r/BeAmazed • u/GlitteringHotel8383 • 4h ago
Miscellaneous / Others The Man Who Risked His Life for Science.
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u/aviatorintheclouds 4h ago
The only time 'trust me bro' passed peer review 😭
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u/LingonberryPossible6 2h ago
There was another doctor who wanted prove that you could get a device into the heart via the armpit but no one thought it safe.
He gave himself a local anaesthetic, pushed the wire through his armpit and into his heart and then went to x-ray to prove it.
He then went to the chief of medicine, fully conscious, with the wire still in him and hand the CoM the x-ray.
He was fired on the spot, but also went on to win the Nobel
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u/money_loo 1h ago
I found this so unbelievable I had to look it up. Only to learn it was 1929?!? The dude got the idea from how other doctors in France used to do it to horses in the 1840s while they were alive to I think monitor blood pressure?
He saw it in a physiology text book and was like “yeah we could totally do that to people.”
One small mistake, is he apparently went in through the elbow section of the arm, not the armpit.
Also the x-ray machine was above him so he had to walk stairs with it in his heart.
Absolutely metal.
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u/religion-lost 51m ago
Why couldn't he have just tested it with a model or a corpse??
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u/Mother_Difficulty233 41m ago
i assume he wanted live data so he can find the safest and painless way to reach his goal
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u/Lou_C_Fer 1h ago
Sounds like something stupid that I'd do... but as a prank, not for any serious venture.
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u/-TrUsT_mE_bRo 2h ago
This comment is legitimately hilarious because I was one of the first people diagnosed and treated after his discovery. I went a very very long time without being able to eat much of anything and doctors completely stumped as to why.
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u/LingonberryPossible6 2h ago
I read that most docs believed it was caused by poor diet, alcohol and smoking
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u/AgathaJones2022 2h ago
Which was weird, given my sister developed an ulcer at 13. She did not drink or smoke.
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u/zj-- 2h ago edited 2h ago
And get this:
There are still living, breathing dum dums existing around us that complain soda gives them gastricitis.
No, Phillip. Guzzle the trifecta of azithromycin, metronidazole, and amoxicillin for at least 14 days. And take a dewormer, whilst at it!
Rest of you, profane tissue paper users: Cleanliness is godliness all you uncouth, bunghole bidet-less-random-reddit-comment-personally-attacked-bonobos!
Because once that delicate gut bacteria biome you've got in your tum tum goes off on a holiday never to return, you'll feel it. For the rest of your lives.
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u/EffectiveDandy 23m ago
He's become the running joke amongst our crew when someone says "trust me bro." We look them dead pan and say "Marshall trust me?" No one has ever accepted the challenge to this day and has always backed down lmao
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u/ThisIsALine_____ 3h ago
Super common by the way.
1 in 3 in the US have it. I have had it, and my germaphobe girlfriend had it.
It's asymptomatic most the time. So...if you're reading this there is a very good chance you have it.
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u/Few_Firefighter251 2h ago
Uhhh i had it before and u know that hungry feeling we get in our upper bellies? I had that but intensified and every time I felt it I had to barf. So I would eat small meals until I couldn’t feel it and I gained about 15 pounds because I would feel it constantly even if I was full it was horrible. I think it took about two months for me to feel like myself afterwards.
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u/lamentable_ 2h ago
I have it right now! going through my antibiotic treatment and whew boy it’s kicking my ass. that “gnawing” feeling caused me to gain a shitton of weight too, I’m hoping I get on the other side of this and can lose it and feel better and not like I have a damn tapeworm
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u/D0MSBrOtHeR 2h ago
Cold pressed celery and cabbage juice first thing in the morning on empty stomach for a couple weeks will do wonders. You can add apple to it to make the taste more bearable.
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u/lamentable_ 1h ago
does you utilize that for anti-inflammatory purposes? does the apple cut the bitter taste of the cabbage? nausea/vomiting is horribly acting up due to the current course of antibiotics but I def am interested in that recipe after I’m done
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u/D0MSBrOtHeR 36m ago
It’s anti inflammatory and helps kill the h pylori. Heals the stomach lining and digestive tract. The apple definitely makes the taste a little more bearable. You can get a cold pressed juicer on Amazon pretty cheap. Half a cabbage chopped up and an apple makes a tall glass of juice. It takes a couple days to get used to but it truly helps a lot. I was skeptical but I’m glad I did it.
