Horror, Sleaze and Trash.

“Don’t worry or you’ll get ulsers,” people used to say and at one point, this was considered sage advice. This was - at least - until Barry Marshall discovered that ulcers are caused by a simple bacterium that can be readily killed. Marshall was a junior medical resident when he joined Robin Warren, a gastroenterologist at the Royal Perth Hospital to study biopsy specimens of stomach ulcers.
Marshall collected scrapes material from the ulcers and placed it in a culture media for bacterial growth. He periodically checked the media and when he noticed that nothing was growing, he discarded them. Once, he forgot to check on them for several days and when he returned to check them, he noticed a profuse growth of bacteria. They named the bacteria Helicobacter pylori and concluded that they were the cause of gastritis and stomach ulcers.

However, physicians scoffed at his hypothesis. In a bid to prove his hypothesis, Marshall swallowed 50ml of Helicobacter pylori suspended in the culture solution. As expected, he became sick and developed gastritis and ulcers in the stomach. He then took antibiotics to eliminate the bacteria and his ulcers healed, proving the connection between Helicobacter pylori and ulcers.

In 2005, Marshall and Warren received the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking research.