September 6, 2011 • 40 mins
Over the centuries, some scientists have concluded that the best test subject is looking at them in the mirror. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore 10 researchers, unsung or otherwise, who put their own health second to the advancement of science.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House toff works dot com. Sometimes science goes too
far dog matters twisted but true. Wednesday's attend on Science. Hey,
(00:25):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
at long last is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this
is special like eight ways from Sunday? This episode is,
isn't it. I've changed my name over the weekend. Yeah,
I've changed the jan Michael Vincent finally. All right, you've
(00:46):
been talking about that forever, Chuck. I'm glad you finally
did it. And you showed me your driver's license and
it's official. Pretty neat. And what's cool is, um you
did your hair for the photo. It looks kind of
like the air Wolf Airwolf era, Jane Michael Vincent. Is
there any other era the Mechanic? That's true? That those
are his two eras Hooper. Was he in that? Yeah?
(01:08):
He was the young buck stuntman to Burt Reynolds's aged veteran.
Really he played that role a couple of times. Then
I guess, huh, okay, Well, that's enough for the Jim
Michael Vincent shout outs. Is he around still? Uh? I
mean I haven't seen him in a decade and he
was in pretty bad shape a decade ago. Was he
really Yeah? From the from what I think drugs, I
(01:30):
might be wrong though, or maybe he was not. He
was injured or something. Do you just told everybody Jim
Michael Vincent likes drugs. He's self experimented. Great one, Thank
you very much for that. Um. This is a special
episode because we are good good friends of the Science
Channel and they have a very very cool show that
an ad played for at the beginning of this episode,
(01:53):
Dark Matters. It comes on. It premiered last Wednesday. It
comes on tomorrow Wednesdays at ten pm. Have you have
you looked at the episodes? Have you seen any of
the video? It's pretty awesome. It is UM and I
was going through the episode guide of the stuff they
have coming up. It's like, um, really like a dark
version of Unsolved Mysteries? Remember that? Yeah? Yeah? So UM.
(02:15):
The A couple of the episodes have stuff that we've covered,
like Einstein's brain, c I A lsd UM, and then
they have a bunch of stuff we have. I didn't
get that impression, but it's it's possible. They can do
anything they want. But imitation is the greatest form of flighters, right,
And that's actually we get asked to do stuff sometimes
and you'll know if we really want to do it
(02:36):
because we do it. And we did this one. Like
this is literally being recorded today. Yeah, Like that's crazy.
That is definitely different. Yeah, Jerry's turning this one around
like hours later. Yeah, or earlier. We recorded this. It
is as fresh as it gets. It still has the
peach fuzz on it. Depeche Mode. By the way, de
pech Mode is in no way related to a rare
(02:58):
the founding He was a founding member of the h
Mode and later went on to Founderation. Really Vincent Clark really, yes, wow,
I knew there was some tie. I had no idea
we're talking about this because we were having rarely do
we let you in on our pre record conversation. But
Josh went saw Ratio this weekend and I knew it
was awesome and it was great, and there was some
tie to another band. I couldn't remember it, and it
(03:20):
was depeche Mode. Well, it was either depeche Mode or
the pet Boys, probably, but I had cheez Did I
just say that that? He said the pet Boys, which
is an auto part score. They're really good on the
keyboards and they had these gigant or heads and bodies.
All right, So Chuck, you're ready ready. We're talking about
scientists who self experiment and we've talked about UM crazy
(03:43):
experiments before. So this UM episode actually forms a trifecta
with two other previously released episodes that if you haven't heard,
you should go listen to. What's the third UM? There
is the human Experimentation sure episode, and then five Crazy
Government exp Oh yeah, all those are pretty pretty well
mixed together. So if you listen to that the if
(04:06):
you listen to those two and self Experimentation, you're gonna
have a very robust understanding of just how nuts some
scientists are. You know what they call that around here?
What a bucket? Yeah, they do a bucket of content. Heck,
that's almost channel. That's right. Ah, this is good man.
You threw this together like lickety split last week and
found some really cool things. I think. Yeah, there's there's
(04:29):
UM you could do way more than ten Yeah, sure, UM,
like the guy who cracked his own knuckles for thirty years,
just in his left hand. I believe he found nothing right.
It does not cause arthritis. Um. We've talked before about
Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who um took the world's
first acid trip that's on purpose, Um, on a bike.
(04:51):
But can you imagine like never having known anything about it,
Like I think generally when people do that kind of
thing these days, you've heard of it and you know
what's coming. But for it to be this brand new thing,
he was probably like I bet there was along bike crack. Yeah,
like kids, kids grew up on the Great Space Coaster,
so they know it's coming, you know. Um, But yeah
(05:12):
he said that. Um. He he laid down at home
and UM, these these bizarre but not altogether unpleasant visions
started coming to him and yeah, he was whacked out
for many hours. Um. But we've talked about him before. UM.
A guy who we haven't talked about who I find
just fascinating. His name Santorio Santorio. It's the the researchers
(05:35):
so nice. They named him twice, Sordio Sthordio. Yes, yes,
take a check. Well, he was a self experimenter and
one of the earlier self experimenters. Um, we're talking sixteenth
century style. And uh, what he did is he wanted
to find out about and I guess they didn't call
it metabolism at the time, did they, No, he he
(05:56):
later ending the study. Okay, yeah, back then they had
no I But basically that's what he was doing, was
kind of learning about the human metabolism. And he did
so by h being very meticulous about recording what he
eat eated, what he ate and what he drank, and uh,
weighing his stools and his urine. And I guess he
(06:17):
formed some equation what comes in what goes out? Well,
he found that it doesn't equal. And you you can't
take into account the weight you put on. There's still
some um difference. And he wanted to figure out where
that went. And he came up with the idea of
insensible perspiration, which I thought was going to be all
about sweat. So I was a little disappointed. Well it is, yeah,
(06:38):
but really, I mean it's just like constant, little sweat
weight like that. But the cool thing about Santorio Squared
is that, um, he lived for thirty years chuck essentially
every every day, every every single day for thirty years,
and he basically lived on this machine. It was like
(06:58):
a huge beam scae and he constructed like a little
chair and like a work table and all that. And
he weighed all the food and drink that came on,
and he weighed all the poop and urine that went off.
But he lived on this thing. Well. And what's sad
is that he did all this and it really wasn't
super useful, no, but it opened the doors though for
things like that. It definitely did. And um, one of
(07:19):
one of the other things that did was, um, he
had the idea of insensible perspiration before he did this,
so he was one of the first people to say,
you know what, I'm not just gonna say something. I'm
gonna subject this to scientific rigor. I'm gonna put my
money where my mouth is. I'm gonna scale and weigh
my pooop. Yeah, he's like a stockbroker in the eighties
(07:41):
looking for brand, you know. So that's number one. Uh,
number two, we come to eighteen o three is a
little bit of a jump there to Frederick Wilhelm Adam
Certnir and Um, what he ended up doing was actually
pretty useful for everyone even today, because he did he
discover morphine he isolated did it isolated it from opium? Yeah,
(08:05):
and through two steps got a few friends together. Well,
at first he tested it on animals until they started dying,
sleeping and dying, right, and then he was like, well,
maybe I should try to some people and see what happened.
Because he said, um that animals do not give exact results.
I guess that's true, right, So he and his seventeen
year old friends give exact results. Also, dying is a
(08:26):
pretty exact result. Yeah, So he ouedied a bunch of
animals and he got three uh you pointed out seventeen
year olds plus himself, and I think he was like
twenty at the time he was, so that's like right
in the wheelhouse. Still today, I think he's a middle
age back then though, yeah. Uh. And so he dosed
himself and his friends on a low dose at first,
(08:46):
about a half a grain of morphine, which is thirty mgs.
It's a comparatively low dose to what he took, right,
and that produced a little flushing. He was like, hey,
this is kind of neat, but I'm I'm looking for
more than flushing, so let me take a little more more.
After about fifteen minutes, took a similar dose, started feeling
a little queasy and faint and sleepy, of course, and
(09:08):
to the point where I guess he thought it might
be getting a little dangerous, so he threw up, made
all his friends throw up to get it out of
their system. Well, yeah, he started to get a little
worried that they were all gonna die because they've taken
ninety milligrams of morphine in less than an hour, which
today we realized is ten times recommended us. So yeah,
(09:30):
he he um, he gave everybody like eight ounces of
vinegar to drink and made him throw up and save
their lives. Yeah, imagine they probably huh. Yeah. And then
he did another experiment later because he had a toothache,
and he found that if he just took opium for it,
the toothache wasn't cured, but if he took some morphine
it was cured. Oh, I thought he discovered that by accident,
(09:52):
Like he was like, wait a minute, my toothache. You know,
he kept going, this is the only experiment, Like he
had like many many brushes with death. As far as
self experiment any scientists go, he was probably one of them,
one of the toughest ones, or at least or the
most as the one most addicted to morphine. That's right, Yeah,
but that was a pretty big contribution to humanity. I mean,
(10:15):
that's still like the go to um pain killer today,
I imagine or not imagine, I know this to be true.
