Until relatively recently, experiments on people did not regarded as something out of the ordinary. And some especially obsessed researchers saw nothing wrong with even experiment on your own children …
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1. The psychologist studies the reaction of his own son to tickling
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In 1933, psychologist Clarence Leouba decided to find out why we laugh when we are tickled – obeying an innate instinct or because we see the idiotic smiles of those who do this with us. Leub considered the most suitable object for the experiment own son – still a baby.
First of all, in the name of science, Leuba forbade anything in his house. tickling, except for special sessions that he spent personally. Moreover: he strictly forbade his wife laugh and even smile when she touched the skin of the baby. Apparently, the subject of research seemed to him quite important, to deprive the child of ordinary childhood joys.
Further, to be sure that the child does not respond to expression of his own face, Leuba made himself a huge mask made of cardboard, with tiny holes for the eyes. Putting on himself this nightmare, the scientist carefully tickled certain parts of the children’s bodies starting with armpits.
Everything went according to plan until the experiment ruined Leuba’s wife, who once forgot herself and laughed, swinging the one sitting on her lap son. How did this blatant incident react Leuba – the story is silent. It is only known that after this wife the professor quickly became pregnant with a second child, and soon the professor conducted his ticklish experiment with a newborn daughter.
This time the experiment was successfully completed and the important scientific conclusion: “children laugh, even if they don’t know that so accepted”.
2. The scientist who invented the vaccine by infecting his own son of smallpox
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At the end of the 18th century, the English physician Edward Jenner tried to prove his theory that if you intentionally infect people with non-fatal with smallpox, then, having recovered, they will be insured against really scary human smallpox.
Today we know that Jenner was right, but at that time the whole vaccination theory was based only on human observations, who worked with cows and very rarely hurt human smallpox.
It is clear that the scientific community reacted to the idea intentional infection is skeptical, so Jenner decided to take a chance, and conduct an experiment on his own little son – Edward younger. The historical moment of cow’s infection of his own son smallpox was immortalized even in sculpture:
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Vaccination at that time was not just an injection. Jenner made a cut on the boy’s hand with a scalpel and generously smeared the resulting wound with pus previously taken from the present the patient. After the baby has had a mild form of smallpox, Jenner brought him the real, human smallpox – if theory was true, then infection should not have happened. Then the same he did the same with a few young boys – now already neighboring.
Fortunately, Jenner was right, and the calculations were justified – otherwise in history, he would have remained a crazy killer of small children, and not the inventor of the vaccine.
3. The scientist who tested on his son how much dangerous burn jellyfish
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In 1964, an Australian toxicologist named Jack Barnes studied the connection of burns of poisonous jellyfish with the development of the so-called “syndrome Irukanji “- a set of very unpleasant symptoms that were observed some Australian swimmers.
First of all, Barnes caught several jellyfish in which he suspected the causative agents of the mystical syndrome of Irukanji. After this required an experiment, or, more simply, to give trapped jellyfish sting someone. For this purpose was a group of “experimental rabbits” was selected, which included a local lifeguard, Barnes himself and … his nine-year-old son Nick.
As a result of the experiment, it turned out that jellyfish poison really causes irukanji syndrome, and at the same time that patients suffer terrible torment – worse than a woman with childbirth. 20 minutes after the start of the experiment, the entire group in convulsions were taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital.
Fortunately, they all got better.
4. The scientist who doomed his own son to imprisonment, to make him learn a dead language.
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In 1881, a native of Lithuania named Eliezer Ben Yehuda emigrated to Palestine and suddenly realized that all immigrants Jews speak different foreign languages unknown to him, because which the organization of the rite of circumcision of his newborn son was It’s extremely problematic. And then Ben Yehuda decided to put life for the Jews to speak in one common language for them. In fact, the Jews already had such a language – Hebrew, but in it, as in mother tongue, no one spoke from around the third century BC His used only for worship.
Privileges to become the first bearer of a revived conversational Hebrew Ben Yehuda decided to honor his own son Itamar. And here some difficulties arose because the Old Testament did not have words such as, for example, “steam train”. So for training Itamara what happened in the world after the fall of the Roman Empire, I had to come up with a huge number of new words. It may seem even funny, however …
Since at that time there were only two carriers of the new the spoken version of Hebrew,
Ben Yehuda forbade his son to communicate with anyone other than himself. When guests came to the house, Itamar was sent to bed so that he accidentally did not hear a word in a foreign language.
Once Ben Yehuda caught his wife singing to a Russian child songs. He became so furious that he began to destroy furniture (scary even think how many new words the boy learned during this scenes). It got to the point that poor Itamar was forbidden to listen even sounds made by animals.
However, I must admit, training has borne fruit through for a while other Jews began to trust Ben Yehuda to teach of their children, and, in the end, Hebrew became the state language Of Israel.
5. The psychologist who raised the chimpanzee as a brother own child
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In the 1930s, scientists still could not figure out which part of human intelligence owes inheritance and what is grafted education. There was even a theory that for some, the most smart animals – chimpanzees, for example, lack of speech, good manners and morality is explained solely by the fact that no one tried read books to them aloud and generally raise them as human children.
There was even a psychologist who decided to hold a home experiment and test this theory. The psychologist’s name was Winthrop Kellogg, and his son Donald was just born – such a case is a scientist could not miss. The Kellogg family acquired a chimpanzee cub and became raise him like brother Donald.
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In order to somehow evaluate the intermediate stages experiment, Winthrop developed a sophisticated testing system, which the “brothers” went through every day. Kellogg checked all that possible – dexterity, memory, speech development, obedience, etc.
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Unfortunately, the experiment did not give the expected results. Chimpanzee and the chimpanzee remained. But on the development of Donald, the influence of “brother” affected in the most unexpected way – he began to behave like chimpanzees.
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When the child started jumping like a monkey and biting everyone in a row, experiment urgently curtailed.
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