Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth

Trevor Norton

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781605983752
• eBook ISBN: 9781605988504
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

A witty celebration of the great eccentrics who have performed dangerous scientific experiments on themselves for the benefit of humankind. Many scientists have followed the advice of the great Victorian doctor 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 in Norton's new book are astonishing, disturbing or absurd. 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 slug soup. Some medics deliberately contracted deadly blood diseases in the hope of finding cures. Then there was the surgeon who was fired and subsequently won the Nobel Prize for thrusting a catheter into his own beating heart.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgemnts
• Preface
• He came, he sawed, he chancred
• Sniff It and See
• Trials and Tribulations
• Lovely Grubs
• A Diet of Worms
• The Desire for Disease
• The Disease Detectives
• That Unhealthy Glow
• Found to be Wanting
• Something in the Blood
• A Change of Heart
• Behind the Lines
• Suffer
• Adrift and Alone
• Carnivorous and Coming This Way
• Into the Abyss
• High, Fast and Hazardous
• Risky Business
• Recommended Reading
• Credits
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright