YELLOW FEVER: SELF EXPERIMENTATION

Self experimentation is a way for researchers to conduct experiments when they have limited resources or volunteers.

In this case Stubbins Ffirth was an American doctor best known for his outlandish experiments as a med student. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania in 1801, and his third he began to investigate the cause of yellow fever and how it is transmitted among people.

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The popular hypothesis at the time for way of transmission was “bad air,” but Ffirths believed that the fever was transmitted through fluids and excrement, particularly vomit. He ran a few trials feeding and injecting dogs and cats with vomit from a patient with yellow fever, they came back perfectly fine. Ffirth then continued filling himself with the vomit of dying yellow fever patients, injecting it into veins, under his cuticles and into his eye. For his tenth experiment, he fried up three ounces of vomit in a pan and inhaled the steam. After no results he collected a fresh cup of vomit from a patient, diluted it a bit then drank it.

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He was not one to give up, these experiments were conducted a numerous amount of times, to no avail. He then came to the conclusion that the transmission of yellow fever was not transmitted from human vomit.

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[editor's note: While Ffirth did not contract the disease, he was wrong about his conclusions. Other researches duplicated his experiments and found that Yellow Fever is in fact contagious.]

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Sources: 

“1804: Med Student Tests Theory by Drinking Black Vomit.” Past Peculiar, 13 Feb. 2019, alphahistory.com/pastpeculiar/1804-med-student-drinking-black-vomit/

“Dr Stubbins Ffirth (1782-1820) - Find A Grave...” Find a Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/85695900/stubbins-ffirth.

“STUBBINS H. FFIRTH (1784-1820).” JAMA, American Medical Association, 27 July 1964, jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1163961.