Uh up next, Josh, we have Henry Head, Sir Henry Head,
and he got together with his buddy w HR Rivers
and um they this one's a little crazy to meet.
(10:37):
They knew at the time that nerve damage can repair itself,
but what they didn't have was uh documentation, right, because
people couldn't describe it. Good night. They'd be like yeah,
I guess that kind of hurts, yeah, and like yeah,
so what they needed at the time there was no documentation.
So they were like, well, let me cut out a
sliver of my nerve on my arm and sew it
(10:59):
back together. Unless since I can talk about this stuff intelligently,
just I'll do it myself and not just any nerve.
This is a radial that his the radial nerve in
his left arm. Right, he was right handed, which is
why he did this to his left arm because he's no,
he's no dumb right, Um and he had it surgically
removed and the radial nerve, dude goes to the spinal
(11:20):
calm and then all the way down branches all the
way down to the hand, so it's like a major nerve.
And he had a section cut out and then tied
back together with silk and then said, Okay, I'm just
gonna spend the next five years paying attention to how
the um sensation uh semantaception comes back. That's right, and
not only that, chuck. So, dude, I got a root
(11:42):
canal the other day, as you know, he said, it
wasn't too bad. Huh, No, it wasn't. But I was
thinking about Henry Head because while it was going on,
I kind of went off to my happy place. I
just like left my body as much as possible in
case any pain did come along, it would be kind
of muted. What Henry Head did that work? Was it did? Yeah?
(12:03):
You know, like you're not looking for the pain, You're
trying to avoid it mentally. Yeah, and it definitely makes
it worse if you're attention, yes, he But what Henry
Head did was create this kind of trance like state
called negative attitude of attention, where he focused his attention
inward on pain, looking for it, so he could, you know,
(12:26):
I guess, experience it more fully and pay attention to
the type of pain it was. This guy went on
this journey of pain, excruciating pain at times. Yeah. What
was his quote to his wife? He said, I shall
know a great deal about pain by the time this
experiment is over. And he was right, yeah, whatever, But
(12:48):
he was a bad dude. She's like, what's this bringing
in this eternal pain? But he, uh, you know that
documentation was important because they've never been able to describe
for they probably didn't follow patients up like they do now,
you know, like five years later, right, Well, and this
was over the course of five years, so like they
they basically documented how sensation returns after a major nerve damage.
(13:11):
And he also contributed a lot to experimental psychology with
the negative attitude of attention. UM. Basically, there's this whole
thing of reverie where you're just basically zoned out, like
Ralphie in um a Christmas story like that that was
never documented before. And basically what Henry Head did was say, oh,
here's a way to explore that. I don't get the Ralphie.
(13:34):
Remember where they're like Ralphie and he like comes to
remember his his little daydream about getting the A plus
plus plus plus plus. That's Reverie. Yeah, that's good. Family
comedy is number four in our list. Josh, I could
like to call the dude who loved drugs Alexandra Shulgin.
(13:55):
We talked about him before, and he was a chemist
for doll in the sixties. We talked about in the
can Psychedelics treatmental Illness, that's the one he showed up in. Right.
He was basically um toying with with mescaline and and
compounds that later became ecstasy M D M A M
D M A. I have a hard time saying that.
(14:15):
And he and his wife took a lot of these
psychoactive drugs, had parties and the Martini as the usual
method of the sixties, put a little drugs in there,
and uh, you know, that's basically his story. He he
liked the drugs, and I guess he documented all this stuff, right, Yeah,
he went just partying, was he? I don't know if
(14:36):
partying is the right word, But I don't know that
he was always documenting. I don't know if it was
always scientifically rigorous how many did he take here? So
there's like an estimated three hundred psychoactive compounds in the world,
and he estimated that he sampled between two hundred and
two and fifty of them. So he liked the psychedelics
a lot. He put into the dead Simothy Learry to shame,
(14:59):
didn't he They were probably buddies? Was he American? Yeah? Okay,
So let's go back a little bit from the drug
adult sixties to nineteenth century. Yeah, eighteen nineteen, Right, there's
a Czechoslovakian monk who um at age thirty two, became
a doctor because, um, he didn't think that the whole
(15:23):
recommended dosage thing that was being doled out at the
time was he called it nothing but mysticism. He thought
it was way too low and basically, um was homeopathy.
I think he had a problem with homeopathy. His name
is yam Per Kenny, and he uh, he basically said, Okay,
I'm gonna become a doctor so I can learn more
(15:44):
about this, and then I'm gonna take as many drugs
as I can get my hands on, and um overdose
and then pay attention to what happens to me, because
I want to figure out what the recommended dosage should be. Yeah.
The coolest part about this guy's story, I think is
that after he started doing this, like taking things like
fox glove to blur his vision and then writing about
(16:05):
that night shade Ah, the word got out and people.
I got the sense that other doctors were like, Hey,
there's this dude that you'll let you do anything. Do
it right, He'll take anything, So they started doing that. Yeah.
One of his teachers, UM at med school, said Hey,
I've got these three different extracts of epocac, and I
need to find out which one's best. So what do
(16:27):
you think which one? Is there anything that that does
besides make you vomit? Nope, Okay, that's it's sole purpose
as far as I know, that's it. Have you ever
ever heard of it used for anything else? No? I
haven't either. No, I don't ever want to have it,
but um, I want to try it this, so yeah,
PERKINI UM conducted a three week trial of these three
extracts of ipecac, and by the end of the trial,
(16:49):
he'd conditioned like a vomiting response whenever he saw like
a brown powder that looked like iocac. Again, this life's
like you want some cinnamon TOAs well. You know, it's
interest seeing his wife died and he became um in
charge of raising his three boys, and he said, okay,
I'm not a self experimenting anymore. I gotta I have
to stick around and take care of these these jokers. Yeah,
(17:12):
it was pretty cool. He said he was leaving it
to the younger generation. But he's been doing it for
twenty years already. And um, not just ipecac and uh
fox glove, but also um nightshade. We now use atropine,
which is the active ingredient night shade to dilate pupils
thanks to him, because he overdosed on night shade to
(17:32):
find out what would happen. And he would also make
himself very dizzy to study vertigo on carousels. Yeah, there's
the type of vertigo named after him. Yeah, because he
he studied it and figured it out. So he would
just like get on the carousel until it and then
stand up and yeah. But rather than this is a
common thread in in self experimentation, like with my root
(17:54):
canal or if you're dizzy on a carouself, you go inward.
You you you shy away from it. You don't want
to pay attention to any details. You just want everything
to end right with self experimenting researchers do is throw
themselves into the experience and pay attention and gain all
that knowledge from it that you know, any one of
us could do if if we were good at describing
(18:15):
things scientifically, but we don't because we want to avoid
pain and discomfort. Guys did it for us, they did, thankfully. Yeah,
well that's why we're doing this one too. It's like,
hats off to him. If you haven't gotten that impression yet,
thank you, hats off. What if I just did that
and I had like a reversal and I like, you
(18:37):
couldn't say anything about it, all right? George Stratton is next,
and he uh did something a little crazy. You know.
He wore reversing lenses in the nineties. So he learned
that our visual information comes in in an inverted manner.
