Major Medical Discoveries That Happened By Mistake

Every year, millions of hours and billions of dollars

are poured into medical innovation, seeking new methods of improving, sustaining, and extending human life

Nonetheless, some of the most significant medical discoveries in history, without which many of us wouldn't be here today

were made completely by accident. So today, we're going to take a look

at some major medical discoveries that happened by mistake. The coronary angiogram is an x-ray that examines blood vessels

And when F. Mason Soans Jr. accidentally invented it, he didn't just think he'd made a mistake

He thought he had killed someone. And that's the opposite of medicine

In 1958, Soans was overseeing the injection of dye into a patient's aorta

when the tube slipped into the right coronary artery, filling the vessel with contrast

At the time, the belief was that contrast dye could be inserted into the larger vessels of the heart, like valves and chambers

but that putting it through the coronary artery themselves would cause a lethal blockage

After shouting what we imagined was a long, desperate string of profanities

Soans prepared for life-saving open-heart surgery. But, much to a surprise, and everyone else's, for that matter, the patient's heartbeat just kept chugging along

At this point, we assume Soans just pretended he did it on purpose, smoothed his hair

and strutted out of the operating room like the Fonz. Through further experimentation

scientists discovered that fears of blockages were overblown, and most patients could, indeed

manage a large amount of dye pushed through their arteries, leading directly to the invention of the coronary angiogram

Ayyy! While working as a medical researcher in the 1950s, Wilson Greatbatch

whose last name sounds like a compliment you'd give someone's cookies, was putting together an oscillator when he reached into his toolbox and pulled out the wrong kind of resistor

He installed it into the oscillator without realizing, only to discover that it made the machine emit a rhythmic electrical pulse

giving Greatbatch the idea of a lifetime. No, it wasn't, I should keep my toolbox a little more organized

He had accidentally invented a better version of the pacemaker. Before his invention, pacemakers were enormous and unpleasant

capable of saving lives but not doing much to improve a patient's quality of life

Great Batch created a much smaller version of the device. And after a successful trial period, it didn't take long for their use to become mainstream

Today, implantable pacemakers have greatly extended the lives of millions of individuals

But history remains unclear on whether Great Batch made a mean chocolate chip cookie

If you were out of work, where would you hang out? If your answer is in an oil field then congratulations You have something in common with the inventor of Vaseline In 1859 unemployed chemist Robert Chisbrough whose last name is too silly to even joke about

was visiting an oilfield when he heard complaints about something called rod wax. It sounds like

something you'd buy from a store in the mall that sells airbrushed t-shirts, but it's actually a

residue that builds up in pumps and needs to be periodically removed to prevent jamming

Chisbro also learned that rig workers had taken to collecting the jelly-like substance

and applying it to their cuts and burns, reporting a soothing sensation

And that's all Chisbro needed to hear. Over the next decade, he worked on extracting and purifying this petroleum jelly

until he was left with a product suitable for the open market. The result was Vaseline, and Chisbro spent the rest of his life extolling its medical virtues

reportedly going as far as to eat a spoonful of it a day himself, which we do not recommend you do

In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen was performing an experiment in Würzburg, Bavaria, which we are assuming has the best beer and pretzels in the entire world

The experiment itself was pretty mundane, but the results he achieved were anything but

Röntgen was attempting to find out if cathode rays could pass through glass

so he covered a cathode tube with heavy black paper and waited to see what would happen

and without a smartphone to pass the time. We used to have so much patience

An unnatural green light began to emanate from within. It emerged through the paper

and projected onto a nearby fluorescent screen. And that surprising result gave Röntgen an idea

He discovered that some of the rays he produced could pass through just about anything

But they also left shadows of solid objects wherever they were projected

Because he didn't know what these specific rays were, he labeled them X-rays

The name was so catchy, no one ever bothered to change it. The discovery of penicillin is perhaps the most famous tale

of accidental medical innovation in history, even if the commonly told version of that tale

is more or less a fish story. The usual version holds that microbiologist Alexander Fleming

left a sandwich sitting in a lab while on vacation, only to return and find it molded over

with a life-saving substance. While that's not far from the truth, it's also not completely true

Still with us? Good. Fleming did go on vacation in 1928, and he did leave some items out in the lab

But they were petri dishes filled with colonies of staphylococcus, which we don't recommend adding to your sandwich

When he returned, one dish had grown moldy in his absence. And that's when he made the discovery of a lifetime

