Medical Mavericks
2007 · BBC Four · 60 min · 1 season
S01E04 · Beating Infection
Sun, 22 Apr, 5:30 am
Michael Mosley looks at how doctors came to understand infectious diseases by deliberately infecting themselves with conditions such syphilis and yellow fever.
About
Animals and lab tests can only take you so far - in the end you have to experiment on people. But who would want to go first? Award-winning journalist and former doctor Michael Mosley exposes the curious, gruesome and sometimes fatal ways in which scientists have transformed medical knowledge by using themselves as guinea pigs.
Episodes
- E01
Anaesthesia
Sun, 1 Apr· 60 minMichael Mosley explores the work of the pioneering doctors who laid the foundations of modern medicine. He begins by charting the development of pain-free surgery.
- E02
Discovering Vaccines
Sun, 8 Apr· 60 minMichael Mosley explores how pioneering doctors learnt to harness the immune system by exposing themselves to incurable diseases like rabies, typhoid and polio.
- E03
Diet and Disease
Sun, 15 Apr· 60 minDr Michael Mosley explores the lengths to which pioneering doctors have gone to uncover the connections between what we eat and what we die from.
- E04
Beating Infection
Sun, 22 Apr· 60 minMichael Mosley looks at how doctors came to understand infectious diseases by deliberately infecting themselves with conditions such syphilis and yellow fever.
Cast
Michael Mosley
Presenter