But let's get down to business. Today's topic are scientists and their experiments, or to be more exact, scientists who were either injured or killed by their inventions.
1. Alexander Bogdanov
Bogdanov was a Russian physicist, who experimented with blood transfusions. He managed to complete eleven transfusions on himself, surviving every time without any problems. In fact, after he completed the eleventh one, he actually reported that he managed to stop his hair loss and improve his eyesight.
The thing that cost his life was that he failed to test the people who gave him their blood. He somehow managed to find a guy who was not only infected with malaria, but also with TBC. He died in 1928, in a very short time after he performed this transfusion.
2. Carl Scheele
The thing that cost his life was that he failed to test the people who gave him their blood. He somehow managed to find a guy who was not only infected with malaria, but also with TBC. He died in 1928, in a very short time after he performed this transfusion.
2. Carl Scheele
Scheele was a German-Swedish chemist. He was pretty good in what he did, he discovered a bunch of elements while he lived, like oxygen and tungsten and manganese and chlorine. Of course, being a genius in some things doesn't mean your intelligent enough to survive. You see, he had the stupid habit of actually tasting his discoveries. First, he took a sample of cyanide- which he survived by some miracle.
But then, some people never learn from their mistakes. When he tasted mercury, he was not so lucky as before. He died in 1726.
3. Marie Curie
I wouldn't leave her out from this list, don't worry. Marie worked on radium with her husband, Pierre all throughout 1898. After the discovery of radium, she spent her days with researching radiations and radiation therapies. Because of the constant exposure to this radiation she got leukemia, and she died in 1934.
4. Galileo Galilei
We all know who this guy was - he improved the telescope, and many other things that make our world what it is now. Unfortunately, he had a great fascination with watching the sun trough his telescope for hours and hours in one sitting.
I guess I don't really need to tell you that looking into the sun will cause you at least SOME damage. Galilei's retinas were so damaged, he never got his eyesight back again. Of course, there are some people who go on even when tragedy strikes. After he became blind, he still continued on with inventing.
5. Sir Humpfrey Davy
Mister Davy here was an awesome British inventor and chemist. He experimented a lot during his apprentice years - so much, that he got fired for causing too many explosions in the apothecary he worked at. Just like Scheele, tho, he had a pretty annoying habit.
Instead of tasting his inventions, he liked to inhale them. Sure, he managed to discover the anesthetic properties of nitrous-oxide, but his little habit got him almost killed numerous times. Of course, the inhaling of poisonous gasses won't live you undamaged on the long run either.
For the last two decades of his life he became an invalid - and he also managed to permanently damage his eyes in an explosion.
The weirdest thing in this was that Faraday, who was in touch with Davy also managed to get injured in the same way.
(I kind of love those years, because I think the most amazing scientists lived around those times - and as these things go, they were more or less connected with each other in some way)
