Daniel Alcides Carrión

    Will 51:21
    Peruvian medical student. In 1885, he infected himself from the pus in the purple wart of a female patient.

    Rod 51:30
    Hey, that's the worst euphemism I've ever heard.

    Will 51:33
    Oh, no. If you see someone's got a purple wart. And you think I wonder what that would be like in me. Like,

    Rod 51:40
    you don't do that? No, I don't. I don't think I've ever seen a purple wart.

    Will 51:43
    He developed an acute form of bartonellosis, now known as Carrión disease after him. It's a rare disease found only in Peru and certain other parts of South America kept detailed notes of his condition and succeeded in showing through his self experiment, that the chronic and acute forms were the same disease. Okay, he died from the disease after several weeks, a student who had assisted carry on in carrying out his work was charged with murder, but later released,

    Rod 52:07
    died from a disease. But it's cool because we named it after you. So that's sweet. Claude Barlow,

    Will 52:15
    American physician in 1944. He wanted to know whether American snails could become infected with an Egyptian worm that then got into humans. So it's its Schistosomiasis. Schistosome worms, so they get from worm into snail into human. It was a pretty bad disease. And you wanted to know would that happen in America? The problem was, they couldn't get any of these snails to America. They tried sending them by the mail, but they kept going. So he decided to go to Egypt and ingest 200 of the schistosome worms to carry them back to the United States. I

    Rod 52:51
    was gonna say because I think eating snails doesn't preserve them that well, no. Well, the snail

    Will 52:55
    it's kind of weird. It's kind of weird. He got back to America refused treatment for the systemless diocese. Despite becoming desperately ill because he wanted to keep the eggs. He finally passed 200 eggs in his urine and 4000 eggs in his semen. The US government decided not to use the eggs. So his self sacrifice was to know about any other growth. No, you didn't even test on that.

    Rod 53:17
    That's lame. Elie Metchnikoff should actually read the letters,

    Will 53:24
    is a Russian zoologist. Best known for his work on immunology. He went on to win the Nobel Prize. But long before that, in 1885, he was suffering from depression. And he said, Well, look, I want to end it all. But I wanted to end it all with science in mind. He injected himself with relapsing fever. I don't know quite what it is, but

    Rod 53:43
    it happens regularly.

    Will 53:46
    He chose this method of death so that his it would be of benefit to medicine. But he survived. And then later, later, he self experimented with cholera is really determined. Yeah, he's really determined. And then he went on to win the Nobel Prize for his immunology work so

    Rod 53:59
    well, that didn't give me another one. And our last candidate, Nicolae Minovici

    Will 54:05
    I don't understand why he was doing this. But in the early 1900s, Nikolai Mina Vici, a professor of forensic science in Bucharest, undertook a series of experiments into hanging. At first he put the noose...

    Rod 54:15
    This is all sexual I might straightaway

    Will 54:18
    so there's pictures of him here auto asphyxiation, he put the noose around his neck while lying down and had an assistant put tension on the rope. I don't want to do this job anymore. I quit, and then he moved on to full suspension by the neck. Finally, he attempted suspension with a slipping hangman's knot, but the pain was too great for him to continue. He couldn't swallow for a month. Oh, what? He was determined to surpass a record set by Dr. Fleischmann of Erlangen, who in 1832, had self asphyxiated for two minutes.

    Rod 54:46
    So that's the worst record to exist. Videotron hold. No. couldn't swallow for a month. I mean, I take that as an exaggeration because he had to eat and drink but like it sucked for a month.

    Will 55:01
    Oh my god. So you might get a picture from that heroes, idiots and sad stories fine line. So Alan Weiss, he went through and looked at all the literature. And he found like, well, 514 cases of self experimentation that had made it to publication, at least seven of which went on to win Nobel prizes. Five of them also won Nobel Prizes, but not for their self experimentation work. So it's vital. Yeah, well, not necessarily. But like Barry Marshall clearly got it for his self experimentation. So did Foresman. In 1956. Interestingly, there was a huge gap there. Like Marshall got it in 2005. Foresman was the most recent previously in 1956. Bias? Well, yeah, people are doing it a lot less. The peak was in the sort of mid 20th century. Look, a lot of that's got to be straight up ethics committees, right. It's kind of ethics committees. It's kind of also bigger science. I think like there's, there's just more and more teams like to do anything, you need a team of 20 or 30 people

    Rod 55:59
    and turning to your assistant these days HR wise and say, I need you to strangle me and you put my nuts in a frying pan and put a brick on top like, a lot of people would say I don't want this job anymore.

