16 ms·

Newton has been romanticized a bit by the math/science community. The man was amazing, but thinking of him in our context of modern science/geekery is misleadi

• arethuza 13y ago
  That's true - modern scientists or geeks probably wouldn't stick a needle down the side of their eye to see what happened to their vision: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/private_scholar.html http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/...
  • enraged_camel 13y ago
    That... that makes me feel... shudder
    • Florin_Andrei 13y ago
      How about Robert Hooke drinking mercury. You know, for science. http://www.strangescience.net/hooke.htm http://www.strangescience.net/hooke.htm > It may have been in response to the constant pressure from the society (and himself) that the experimentalist Hooke performed plenty of experiments on his own body. Many of his adventures in self-experimentation were dangerous; almost all of them were pretty disgusting. At various times, he medicated himself with botanical purgatives, botanical emetics, mercury, steel filings, tobacco, absinthe, and mineral water so foul that he found ammonium chloride preferable to it. Hooke obsessed over getting a good night's sleep and clearing out his lethargic digestive system. He often found his home remedies violently effective. He authored a recipe for turning pee into phosphorus salts, including an intermediate step of letting the effluvia sit "till it putrify and breed Worms."