Researchers do some crazy things in their pursuit of knowledge, not always to great results. In a post on The Debrief, Kenna Hughes-Castleberry describes a pair of such shenanigans, including:
- Drinking vomit. “Leading up to the Victorian age, there were many theories about how pathogens spread, but very little real scientific knowledge could confirm it,” the article says. “When a case of yellow fever broke out in the early 19th century in Philadelphia, one doctor got to test his own ideas in a novel – and disgusting – way: by using a patient’s vomit.” Dr. Stubbins Ffirth (ed. note: How can you not love this name for a character??) noticed that yellow fever spiked in the summer and all but disappeared in the winter. Based on this observation, he concluded that the disease was not contagious, but spread via the environment, including in food. So, naturally, Ffirth did was any scientist would do: he injected vomit into his arms, dripped it into his eyes, and then drank a glass. Miraculously, he didn’t get sick, but he also never discovered that yellow fever is spread by mosquitos.
- Elephants and LSD. This sounds like a bad idea already. “In 1962, a group of scientists in Oklahoma City decided to give an elephant named Tusko approximately 297 milligrams of LSD,” the article says. “This amount of the drug is around 3,000 times the normal dose of LSD for a person.” Researchers wanted to see if Tusko had a bad trip. Instead, he collapsed and died within a few hours. The scientists concluded, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.” Or at least 297 milligrams of LSD. Twenty years later, researchers wanted to know if the LSD had actually killed Tusko, so they dosed two more elephants. This time, the elephants survived, possibly because the LSD had been put in their water, rather than injected. No one is known to have attempted this experiment since.
To what lengths will your hero go to solve a scientific puzzle? Or does your protagonist save elephants instead of dosing them? What did the friends of Stubbins Ffirth think about him drinking vomit? What did they think of his breath? What happens next?
