15. Stubbins Ffirth
One of the more disgusting incidents of self-experimentation came from 19th century medical student Stubbins Ffirth. Ffirth set out to prove that yellow fever was not contagious, which led to a series of the most revolting experiments anyone has probably conducted. The first round began with Ffirth pouring fresh black vomit from a patient with yellow fever into cuts in his arm. The result? No yellow fever. Next, he began to dribble vomit into his eyes before progressing to smearing blood, spit, sweat and urine of those sick with yellow fever over his body.
Even worse, Ffirth sat in his own self-made “vomit sauna” filled with heated yellow-fever vomit, and still did not contract the disease. This led to Ffirth ingesting vomit, but he still didn’t get ill, which led him to believe yellow fever was not contagious. However, this would later be debunked, since yellow fever is highly contagious, but only if directly transmitted into the bloodstream.