Major Medical Discoveries That Happened By Mistake

Every year, millions of hours and billions of dollars are poured into medical innovation, with new methods of improving, sustaining, and extending human life discovered on a near daily basis - yet without some significant accidental medical discoveries thrown into the mix, many of us would not be here today.

Unintended scientific discoveries often prove more fascinating than those made on purpose. Perhaps it’s the lure of serendipity, or the enticing possibility of changing the world for the better through nothing more than sheer happenstance. Either way, people everywhere are grateful that some enterprising individuals were fortunate enough to stumble into important medical breakthroughs - and had awareness enough to understand the implications of their discoveries.

#medicalhistory #inventions #weirdhistory

[davea]

Penicillin was the most important accidental medical discovery. Thank Alexander Fleming for saving millions of lives!

[grapeshot]

We don't make mistakes we just have happy accidents. Said a guy that had some big hair.

[malcolmr]

My grandmother ate a spoon of Vaseline every day for her whole life, starting as a child. She claimed that it helped her be “regular” and swore by it. She did live to be in her 90’s and was healthy her whole life.

[baronvg]

When it comes to accidental life changing discoveries like this, I always find myself wondering two things: what kind of world would we be living in IF we had never made those discoveries, and what world are we missing out on because we HAVEN’T made an accidental discovery.

[SuzanneBaruch]

You left out a recent accidental medical discovery of a previously unknown part of the human body: the tubarial glands. They're actually a type of salivary gland that's associated with the sinuses. Before the discovery, anatomists had absolutely no idea they were there -- which is crazy considering the number of human dissections there have been.

[Johnmhatheist]

Fun fact: in Spanish a pap smear is reffered to as a papanicolau. So, now I know where that word comes from.

[jenniferpiniarski]

Love how there’s a GUY in the bed during the Pap smear clip 🤣

[NASCARFAN]

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination."

John Dewey

[btetschner]

10:48 Warfarin was one of the most common prescription drugs that we dispensed when I was a medication aide.

The popular writer Agatha Christie also dispensed medication.

[ridureyu]

I remember the episode where Fonzie injected people’s hearts with various liquids for his unethical scientific experiments. That show got weird after the waterskiing episode.

[tremorsfan]

Penicillin is a testament to the power of procrastination.

[ingridfong-daley]

I guess if you're going to make a medical mistake, a major discovery would be a pleasant surprise to the usual outcome of a malpractice suit.

[lionelson]

People frequently mix up science with technology. In reality, a substantial portion of discoveries, perhaps the majority, follows a technological path of trial and error rather than the traditional framework of observation-hypothesis-thesis-theory-experiment, and so on. Chance, wonder, randomness, and luck play a much larger role than people often realize.

[hipp_katt]

Sildenaphil is still used as a heart medication, and a rather important one. My daughter was on it for her heart defect.

[anotherlilthing]

Weird bit of Vaseline info, ferrets love it, which is fantastic because ferrets can be felled by constipation.

[btetschner]

0:41 I remember going through intense classes of Anatomy and Physiology one quarter.

One of the first topics was learning about the parts of the heart and its blood flow.

[mtrench]

Yeah that Pap smear guy could have developed a less painful tool to do it with 🙃😊

[koalasez]

Great narration! Totally enjoy this channel 🙂

[brocknakachi]

Thank you for not having ads. I watch this channel because of that

[ArcherSuh]

Honorable Mention to alchemy. It laid the groundwork for chemistry and created a hell of a lot of things.
Not bad for a science with a 100% failure rate.