He Tested It On Himself Trivia Quiz

Answer: Stomach ulcers

Barry Marshall suspected that this bacteria was linked to stomach ulcers, but it would have been unethical to even ask to perform this test on another human. So Barry, being a man who did not suffer stomach ulcers, bypassed the ethics board by testing it on himself. He did indeed develop ulcers, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005.

Answer: A rocket sled

More accurately, the Americans wanted to know what the effects of sudden deceleration would be, such as when a pilot ejected from a fast moving plane. John Paul Stapp was strapped to a chair on a rocket sled. The sled was accelerated, and then run into water to quickly stop it. Stapp went multiple times, suffering greater injuries each time, including blackouts, concussions, broken bones, and nearly having his eyes fly out of his skull.

Answer: Adhering radium to his arm

Pierre Curie taped Radium salts to his arm for a few hours, and then showed off the burns to an audience in the UK a few months later. He had hoped that radiation could be harnessed to combat cancer, which turned out to be true. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with his wife.

During his experiments he was routinely exposed to radiation, which impacted his health. It did not kill him, though, as it did his wife in 1934. He died when he was accidentally run over by a horse-drawn cart in 1906.

Answer: Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or Acid)

Hofmann accidentally got some LSD on his finger tips while working in his lab. By the time he got home, he was experiencing the first ever acid trip. Hofmann continued to try LSD in different doses, and advocated its safe use until his death in 2008, at the age of 102.

Despite so many discoveries being made by chemists who accidentally spilled new substances on their hands, it is now expected that they wear safety equipment to prevent this.

Answer: Yellow Fever

In 1793, a Yellow Fever epidemic hit Pennsylvania. Ffirth joined the university later, and went to horrific ends to demonstrate that Yellow Fever was not contagious. He proved his hypothesis and published his findings in 1804.

It was not until a century later that he was proven wrong by James Carroll, in 1900. A lot of men had contracted the disease during the Spanish-American war, and the idea of mosquitoes as a vector was floated. In another example of self-experimentation, Carroll let himself be bitten by laboratory mosquitoes with the virus. He contracted Yellow Fever, but managed to recover. Ironically, he died 1907 when he contracted Yellow Fever from a wild mosquito.

Answer: Black Widow Spider

Some people in the 1930s could have easily said whether black widow bites hurt or not, but it was not widely circulated or trusted information. Blair set out to set the record straight, once and for all, by doing it scientifically. He let himself be bitten by a black widow in what was supposed to be the first of many repeated experiments.

He kept notes of his experience until he was no longer able to write. He had to be rushed to the hospital, but insisted that his assistants continue to take his notes for the whole ordeal. Blair recovered, but elected to not perform the follow-up experiments.

Answer: Roundworms

Roundworms are a parasitic animal that live in the digestive system of other animals, feeding on what they digest. They are usually harmless, if unpleasant. Grassi actually took a long while to perform this experiment. He found the eggs and roundworms in a corpse, and decided to eat the eggs himself to see if they grew. First, though, he needed to make sure that he was not already infected.

He preserved the eggs in stool for a year while he studied his own stool for eggs. After giving himself a clean bill of health, he ate the eggs and was able to confirm the connection.

Afterwards, he recovered by using anti-worm medicine.

Answer: Sucralose

Sucralose would go on to be mass produced and marketed as Splenda. A lot of artificial sweeteners, such as Aspertame, were discovered by chemists before the use of gloves in laboratories. They would taste something sweet when smoking a cigarette, or eating food, and trace it back to their work in the lab. In modern labs, safety procedures are much stricter.

Answer: Placed himself in a decompression chamber

Haldane was concerned about the well being of sailors on submarines, and subjected himself to experiments in a pressure chamber to study the effects of being cooped up in a highly pressurized steel tube. Through his experiments, Haldane discovered nitrogen narcosis, which can make people feel "intoxicated" while under pressure.

He also discovered oxygen poisoning, which is why modern breathing apparatuses do not use pure oxygen. Haldane burst his own eardrum by putting so much pressure on it, but brushed it off by saying, "If 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."

Answer: Sir Isaac Newton

In one of his earlier experiments, Newton stuck a needle into his eye socket, and moved it around to literally see what would happen. He wrote up detailed notes (with diagrams) describing the spots and blurring he saw.

Sticking a needle in one's eye is not a wise decision. The optic nerve can be damaged, and the eye socket is one of the easiest ways to access (and damage) the brain.