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u/tinygraysiamesecat 2h ago
Yep. I’ve felt that pain. “Gnawing” is the only way I know to describe it.
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u/danny12beje 1h ago
I still have a few days a year when I don't eat anything.
Hunger just doesn't kick in for a full day because of how often I had that "full" feeling when I had untreated H. Pylori for a year (dumbass me for downplaying my symptoms to my mum when I was 16).
And man I do not fucking miss the pain I was in.
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u/ayriuss 12m ago
I had bad bad acid reflux for a while, and eating and drinking would always make it worse, so I ended up losing like 15 pounds lol. Im guessing it was a similar kind of bacterial infection because it mostly went away, and I didn't change much in my eating habits. Although taking acid reducer medication reduced some of the inflammation to allow it to heal I'm guessing.
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u/tinygraysiamesecat 2h ago
I had it in my 20s. It was very much not asymptomatic for me lol. Any time I’d lay down, I’d get the worst gnawing hunger pains in my stomach except eating doesn’t make it go away. It was excruciating being woken up every night by it.
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u/AngryInternetPerson3 1h ago
That bitch gave me Chronic Gastritis and took me 2 rounds of antibiotics to kill, its been 4 months, and while I am better, if I eat too much fatty stuff, chocolate or tomato I get reflux and stomach pain.
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u/DuntadaMan 1h ago
My grandma had it. They told her for years the ulcers were from stress. She got them pretty regularly for years because they treated it with antacids.
When this was found out they gave her an antibiotic and wiped it out in the first try.
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u/Shadowcat1224 1h ago
I am 2 years passed when the antibiotics cleared my symptomatic H. Pylori and I still have post-infectious IBS, plus it gave me digestive enzyme deficiency…
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u/Electrical_Ad_9778 3h ago
Also the doctor which invented heart cathetherisation did it on himsel since no one agreed for him to test it. In 1928 Dr Werner asked one nurse for a help, put the catheter in and went all the way down to xray and took a picture.He got his nobel in 1956 This is how it looks hearh catheterisation
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u/BigAddam 2h ago
This is one of my favorite fun medical facts/trivia! So much we do is commonplace now, but it took some real balls to be the first to basically be like, “hold up. I got a crazy idea and I’m just going to fucking do it.”
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u/scidious06 1h ago
This is one of my favorite fun medical facts/trivia!
It is fun, but he was immediately fired, shunned by his peers and the medical community, and it ruined his career
He only got the Nobel prize 27 years after his experiment and only because two other doctors he didn't know actually believed his discovery was worth researching
Most of these medical/scientific fun facts are incredibly depressing in reality
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u/WithOrgasmicFury 1h ago
Also in most situations this is the only ethical way to truly test your ideas.
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u/Electrical_Ad_9778 3h ago
He is not the only one. Many doctors did it in the past. One doctor wanted to prove that leprosy is not contagious by skin tuch so he put a piese of leprosy skin on himself and walked around with it for sometime. Nothing happened
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u/S0whaddayakn0w 2h ago
These kinds of things always amaze me. They must be such great people, the ones who go against the populqr opinion. Either that, or they are brilliant arseholes
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u/TheAviBean 2h ago
Or they’re wrong, and die, and then we say “lol, moron”
Really only the outcome matters.
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u/scidious06 1h ago
Sometimes they're right but the scientific community still laughs at them and calls them idiots, they live and sometimes die in shame (and broke). Then decades later it is revealed that they were right all along
The outcome often matters little
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u/Hypranormal 37m ago
Or you're right and die, like Jesse Williams Lazear, who proved the hypothesis that mosquitos spread yellow fever by allowing himself to be bitten by one that was infected with the disease and then died like two weeks later.
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u/amgineeno 2h ago
It can be tough though. While there are people who go against the grain and are rewarded with being proven right. There are also those that think proven science is still wrong even when faced with empirical evidence to the contrary. Some of them spread misinformation.
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u/Aqquila89 57m ago
Stubbins Ffirth, a doctor-in-training in the early 19th century tried to prove that yellow fever isn't contagious by smearing himself with the blood, urine, sweat and vomit of yellow fever patients and drinking the vomit. Fortunately for him but unfortunately for medical science, his samples came late-stage patients who were no longer contaminated with the virus, so he didn't get infected and considered his thesis proven.
