Human experimentation will always be a controversial topic. On the one hand, this approach allows us to obtain more information about the human body, which will find useful application in the future, on the other hand, there are a number of ethical issues. The best we can do as civilized human beings is to try to find some balance. Ideally, we should conduct experiments with as little harm as possible.
However, the cases on our list are the exact opposite of this concept. We can only imagine the pain these people experienced - for those who enjoyed playing God, they meant no more than guinea pigs.
1. Treatment of insanity by surgery
Dr. Henry Cotton believed that the underlying causes of insanity were localized infections. After becoming the head of an insane asylum in Trenton in 1907, Cotton practiced a procedure he called surgical bacteriology: Cotton and his team performed thousands of surgeries on patients, often without their consent. First, they removed teeth and tonsils, and if this was not enough, the "doctors" took the next step - they removed the internal organs, which, in their opinion, were the source of the problem.
Cotton believed in his methods so much that he even resorted to them on himself and his family: for example, he removed some teeth for himself, his wife and two sons, one of whom also had a part of the large intestine removed.
Cotton claimed that his treatment had a high rate of patient recovery, and that he simply became a lightning rod for criticism of those moralists who found his methods terrifying. For example, Cotton justified the death of 49 of his patients during colectomy by the fact that they had already suffered from “terminal stage of psychosis” before the operation. Subsequent independent investigations revealed that Cotton was grossly exaggerating.
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After his death in 1933, such operations were no longer carried out, and Cotton's point of view faded into obscurity. To his credit, critics ruled that he was quite sincere in his attempts to help patients, even if he did it in an insane deception.
2. Vaginal surgery without anesthesia
Revered by many as a pioneer in American gynecology, Jay Marion Sims embarked on extensive research in surgery in 1840. He used several Negro slave women as test subjects. The study, which took three years, focused on the surgical treatment of vesicovaginal fistulas.
Sims believed that the disease occurs when the bladder is abnormally connected to the vagina. But, strangely enough, he performed the operations without anesthesia. One subject, a woman named Anarch, underwent as many as 30 such surgeries, which ultimately allowed Sims to prove his case.
This was not the only horrific study Sims did: he also tried to treat slave children suffering from trismus - spasms of the chewing muscles - using a boot awl to break and then align their skull bones.
3. Accidental bubonic plague
Richard Strong, physician and head of the Biological Laboratory of the Philippines Science Bureau, administered several vaccinations to inmates in a Manila prison in an attempt to find the perfect cholera vaccine. In one of these experiments in 1906, he mistakenly infected prisoners with the bubonic plague virus, which led to the death of 13 people. A government investigation into the incident then confirmed this fact. A tragic accident was announced: a bottle of vaccine was confused with a virus.
Strong after his fiasco went to the bottom for a while, but six years later he returned to science and gave the prisoners another series of vaccinations this time in search of a vaccine against beriberi disease. Some of the participants in the experiment died, and the survivors were compensated for their suffering by giving them several packs of cigarettes.
Strong's notorious experiments were so inhuman and so disastrous that the Nazi defendants later cited them as examples at the Nuremberg Trials in an attempt to justify their own horrific experiments.
4. Slaves were doused with boiling water
This method can be regarded more as torture than treatment. Dr. Walter Jones recommended boiling water as a cure for abdominal pneumonia in the 1840s - he tested his method on numerous slaves suffering from this disease for several months. Jones described in great detail how one patient, a 25-year-old man, was stripped naked and forced to lie on his stomach on the ground, and then Jones poured about 22 liters of boiling water on the patient's back.
However, this was not the end: the doctor stated that the procedure should be repeated every four hours, and perhaps this will be enough to "restore capillary circulation." Jones later claimed to have cured many patients in this way, and claimed that he had never done anything with his own hands. No wonder.
5. Exposure to electric current directly on the brain
While the idea of electrocuting someone for treatment is ridiculous in itself, a Cincinnati physician named Roberts Bartolow took it to the next level: he sent an electric shock directly into the brain of one of his patients. In 1847, Bartolow was treating a patient named Mary Rafferty suffering from an ulcer in the skull - the ulcer literally eaten away part of the cranial bone, and the woman's brain was visible through this opening.
Roberts Bartolow
With the permission of the patient, Bartolow inserted electrodes directly into the brain and, passing current discharges through them, began to observe the reaction. He repeated his experiment eight times over the course of four days. At first, Rafferty seemed to be doing fine, but at a later stage of treatment fell into a coma and died a few days later.
