Remojadas

Transcription

To advance science, some laboratory daredevils haven't been reluctant to put themselves on the line. Isaac Newton for instance. Considered by many as the greatest scientist of all time, he is not only the brilliant universal gravitation's discoverer. Among other things, Newton also revolutionized our optics knowledge. He was so devoted to his cause that to test one of his theories about the colour perception, he put a knitting needle under his eyeballs, until it touched the back of the eye-socket. Then he wrote down in a very factual way that he saw colored circles when he twiddled his eyes with the needle. If you thought the history of science was made of wisdom and caution, you will find out it can bear comparison with Jackass. In 1793, a terrible yellow fever epidemic killed more than 5.000 people in Philadelphia. A few years later, a young doctor by the name of Stubbins Ffirth voiced yellow fever was not a contagious disease, but rather it was caused by the summer climate. To prove his theory, he undertook a series of experiments on himself so much disgusting that they made him famous : Ffirth started making incisions on his arms to pour infected patient's vomit in them, then he also poured some in his eyes. Next he heated vomit to inhale vapours from it, and as he was still not sick, he finally drank some. At the end of these experiments, he was still in good health, which appeared to him as a resounding evidence of his theory. It took 60 years after the death of Stubbins Ffirth to discover yellow fever was actually transmitted by mosquitoes. When Alessandro Volta invented the first electric cell in 1800, he revolutionized the energy industry. What he may have not imagined is the way it would be used by Johann Wilhelm Ritter, a German physicist to whom the discovery of ultraviolet rays is due, and who seized with a strange passion for the invention of his Italian fellow. Ritter decided to study the effects of electricity on the organism connecting the cell to different parts of his body. When he electrified his tongue, he felt an acid flavor, and when he put the wires on his eyes, he perceived some strange colours floating before him. Out of love for science, Ritter also put the electric current on his genitals. The experiment was so "conclusive" that the physicist told people around him he would marry his cell. Ritter's curiosity for self electrical stimulation could have stopped there, but he exposed himself to stronger and stronger currents, over longer and longer periods, taking even opium to bear with the pain. Inevitably his health ended suffering from it : his eyes become infected, he got spasms and headaches, his tongue temporarily lost its sensitivity, and the current paralyzed one of his arms for an entire week... It didn't prevent him from continuing his research, to the astonishment of his fellows. Ritter finally died of tuberculosis at the age of 33, but the experiments on himself have probably sped up his destiny. At the beginning of the 20th century, while he teached forensic medecine at the University of Bucharest, the Professor Nicolae Minovici wondered a very legitimate question : What do you feel when you die by hanging ? To give an answer, he started to asphyxiate himself. He lied on a camp bed, put his head through a noose linked to a pulley, then he pulled on the other end of the rope. In short order, his face turned to red, his eyesight became blurred, and as he felt he was about to faint, he released the rope after a few seconds. But it was just the beginning. For the second phase of his research, Minovici put his neck through a loose knot, then he asked to his assistants to pull on the rope until he would be suspended above the ground. The first time, the professor was only able to resist a few seconds before stopping the experiment, but with practice he succeeded in enduring the strangulation for 25 seconds. The final step consisted in being hanged for good. This time, Minovici tightened the noose around his throat, but when his assistants pulled, pain was so intense that he asked them to release almost immediately, even before his feet got off the ground. Finally, these experiments ended in bruises, swallowing problems, as well as the most comprehensive study ever conducted about the hanging effects. After World War II, the US Army had to better understand the effects of acceleration and deceleration on the human body, especially to protect more efficiently the fighter pilots in case of crash. At the time, the experts estimated that the maximum force someone could bear was 18 G, that is to say a pressure 18 times greater than the Earth's gravity. It was before Colonel John Paul Stapp intervene. Stapp was a doctor in biophysics determined to improve the aeronautical safety, even if it implied designing fatal machines, then trying them himself. His most famous invention is a kind of sled propelled by rockets called the Gee Whiz. This device was able to reach 750 mph, almost the speed of sound, and to stop instantaneously at the end of railroad tracks around 0.400 mile-long. As a true human crash dummy, Stapp tried the sled 29 times in 7 years. The violence of the tests caused him several fractures and loss of consciousness, but it didn't prevent the colonel from breaking his speed record during his final attempt, on 10 December 1954. Stapp was propelled at 630 mph, which is faster than a .45 calibre bullet. It is the highest speed ever reached on rails, and it is still the highest speed reached on earth by an open-cockpit vehicle. But the most spectacular thing was the moment when the machine slowed down from 620 mph to 0 in one and one-half seconds. During this deceleration, Stapp stood 46,2 G, which remains an all-time record, and which is the same as crashing into a wall at 120 mph with a car. The collision was so violent that Stapp remained blind until the next day, the eyes filled with blood. He was left with sight problems all his life, but in spite of all the dangers he exposed himself to, he died in his sleep at 89 years old. Dr Henry Head was an English neurologist, pioneer in the nervous system study. At the beginning of the 20th century, he got into research in the physiology of pain, and as if you want something done right you should do it yourself, he used his own body as a laboratory. On 25 April 1903, he persuaded a surgeon to open one of his arms, then to sever two nerves before stitching up all of it. The aim of this operation was to study the way the sensations came back after such a wound. To help him in his process, his fellow William Rivers subjected him to a series of tests each one more painful than the other. During 4 years, Rivers tortured Head's arm while the latter told him if he felt something or not. The sacrifice of the neurologist allowed the two men to make a fundamental discovery : as the sensations of heat and pain recovered more quickly than some more subtle sensations, they deduced there were two distinct ways of sensitivity. A way of vague sensations, they named protopathic, and a way of more precise sensations, they called epicritic. To know if the whole body was able to detect the two types of stimuli, Rivers examined his fellow from head to toe, and he finally found on him a purely protopathic area : his penis. In a pure scientific abnegation, Henry Head agreed to have his masculinity pricked with needles and to dip it in hot water to determine the organ's sensitivity. Thanks to these experiments, today we know why it is impossible to read braille with his penis. Thank you, Mr Head! On 15 February 1921, while he was lying down on the operating table to have his appendix removed, the American surgeon Evan O'Neil Kane announces he wanted to operate on himself. As he is the Chief of Surgery of the hospital, the medical staff can only obey him and watch him conduct his little experiment. Kane injects himself with cocaine and adrenaline to anaesthetize himself, then he cuts open his belly, and severs his swollen appendix. A brief moment of panic takes hold of the audience when the surgeon guts go out, but this one calmly puts them back inside, and ends up the surgery. 14 days later, he was on his feet, and ready to turn to work. The case made the headlines of the international press, but Kane was not done with the self-surgery pleasures. In 1932, aged of 71 years old, he needed an operation of the inguinal hernia. This surgery is more delicate than a simple appendicectomy, because there is a risk the femoral artery might be cut. But as a good scalpel adventurer, Kane decides to operate on himself again. During the surgery which lasted 1h45, he joked with the nurses, and he asked for a second shot of anaesthesic when pain started to be felt. He seemed to quickly recover from the surgery, but actually, he never regained all his strength and he died three months later of pneumonia. Evan O'Neil Kane remains the only person in the history to operate on himself for appendicitis and hernia. Thank you for watching this video, as always I hope you have learned something, and I invite you to follow Axolot on social networks. See you soon!