We all know this, right, well, he knew that, but
(18:57):
there were theories that said this, that's how it has
to be, and he wanted to find out if that
was true, Like, does visual information have to be inverted
for us to see upright? Because you know that it
flips over in the brain exactly right. So can you
imagine what he did to his brain by doing this? Yeah,
it's pretty crazy. He wore these reversing lenses, which basically
(19:19):
presented the visual information right side up, um, and were
them for eight days straight. So it provided it right
side up to the brain. But if we wore that,
everything would look upside down. And he did. He like
you said, eight days straight, unbelievable. He said. The thing
that got him the most was like he would put
his hand out moving right. Well, he had to just
(19:41):
sit there for like the first four days. He couldn't
move at all. Yeah, but um, he would put his
he would stretch his hand out and it would come
in from the top rather than the bottom. He said,
everything was just like a dream. Um, I'd like to
try that out for like a second, you know, I'd
just like to put some on and be like, oh right,
that's weird. Let me take them right back off exact,
not leave them on for eight days. Apparently, by the
(20:03):
fifth day, everything started to um show up as upright again. Yeah,
and then if you really concentrated on it, it would
go back to being upside down. But so did he
rewire his brain? Yeah, he proved that the visual information
doesn't have to be inverted to be seen upright, um,
and that the brain is really capable of adapting in
(20:24):
a fairly short time to basically the most radical changes
in in the stations it is presented. So I guess
that's sort of helped. I mean, it's not like that
led to any huge breakthrough that I think it probably gave. Yeah,
I would think that it probably formed the basis of
like neural plasticity surely, all right. Yeah. Plus also, I mean,
(20:47):
anybody who does that, that's mind bending. You know, he
gets a he gets a pat on the back for that,
no matter what. Well. And he also found too that
after taking them off that it took a little while
to get back to normal, which the process something too
about your brain unlearned and his brain was. Yeah. He
said that he had like glasses at first, and he
(21:08):
said it was just too much. He couldn't do it.
So he blindfold of one eye for eight days and
had like basically a monocle like a little yeah, just
single lens and that's the one he wore for eight days.
He said it was just too much to have two lenses.
So you want to do Carl lon Steiner. Uh yeah,
he he actually did do a lot of good work.
(21:30):
He was Viennese and he was a physician, and he
basically came up with the blood typing system, the A
B O blood typing system, because he noticed that red
blood cells and some people clump in the presence of
the fluid component, which is serum, but not everybody. So
we thought it's almost as if their blood is a
(21:51):
different type from one another. Well, at the time, like
they knew that that would happen because you give people
blood transfusions and then they die and um they because
BO was clumped. Yeah, but at the time everybody thought
it was because those people had some unknown disease. And
lon Steiner was like, I think that people just have
different types of blood. So he used his own blood
(22:11):
in some of his colleagues, we should do one on
blood type. I think we should. Is that true? Like
your body cannot literally cannot accept another blood type. It
depends I think, oh is the universal type, so you
can um except but if you have like A can
you can't have B at all because the red blood
cells clump and your blood doesn't flow and you die.
So it's like putting diesel in a very much in
(22:33):
a regular very much. So yeah, um so what like
you said, what Lon Steiner did was a huge contribution
because he showed, you know, there's different anigens in different
types of blood, and that creates this different blood type
a bo or a b um. And when you when
you if you tell if you test people first and
(22:55):
say oh, they're a type and we've got some a
type blood over here, a blood transfusion will work, and
so will oregan donation and all the other huge. Yeah,
it was enormous. I bet doctors were like, oh, well
that's good to know in these people. Um. So yeah
he won the Nobel Prize in ninety that rightly, so yeah,
(23:15):
he should win it every year. But what's crazy is
you know he he just he experimented on himself. It's
kind of cool. Um. But what's nuts is that he
also uses colleagues blood. And it just so happened that
out of like five people, they all had different blood types,
like types were present. It could have gone the exact
opposite way and just everybody had a type and then
(23:38):
he said no, they're the same, yeah exactly. So I
thought that was pretty cool and it was almost providence
well and he he led that led to Dr Jack
Goldstein UM in the nineteen eighties to do He was
a biochemist that did more experimenting and this one confused
not confused me. But he found out that an enzyme
and coffee, when injected into BE blood removes anigin and
(24:01):
basically makes it the universal blood type. How did he
figure that out? I don't know. The coffee, I don't know,
but he figured it out. But I just injected coffee
one day to see what that would do and in
my blood. Right, So he he had O type blood,
so that that this enzyme changes B type blood O
type blood. UM, and he had O type blood. So
to prove that this worked, he got a blood transfusion
(24:24):
of this treated B blood that was ostensibly now OH blood.
So he got a blood transfusion, a small one, but
he did it himself, UM to see if you know,
his arm would fall off or something like that, or
if his blood would clump. And it worked. And it's
still being worked out. But apparently, UM, you know that
opens up like the donation pool. If you can just
(24:46):
take all this B type blood and you need OH,
which is the universal type. Just injected with this enzyme,
and I wonder how much blood you have to have
transfused before it, Like how much diesel can you put
in there? I don't know, Like if you if they
just did like a vial with that, like what would
that do to your body? I don't know, because Goldstein
did like eleven billion, eleven and a half billion red
(25:09):
blood cells, and I don't know if that's just a
few drops or if that's like half a pine or
a pine or what. Yeah, well we'll have to find
that out in the blood typing episode. Okay, well I
have I've been wanting to do the blood one for
a while, but it's just like, let's do it right now.
It's tough. I'm gonna need a little while on that one. Okay, Okay,
(25:29):
do we have a blood typing article? Well, we have
an article on blood that's like really dense. Oh yes,
we started to do that when we're like, yeah, we're
not doing this right now. It was I thought I
think it was written by an M. D. Wasn't it.
It read like it. Yeah, So look for the revised
version coming in the future. All right. I like number
nine Erman is it Herman or Erman Ebbing? House. I
(25:54):
don't think he's Portuguese. He was a German. Would Airman Portuguese? Yeah, Erman,
I don't know he's Herman. Then let's just call him Herman.
He was German. And uh he was the first guy
to really study memory and a really maybe at all,
but in a really scientific way, which was which was
unusual at the time to apply scientific research principles to
(26:17):
psychological matters. Right that it was like basically taking the
way the hard science is doing and applying it to
the soft science of psychologists. But he formed the methodology
that's still in use today and proved that it can work. Like, yes,
you can study you know, cognitive faculties like memory in
a science way, in a science way, science e way. Um,
(26:39):
so what he did was pretty cool. He created Uh,
the first thing he did was he created these non
syllable nonsense syllable of them with two consonants with a
vowel in the middle, like nog this is one example
you used. And he had to make them nonsense because
there had to be like no so ciation with like
(27:01):
previous words that he had learned that had to be
brand new things in his brain because I mean, if
you if you have a previous association with a syllable,
right like SKay. Okay, and you have a great memory
of ice skating as a child, and SKay brings that
to mind. Of course you can remember SKay. I'm surprised
he came up with I would that'd be tough for me. Uh.
(27:26):
So what he did was he basically, over the course
of a year, uh learned these words and then to
the point where he could recall them perfectly, and then
recorded how long it took for him basically to forget
them and then relearn them again. And that taught us
all sorts of cool things about memory. Yeah. He he
(27:46):
figured out that um and a lot of this stuff
you know is so commonplace. We we know it, we
take it very much for granted. But this guy is
the one who figured out that UM, meaningless stuff is
harder to learn than meaning full stuff. Um. He gave
us the idea of the learning curve. The more stuff
you have to learn, the longer it's going to take
(28:07):
to learn it. Yeah. I think he was the first
person actually name it to the learning curve. I think
so it's possible. I believe so Okay, um and uh
forgetting happens most rapidly right after learning and then kind
of evens off and slows down. Um. And he taught
us that cramming doesn't work, that learning is best when
(28:28):
it's done over a longer time than you know, a
single Yeah, because boy, I used to cram pretty well.
Did you stunk at it? I was good at it?
I was not. I just I would just be too
stressed out. Well, and I short changed myself though, because
I would do well in the test and then forget it,
(28:49):
which was I mean, I wasn't doing myself any favors
as far as gaining knowledge. You know, I took Italian
um in college, and it was the only language that's
ever clicked for me, Like I got a town in
on a fundamental level. Yeah, and just aced the class
until the final, and I studied for the final. I
don't think I crammed it, just you know, I didn't
take it for granted that I was gonna ace the final.
(29:11):
But I for some reason I got there and forgot
everything when I sat down, and well then I panicked, Yeah,
but it wasn't panic until I realized that I had
forgotten everything. And I still did this day. Don't understand
what happened, and I don't remember. It's not like it
came back after the test. It just went away right
before the final. You know what happened? What Centorio Sordio,
(29:34):
That's what happened. I started, I started weighing my feces,
and it chased away all my understanding of battalion, and
I stopped after one trial. Did you? I'm just saying,
I've waited my feces once, and I know you gotta
do it more than once. He also created the ebbing
House illusion. Have you ever heard that? That's that thing?
