Little is known about human experimentation in ancient times. For example, there is information that in ancient Egypt it was allowed to conduct research on convicted criminals, and a representative of Alexandrian science, Erasistratus (circa 300,262 BC), experimented on slaves. However, it should be noted that experimentation as a conscious scientific method appeared much later – only from the beginning of modern times (late XVI-XVII centuries).

One of the first clinical experiments in the history of medicine was conducted in the XVI century by the famous French surgeon Ambroise Marie (1510-1590). But the curious thing is that this experiment took place by accident, by itself. At the time, it was believed that gunshot wounds should be cauterized with boiling resin to destroy the “gunpowder poison.” During one of the battles, A. Pare ran out of resin, and he simply used a clean bandage. The next day, he found the newly treated wounds to be in better condition compared to those inflamed and painful wounds that had been burned with resin.

In the modern era, the famous English philosopher F. Bacon advocated for the scientific substantiation of medical practice. He criticized the lack of evidence for medical methods (which, for example, can lead to unjustified fame and honor for charlatans).

In 1754, British navy doctor J. Lind conducted a special study, taking several groups of sailors with scurvy and assigning each a different diet. The results were convincing: only in the group where patients received citrus fruits did they recover, while the condition of the other patients remained serious. This proved the connection between diet and health (although vitamins were not yet known).

The first experiment that had a major impact on medical science and practice was the study of the English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823), the founder of vaccination. Jenner noticed that rural milkmaids often contracted cowpox, but their disease was mild, and then they became immune to human smallpox. In 1796, Jenner conducted an experiment on a boy by injecting him with material from a bottle of a cowpox patient. When the boy was later vaccinated with smallpox, the disease did not develop.

During the nineteenth century, the practice of experimentation expanded; there are many cases of doctors conducting experiments on themselves or their relatives.

The German physician I. Jorg (1779-1856) tested 17 different drugs in varying dosages to assess their effect on the body. The Ukrainian infectious disease physician H. N. Minch (1836-1896) proved by inoculation on himself that the blood of patients with relapsing typhus was a source of infection.

The founder of experimental medicine, the great French scientist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), in his works raised the question of the moral acceptability of human experimentation and concluded that it was immoral to put people at risk and that the needs of scientific progress could not justify violence against the well-being of an individual.