    Will 56:08
    Vice found eight deaths, women in distinct minority 12 out of the 465 out of the last 200 years. Wow. Five of whom were Russian. I don't know why he hasn't.

    Rod 56:18
    Why are they in such a hurry? That is a tiny percentage. Okay, so that's almost as noise in the data. Like there was almost coincidence, that's such a tiny number.

    Will 56:27
    It does say that it's not exclusively, men being idiots, but doesn't only yeah, there's something countries doing it the most United States had the most 33% of the total, followed by Germany, United Kingdom, Russia and France. In a remarkable 89% of instances, the self experiments obtained positive results in support of a hypothesis or valuable data that have been sought. So the question I've got, then you sit on an ethics committee?

    Rod 56:50
    Yeah. I'd say yes. To all of it. Would you approve?

    Will 56:54
    I mean, the key thing here,

    Rod 56:55
    I don't think we'd be able to, we'd be allowed, I think, well, no, actually, that's not fair. I think it'd be very difficult to make an argument for such intrusive things like this. I mean, if they were a nice self infection, that sort of thing, I think would be very difficult. And arguments I can imagine humans running into Are you have a self interested in bias in doing it as opposed to anything else.

    Will 57:18
    That's one of the big ones, I think so like the Nuremberg Code, like after the Second World War, it's sort of it's sort of foundational in a lot of medical ethics. And one of the key lines is don't do anything that you wouldn't do to yourself. And so that probably holds for a lot of medical research. Yeah. But But then,

    Rod 57:35
    then you get to the point where that doesn't mean, you should do it, because you are prepared to do it to yourself. Yeah, so it's not as if all medical researchers are representative.

    Will 57:43
    In some directions, there's, you know, there's scientists that say, we know more about the risks here than anyone else. Sure, you know, we have better informed consent than anyone else.

    Rod 57:52
    But we have situations. So even social research, you know, we've I've sat on panels where people have asked if they can apply to be able to, you know, basically, I exaggerate for the fun of it, you know, parachute behind enemy lines in an active conflict zone. But they say it's cool, because I speak the language. And you know, I've got a contact and you're like, oh, and that isn't, in many ways exactly the same. Like, I want to dive in there and interview these people who have been victims of crime, whatever it may be, and you're like, but you're in a lot of danger doing that. Yeah, call me crazy, but are a lot of unknowns. And this is in some ways the same.

    Will 58:23
    I think I think the thing here is, it's not banned in a lot of places. A lot of people think it is banned, explicitly. No. But I think I think that I think that the interesting questions are, you don't need to ask for ethical permission to do stuff to yourself, necessarily. But can you use that data and then in your thesis or in your public housing, you

    Rod 58:41
    could argue though, you do need to talk about participants in research, if the research involves a human participant, whether it's you or not, if it's you, it does involve a human participant. So I reckon, I reckon that technicality wouldn't fly.

    Will 58:53
    This is the interesting one. There's a lot of idiots in this story. But someone like Barry Marshall was pretty recent. Like he was doing his stuff in the 90s would have medical ethics board approve that.

    Rod 59:03
    I suspect not doing it that way. But he but he did loose cannon should be and he had reasons he had his frustrations if you really want here at all. Listen to that episode, he was frustrated by a state medical professional attitude. Yeah. So I think in the end, you get you do it, you get a result that works. It'll be fine.

    Will 59:19
    Committees have to say no to this, like if I was any of these stories. If someone was saying, Should I do this? I'm like, No, that is too much of a risk to you.

    Rod 59:27
    In the defence of ethics committees, which I never thought as a PhD student, I'd say but they they will look for ways to try and facilitate what you want to do at least at our uni so I don't know if it'd be an arbitrary No, unless there's actually a clause which I should probably know but I don't unless was actually a rule that said you can't do it to yourself. But I think there'll be other ways to argue it's not a great idea. I personally am not necessarily against it because they have been good results very much. Well, for one there's a lot of their reasons to results in here. There are reasons to do

    Will 59:54
    and and medical ethics boards do slow us down. You know, the fact that it's so many guys tends to suggest If there's a social pattern going on here like that, that maybe there's peer pressure or there's there's self aggrandisement you know, like I can I can do this when Yeah.

    Rod 1:00:09
    But if we're also looking over history or dudes in science until recently anyway so that sort of surprised the straight proportions a sure shot Yeah. It seems like a very likely want to go and get a balloon and some vomit right now.

    Will 1:00:24
    rub it into your eyes. There you go.

Brianna Ansaldo
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