Right there? Is that the same size that is not
(29:58):
the same size, It is not the same side. It's
a very famous illusion where there are two same sized circles,
they're not the same size. And then the one on
the left has these very large circles around it and
the one on the right has very small circles around it,
and it gives the appearance that they're different sizes, but
they are not so. Eving House is a pioneer in
(30:18):
experimental psychology, which is pretty cool, absolutely, and in experimental
psychology still today. Self experimentation is um fairly commonly used
UM because it's not nearly as dangerous as it is
in say medicine. For that reason, science today is basically
like you can't self experiment. That's so nineteenth century. Well,
(30:43):
and beyond the dangers of it, there's something called double
blinds and placebos that you know, if you know, if
you're self experimenting, then there that's going to affect the
outcome of the experiment almost time with the double blind
is like a hallmark of science, the inquiry, and you
it's impossible with when you're experimenting on yourself. So, uh,
(31:07):
if you're looking for grant funding and you're saying, well,
I'm just gonna try this drug on myself and see
what happens, You're not gonna get that funding, but probably
won't get published either, right, Well, it depends. There's this
guy named Seth Roberts who published a paper about his
twelve years of self experimentation. And he's a psychologist, um,
but the paper that he published was about the self
(31:28):
experimenting he did in his spare time. So if you're
not an experimental psychologist, um, probably if you're into self experimentation,
you're either um some sort of pro scientist doing it
in your spare time, or you're an amateur. There's a
there's a been a movement called an equals one, which
is you know, in his scientific notation for the study
(31:50):
sample size or population size, didn't called quantified self though.
That's a movement. Well, that's the um, that's the website.
There's like a group where it's kind of like this
hub of like, hey, I want to figure out why
I had migraine. So I started tracking like my food
and they were wired editors. I think, yeah, yeah, I
did not know that. Yeah, yeah, So there's a quantified self.
(32:12):
Dot com is basically this awesome place where you can
go see how other people are carrying out their own
self experiments and gets a little wacky. Yeah, there's just
one lady that drinks her first yurine of the day
each day she records all that. Are you sure you
saw that? I read it. I didn't see her do that. Well,
but he didn't click on the YouTube. Know, there's all sorts.
(32:35):
There was a big Forbes. Forbes had a big article
on this movement, which is some people call it naval
gazing at its finest. Other people think it's valid. Well
that's the point that Seth Roberts made. He was saying like,
I don't need funding for this because I'm just doing
it my spare time. It costs like basically no money.
Get off my back. I just pay attention. But he
(32:56):
also said that, um, he was motivated. He had the
motivation of a person looking to solve a problem, like
he wanted to control his weight or mood or make
himself a happier person, um, get better sleep. So he
just carried out all these self experiments and he could
conduct more than one at a time. So yeah, he
(33:16):
was like, get off my back. I think it's kind
of cool though, Like I have lactose issues and I
could see myself getting into um eating to tracking that
and and isolating exactly which foods. I mean, that's basically
all it is. That's it's kind of cool. And drinking
your own urine type will draw the line there. So, UM,
we should probably say thanks to some of the sources
(33:39):
that helped us with this podcast Clark Oscillatory Thoughts Blog. Um,
let's see Tiffany Watt Smith wrote Henry Head in the
theater of Reverie. Scientific American had a cool article self
experiment and step up for science. Alan Neringer had a
paper from one called self experimentation a call for change.
(33:59):
Lawrence kay Altman literally wrote the book on this. Um
who goes First? The Story of Self Experimentation in Medicine? Yeah, exactly.
Um A. Cohen wrote an article in the British Journal
of Clinical Pharmacology about UM Sara Turner's experiments. He in
his good Time Buddies. Um Salvatore Kurri did he rideout sad?
(34:21):
He wrote about George Stratton. Uh, the University of Indiana
has a cool human intelligence department quantified self dot com.
If you want to get into self experimentation and don't
feel like suing us for mentioning it, it's interesting to
look at at the very least. Yeah, I agreed, and
then Seth roberts the unreasonable effectiveness of my self experimentation
is the name of the paper. So those are all
the ones, and then pretty soon there'll be a list
(34:44):
top ten list on the site. It's not published yet,
it's practically done. I would assume, and Chuck, if you
forgot the name of the show that we were promoting
on sign channel, why don't we do a little ad
for it? That's true? Yeah, um chuck. A couple more
shout outs are good, good friend Wyatt Senak. Yes, his
(35:06):
stand up special Wyatt Sanak Comedy Person is out on DVD,
very funny stuff and if you've only seen why it
on the Daily Show he is. Uh, he's great on
the Daily Show. But his stand up is hysterical and
different than you would think it would be. It is.
He's much more like lively and animated and he's awesome.
He's a good guy too. Um. And we have a
(35:28):
happiness audio book out, that's right, the Grammy nominated nominated
Happiness Audio book, The super Stuff Guide to Happiness. That's right. Um,
it's up on iTunes for three nine nine. You're gonna
end up selling out more if you're in Australia. We're sorry.
Um let's see what else. Oh, it's got all sorts
of great sound design interviews. It's just cool. We've got
(35:49):
some experts on the horn. Ye, my niece, yes, starts
it out. Um and uh, yeah, it's up on iTunes.
Just search for super Stuff Guide to Happiness and that
will also bring up, um, the super Stuff Guide to
the Economy, which is still evergreen and good. Are we
gonna do any more of those? I think we should
just I mean I would feel like I just we
(36:11):
should okay, we would it feel like a quitter if
we just had to. Yeah, we need at least three.
I would like four at least okay, okay, and then
one more administrative detail. We have a cool little thing.
If you text um s y s K to eight
zero five six five, it texts you back a link
to listen to the podcast on your iPhone without going
(36:34):
through iTunes if you're not in the mood. Is that
what it did? Yeah, it's cool. It brings up our
r S speed and you can just listen to it.
I think it's quick time, so it'll work on your
iPhone or your droid or whatever. That's our latest marketing invention. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. So UM just text s y s
K two eight oh five six five. If you ever
are having a stuff, you should know Jones. It's right.
(36:58):
Friedrich's turners not around. Yeah. By the way, we're we're
working on there's been some issues with the apps, I
think refreshing the podcast less lately, and we are working
Our tech department is working on that. So keep your
pants on, as they say, so this will be up eventually.
You can look for UM ten ten scientists who were
their own guinea pigs love it. In the search bar
(37:20):
at how stuff works dot com, you can also type
in human experimentation and five crazy government experiments and they'll
bring up those articles. Um, and I said, handy search
bar finally somewhere in there, which means it's time. We're
a listener, man, Josh, I'm gonna call this, uh well,
first of all, quickly, if you're from Berkeley, California and
(37:42):
you went to UC Berkeley, we had a slight slip
of the tongue. Seriously, we said, U C l A Berkeley.
We know it's UC Berkeley, we know you see l
A is in Los Angeles. Yes, it was just a
little slip of the dog. That's it. We're not dummies.
And sometimes if you live in or have been to Netterling, Colorado,
and are a fan of the Frozen Dead Guy Days
(38:04):
and are mad we didn't bring it up in our
Cryonics episode, go listen to ten odd town Festivals. It's
in there. It's in there, all right. So back to
the listener mail. This is from Stephen H. And this
was just cool information. I'm a huge fan of the show. Guys,
loved the depth and breadth of the presentations. I'm not
sure how far I uh I am from this week.
He's pretty far, but I just listened to the Black
(38:26):
Death episode. I thought you might be interested to know.
While the plague was a horrible affair with millions of
deaths and an interesting effect on our language today, many
scholars of the history of the English language, myself included,
hold that the plague in England is a major reason
why we write in English today. You see, after the Normans,
which were French vikings, took England at the Battle of
(38:48):
Hastings in ten sixty six, Anglo Norman, French and Latin
became the two major languages of administration and literature because
all the important rich folks were chum. However, for reasons unknown,
the plague seems to have hit the mid range nobility
harder than other groups, resulting in a desperate need for administrators.
(39:10):
The only people left to fill the jobs were regular
joe's who only spoke English. So the theory goes, because
of the plague, the nobility was forced to learn English
to communicate with their administrators, resulting in the re emergence
of English as the language of law, administration, and literature
from Stephen h pretty neto. Yeah, I love supplemental information.
(39:32):
That's those are my favorite ones. So thanks a lot,
Stephen h um and since chucks such a big fan
of supplemental information. UM, if you have any supplemental information
about experimentation, specifically self experimentation, we want to hear it. Yeah,
if you've done this yourself, I'd like to hear about it. Yeah,
but don't do it yourself just to tell us about it, No,
(39:53):
because we don't want even get hurt. That seems like
in the gray area that I'm not comfortable with it.
If you've done like your own lactose study on yourself,
something like that, sure, something harmless, Yeah, like you didn't
inject lactose. Um. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast UM. You can go onto Facebook
dot com slash stuff you should know that's our page, UM,
(40:14):
or you can send us a plain old fashioned email
to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to
(40:37):
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera, it's ready.
Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House toff works dot com. Sometimes science goes too
far dog matters twisted but true. Wednesday's attend on Science. Hey,
(00:25):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
at long last is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this
is special like eight ways from Sunday? This episode is,
isn't it. I've changed my name over the weekend. Yeah,
I've changed the jan Michael Vincent finally. All right, you've
(00:46):
been talking about that forever, Chuck. I'm glad you finally
did it. And you showed me your driver's license and
it's official. Pretty neat. And what's cool is, um you
did your hair for the photo. It looks kind of
like the air Wolf Airwolf era, Jane Michael Vincent. Is
there any other era the Mechanic? That's true? That those
are his two eras Hooper. Was he in that? Yeah?
(01:08):
He was the young buck stuntman to Burt Reynolds's aged veteran.
Really he played that role a couple of times. Then
I guess, huh, okay, Well, that's enough for the Jim
Michael Vincent shout outs. Is he around still? Uh? I
mean I haven't seen him in a decade and he
was in pretty bad shape a decade ago. Was he
really Yeah? From the from what I think drugs, I
(01:30):
might be wrong though, or maybe he was not. He
was injured or something. Do you just told everybody Jim
Michael Vincent likes drugs. He's self experimented. Great one, Thank
you very much for that. Um. This is a special
episode because we are good good friends of the Science
Channel and they have a very very cool show that
an ad played for at the beginning of this episode,
(01:53):
Dark Matters. It comes on. It premiered last Wednesday. It
comes on tomorrow Wednesdays at ten pm. Have you have
you looked at the episodes? Have you seen any of
the video? It's pretty awesome. It is UM and I
was going through the episode guide of the stuff they
have coming up. It's like, um, really like a dark
version of Unsolved Mysteries? Remember that? Yeah? Yeah? So UM.
(02:15):
The A couple of the episodes have stuff that we've covered,
like Einstein's brain, c I A lsd UM, and then
they have a bunch of stuff we have. I didn't
get that impression, but it's it's possible. They can do
anything they want. But imitation is the greatest form of flighters, right,
And that's actually we get asked to do stuff sometimes
and you'll know if we really want to do it
(02:36):
because we do it. And we did this one. Like
this is literally being recorded today. Yeah, Like that's crazy.
That is definitely different. Yeah, Jerry's turning this one around
like hours later. Yeah, or earlier. We recorded this. It
is as fresh as it gets. It still has the
peach fuzz on it. Depeche Mode. By the way, de
pech Mode is in no way related to a rare
(02:58):
the founding He was a founding member of the h
Mode and later went on to Founderation. Really Vincent Clark really, yes, wow,
I knew there was some tie. I had no idea
we're talking about this because we were having rarely do
we let you in on our pre record conversation. But
Josh went saw Ratio this weekend and I knew it
was awesome and it was great, and there was some
tie to another band. I couldn't remember it, and it
(03:20):
was depeche Mode. Well, it was either depeche Mode or
the pet Boys, probably, but I had cheez Did I
just say that that? He said the pet Boys, which
is an auto part score. They're really good on the
keyboards and they had these gigant or heads and bodies.
All right, So Chuck, you're ready ready. We're talking about
scientists who self experiment and we've talked about UM crazy
(03:43):
experiments before. So this UM episode actually forms a trifecta
with two other previously released episodes that if you haven't heard,
you should go listen to. What's the third UM? There
is the human Experimentation sure episode, and then five Crazy
Government exp Oh yeah, all those are pretty pretty well
mixed together. So if you listen to that the if
(04:06):
you listen to those two and self Experimentation, you're gonna
have a very robust understanding of just how nuts some
scientists are. You know what they call that around here?
What a bucket? Yeah, they do a bucket of content. Heck,
that's almost channel. That's right. Ah, this is good man.
You threw this together like lickety split last week and
found some really cool things. I think. Yeah, there's there's
(04:29):
UM you could do way more than ten Yeah, sure, UM,
like the guy who cracked his own knuckles for thirty years,
just in his left hand. I believe he found nothing right.
It does not cause arthritis. Um. We've talked before about
Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who um took the world's
first acid trip that's on purpose, Um, on a bike.
(04:51):
But can you imagine like never having known anything about it,
Like I think generally when people do that kind of
thing these days, you've heard of it and you know
what's coming. But for it to be this brand new thing,
he was probably like I bet there was along bike crack. Yeah,
like kids, kids grew up on the Great Space Coaster,
so they know it's coming, you know. Um, But yeah
(05:12):
he said that. Um. He he laid down at home
and UM, these these bizarre but not altogether unpleasant visions
started coming to him and yeah, he was whacked out
for many hours. Um. But we've talked about him before. UM.
A guy who we haven't talked about who I find
just fascinating. His name Santorio Santorio. It's the the researchers
(05:35):
so nice. They named him twice, Sordio Sthordio. Yes, yes,
take a check. Well, he was a self experimenter and
one of the earlier self experimenters. Um, we're talking sixteenth
century style. And uh, what he did is he wanted
to find out about and I guess they didn't call
it metabolism at the time, did they, No, he he
(05:56):
later ending the study. Okay, yeah, back then they had
no I But basically that's what he was doing, was
kind of learning about the human metabolism. And he did
so by h being very meticulous about recording what he
eat eated, what he ate and what he drank, and uh,
weighing his stools and his urine. And I guess he
(06:17):
formed some equation what comes in what goes out? Well,
he found that it doesn't equal. And you you can't
take into account the weight you put on. There's still
some um difference. And he wanted to figure out where
that went. And he came up with the idea of
insensible perspiration, which I thought was going to be all
about sweat. So I was a little disappointed. Well it is, yeah,
(06:38):
but really, I mean it's just like constant, little sweat
weight like that. But the cool thing about Santorio Squared
is that, um, he lived for thirty years chuck essentially
every every day, every every single day for thirty years,
and he basically lived on this machine. It was like
(06:58):
a huge beam scae and he constructed like a little
chair and like a work table and all that. And
he weighed all the food and drink that came on,
and he weighed all the poop and urine that went off.
But he lived on this thing. Well. And what's sad
is that he did all this and it really wasn't
super useful, no, but it opened the doors though for
things like that. It definitely did. And um, one of
(07:19):
one of the other things that did was, um, he
had the idea of insensible perspiration before he did this,
so he was one of the first people to say,
you know what, I'm not just gonna say something. I'm
gonna subject this to scientific rigor. I'm gonna put my
money where my mouth is. I'm gonna scale and weigh
my pooop. Yeah, he's like a stockbroker in the eighties
(07:41):
looking for brand, you know. So that's number one. Uh,
number two, we come to eighteen o three is a
little bit of a jump there to Frederick Wilhelm Adam
Certnir and Um, what he ended up doing was actually
pretty useful for everyone even today, because he did he
discover morphine he isolated did it isolated it from opium? Yeah,
(08:05):
and through two steps got a few friends together. Well,
at first he tested it on animals until they started dying,
sleeping and dying, right, and then he was like, well,
maybe I should try to some people and see what happened.
Because he said, um that animals do not give exact results.
I guess that's true, right, So he and his seventeen
year old friends give exact results. Also, dying is a
(08:26):
pretty exact result. Yeah, So he ouedied a bunch of
animals and he got three uh you pointed out seventeen
year olds plus himself, and I think he was like
twenty at the time he was, so that's like right
in the wheelhouse. Still today, I think he's a middle
age back then though, yeah. Uh. And so he dosed
himself and his friends on a low dose at first,
(08:46):
about a half a grain of morphine, which is thirty mgs.
It's a comparatively low dose to what he took, right,
and that produced a little flushing. He was like, hey,
this is kind of neat, but I'm I'm looking for
more than flushing, so let me take a little more more.
After about fifteen minutes, took a similar dose, started feeling
a little queasy and faint and sleepy, of course, and
(09:08):
to the point where I guess he thought it might
be getting a little dangerous, so he threw up, made
all his friends throw up to get it out of
their system. Well, yeah, he started to get a little
worried that they were all gonna die because they've taken
ninety milligrams of morphine in less than an hour, which
today we realized is ten times recommended us. So yeah,
(09:30):
he he um, he gave everybody like eight ounces of
vinegar to drink and made him throw up and save
their lives. Yeah, imagine they probably huh. Yeah. And then
he did another experiment later because he had a toothache,
and he found that if he just took opium for it,
the toothache wasn't cured, but if he took some morphine
it was cured. Oh, I thought he discovered that by accident,
(09:52):
Like he was like, wait a minute, my toothache. You know,
he kept going, this is the only experiment, Like he
had like many many brushes with death. As far as
self experiment any scientists go, he was probably one of them,
one of the toughest ones, or at least or the
most as the one most addicted to morphine. That's right, Yeah,
but that was a pretty big contribution to humanity. I mean,
(10:15):
that's still like the go to um pain killer today,
I imagine or not imagine, I know this to be true.
