1714: Charles Maitland, Smallpox

Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, microbiologist who laid the foundation for vaccines. After testing the rabies vaccine in 50 dogs, he tested the vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister who was bitten by a rabid dog with a physician in attendance. The experiment was controversial and he was brought before the…

Probably few Bible scholars or scientists are aware that Daniel—the same Daniel who was cast into the lion’s den—was also a scientist. Daniel proposed (what is now recognized as) a classic experimental design: comparing the effect of a vegetable and water diet to a diet of the king’s meat and…

Arthur Wentworth, MD, a pediatrician trained at Harvard Medical School, performed spinal taps on 29 babies and young children at Children’s Hospital, Boston, to determine if the procedure was harmful. Dr. John Roberts of Philadelphia, noting the non-therapeutic indication, labeled Wentworth’s procedures “human vivisection.” (Grodin and Glantz, Children As Research…

Richard Strong, MD, a professor of tropical medicine at Harvard, conducted cholera experiments on 24 prisoners in the Philippines killing thirteen. Their deaths were attributed to the accidental substitution of bubonic plague serum for cholera. He rewarded the survivors with cigars. During the Nazi trials at Nuremberg, the defendants cited…

Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) Report Ch. 2, 1995. Lawrence Altman. Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine, 1988 Appeal from the Lübeck Decision, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 1932 Nicholas Bakalar.  Where the Germs Are: A Scientific Safari, 2003 Edwin Black. War Against…