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u/ShigodmuhDickard 3h ago
Look into what it does to the gut biome and the link with mental health.
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u/masterwit 1h ago
Anxiety about this... caused by the bacteria about the bacteria?
But in all seriousness, it is nuts what hell this can do to a person
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u/Yuyu_hockey_show 50m ago
I could write a book on how working on my gut health has improved my mental health and other overlooked aspects like social anxiety and sleep issues
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u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth 42m ago
I've got chronic pelvic pain, bloating issues in response to certain foods, and depression. And the comorbidity is so common that I'm not sure what angle to attack it from. I keep being told I need to work on mind body stuff. But I swear the stomach issues came after eating probiotics one time while being on antibiotics (like an idiot).
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u/TheUberMcGuber 3h ago
I seriously got c-diff last spring from taking an antibiotic. Then right after the c-diff I got this damn H. Pylori. My gut has hated me ever since and just isn’t the same. They both suck but what sucks more is the medicine you have to take 4 times a day. I do not recommend. Stay away from bad gut bacteria. Avoid at all cost, if possible lol.
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u/Silverjeyjey44 2h ago
Your gut can't take a damn break. Are you doing probiotics now and do you think it makes a difference?
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u/False_Ad_555 3h ago
And the AMA called him every name in the book, tried to discredit him and have him censored because the ulcer treatments of the time were a multi-billion dollar a year industy
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u/TheBlackCat13 2h ago
That isn't true at all. There were multiple labs doing clinical trials within a year and the australian government fully funded his research the next year after he announced the results. There was no attempt to censor him and his research was published in top-tier journals around the world early on.
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u/HushFunded 1h ago
Or he's just rage baiting. Likely referencing the American Medical Association, because they're the only country on earth.
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u/LocalMarsupial9 3h ago
I can't imagine the physical action of "drinking bacteria"
Like what did he do take a shot of boogery slime or what?
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u/CosmicOwl47 3h ago
Probably just a liquid, could have been delicious. Have you ever drank kefir?
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u/sueypigsui 3h ago
Pissed off an entire industry of doctors that got rich treating it using kook 'science' while he was at it, but we just pretend that didn't happen.
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u/TheBlackCat13 2h ago
It didn't actually happen, his research was tested and verified by numerous labs almost immediately, and labs around the world began working on treatments almost immediately after that. Once the clinical results confirmed those treatments they became the accepted standard of care almost immediately.
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u/TheBlackCat13 2h ago edited 2h ago
That is myth. He did drink H. pylori, but he did NOT developer ulcers. He had gastritis for a few days but never developed the chronic symptoms like ulcers he was predicting. Several other people tried the same thing. None of them developed ulcers, either.
The problem at the time was proving that H. pylori caused ulcers, rather than being opportunists that took advantage of ulcers that already existed. This was ultimately demonstrated by the success of antibiotics in treating the ulcers, not in people intentionally ingesting the bacteria.
The resistance he got from the scientific community has also been massively overblown in the popular press. Yes, a lot of people doubted his initial presentation. But rather than ignore him, they tested his results and confirmed them. There were multiple labs around the world working on clinical trials within a year.
The problem ended up not in doubt over his results, but rather in finding an antibiotic cocktail that was more effective than existing ulcer treatments. The problem is that the bacteria rapidly developed resistance to most antibiotics, which caused them to immediately come back. So the treatment was equally effective immediately, but stopped working much more quickly. It took years of trial and error to actually develop a combination of antibiotics that worked.
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u/Technical-Mind-3266 3h ago
I had it, didn't know that I did
They took a sample of my poo, got it sorted, stopped having agonising pain
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u/chestypants12 3h ago
Barry is a legend and I have brought up this fact (gave himself an ulcer) in various chats/debates with people. The Pharma industry would rather you take indigestion tablets every day for life, than announce a simple cure.
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u/TheBlackCat13 2h ago
He didn't give himself an ulcer.
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u/throwingsoup88 1h ago
He's also a bit of a twat in real life.
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u/friday_scientist 43m ago
Can confirm. I spent about three weeks helping him with a tech support issue. He was convinced his PhD status was relevant to whether he needed to unistall/reinstall software as a first attempt at solving the problem. It was not. (He also brought up his Nobel once.) Guess what fixed the problem? 🙄 Three weeks of emails with this guy.
