The Scientist Who Drank a Beaker of Bacteria

For most of the 20th century, doctors were certain they knew what caused stomach ulcers: stress, spicy food, and too much acid. The treatment was bland diets, antacids, and sometimes surgery to remove part of the stomach.

Then two Australian researchers — Barry Marshall and Robin Warren — discovered something heretical. They found a spiral-shaped bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, living in the stomachs of ulcer patients. They proposed that ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection, not by lifestyle.

Nobody believed them.

The medical establishment dismissed their findings. Bacteria couldn't survive in stomach acid, they said. Ulcers were a disease of modernity and stress. Marshall submitted papers that were rejected. He presented at conferences and was ignored.

So in 1984, Barry Marshall did something that would either vindicate him or kill him. He brewed a solution of H. pylori in a petri dish and drank the entire thing.

Within days, he developed severe gastritis — inflammation of the stomach lining, the precursor to ulcers. He was vomiting and miserable. An endoscopy confirmed his stomach was teeming with H. pylori. He treated himself with antibiotics and bismuth, and the infection cleared.

His self-experiment provided the critical proof. It took another decade for the medical establishment to fully accept the finding, but in 2005, Marshall and Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their discovery revolutionized the treatment of ulcers — from surgery and lifetime medication to a simple course of antibiotics.