Uh up next, Josh, we have Henry Head, Sir Henry Head,
and he got together with his buddy w HR Rivers
and um they this one's a little crazy to meet.
(10:37):
They knew at the time that nerve damage can repair itself,
but what they didn't have was uh documentation, right, because
people couldn't describe it. Good night. They'd be like yeah,
I guess that kind of hurts, yeah, and like yeah,
so what they needed at the time there was no documentation.
So they were like, well, let me cut out a
sliver of my nerve on my arm and sew it
(10:59):
back together. Unless since I can talk about this stuff intelligently,
just I'll do it myself and not just any nerve.
This is a radial that his the radial nerve in
his left arm. Right, he was right handed, which is
why he did this to his left arm because he's no,
he's no dumb right, Um and he had it surgically
removed and the radial nerve, dude goes to the spinal
(11:20):
calm and then all the way down branches all the
way down to the hand, so it's like a major nerve.
And he had a section cut out and then tied
back together with silk and then said, Okay, I'm just
gonna spend the next five years paying attention to how
the um sensation uh semantaception comes back. That's right, and
not only that, chuck. So, dude, I got a root
(11:42):
canal the other day, as you know, he said, it
wasn't too bad. Huh, No, it wasn't. But I was
thinking about Henry Head because while it was going on,
I kind of went off to my happy place. I
just like left my body as much as possible in
case any pain did come along, it would be kind
of muted. What Henry Head did that work? Was it did? Yeah?
(12:03):
You know, like you're not looking for the pain, You're
trying to avoid it mentally. Yeah, and it definitely makes
it worse if you're attention, yes, he But what Henry
Head did was create this kind of trance like state
called negative attitude of attention, where he focused his attention
inward on pain, looking for it, so he could, you know,
(12:26):
I guess, experience it more fully and pay attention to
the type of pain it was. This guy went on
this journey of pain, excruciating pain at times. Yeah. What
was his quote to his wife? He said, I shall
know a great deal about pain by the time this
experiment is over. And he was right, yeah, whatever, But
(12:48):
he was a bad dude. She's like, what's this bringing
in this eternal pain? But he, uh, you know that
documentation was important because they've never been able to describe
for they probably didn't follow patients up like they do now,
you know, like five years later, right, Well, and this
was over the course of five years, so like they
they basically documented how sensation returns after a major nerve damage.
(13:11):
And he also contributed a lot to experimental psychology with
the negative attitude of attention. UM. Basically, there's this whole
thing of reverie where you're just basically zoned out, like
Ralphie in um a Christmas story like that that was
never documented before. And basically what Henry Head did was say, oh,
here's a way to explore that. I don't get the Ralphie.
(13:34):
Remember where they're like Ralphie and he like comes to
remember his his little daydream about getting the A plus
plus plus plus plus. That's Reverie. Yeah, that's good. Family
comedy is number four in our list. Josh, I could
like to call the dude who loved drugs Alexandra Shulgin.
(13:55):
We talked about him before, and he was a chemist
for doll in the sixties. We talked about in the
can Psychedelics treatmental Illness, that's the one he showed up in. Right.
He was basically um toying with with mescaline and and
compounds that later became ecstasy M D M A M
D M A. I have a hard time saying that.
(14:15):
And he and his wife took a lot of these
psychoactive drugs, had parties and the Martini as the usual
method of the sixties, put a little drugs in there,
and uh, you know, that's basically his story. He he
liked the drugs, and I guess he documented all this stuff, right, Yeah,
he went just partying, was he? I don't know if
(14:36):
partying is the right word, But I don't know that
he was always documenting. I don't know if it was
always scientifically rigorous how many did he take here? So
there's like an estimated three hundred psychoactive compounds in the world,
and he estimated that he sampled between two hundred and
two and fifty of them. So he liked the psychedelics
a lot. He put into the dead Simothy Learry to shame,
(14:59):
didn't he They were probably buddies? Was he American? Yeah? Okay,
So let's go back a little bit from the drug
adult sixties to nineteenth century. Yeah, eighteen nineteen, Right, there's
a Czechoslovakian monk who um at age thirty two, became
a doctor because, um, he didn't think that the whole
(15:23):
recommended dosage thing that was being doled out at the
time was he called it nothing but mysticism. He thought
it was way too low and basically, um was homeopathy.
I think he had a problem with homeopathy. His name
is yam Per Kenny, and he uh, he basically said, Okay,
I'm gonna become a doctor so I can learn more
(15:44):
about this, and then I'm gonna take as many drugs
as I can get my hands on, and um overdose
and then pay attention to what happens to me, because
I want to figure out what the recommended dosage should be. Yeah.
The coolest part about this guy's story, I think is
that after he started doing this, like taking things like
fox glove to blur his vision and then writing about
(16:05):
that night shade Ah, the word got out and people.
I got the sense that other doctors were like, Hey,
there's this dude that you'll let you do anything. Do
it right, He'll take anything, So they started doing that. Yeah.
One of his teachers, UM at med school, said Hey,
I've got these three different extracts of epocac, and I
need to find out which one's best. So what do
(16:27):
you think which one? Is there anything that that does
besides make you vomit? Nope, Okay, that's it's sole purpose
as far as I know, that's it. Have you ever
ever heard of it used for anything else? No? I
haven't either. No, I don't ever want to have it,
but um, I want to try it this, so yeah,
PERKINI UM conducted a three week trial of these three
extracts of ipecac, and by the end of the trial,
(16:49):
he'd conditioned like a vomiting response whenever he saw like
a brown powder that looked like iocac. Again, this life's
like you want some cinnamon TOAs well. You know, it's
interest seeing his wife died and he became um in
charge of raising his three boys, and he said, okay,
I'm not a self experimenting anymore. I gotta I have
to stick around and take care of these these jokers. Yeah,
(17:12):
it was pretty cool. He said he was leaving it
to the younger generation. But he's been doing it for
twenty years already. And um, not just ipecac and uh
fox glove, but also um nightshade. We now use atropine,
which is the active ingredient night shade to dilate pupils
thanks to him, because he overdosed on night shade to
(17:32):
find out what would happen. And he would also make
himself very dizzy to study vertigo on carousels. Yeah, there's
the type of vertigo named after him. Yeah, because he
he studied it and figured it out. So he would
just like get on the carousel until it and then
stand up and yeah. But rather than this is a
common thread in in self experimentation, like with my root
(17:54):
canal or if you're dizzy on a carouself, you go inward.
You you you shy away from it. You don't want
to pay attention to any details. You just want everything
to end right with self experimenting researchers do is throw
themselves into the experience and pay attention and gain all
that knowledge from it that you know, any one of
us could do if if we were good at describing
(18:15):
things scientifically, but we don't because we want to avoid
pain and discomfort. Guys did it for us, they did, thankfully. Yeah,
well that's why we're doing this one too. It's like,
hats off to him. If you haven't gotten that impression yet,
thank you, hats off. What if I just did that
and I had like a reversal and I like, you
(18:37):
couldn't say anything about it, all right? George Stratton is next,
and he uh did something a little crazy. You know.
He wore reversing lenses in the nineties. So he learned
that our visual information comes in in an inverted manner.
We all know this, right, well, he knew that, but
(18:57):
there were theories that said this, that's how it has
to be, and he wanted to find out if that
was true, Like, does visual information have to be inverted
for us to see upright? Because you know that it
flips over in the brain exactly right. So can you
imagine what he did to his brain by doing this? Yeah,
it's pretty crazy. He wore these reversing lenses, which basically
(19:19):
presented the visual information right side up, um, and were
them for eight days straight. So it provided it right
side up to the brain. But if we wore that,
everything would look upside down. And he did. He like
you said, eight days straight, unbelievable. He said. The thing
that got him the most was like he would put
his hand out moving right. Well, he had to just
(19:41):
sit there for like the first four days. He couldn't
move at all. Yeah, but um, he would put his
he would stretch his hand out and it would come
in from the top rather than the bottom. He said,
everything was just like a dream. Um, I'd like to
try that out for like a second, you know, I'd
just like to put some on and be like, oh right,
that's weird. Let me take them right back off exact,
not leave them on for eight days. Apparently, by the
(20:03):
fifth day, everything started to um show up as upright again. Yeah,
and then if you really concentrated on it, it would
go back to being upside down. But so did he
rewire his brain? Yeah, he proved that the visual information
doesn't have to be inverted to be seen upright, um,
and that the brain is really capable of adapting in
(20:24):
a fairly short time to basically the most radical changes
in in the stations it is presented. So I guess
that's sort of helped. I mean, it's not like that
led to any huge breakthrough that I think it probably gave. Yeah,
I would think that it probably formed the basis of
like neural plasticity surely, all right. Yeah. Plus also, I mean,
(20:47):
anybody who does that, that's mind bending. You know, he
gets a he gets a pat on the back for that,
no matter what. Well. And he also found too that
after taking them off that it took a little while
to get back to normal, which the process something too
about your brain unlearned and his brain was. Yeah. He
said that he had like glasses at first, and he
(21:08):
said it was just too much. He couldn't do it.
