Hard Science

"Who are the hardest, bravest men and women in the history of science?" asks Ian Sample on The Guardian's Science Blog.

The resulting list - and slideshow - make for interesting reading and the nominated scientists feature a number of figures whose papers we now hold in the Wellcome Library.

These are Sir Henry Head ("Operated on his own arm to investigate how sensations change when peripheral nerves are cut and left to regenerate"), Elsie Widdowson ("Biochemist who studied at Imperial College London. Widdowson and her colleague, Robert McCance, endured minimal diets for long periods to study the effect of calorie restriction on health"), Cicely Williams ("...specialised in children's diseases and developed life-saving high-protein diets while working in Africa. During the second world war, Williams was captured after the fall of Malaya and was held in two different Japanese prison camps, where she continued to treat patients despite coming close to death herself") and Alice Stewart ("took on the British and American governments with research that showed that the adverse effects of low-level radiation were more serious than either officially admitted").

It's good to see these scientists being brought to a wider audience through Sample's article and intriguing too to see the further suggestions given in the comments thread which follow it. As for our own suggestions, if self-experimentation is seen as a sign of bravery, then those featured in the 2007 BBC series Medical Mavericks are fine candidates for a place on the list.

Image: Photograph of the injection into Dr Elsie Widdowson's arm of iron, calcium and magnesium (GC/97/B.2)

Dr Henry Head

This Sunday sees the transmission of the last part of BBC One’s historical medical drama, Casualty 1909.

Set in the Royal London Hospital, the series is based on the Hospital’s original records, personal papers and contemporary newspapers accounts. So far in the series, the doctors and nurses of the hospital have contended with Anarchist ‘outrages’, protesting Suffragettes and militant animal rights activists.

Pictured above is one of the main characters in the series, Dr Henry Head (portrayed by actor Anton Lesser), by 1909 Assistant Physician at the Royal London.

Head is described in promotional material for the series as:

A pioneering psychologist, with a fiercely enquiring mind, yet a gentle touch. Despite the many frustrations Head perseveres where other doctors would give in and is able to reach even the most lost of his patients. He is willing to take huge personal risk to advance the development of medicine.

This ‘huge personal risk’, was the real-life Dr Henry (later Sir Henry) Head's research into the human nervous system, and his actions as a human guinea pig. In collaboration with W H R Rivers, Head (pictured left) carried out a series of experiments in which his cutaneous nerves were severed, and the stages in which sensation returned were measured.

Papers relating to Head’s medical work, reside in the archives of the Royal London Hospital, and at the Library of the Department of Experimental Psychology in the University of Cambridge. However, the Wellcome Library does contain an extensive collection of Head’s personal papers (PP/HEA).

Whilst our papers may not record Head’s major achievements in medicine, they do include an incomplete autobiography which Head dictated in his later years, and correspondence which illustrates Head’s close relationship with the literary and artistic circles of his time. This material formed the basis of Dr Stephen Jacyna's recent book, Medicine and Modernism: A Biography of Sir Henry Head (2008).

All of the episodes of Casualty 1909 – including those featuring Head’s self-experimentation - are still available to watch through the BBC’s iPlayer.