The area of the dish affected by the mold, which Fleming later identified as penicillin notatum

was free of the staphylococcus, as if something in the mold itself

was inhibiting the growth and spread of the bacteria Soon enough Fleming was able to prove that exactly what was happening As a result penicillin is now the most widely used antibiotic

in the world. Score one for having a dirty workstation. The pap smear is one of the simplest procedures

in modern medicine, yet one of the most vital for women's health

It all stems from one doctor, George Pepinicolow, and his research into the menstrual cycle

At first, Papanikola only intended to swab his test subjects to determine how their vaginal cells changed at different stages of sexual development

But when he noticed cancer cells in one such swab, the focus of his research shifted

While it was undoubtedly bad news for the patient, Papanikola discovered that this simple and expensive procedure provided the earliest possible indications of cervical cancer in patients

In doing so, Papanikola undoubtedly saved countless lives, and today the method still bears his name, or rather a shortened version of his name

No one wants to have to ask for a Papanikola smear. In the early 1990s, researchers at Pfizer were looking into a substance known as sildenafil as a potential treatment for high blood pressure

They believed it might be able to dilate the heart's blood vessels by blocking a certain protein

When initial tests looked promising, they moved on to human trials, which yielded disappointing results, though not for long

Nurses examining test subjects noticed that the men who had ingested the substance were often lying on their stomachs when they came into the room to check on them

One nurse quickly figured out that the men were embarrassed by their uncontrollable erections, which turned out to be an unforeseen side effect of sildenafil

At least none of them started levitating. Having accidentally invented a particularly important drug for men, we imagine those researchers threw one heck of a party, or at least took the rest of the day off

They abandoned the whole high blood pressure angle, and today the drug is sold under the name Viagra

In 1938, researcher Albert Hoffman began artificially synthesizing ergot fungus compounds into lysergic acid and mixing them with other active ingredients

He was searching for a substance that might be able to stimulate the respiratory and circulatory systems to treat hemorrhaging

and was in no way trying to figure out a way to get the Beatles to eventually write Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

But hey, if it happens, it happens. On his 20th attempt, Hoffman combined lysergic acid with diethylamine, which showed some intriguing results

He labeled this concoction LSD-25. And despite moving on to other potential solutions, Hoffman kept thinking of the strange and excited

reaction that lab animals had experienced after being exposed to number 25

So five years later, he returned to experimenting with it. And by experimenting with it we mean accidentally exposing himself to it After this inadvertent dosage Hoffman wrote that he had to leave work early and go home because he was being affected by a remarkable restlessness combined with a slight dizziness

Once home, the chemist laid down and fell into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition

characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. Hoffman recalled being in a dreamlike state

The sun hurt his eyes, so he kept them closed, during which time he perceived an uninterrupted stream

of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with an intense kaleidoscope play of colors

This was a much more eloquent way of stating, I was tripping b****s

And with that, one of the world's most popular hallucinogens, along with every note of music ever played

by the Grateful Dead, was born. It's not a stretch to say that no medical discovery

has had a greater impact than the mechanism behind vaccinations. But the discovery didn't come from a lab or a university

Rather, it came from an ordinary farm and the musings of a milkmaid

Thankfully, no one involved was lactose intolerant. When Edward Jenner was just a teenager in the 1760s

a woman told him, I shall never have smallpox for I've had cowpox

I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face. It was a super weird thing to say to a teenager

but it stuck with him. And good thing, too, because that teenager eventually grew up into a doctor

But it wasn't until 1796, after a lengthy career as a medical researcher, that Jenner finally

applied this knowledge. He found another milkmaid, Sarah Nelms, who had been freshly infected with cowpox

and used material from her lesions to inoculate a young boy. When the boy subsequently proved immune to smallpox

the era of vaccines had officially begun, and the source of smallpox was well on its way

to being eliminated. He wasn't the first person in history to experiment with inoculation

but Jenner is the most noteworthy. And today he is widely recognized

as the originator of vaccines. So the next time some weirdo says something strange

to you at the mall, write that stuff down. Who knows what you'll invent? The chemical compound coumarin

produced naturally by moldy hay, leads to an animal disease known as sweet clover disease

which is nowhere near as cute as it sounds. Back in the day, scientists turned a variation

of coumarin, called warfarin, into a particularly potent rodenticide. Then in 1951, a US Army trainee

attempted to take his own life using that rat toxin. Miraculously, he survived the attempt

His survival inspired researchers to start looking into warfarin's potential as an anticoagulant

and they found it to be far more effective at treating and preventing blood clots than other

blood thinners on the market. By 1954, it was already approved for human use. And by 1955

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was using it. And if Ike likes it, then we like it