Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409099079
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416
Categories:

Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth

Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

A witty celebration of the great eccentrics who have performed dangerous experiments on themselves for the benefit of humankind.

Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth is a hilarious celebration of the great eccentrics who have performed dangerous experiments on themselves for the benefit of humankind, written with all the wit, humour and eye for the beauties of nature - and machinery and scientific equipment - that have gained Trevor Norton a cult following and critical acclaim.

Many have followed the advice of the great Victorian scientist Jack Haldane to 'never experiment on an animal if a man will do' and 'never ask anyone to do anything you wouldn't do yourself.'.He and his father inhaled poisonous gasses to test the efficacy of the prototype gas mask they had invented. When breathing gasses under pressure he suffered the smoking ears and screaming teeth of the title.

The stories are astonishing, disturbing or absurd - the Marquis de Sade meets Monty Python. John Hunter pioneered self-experimentation and deliberately infected himself with venereal diseases by the puss transference method and gave his name to chancre of the penis. The zoologist Frank Buckland made a concentrated effort to widen the nation's diet by personally testing everything that crossed his path, from boiled elephant's trunk to bluebottles. He published recipes for such delicacies as slug soup. Some medics deliberately contracted deadly blood diseases in the hope of finding cures. Then there was the the surgeon who got the sack and won the Nobel prize for thrusting a catheter into his own beating heart.

Trevor Norton writes that self-experimentation is still a component of much scientific research. In our health and safety obsessed society, we need people who are willing to risk themselves to make life safer for us.
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409099079
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416
Categories:

About the author

Trevor Norton

Trevor Norton is Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool and Director of the Port Erin Marine Laboratory on the Isle of Man. He has authored over 150 scientific publications and books, and is an authority on the history of scientific diving.

Also by Trevor Norton

Underwater to Get out of the Rain
Reflections On A Summer Sea
Stars Beneath The Sea
See all

Praise for Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth

This is a rip-snortingly entertaining omnium gatherum of the riskiest and most extraordinary experiments in the history of science and medicine, told in breezy-pop science manner

Daily Mail

Wonderful ... Professor Norton writes with engaging fluency and is easily understood by the non-scientist

Independent

This book is guaranteed to make you wince, laugh and marvel at the bravery and foolhardiness of the people who, through their own discomfort, have made our own lives a good deal better

Telegraph

packed full of amusing anecdotes ... delightful

Mail on Sunday

His research has been intensive and his material is rich and plentiful...This book may not be for the squeamish or the very gentle of disposition but you soon come to share Norton's admiration for these crazed men and women

Spectator

Fascinating celebration of those pioneers who have taken remarkable risks in the name of science its name

Choice Magazine

Entertaining and often mind-boggling

Independent

Written with plenty of wit and sass, and well researched to boot, it's a fun frolic through a world of quackery and general weirdness

The Big Issue