How far would you go to find the answers to a medical mystery?

Would you go as far as Stubbins Ffirth, a 19th century doctor who smeared himself with vomit and other bodily fluids from yellow-fever suffers to prove it wasn’t a contagious disease?

Or tape a sample of radium salts to your arm for 10 hours as Pierre Cuire did in his desire to find out how radiation might help in the treatment of cancer?

Probably not.

Read more about these and other extraordinary scientists who put their lives on the line for the sake of knowledge at New Scientist’s fascinating (and somewhat gross) article Eight scientists who became their own guinea pigs.

(image by Gaetan Lee)

Ready for some more interesting, fascinating, unusual, strange, and even bizarre news…

Pay patients to go to the doctor? - in England, Health Service Managers are looking at ways to get people in unhealthy people in the lower social economic rankings to visit the doctor. The thinking is that if you can get people to the doctor earlier, before chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease set in, the government health system would save money. It makes sort of makes sense. But the idea is getting flack from politicans and medical experts alike who say that the government shouldn’t be bribing people to stay healthy.

‘World’s Fattest Man’ to Marry After Massive Diet - after two years of dieting, Manuel Uribe, the world’s heaviest man and his girlfriend are set to wed this month. Originally weighing in a couple of years ago at 1,235 pounds, the 43 year old Manual has shed around 700 pounds.

Something of a celebrity, Manual has been giving telephone advice to Jose Luis Garza, another determined dieter who weighs in at around 990 pounds.

Discover the surgical tools of Ancient Rome at the Historical Collections & Services of the Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia. Excavated from the House of the Surgeon at Pompeii, looking at this collection of instruments makes you realize how far medical science has come (and how lucky we are that it has advanced so far).

As for the bizarre, how about this cookbook by a Russian chef called ‘Cooking with Balls’. Featuring testicle pizza, battered testicles and barbecued testicles with giblets recipes made from the sex organs of ostriches, bulls, pigs, turkeys and stallions, this e-book is definitely ‘one of a kind’ and not for the faint hearted.

And that’s it for this week’s Monday Sidebar…

From stomach sized hairballs to a giant hamster wheel for energetic patients, medical museums offer a chance to explore medicines colorful history and discover the bizarre, the offbeat, and the extreme treatments of days gone by.

So if you’re on the road this summer and don’t mind a little ’shock and gore’, stop by a medical museum or two. You’ll be amazed (and relieved) by how far the practice of medicine has come.

Here’s four medical museums definitely worth visiting:

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia was orginally established as a place for trainee doctors to go and learn about anatomy and human anomalies. It’s those anomalies - such as the preserved body of the ‘Soap Lady’ and a cancerous growth removed from President Grover Cleveland - that now draw the public to it’s doors.

The Glore Psychiatric Museum is housed in former ‘State Lunatic Asylum No. 2′ building in St Joseph, Missouri,. From medical artifacts such as a tranquilizing chair and a dousing tank to exhibits featuring the ‘1,446 Objects Swallowed by a Patient’ and the ‘television diary’, this museum will leave you speechlss, spellbound, and mighty relieved that the days of such barbaric medical treatment is well and truly over.

The International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago offers a diverse collection of surgical memoriabilia and artefacts from the around the world. Spread out over four floors, the exhibits include early 20th century X-Ray machines, trephining (skull drilling) instruments and an iron lung. The museum’s newest exhibit, Beyond Broken Bones, looks at the history (from the ancient Egyptians to modern day) of orthopedics and prothestics.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington D.C. is a goldmine for American history buffs. Here you can see not only the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln but also the probe used to locate the bullet and the blood stained shirt cuff of the surgeon who attended Lincoln’s autopsy. Other permanent displayss include ‘Medicine During the Civil War’ and ‘Battlefield Surgery 101.’

Know of any Medical Museums to add to the list ?