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. abo blood group system karl landsteiner in stockholm, 1930 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.: 34–37 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.: 287 : 203 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.: 286–287 : 3 gerhard domagk, in 1949, injected himself with sterilised extract of human cancer in an attempt to prove that immunisation against cancer was possible.: 287–288 infectious diseases and vaccines covid-19 alexander hoekstra self-administering an experimental, intranasal covid-19 vaccine developed by rapid deployment vaccine collaborative in 2020. 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.: 26 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 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.: 24–26 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.: 139 helicobacter pylori in 1984 a western australian scientist, dr barry marshall, discovered the link between helicobacter pylori (at that time known as campylobacter pylori) and gastritis. this was based on a series of self-experiments that involved gastroscopy and biopsy, ingestion of h. pylori, regastroscopy and biopsy and subsequent treatment with tinidazole. his only option was self-experimentation: ethical measures forbade him from administering h. pylori to any other person. in 2005, marshall and his long-time collaborator robin warren were awarded nobel prize in physiology or medicine, "for their discovery of the bacterium helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease". marshall's experiment debunked the long-held belief of the medical profession that stress was the cause of gastritis. this cleared the way for the development of antibiotic treatments for gastritis and peptic ulcers and a new line of research into the likely role of h. pylori in stomach cancer.: x campylobacter jejuni marshall's investigation was preceded by david a. robinson who, in 1980, ingested campylobacter jejuni, a bacterium found in cow's milk, to investigate whether gastritis could be caused by drinking milk infected with c. jejuni. robinson became sick as a result. robinson needed to do a human experiment because the alternative, testing on cows, was not viable as infected cows frequently do not become ill.: 33 staphylococcus gail monroe dack (1901–1976), a former president of the american society for microbiology, gave himself food poisoning by eating cake tainted with staphylococcus.: 56–57 syphilis constantin levaditi (1874–1953) injected himself with spirochaete from rabbits suffering from syphilis but did not contract the disease himself.: 138–139 yellow fever jesse lazear in cuba, u.s. army doctors from walter reed's research team infected themselves with yellow fever including james carroll, aristides agramonte, and, most notably, jesse lazear, who died from yellow fever complications in 1900. these efforts ultimately resulted in proof of the mosquito-borne nature of yellow fever transmission and saved countless lives. stubbins ffirth had investigated the contagious nature of the disease at the end of the 18th century.: 137 there was an unsuccessful campaign to award a nobel prize to reed's team. lazear, in any event, could not be awarded the prize because it is never given posthumously. however, a nobel prize was awarded to a later yellow fever researcher and self-experimenter, max theiler who, in 1951, developed the first yellow fever vaccine and was the first to try it.: 156–157 trachoma anatolii al'bertovich shatkin, in 1961, injected trachoma virus into the conjunctival sac of his eye and rapidly developed trachoma. he did not begin treatment of the condition for 26 days.: 205 schistosomiasis in july 1944, physician researcher claude barlow ingested over 200 schistosome worms to carry back to the united states from egypt to study whether domestic snails could become infected and introduce the disease into the united states. attempts to send infected snails, the intermediate host, by mail had been unsuccessful. he refused treatment, despite being desperately ill by december, so as not to lose the eggs for further study. he finally passed 4,630 eggs in his semen and 200 eggs in his urine. the u.s. government decided not to use the eggs, so his self-sacrifice was to no avail. it was november 1945 before he finally cleared all the parasites, after treatment with tartar emetic. anaemia william bosworth castle, in 1926, ate minced raw beef every morning, regurgitated it an hour later, and then fed it to his patients suffering from pernicious anaemia.: 258–263 castle was testing his theory that there was an intrinsic factor produced in a normal stomach that hugely increased the uptake of the extrinsic factor (now identified as vitamin b12), lack of which leads to pernicious anaemia. beef is a good source of b12, but patients did not respond with beef alone. castle reasoned they lacked production of intrinsic factor and he could provide it from his own stomach. while castle was not the recipient of this treatment, his story is included in who goes first?: the story of self-experimentation in medicine and is considered a self-experimenter by the author.: 258–263 hyperthyroidism elliott cutler (1888–1947) took sufficient thyroid extract to give himself hyperthyroidism and enable him to study the effect of the condition on kidney function.: 57 scurvy in london in june 1769, william stark aimed to find the cause of scurvy with a series of dietary experiments on himself. he devised a series of 24 dietary experiments and kept accurate measures of temperature and weather conditions, the weights of all food and water he consumed, and the weight of all daily excretions. he started with a basic diet of bread and water and became 'dull and listless'. when he recovered, he resumed experimenting by adding various foods, one at a time - olive oil, milk, roast goose, and others. after two months, he had symptoms of scurvy. by november 1769 he was living on nothing but honey puddings and cheshire cheese. he considered testing fresh fruits and vegetables when he died in february 1770. cocaine in 1936, edwin katskee took a very large dose of cocaine. he attempted to write notes on his office wall, but these became increasingly illegible as the experiment proceeded. katskee was found dead the next morning.: 313–325 disulfiram in 1945, during the german occupation of denmark, erik jacobsen and jens hald at the danish drug company medicinalco (which had a group of enthusiastic self-experimenters that called itself the "death battalion") were exploring the possible use of disulfiram to treat intestinal parasites, and in the course of testing it on themselves, accidentally discovered its effects when alcohol is ingested, which led several years later to the drug called antabuse.: 98–105 furan chauncey d. leake, in 1930, took furan as a possible substitute for aspirin but it just gave him a splitting headache and painful urination that lasted three days.: 137–138 grapefruit juice david g. bailey, in 1989, was researching the effects of drinking alcohol while taking the then experimental drug felodipine. it was usual in this kind of research to mix the alcohol with orange juice but bailey did not like the taste of this drink so used grapefruit juice instead. bailey found that there was three times more felodipine in his, and fellow researchers', blood than had been reported by other scientists using orange juice. it was later found that grapefruit juice suppresses an enzyme responsible for breaking down a large number of different drugs.: x–xi ibuprofen as part of the team who developed ibuprofen in the 1960s, stewart adams initially tested it on a hangover. psychoactive drugs