Today in 1951, the birth of Barry Marshall, a Nobel Prize winning doctor who proved what was behind most ulcers by giving himself an ulcer.
Marshall was born in Australia.
While in medical school there, he started working on a project with Robin Warren, a hospital pathologist.
Warren had been performing biopsies on patients with ulcers and stomach cancer, and along the way he’d noticed that a lot of his patients had a coating of bacteria all over the insides of their stomachs.
They started doing more testing, and found that this bacteria, known as Helicobacter pylori was not only present in virtually every patient they were studying, but the evidence suggested that the bacteria was actually the cause of the ulcers.
At the time of this research in the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom was that ulcers were caused by lifestyle: too much rich food, too much smoking, too much drinking, too much worrying.
Patients with ulcers might need surgery, or they just had to live with the symptoms the best they could.
Marshall realized there was really only one way to prove his and Marshall’s research to be true: basically give a human patient an ulcer by introducing the bacteria into their stomachs.
There was no ethical way to give test subjects ulcers, so he put a culture of the bacteria into a broth and drank it himself.
Sure enough, a few days later he had all the symptoms.
But it meant that with a course of antibiotics, he was able to put his system back in order quickly: no surgery, no managing chronic symptoms.
It still took time for the medical community to recognize what Marshall and Warren had discovered.
But they did in time – and in 2005, the two won a Nobel Prize for their breakthrough.
Hopefully that moment in the spotlight didn’t give them ulcers. (Only kidding, doctors!)
A few years back Mat Winter, an 11 year old in southeast England, was looking through the trash, as one does.
He saw a woman throwing out an engraving and asked if he could have the piece.
Winter held onto the engraving for 13 years before sending it in to an appraiser.
It was a work by the acclaimed 16th Century German artist Albrecht Dürer, and earlier this month it sold at auction for more than £33,000.
Three cheers for situational awareness!
The Doctor Who Drank Infectious Broth, Gave Himself an Ulcer, and Solved a Medical Mystery (Discover Magazine)
Dürer Engraving Found by 11-Year-Old in Dumpster Sells for $44,000 (Hyperallergic)
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