---
title: "Self-experimentation in medicine"
chunk: 3/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medicine"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:17:50.473562+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Anaesthesia ===
Dentist Horace Wells made multiple experiments with nitrous oxide, diethyl ether, and chloroform while trying to determine their uses as anaesthetics. The first, conducted in 1844, consisted of having his assistant John Riggs dose him with nitrous oxide and then extract one of his teeth. His later self-experimentation of ether and chloroform took place in 1848, and he eventually became addicted to chloroform due to excessive use. He inhaled chloroform as an anaesthetic shortly before committing suicide on January 24, 1848.
Lidocaine, the first amino amide–type local anaesthetic, was first synthesized under the name xylocaine by Swedish chemist Nils Löfgren in 1943. His colleague Bengt Lundqvist performed the first injection anaesthesia experiments on himself.

=== Asthma ===
Roger Altounyan developed the use of sodium cromoglycate as a remedy for asthma, based on khella, a traditional Middle Eastern remedy, with experiments on himself.

=== Blood ===

==== ABO blood group system ====
Dr. Karl Landsteiner's discovery of the ABO blood group system in 1900 was based on an analysis of blood samples from six members of his laboratory staff, including himself.

==== Thrombocytopenia ====
In the Harrington–Hollingsworth experiment in 1950, William J. Harrington performed an exchange blood transfusion between himself and a thrombocytopenic patient, discovering the immune basis of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and providing evidence for the existence of autoimmunity.

=== Cancer ===
In 1901, Nicholas Senn investigated whether cancer was contagious.  He surgically inserted under his skin a piece of cancerous lymph node from a patient with cancer of the lip.  After two weeks, the transplant started to fade and Senn concluded that cancer is not contagious.
Much earlier, in 1808, Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert injected himself with a discharge from breast cancer.  The site of injection became inflamed, but did not develop cancer.
Gerhard Domagk, in 1949, injected himself with sterilised extract of human cancer in an attempt to prove that immunisation against cancer was possible.
In 2024, Beata Halassy, a 50-year-old virologist with a history of recurrent triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), conducted a self-experiment using intratumoral injections of research-grade viruses she prepared in her own laboratory. Her cancer was first treated with mastectomy and chemotherapy in 2016, but a local recurrence in 2018 left a small residual seroma. By 2020, what was thought of as a "seroma" had progressed into a 2 cm tumor infiltrating the pectoral muscle. Facing this invasive recurrence, she initially injected the Edmonston-Zagreb measles vaccine strain (MeV) directly into the tumor, later switching to the vesicular stomatitis virus Indiana strain (VSV). Her oncologists were informed of her intent and agreed to monitor her condition, prepared to intervene if necessary. This unconventional and experimental neoadjuvant oncolytic virotherapy led to significant tumor reduction, enabling a less invasive surgical resection. After that she completed a year of adjuvant trastuzumab therapy and remained recurrence-free 45 months after the oncolytic virotherapy.

=== Infectious diseases and vaccines ===
COVID-19

In February 2020, Huang Jinhai, an immunologist at Tianjin University, claimed that he had taken four doses of a COVID-19 vaccine developed in his lab even before it had been tested in animals.
In March 2020, the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (also known as RaDVaC) developed, produced, and published technical specifications for a modular, intranasal COVID-19 vaccine. Numerous scientists working directly and indirectly on the group's vaccine development also began self-experimentation using the project's multiple vaccine candidates.
In March 2020, Hans-Georg Rammensee, professor of immunology at University of Tübingen and co-founder of CureVac began testing a COVID-19 vaccine on himself.
In May 2020, Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology announced that several vaccine specialists had begun self-experimentation with the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.

==== AIDS vaccine ====
Daniel Zagury, in 1986, was the first to test his proposed AIDS vaccine.

==== Bartonellosis ====
Daniel Alcides Carrión, in 1885, infected himself from the pus in the purple wart (verruga peruana) of a female patient.  Carrión developed an acute form of bartonellosis now known as Carrion's disease or Oroya fever.  This is a rare disease found only in Peru and certain other parts of South America.  He kept detailed notes of his condition and succeeded in showing through this self-experiment that the chronic and acute forms were the same disease.  He died from the disease after several weeks.  A student who had assisted Carrion in carrying out this work was arrested and charged with murder, but later released.

==== Cholera ====

Max von Pettenkofer, in October 1892, drank bouillon deliberately infected with a large dose of cholera bacteria.  Pettenkofer was attempting to disprove the theory of Robert Koch that the disease was caused by the bacteria Vibrio cholerae alone.  Pettenkofer also took bicarbonate of soda to counter a claim by Koch that stomach acid killed the bacteria.  Pettenkofer escaped with mild symptoms and claimed success, but the modern view is that he did indeed have cholera, luckily just a mild case, and possibly had some immunity from a previous episode.

==== Dysentery ====
S.O. Levinson with H.J. Shaugnessy – and others between 1942 and 1947 – injected themselves with a vaccine against dysentery.  The vaccine had previously been tested on mice, which had all died within minutes, and the effect on humans was completely unknown.  The experimenters survived but suffered strong side effects.

==== Gastritis and peptic ulcers ====