Monday, November 05, 2007

Top 10 most bizarre medical experiments

From a longer article in the Guardian, includes some psychiatric classics

Top 10 most bizarre experiments

Elephant receives massive dose of LSD to see if it induces temporary madness.
Conclusion: LSD is fatal to elephants

Aircraft passengers told they are about to die in crash make more mistakes in written test.
Conclusion: Extreme stress harms cognitive ability

Two-headed dogs created by Soviet surgeon, above, but die within a month.
Conclusion: Tissue rejection makes animals incompatible

Psychologist begins experiments on son to test if laughing is spontaneous when tickled.
Conclusion: Laughing is an innate response to tickling

A room of nail-biting boys is played a recording or spoken announcements to break the habit while they sleep.
Conclusion: Sleep learning is possible. Others prove otherwise

To test if people can sleep through anything, volunteers have their eyes taped open and bright lights shone in their eyes.
Conclusion: The men dozed off in 12 minutes

People asked to smell ammonia, put hands in a bucket of frogs and watch porn.
Conclusion: Disgust has no single expression.

Doctor rubs vomit from yellow fever patients into open wounds and drinks it.
Conclusion: Mistakenly claims it is not infectious

Animal corpses placed on seesaw to restart circulation and bring them back to life.
Conclusion: Two animals survive with blindness and brain damage

Fake female turkey dismantled limb by limb to find minimum that a male will mate with.
Conclusion: Male turkeys aroused by a head on a stick, but not a headless body

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