So he blindfold of one eye for eight days and
had like basically a monocle like a little yeah, just
single lens and that's the one he wore for eight days.
He said it was just too much to have two lenses.
So you want to do Carl lon Steiner. Uh yeah,
he he actually did do a lot of good work.
(21:30):
He was Viennese and he was a physician, and he
basically came up with the blood typing system, the A
B O blood typing system, because he noticed that red
blood cells and some people clump in the presence of
the fluid component, which is serum, but not everybody. So
we thought it's almost as if their blood is a
(21:51):
different type from one another. Well, at the time, like
they knew that that would happen because you give people
blood transfusions and then they die and um they because
BO was clumped. Yeah, but at the time everybody thought
it was because those people had some unknown disease. And
lon Steiner was like, I think that people just have
different types of blood. So he used his own blood
(22:11):
in some of his colleagues, we should do one on
blood type. I think we should. Is that true? Like
your body cannot literally cannot accept another blood type. It
depends I think, oh is the universal type, so you
can um except but if you have like A can
you can't have B at all because the red blood
cells clump and your blood doesn't flow and you die.
So it's like putting diesel in a very much in
(22:33):
a regular very much. So yeah, um so what like
you said, what Lon Steiner did was a huge contribution
because he showed, you know, there's different anigens in different
types of blood, and that creates this different blood type
a bo or a b um. And when you when
you if you tell if you test people first and
(22:55):
say oh, they're a type and we've got some a
type blood over here, a blood transfusion will work, and
so will oregan donation and all the other huge. Yeah,
it was enormous. I bet doctors were like, oh, well
that's good to know in these people. Um. So yeah
he won the Nobel Prize in ninety that rightly, so yeah,
(23:15):
he should win it every year. But what's crazy is
you know he he just he experimented on himself. It's
kind of cool. Um. But what's nuts is that he
also uses colleagues blood. And it just so happened that
out of like five people, they all had different blood types,
like types were present. It could have gone the exact
opposite way and just everybody had a type and then
(23:38):
he said no, they're the same, yeah exactly. So I
thought that was pretty cool and it was almost providence
well and he he led that led to Dr Jack
Goldstein UM in the nineteen eighties to do He was
a biochemist that did more experimenting and this one confused
not confused me. But he found out that an enzyme
and coffee, when injected into BE blood removes anigin and
(24:01):
basically makes it the universal blood type. How did he
figure that out? I don't know. The coffee, I don't know,
but he figured it out. But I just injected coffee
one day to see what that would do and in
my blood. Right, So he he had O type blood,
so that that this enzyme changes B type blood O
type blood. UM, and he had O type blood. So
to prove that this worked, he got a blood transfusion
(24:24):
of this treated B blood that was ostensibly now OH blood.
So he got a blood transfusion, a small one, but
he did it himself, UM to see if you know,
his arm would fall off or something like that, or
if his blood would clump. And it worked. And it's
still being worked out. But apparently, UM, you know that
opens up like the donation pool. If you can just
(24:46):
take all this B type blood and you need OH,
which is the universal type. Just injected with this enzyme,
and I wonder how much blood you have to have
transfused before it, Like how much diesel can you put
in there? I don't know, Like if you if they
just did like a vial with that, like what would
that do to your body? I don't know, because Goldstein
did like eleven billion, eleven and a half billion red
(25:09):
blood cells, and I don't know if that's just a
few drops or if that's like half a pine or
a pine or what. Yeah, well we'll have to find
that out in the blood typing episode. Okay, well I
have I've been wanting to do the blood one for
a while, but it's just like, let's do it right now.
It's tough. I'm gonna need a little while on that one. Okay, Okay,
(25:29):
do we have a blood typing article? Well, we have
an article on blood that's like really dense. Oh yes,
we started to do that when we're like, yeah, we're
not doing this right now. It was I thought I
think it was written by an M. D. Wasn't it.
It read like it. Yeah, So look for the revised
version coming in the future. All right. I like number
nine Erman is it Herman or Erman Ebbing? House. I
(25:54):
don't think he's Portuguese. He was a German. Would Airman Portuguese? Yeah, Erman,
I don't know he's Herman. Then let's just call him Herman.
He was German. And uh he was the first guy
to really study memory and a really maybe at all,
but in a really scientific way, which was which was
unusual at the time to apply scientific research principles to
(26:17):
psychological matters. Right that it was like basically taking the
way the hard science is doing and applying it to
the soft science of psychologists. But he formed the methodology
that's still in use today and proved that it can work. Like, yes,
you can study you know, cognitive faculties like memory in
a science way, in a science way, science e way. Um,
(26:39):
so what he did was pretty cool. He created Uh,
the first thing he did was he created these non
syllable nonsense syllable of them with two consonants with a
vowel in the middle, like nog this is one example
you used. And he had to make them nonsense because
there had to be like no so ciation with like
(27:01):
previous words that he had learned that had to be
brand new things in his brain because I mean, if
you if you have a previous association with a syllable,
right like SKay. Okay, and you have a great memory
of ice skating as a child, and SKay brings that
to mind. Of course you can remember SKay. I'm surprised
he came up with I would that'd be tough for me. Uh.
(27:26):
So what he did was he basically, over the course
of a year, uh learned these words and then to
the point where he could recall them perfectly, and then
recorded how long it took for him basically to forget
them and then relearn them again. And that taught us
all sorts of cool things about memory. Yeah. He he
(27:46):
figured out that um and a lot of this stuff
you know is so commonplace. We we know it, we
take it very much for granted. But this guy is
the one who figured out that UM, meaningless stuff is
harder to learn than meaning full stuff. Um. He gave
us the idea of the learning curve. The more stuff
you have to learn, the longer it's going to take
(28:07):
to learn it. Yeah. I think he was the first
person actually name it to the learning curve. I think
so it's possible. I believe so Okay, um and uh
forgetting happens most rapidly right after learning and then kind
of evens off and slows down. Um. And he taught
us that cramming doesn't work, that learning is best when
(28:28):
it's done over a longer time than you know, a
single Yeah, because boy, I used to cram pretty well.
Did you stunk at it? I was good at it?
I was not. I just I would just be too
stressed out. Well, and I short changed myself though, because
I would do well in the test and then forget it,
(28:49):
which was I mean, I wasn't doing myself any favors
as far as gaining knowledge. You know, I took Italian
um in college, and it was the only language that's
ever clicked for me, Like I got a town in
on a fundamental level. Yeah, and just aced the class
until the final, and I studied for the final. I
don't think I crammed it, just you know, I didn't
take it for granted that I was gonna ace the final.
(29:11):
But I for some reason I got there and forgot
everything when I sat down, and well then I panicked, Yeah,
but it wasn't panic until I realized that I had
forgotten everything. And I still did this day. Don't understand
what happened, and I don't remember. It's not like it
came back after the test. It just went away right
before the final. You know what happened? What Centorio Sordio,
(29:34):
That's what happened. I started, I started weighing my feces,
and it chased away all my understanding of battalion, and
I stopped after one trial. Did you? I'm just saying,
I've waited my feces once, and I know you gotta
do it more than once. He also created the ebbing
House illusion. Have you ever heard that? That's that thing?
