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Weird science and weird scientists throughout history

Electrified Sheep
& Elephants on Acid

My newest book, Electrified Sheep, which is packed full of mad scientists, is currently available in the UK. The US edition is coming out in 2012. My previous book, Elephants on Acid, is also still available everywhere. Click on either image for more info.





Categories

Digestion
Topics from the archives of the Mad Science Museum related to the study of digestion. Arranged in descending chronological order.

Frederick Hoelzel: The Glass-Eating Scientist (1889-1963)

Frederick Hoelzel (age 27)
following a 15-day fast
As a teenager, Frederick Hoelzel adopted a strange method of weight-loss. He curbed his appetite by eating non-caloric food substitutes such as corn cobs, sawdust, cork, feathers, asbestos, rayon, and banana stems. His favorite meal was surgical cotton cut up into small pieces, which became part of his daily diet.

Later in his life, during the 1920s, while working as a researcher at the University of Chicago, Hoelzel put this talent for eating unusual substances to scientific use by ingesting a variety of inert materials in order to measure how quickly they passed through his intestines.
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Grassi Eats Worms (1879)

Giovanni Battista Grassi
Worm Incubator
On 10 October 1878, the Sicilian doctor Giovanni Battista Grassi was conducting an autopsy when he found the large intestine of the corpse to be riddled with tapeworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) and their eggs. Grassi immediately realized he could ingest some of the eggs and prove it was possible to infect oneself with tapeworms in this way.
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Stubbins Ffirth: The Vomit-Drinking Doctor (1804)
How far would you go to prove a theory? Stubbins Ffirth, a doctor-in-training living in Philadelphia during the early nineteenth century, went further than most. Way further.

Having observed that yellow fever ran riot during the summer, but disappeared during the winter, Ffirth concluded that it was not a contagious disease. Instead, he theorized it was caused by an excess of stimulants such as heat, food, and noise.

To prove his theory, Ffirth set out to demonstrate that no matter how much he exposed himself to yellow fever, he wouldn't catch it. He started by making small incisions on his arms and pouring "fresh black vomit" obtained from a yellow-fever patient into the cuts. He didn't get sick.
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All text Copyright © 2011 by Alex Boese, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.