The record
The defining act
On August 27, 1885, Carrion had material from a patient's Peruvian wart inoculated into his arm. He and his colleagues documented the illness that followed until he became too sick to continue. He died on October 5.
What was at stake
Carrion wanted to determine whether verruga peruana and the deadly Oroya fever were different stages of the same disease. The experiment exposed him to an illness that medicine could not yet reliably diagnose or treat.
What followed
His experiment helped establish the relationship between the two clinical forms, now known together as Carrion's disease. Peru commemorates his death on the Day of Peruvian Medicine.
Why Pax Terra remembers them
He treated knowledge as a public inheritance worth suffering for.
Context
The motives and scientific interpretation of his experiment have been debated. Pax Terra honors his willingness to risk himself for knowledge, not self-experimentation as a model for modern research.