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u/SereneOrbit 2h ago
Brave people like this are why we have so much cool shit today.
Hats off to badass and sometimes outright suicidal scientists and engineers. (look up the history of the parachute).
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u/SentientSackOfWorms 2h ago
There are quite a few experiments like this and I really just cringe at all the "But you can't challenge the establishment" people who whine that their fringe scientific ideas aren't being taken seriously.
Then do an experiment, y'all. Write a paper about the experiment.
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u/AngiShyArt-Official 1h ago
My bff almost died because of catching this bacteria in 2017 and doctors were so idiotic and careless they weren't able to do right tests to figure out why she was deteriorating. So after slowly suffering for months, they ended up telling her to go to a psychiatrist instead because they thought ut was a mental thing instead!
Only then her friend and doctor took a sample from her stomach and tested it to find out it was helicobacter pylori. A few weeks of antibiotics later and she finally felt fine. She looked like anorexic person by then, and the doc told her if it'd take one more week before taking the antibiotics, she'd probably die already.
Im surprised to this day that she didn't sue those stupid doctors for being so ignorant. Now her stomach is damaged so she cant eat some stuff she loved before, but well, at least she's still alive.
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u/arostrat 2h ago
Similarly there was a TIL about a Soviet scientist who ate fecal samples of other people's shit to prove some point about a disease.
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u/Interesting-Elk-2562 2h ago
Thats a reason why thinking science is all about consensus is wrong.
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u/TheBlackCat13 2h ago
It was about consensus. He developed a consensus pretty quickly by announcing his results and other labs replicating it.
But there are ethical rules regarding experimentation on human subjects. And one of those rules is you can't intentionally induce a disease in someone just so you can test a treatment. It is unethical and illegal in most countries. It is a good rule for a good reason.
And despite what the meme says, this is a good example of why. Because he never actually developed ulcers.
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u/fabulousmarco 1h ago
And one of those rules is you can't intentionally induce a disease in someone just so you can test a treatment. It is unethical and illegal in most countries. It is a good rule for a good reason.
Clearly this should not apply when that someone is yourself. Bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right.
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u/TheBlackCat13 1h ago
It doesn't apply when someone does it to themself. Which is why he wasn't charged with any crime, and was allowed to publish the results which isn't allowed for research that violates ethical rules.
The problem with doing it to yourself is that it is a sample size of 1, which isn't generally useful. And this is a great example of why.
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u/Interesting-Elk-2562 43m ago
How is testing something on yourself that no one believed would work about consensus? It is exactly the opposite, otherwise he wouldnt have had to do what he did.
The point I was making is simple, it is not because something is a consensus, ie that what Marshall wanted to do would not work, that it cannot be wrong. Papers and studies have nothing to do with it.
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u/VirginiaLuthier 2h ago
Los of people harbor h. Pylori in their stomachs and it never makes them sick......
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u/manyeggplants 2h ago
I love reading this every time it's posted here.
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u/TheBlackCat13 1h ago edited 1h ago
I hate reading it because there is so much factually incorrect about it.
- Lots of people believed it was plausible, but finding solid evidence was difficult.
- He didn't get ulcers.
- It wasn't illegal to test his theory on humans, and in fact clinical trials were already underway. What was illegal was intentionally infecting people who didn't already have ulcers.
- He had no ulcers to treat
- He got a Nobel prize because of the success of the clinical trials, not because of this failed N=1 experiment.
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u/D0MSBrOtHeR 2h ago
Dealt with it in 2020. Spent months feeling like I had stomach cancer and feeling like I’m dying. Took months of back and forth dr appts to diagnose and only because I ended up doing the research myself and demanded to be tested for it. By that point it had caused ulcers and internal bleeding. Brutal antibiotics and 6 months of PPIs later I was able to eat somewhat normally again. But I have damage to my stomach lining from the chronic gastritis it caused. Stole a year of my life. Took almost a year to mentally recover from that. Shits no joke. But it did help me quit drinking so I guess there’s that.
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u/PrometheusMMIV 1h ago
Isn't that testing his theory on humans?
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u/TheBlackCat13 1h ago
It is illegal to intentionally infect other people with a disease for the purpose of testing a cure.
