5/ Henry Head asked his assistant to open his arms and sever his nerves
Henry Head was an English neurologist who wok was pioneering in the domain of our sensory nervous system. At the beginning of the 20th century the researcher and his colleague William Rivers pretty much gifted his body to science. He persuaded his assistant to open up his arms and then sever two nerves before sewing everything back up again. The aim of this experiment was to study the way in which feelings returned after the injury. After four years of all types of scientific experiments the two scientists ended up discovering that there are two paths of distinct sensitivity. One of vague feelings (or prophylactic) and the other of more precise feeling (epicritic). Rivers examined his colleaugue from head to toe to find out if the whole body could feeling these two types of sensations but he ended up finding an area purely prophylactic which was his penis!
6/ Evan O’Neill Kane operate on his own appendix
On the 15 February 1921 the American surgeon Evan O’Neil Kane decided to operate on himself while he was lying on an operating table to get his appendix removed. Kane injected himself with cocaine and adrenaline so as to anesthetize himself from the pain and then opened up his stomach and then severed his appendix. The New York Times recounted his experiment the same year and Kane revealed that this type of operation “could be carried out without need general anesthetic.” He concluded by saying that this “could save many peoples lives who suffer from heart failure or other problems when under general anesthetic.”
7/ Albert Hofman voluntarily took LSD
Albert Hofman synthesized LSD for the first time in 1938 but only realised its effects five years afterwards when he decided to reexamine the drug in 1943. While working, he was suddenly intoxicated. “I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.” According to him he might have absorbed the substance by rubbing it on his eyes. Three days later he intentionally took 250 mg of the drug and had the first LSD trip. he said that “Gradually, I began to enjoy the colors and shapes that persisted before my eyes. Fantastic, kaleidoscopic images pressed into me, varying, opening and closing in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains.” The chemist lived until he was 102 years old…
8/ John Paul Stapp reached the speed of sound through dizzying scientific experiments
John Paul was a US Air Force colonel but also a pioneer in the study of the effect of acceleration and deceleration force on the body. During this time, experts believed that the maximum force that humans could deal with was 18 G. Stapp created the Gee Whiz which was a kind of sled powered by rockets and capable of reaching 1200 km / h which is almost the equivalent to the speed of sound. The machine stopped instantly at the end of a railway line of about 600m. In 1954, it was propelled at a speed of 1017 km / h, the highest speed ever reached on rails. This allowed him to endure 46 times the force of gravity! The violence of the shock gave him some fractures. After his record-breaking scientific experiments, he survived until he was 89, but suffered from vision problems all his life.
