3. Surgeon safely removed his own appendix while under local anesthetic at the age of 60.
Even though there have been quite a few surgeons operating on themselves throughout the years, in most cases this was the result of emergency rather than self-experiment. There’s a bright exception to this rule though. The first surgeon to conduct a self-operation (as part of an experiment), was American surgeon Evan O’Neill Kane in 1921. In his illustrious thirty-seven-year medical career, Dr. O’Neill Kane had performed nearly four thousand appendectomies, so this surgery would be nothing new to the experienced surgeon.
However, there was a twist: he didn’t have to operate himself, but instead he decided to do so as part of his movement against the excessive use of general anesthetic at the time. During the procedure, Dr. O’Neil only complained of a minor discomfort. Once he was done with the procedure, he was taken into post-op and was placed in a hospital ward. He recovered quickly and was discharged two days later. Dr. O’Neil had proven his theory that local anesthesia was a viable alternative, and operated on himself again at the age of 70 to repair a hernia.