Barry Marshall: The Doctor Who Drank a Stomach Ulcer

Around one in ten people will develop a stomach ulcer during their lifetime. For much of the twentieth century, that could mean years of pain, repeated hospital visits, major surgery and, in the worst cases, death. Doctors believed ulcers were caused by stress, diet and excess stomach acid. One Australian doctor suspected something different.

In the early 1980s, Barry Marshall was a young doctor at Royal Perth Hospital in Australia. He became intrigued by the work of pathologist Robin Warren, who had found a spiral-shaped bacterium living in the stomachs of patients with ulcers. Bacteria were not thought capable of surviving in the stomach’s highly acidic environment, so the idea was dismissed.

Marshall became convinced that this bacterium, later named Helicobacter pylori, was the underlying cause of most stomach ulcers. The problem was proving it.

Animal experiments failed and Marshall struggled to persuade others to take the idea seriously. He decided the only way to prove his theory was to infect himself.

In 1984, he drank a laboratory culture containing millions of H. pylori bacteria.

Within days he developed nausea, stomach inflammation and the symptoms of acute gastritis. Tests showed the bacteria had colonised his stomach exactly as he had predicted.

If bacteria caused ulcers, Marshall reasoned, killing them with antibiotics should cure the ulcers. His early treatments showed that antibiotics could do so.

Research confirmed Marshall’s prediction. H. pylori causes more than 90% of duodenal ulcers and up to 80% of gastric ulcers.

The discovery transformed medicine. A chronic disease affecting hundreds of millions could now be cured with a short course of antibiotics.

On 3 October 2005, Marshall and Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His wife, Adrienne, had a simpler assessment: “That's a very Barry thing to have done.”

Marshall helped save generations from years of pain, repeated surgery and a diet of boiled eggs and milk. It took real guts.

Suggested by Mick Hume

Further reading

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee