We are told that insulin therapy would not have been discovered unless animal researchers had removed the pancreas from dogs in the 1920s. But like other areas of medical research, the important clues actually came much earlier from observations of human patients.
Brain surgery in Parkinson’s patients identified the best place for Deep Brain Stimulation electrodes to be placed in the brain to improve symptoms, decades before a claimed ‘discovery’ in monkeys.
Alois Alzheimer first described the main features of Alzheimer’s disease in 1906 by studying brain segments from patients after they had died.
Human population studies led to the discovery that smoking causes cancer. Smoking does not cause cancer in mice and rats.
An Australian doctor used himself in an experiment to discover the main cause of stomach ulcers. He drank a culture of bacteria and became sick before curing his symptoms with antibiotics.
A German chemist tested the effects of aspirin on himself after an accidental discovery that it helped relieve pain in a patient with toothache.
The anaesthetic effect of laughing gas was discovered when someone accidentally cut their leg while under the influence of the gas. An American dentist then confirmed the effects on himself while having a tooth removed.