This Scientist Thought Drinking Vomit To Experiment With Yellow Fever Was A Good Idea
In 1804, Stubbins Ffirth believed yellow fever wasn’t contagious. He wanted to prove this unprecedented opinion to the world by conducting hilarious experiments on himself during the 19th century. If you’re trying to prove something, the best way to test something safely is to start on yourself, right? It sounds like an awful idea. To do this, he cooked vomit from yellow fever patients and breathed in the vapor from the vomit. He dropped the vomit into his eyes and injected it with a small incision he made in his left arm. He also put drops of the patient’s blood serum into his left leg. Nearing the end of his experiment, he was taking rows of shots of black vomit, which has a slightly acidic taste. Ffirth didn’t catch yellow fever from the vomit, proving his point. But you can’t catch yellow fever from a person because it’s only spread through mosquitos, so there was no reason to drink vomit whatsoever (Alpha History).