Who Goes First?: The Story of Self-experimentation in Medicine

This is the only complete history of the little known but controversial practice of self-experimentation in modern medical science. All standard medical practices, therapies and techniques in use today were once experimental. But before any medical advance can be adopted, it must first be tested on a human. The question is, who goes first? This is the story of those who went first: of Werner Forssman, the young German intern who defied medical authorities by pushing a catheter tube through a vein in his arm into his own heart and so revolutionized techniques used in combating heart disease; of Fredrick Prescott and Scott Smith, two researchers who had themselves paralyzed in order to demonstrate that the poison could be used as a drug that revolutionized the practice of surgery. ISBN 0-394-50382-1: $22.50.