The public reaction was so great that Bartolow had to leave and continue his work elsewhere. He later settled in Philadelphia and eventually earned an honorary teaching position at Jefferson Medical College, proving that even mad scientists can be extremely lucky in life.
6. Testicular transplant
Leo Stanley, chief physician at San Quentin Prison from 1913 to 1951, had a crazy theory: he believed that men who committed crimes had low testosterone levels. According to him, increasing testosterone levels in prisoners will lead to a decrease in criminal behavior.
Leo Stanley
To test his theory, Stanley performed a series of bizarre surgeries: he surgically transplanted the testicles of recently executed criminals into prisoners who were still alive. Due to the insufficient number of testicles for experiments (on average, three deaths per year were carried out in the prison) Stanley soon began to use the testicles of different animals, which he processed with various liquids, and then injected under the skin of prisoners.
Stanley stated that by 1922 he had performed similar operations on 600 subjects. He also claimed that his actions were successful, and described one particular case of how an elderly prisoner of Caucasian descent became vigorous and energetic after he had a young Negro testicle transplant.
7. Shock therapy and LSD for children
Lauretta Bender is best known, perhaps, for the creation of the Bender psychological Gestalt test, which evaluates the movements of a child and his ability to learn. Bender, however, was also involved in somewhat more controversial research: As a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital in the 1940s, she shocked 98 child patients every day in an attempt to cure a condition she had invented called childhood schizophrenia.
Lauretta Bender
She reported that shock therapy was extremely successful and that only a few children subsequently relapsed. As if shock therapy wasn't enough, Bender also injected children with LSD and psilocybin, a chemical found in hallucinogenic mushrooms that would have been plentiful for an adult. Often, children received one such injection per week.
8. An experiment with syphilis in Guatemala
In 2010, the American public became aware of a highly unethical experiment with syphilis. A professor studying the infamous study of Tuskegee's syphilis found that the same health organization had also conducted a similar experiment in Guatemala. This revelation prompted the White House to form an investigative committee, and it was discovered that government-sponsored researchers deliberately infected 1,300 Guatemalans with syphilis in 1946.
The aim of the study, which lasted two years, was to find out if penicillin could be an effective treatment for an already infected patient. Scientists paid prostitutes to infect other people, mostly soldiers, prisoners and the mentally ill. Of course, the men did not know that they deliberately wanted to infect them with syphilis. In total, 83 people died due to the experiment. These dire results prompted President Obama to personally apologize to the President and the people of Guatemala.
9. An experiment to increase the strength of the skin
Dermatologist Albert Kligman tested a comprehensive experimental program on inmates at Holmsburg prison in the 1960s. One such experiment, sponsored by the US Army, was aimed at increasing the strength of leather. In theory, hardened skin could protect soldiers from chemical irritants in war zones. Kligman applied various chemical creams and remedies to the prisoners, but the only results were numerous scars - and pain.
Albert Kligman
Pharmaceutical companies also hired Kligman to test their products: they paid him to use prisoners as hamsters. Of course, the volunteers were also paid, albeit a little, but they were not fully informed about the possible adverse consequences. As a result, many chemical mixtures have resulted in blisters and burns on the skin. Kligman was a completely ruthless man. He wrote: "When I arrived at the prison for the first time, all I saw in front of me was endless acres of leather."
In the end, public outrage and subsequent investigation forced Kligman to end his experiments and destroy all information about them. Unfortunately, former test subjects were never compensated for the damage, and Kligman later became rich by inventing Retin-A, an acne-fighting drug.
10. Experiments on lumbar puncture on children
A lumbar puncture, sometimes also called a lumbar puncture, is an often necessary procedure, especially for neurological and spinal diseases. But a giant needle stuck directly into the spinal column is bound to bring excruciating pain to the patient.
Arthur Wentworth
However, in 1896, pediatrician Arthur Wentworth decided to test the obvious: During an experimental lumbar puncture given to a young girl, Wentworth noticed how the patient shrank in pain during the procedure. He suspected that the operation was painful (at that time, for some reason, it was believed that it did not hurt), but was not completely sure. So he did a few more treatments on 29 babies and toddlers.
In the end, he came to the conclusion that the procedure is painful, but nevertheless very useful, as it helps to diagnose the disease. Wentworth's findings received mixed reviews from colleagues: some praised him, but one of the critics said that it was nothing more than "vivisection." Growing public outrage over the experiments later forced Wentworth to leave his teaching job at Harvard Medical School.