Right there? Is that the same size that is not
(29:58):
the same size, It is not the same side. It's
a very famous illusion where there are two same sized circles,
they're not the same size. And then the one on
the left has these very large circles around it and
the one on the right has very small circles around it,
and it gives the appearance that they're different sizes, but
they are not so. Eving House is a pioneer in
(30:18):
experimental psychology, which is pretty cool, absolutely, and in experimental
psychology still today. Self experimentation is um fairly commonly used
UM because it's not nearly as dangerous as it is
in say medicine. For that reason, science today is basically
like you can't self experiment. That's so nineteenth century. Well,
(30:43):
and beyond the dangers of it, there's something called double
blinds and placebos that you know, if you know, if
you're self experimenting, then there that's going to affect the
outcome of the experiment almost time with the double blind
is like a hallmark of science, the inquiry, and you
it's impossible with when you're experimenting on yourself. So, uh,
(31:07):
if you're looking for grant funding and you're saying, well,
I'm just gonna try this drug on myself and see
what happens, You're not gonna get that funding, but probably
won't get published either, right, Well, it depends. There's this
guy named Seth Roberts who published a paper about his
twelve years of self experimentation. And he's a psychologist, um,
but the paper that he published was about the self
(31:28):
experimenting he did in his spare time. So if you're
not an experimental psychologist, um, probably if you're into self experimentation,
you're either um some sort of pro scientist doing it
in your spare time, or you're an amateur. There's a
there's a been a movement called an equals one, which
is you know, in his scientific notation for the study
(31:50):
sample size or population size, didn't called quantified self though.
That's a movement. Well, that's the um, that's the website.
There's like a group where it's kind of like this
hub of like, hey, I want to figure out why
I had migraine. So I started tracking like my food
and they were wired editors. I think, yeah, yeah, I
did not know that. Yeah, yeah, So there's a quantified self.
(32:12):
Dot com is basically this awesome place where you can
go see how other people are carrying out their own
self experiments and gets a little wacky. Yeah, there's just
one lady that drinks her first yurine of the day
each day she records all that. Are you sure you
saw that? I read it. I didn't see her do that. Well,
but he didn't click on the YouTube. Know, there's all sorts.
(32:35):
There was a big Forbes. Forbes had a big article
on this movement, which is some people call it naval
gazing at its finest. Other people think it's valid. Well
that's the point that Seth Roberts made. He was saying like,
I don't need funding for this because I'm just doing
it my spare time. It costs like basically no money.
Get off my back. I just pay attention. But he
(32:56):
also said that, um, he was motivated. He had the
motivation of a person looking to solve a problem, like
he wanted to control his weight or mood or make
himself a happier person, um, get better sleep. So he
just carried out all these self experiments and he could
conduct more than one at a time. So yeah, he
(33:16):
was like, get off my back. I think it's kind
of cool though, Like I have lactose issues and I
could see myself getting into um eating to tracking that
and and isolating exactly which foods. I mean, that's basically
all it is. That's it's kind of cool. And drinking
your own urine type will draw the line there. So, UM,
we should probably say thanks to some of the sources
(33:39):
that helped us with this podcast Clark Oscillatory Thoughts Blog. Um,
let's see Tiffany Watt Smith wrote Henry Head in the
theater of Reverie. Scientific American had a cool article self
experiment and step up for science. Alan Neringer had a
paper from one called self experimentation a call for change.
(33:59):
Lawrence kay Altman literally wrote the book on this. Um
who goes First? The Story of Self Experimentation in Medicine? Yeah, exactly.
Um A. Cohen wrote an article in the British Journal
of Clinical Pharmacology about UM Sara Turner's experiments. He in
his good Time Buddies. Um Salvatore Kurri did he rideout sad?
(34:21):
He wrote about George Stratton. Uh, the University of Indiana
has a cool human intelligence department quantified self dot com.
If you want to get into self experimentation and don't
feel like suing us for mentioning it, it's interesting to
look at at the very least. Yeah, I agreed, and
then Seth roberts the unreasonable effectiveness of my self experimentation
is the name of the paper. So those are all
the ones, and then pretty soon there'll be a list
(34:44):
top ten list on the site. It's not published yet,
it's practically done. I would assume, and Chuck, if you
forgot the name of the show that we were promoting
on sign channel, why don't we do a little ad
for it? That's true? Yeah, um chuck. A couple more
shout outs are good, good friend Wyatt Senak. Yes, his
(35:06):
stand up special Wyatt Sanak Comedy Person is out on DVD,
very funny stuff and if you've only seen why it
on the Daily Show he is. Uh, he's great on
the Daily Show. But his stand up is hysterical and
different than you would think it would be. It is.
He's much more like lively and animated and he's awesome.
He's a good guy too. Um. And we have a
(35:28):
happiness audio book out, that's right, the Grammy nominated nominated
Happiness Audio book, The super Stuff Guide to Happiness. That's right. Um,
it's up on iTunes for three nine nine. You're gonna
end up selling out more if you're in Australia. We're sorry.
Um let's see what else. Oh, it's got all sorts
of great sound design interviews. It's just cool. We've got
(35:49):
some experts on the horn. Ye, my niece, yes, starts
it out. Um and uh, yeah, it's up on iTunes.
Just search for super Stuff Guide to Happiness and that
will also bring up, um, the super Stuff Guide to
the Economy, which is still evergreen and good. Are we
gonna do any more of those? I think we should
just I mean I would feel like I just we
(36:11):
should okay, we would it feel like a quitter if
we just had to. Yeah, we need at least three.
I would like four at least okay, okay, and then
one more administrative detail. We have a cool little thing.
If you text um s y s K to eight
zero five six five, it texts you back a link
to listen to the podcast on your iPhone without going
(36:34):
through iTunes if you're not in the mood. Is that
what it did? Yeah, it's cool. It brings up our
r S speed and you can just listen to it.
I think it's quick time, so it'll work on your
iPhone or your droid or whatever. That's our latest marketing invention. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. So UM just text s y s
K two eight oh five six five. If you ever
are having a stuff, you should know Jones. It's right.
(36:58):
Friedrich's turners not around. Yeah. By the way, we're we're
working on there's been some issues with the apps, I
think refreshing the podcast less lately, and we are working
Our tech department is working on that. So keep your
pants on, as they say, so this will be up eventually.
You can look for UM ten ten scientists who were
their own guinea pigs love it. In the search bar
(37:20):
at how stuff works dot com, you can also type
in human experimentation and five crazy government experiments and they'll
bring up those articles. Um, and I said, handy search
bar finally somewhere in there, which means it's time. We're
a listener, man, Josh, I'm gonna call this, uh well,
first of all, quickly, if you're from Berkeley, California and
(37:42):
you went to UC Berkeley, we had a slight slip
of the tongue. Seriously, we said, U C l A Berkeley.
We know it's UC Berkeley, we know you see l
A is in Los Angeles. Yes, it was just a
little slip of the dog. That's it. We're not dummies.
And sometimes if you live in or have been to Netterling, Colorado,
and are a fan of the Frozen Dead Guy Days
(38:04):
and are mad we didn't bring it up in our
Cryonics episode, go listen to ten odd town Festivals. It's
in there. It's in there, all right. So back to
the listener mail. This is from Stephen H. And this
was just cool information. I'm a huge fan of the show. Guys,
loved the depth and breadth of the presentations. I'm not
sure how far I uh I am from this week.
He's pretty far, but I just listened to the Black
(38:26):
Death episode. I thought you might be interested to know.
While the plague was a horrible affair with millions of
deaths and an interesting effect on our language today, many
scholars of the history of the English language, myself included,
hold that the plague in England is a major reason
why we write in English today. You see, after the Normans,
which were French vikings, took England at the Battle of
(38:48):
Hastings in ten sixty six, Anglo Norman, French and Latin
became the two major languages of administration and literature because
all the important rich folks were chum. However, for reasons unknown,
the plague seems to have hit the mid range nobility
harder than other groups, resulting in a desperate need for administrators.
(39:10):
The only people left to fill the jobs were regular
joe's who only spoke English. So the theory goes, because
of the plague, the nobility was forced to learn English
to communicate with their administrators, resulting in the re emergence
of English as the language of law, administration, and literature
from Stephen h pretty neto. Yeah, I love supplemental information.
(39:32):
That's those are my favorite ones. So thanks a lot,
Stephen h um and since chucks such a big fan
of supplemental information. UM, if you have any supplemental information
about experimentation, specifically self experimentation, we want to hear it. Yeah,
if you've done this yourself, I'd like to hear about it. Yeah,
but don't do it yourself just to tell us about it, No,
(39:53):
because we don't want even get hurt. That seems like
in the gray area that I'm not comfortable with it.
If you've done like your own lactose study on yourself,
something like that, sure, something harmless, Yeah, like you didn't
inject lactose. Um. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast UM. You can go onto Facebook
dot com slash stuff you should know that's our page, UM,
(40:14):
or you can send us a plain old fashioned email
to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to
(40:37):
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera, it's ready.
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