---
title: "Self-experimentation in medicine"
chunk: 7/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medicine"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:45:59.502626+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

There have been several cases of surgeons operating on themselves, but most often it has been in the nature of an emergency rather than experiment.  Such a case was Leonid Rogozov who was obliged to remove his own appendix in 1961 while stranded in Antarctica in winter.  However, the first surgeon to carry out this self-operation, Evan O'Neill Kane in 1921, did so with an element of experiment.  Although Kane's operation was necessary, it was not necessary to do it himself, so that in itself was experimental.  More than that, Kane wished to experience the operation under local anaesthetic before trying the procedure on his patients.  Kane advocated a reduction in the use of general anaesthetic by surgeons. In 2023, Michael Raduga, a Russian lucid dreaming researcher, performed self-neurosurgery that included trepanation, electrode implantation, and electrical stimulation of the motor cortex.

==== Sensory deprivation ====
John C. Lilly developed the first sensory deprivation tanks and self-experimented them with the intention to study the origin of consciousness and its relation to the brain by creating an environment which isolates an individual from external stimulation.

==== Temperature and pressure ====
Joseph Barcroft, in 1920, spent six days in a sealed glass chamber to investigate respiration at altitude.  The partial pressure of oxygen was initially 163 mmHg falling to 84 mmHg (equivalent to an altitude of 18,000 ft) as the experiment progressed.  Barcroft was attempting to disprove a theory of John Scott Haldane that the lungs actively secrete oxygen into the blood (rather than just through the process of passive diffusion) under conditions of low oxygen partial pressure.  Barcroft suffered from severe hypoxia.  At the end of experiment, part of Barcroft's left radial artery was removed for investigation.
In 1931, Barcroft subjected himself to freezing temperatures while naked.  Towards the end of the experiment he showed signs of the final stages of hypothermia.  He was thought to be close to death and had to be rescued by colleagues.

==== Neural implant ====
Kevin Warwick had an array of 100 electrodes fired into the median nerve fibres of his left arm. With this in place, over a 3-month period, he conducted a number of experiments linking his nervous system with the internet.

==== Neural adaption to immobilization ====
Nico Dosenbach wore a pink cast over his (unbroken) right arm for two weeks in order to examine how brain circuits controlling movement are impacted by immobilizing illnesses or injuries.  He did a 30-minute resting state fMRI study daily and identified an undiscovered pattern of pulses of rs-fMRI signal in motor regions controlling the disused anatomy. In a second experiment, he took psilocybin while in an fMRI scanner in a study he led as principal investigator.

== See also ==
N of 1 trial
Personal science
Human Enhancement
Quantified self

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Haldane, J.B.S. (2001) [1927]. "On Being One's Own Rabbit". Possible Worlds (reprint ed.). Transaction Publishers. pp. 107–119. ISBN 978-0765807151.
Roberts, Seth (December 2010). "The unreasonable effectiveness of my self-experimentation". Medical Hypotheses. 75 (6): 482–489. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2010.04.030. PMC 2964443. PMID 20580874.
Dagi, T. Forcht; Dagi, Linda Rabinowitz (1988). "Physicians Experimenting on Themselves: Some Ethical and Philosophical Considerations". In Spicker, S. F.; Alon, I.; de Vries, A.; Engelhardt, Jr, H. Tristram (eds.). The Use of Human Beings in Research: With Special Reference to Clinical Trials. Springer Science+Business Media. pp. 249–260. ISBN 9789400927056.
Altman, Lawrence K. (1987). Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine (1st ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0520212817.