He infected himself, which although not illegal isn't really useful because it is a sample size of 1.
In this case it was also useless, because he didn't actually get ulcers. The meme is just wrong.
He got a Nobel prize because large scale clinical trials on people who already had ulcers, clinical trials that were already going on when he drank the bacteria, showed that eliminating the bacteria was effective at treating ulcers.
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u/scidious06 1h ago
The ethical problem with testing on humans is consent, even if I say yes to be experimented on, I could be doing it because I'm depressed or in financial trouble or because of a 100 other things (I can also be peer pressured by the doctors)
But testing on yourself, I mean, it's hard to get better consent than that
Putting him on trial for testing on himself would be like accusing him of sexually assaulting himself because he masturbated
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u/Warcraft_Fan 1h ago
Dr. Jesse William Lazear did something similar. He wanted to test theory that mosquito can carry yellow fever. He died to prove it. And yes, mosquito does carry disease.
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u/Ashamed_Feedback3843 1h ago
After suffering for over 30 years with stomach ulcers this man was my hero.
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u/willwhitt56 59m ago
That stuff is not a joke either. Caught it when I was little from drinking too many sodas and basically messed up my stomach lining. Felt like someone was squeezing my stomach with a hard grip, constantly feeling like wanting to throw up, but it never happening.
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u/ckglle3lle 50m ago
Had an H. Pylori infection a couple of years ago. Didn't think much of it because the symptoms were fairly intermittent, mostly just some seemingly random GI issues that I wrote off as "Guess I ate something weird". Eventually though, had an experience where I just sort of randomly vomited without otherwise feeling sick, that got me to go to the doctor, tested positive for H Pylori (take home stool sample test).
The treatment is kind of gnarly. You take a strong acid reducer and two or three different antibiotics for several weeks. But it was treated successfully and follow-up test was negative, have not experienced any of those weird GI symptoms since.
Something to consider if you've had random weird GI stuff. Worth noting too though that it is pretty common and it's not recommended to be treated unless you are experiencing symptoms.
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u/Intelligent-Hunt523 45m ago
Yes, this is true. This man was reviled by the professional community until it was discovered his "theory" was correct. Never was there a Nobel Prize more deserved.
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u/Willing-Earth-8227 33m ago
Grateful to him, i had first stage leading to ulcers because of h pylori bacteria
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u/Meaty_Bongos 4m ago
Currently dealing with it and it is hell. No idea how this guy did it voluntarily. Taking treatment and have to deal with work and nausea. Hope this goes away soon with the antibiotics.
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u/Sandcracka- 3h ago
Hard to believe he won the Nobel prize if it was illegal to test on humans
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u/justanaccountname12 3h ago
The inventor of the lobotomy also won the Nobel prize. Scrambling brains won the Nobel prize. Legality does not equal morality.
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u/Temporary-Truth-8041 3h ago edited 3h ago
He tested it on himself, to prove that stomach ulcers were neither caused by stress nor by spicy foods
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u/Sandcracka- 3h ago
Is he a human?
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u/wolflordval 3h ago
The illegality comes from the fact that you can't knowingly infect someone else for the purpose of studying them, not 'because they are human'.
Infecting himself doesn't violate that. So it was perfectly in line with scientific ethical standards.
It's just not usually sufficient for most science, since you have only one singular test subject and can't replicate it without breaking the rule you were trying to avoid in the first place.
In this case, it generated enough grounds to justify collecting people with stomach ulcers and testing antibiotics on them, the result of that research is what won him the Prize.
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u/TheBlackCat13 1h ago
In this case, it generated enough grounds to justify collecting people with stomach ulcers and testing antibiotics on them, the result of that research is what won him the Prize.
These studies were already going on before he experimented on himself. Which is a good thing, because the experiment on himself actually failed. He didn't get ulcers.
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u/TheBlackCat13 1h ago
It is illegal to intentionally infect people with a disease just so you can treat it.
But that isn't what he got the Nobel prize for, he got it for the success of standard large-scale clinical trials, which are the normal way to test claims like this and are absolutely legal. His self-infection experiment didn't even work, despite what the meme said he never developed ulcers.
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u/ThisIsALine_____ 2h ago
This is why we need to allow human testing on the ugly. I've always said that.
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