Weird and wonderful papers I've read
Scientists are a strange bunch. In the name of advancing the frontier of human knowledge, they sometimes put themselves in harm’s way: trying unknown substances on themselves, getting stung by various poisonous animals, drinking Petri dishes of bacteria, and threading catheters into their own hearts.
Here are a few I particularly enjoyed.
Discovery that a melanocortin regulates sexual functions in male and female humans
Mac E. Hadley, Peptides, 2005.
Melanocortin agonists bind to a range of melanocortin receptors, which regulate appetite, melanin production, and sexual arousal. So they make you thin, tanned, and horny.
The author, having developed a superpotent melanocortin agonist (“melanotan”) and tried it on himself, reports:
Unlike MTI, however, MTII caused a rather immediate, unexpected response: nausea and, to my great surprise, an erection (no figure provided). While I lay in bed with an emesis pan close by, I had an unrelenting erection (about 8 h duration) which could not be subdued even with a cold pack. When my wife came upon the scene, she proclaimed that I “must be crazy.” In response, I raised my arm feebly into the air and answered, “I think we may become rich.”
Effects of Sexual Activity on Beard Growth in Men
An anonymous author writes about the effects of isolation for several weeks on a remote island. He noticed that during these stints, his beard seemed to grow more slowly, as shown by a reduced weight of beard clippings during this period.
It’s an n=1 study but found some interesting things: beard growth had a diurnal pattern (presumably related to the diurnal pattern of testosterone secretion?), beard growth was stimulated by both exogenous testosterone and cortisone, and “even the presence of particular female company in the absence of intercourse … usually caused an obvious increase in beard growth.”
That said, he also observed that shaving more often caused his beard to grow more, which is a common folk tale (how would the hairs, which are made of dead keratin, “tell” the follicles to grow more quickly?)
The pronounced effect of sexual intercourse on beard growth may therefore be caused by an increase in testosterone secretion, which is known to occur in response to coitus.
Versuche über Cocainisierung des Rückenmarkes
(Experiments on the Cocainisation of the Spinal Cord), Bier, 1899.
At the time this paper was published, cocaine was used for local anaesthesia (as it still is today in ENT surgery, although has largely been supplanted by other anaesthetics). Bier essentially invents spinal anaesthesia, performing a lumbar puncture into which cocaine is injected.
The paper documents several medical cases in which “cocainisation” was performed: to anaesthetise a man while his ankle joint was sawed through and resected, chiselling open the tibia, bringing out fractured ends of a broken femur to drain a suppurating would.
The most interesting part of the paper comes at the end, when he injects his colleague in the same way, and then does various horrible things to him to observe his pain response: crushing the skin with forceps, putting a lit cigar on his leg, ripping out his pubic hair and crushing his testicles.
After 11 minutes: in the arm, the sensation of pain is markedly diminished.
After 13 minutes: a burning cigar applied to the legs is felt as heat but not as pain. Ether produces a sensation of cold.
After 15 minutes: tickling of the sole of the foot is no longer perceived as such, but only as touch. Pinching of the leg is felt as light pressure; pinching of the upper parts of the chest, as severe pain.
After 18 minutes: from the nipples downwards, even strong pinching is scarcely felt any longer.
After 20 minutes: the pulling-out of pubic hairs is felt only as the lifting of a skin fold; that of chest hairs above the nipples, by contrast, as vivid pain. Forced bending-back of the toes is not unpleasant.
After 23 minutes: a heavy blow with an iron hammer against the shinbone is not felt as pain.
After 25 minutes: strong pressing and pulling on the testicle is not painful.
Who needs enemies when you have friends like this? The paper describes how the colleague has trouble sleeping and “felt very wretched” the next day.
On being one’s own Rabbit
J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds, 1929.
The whole chapter in Haldane’s Possible Worlds is extremely quotable, and Haldane was a mensch.
On biochemists:
The biochemist provides, so to say, chemical splints for damaged organs.
He moved away from animal experimentation to self-experimentation, hence the title of the chapter:
One might, of course, have tried experiments on a rabbit first, and some work had been done along those lines; but it is difficult to be sure how a rabbit feels at any time. Indeed, many rabbits make no serious attempt to co-operate with one. I except always a large buck called Boanerges (which is, being interpreted, the Son of Thunder). Boanerges had to breathe carbon monoxide every day. He sat on the table with his nose in a well-greased funnel. When he got bored he stamped. If one took no notice of his first stamp he proceeded to walk off. However, he was always willing to co-operate for such a period as he thought reasonable; but most rabbits get frightened … A human colleague and I therefore began experiments on one another.
Curiously he and his colleagues ended up doing a lot of weird breathing experiments, trying to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in their blood to show that it regulates normal breathing. These experiments mostly involve breathing fast and deep.
As any freediver will know, this purges that carbon dioxide in your blood, allowing you to hold your breath for longer, although this has the effect of blunting your hypercapnic response, so you can easily pass out doing this.
Poor Goldman on one occasion, after about half an hour, uttered a shrill cry and went into a general convulsion. Every muscle in his body was contracted, his limbs stretched out stiff, and his back arched.
In this vein he also exposed himself to airtight rooms with high concentrations of carbon dioxide, finding that it makes you rapidly feel out of breath even as you’re getting enough oxygen (the hypercapnic response in action). This escalated to drinking weak solutions of hydrochloric acid in order to keep the blood acidic, although getting his hands on it required “[thinking] of a dodge for getting the hydrochloric acid under false pretences.”
The convulsing that his subjects (colleagues) experienced were oddly similar to the symptoms of tetanus. As dissolved carbon dioxide is acidic, this breathing technique makes your blood more alkaline, suggesting a link between alkalosis and tetany. The effects were reversible by administering ammonium chloride, which was converted into urea in the body and releasing hydrochloric acid in the process. Modern-day treatments have moved on to treat the root cause of the alkalosis, but Haldane’s work is still taught in medicine to show the physiological principles of tetany.