Douglas Mawson's Physical Sacrifice

Douglas Mawson’s soles of his feet were hanging off, oozing blood and pus, as he trudged through the snow of Antarctica. Would you make a physical sacrifice like that to achieve a goal? There have been a copious amount of sacrifices made to make new discoveries in science. The scene described above was suffered by Douglas Mawson. This man and two other people made very substantial sacrifices; he risked his life to learn as much about Antarctica as he could and sacrificed the most out of all of these people. Henrietta Lacks died and her body’s cells were used to help create multiple medical advances without her family's permission. Phineas Gage had a 3 meter long iron bar blown through his head and was conscious the whole time. He had the same problem as people with Alzheimer's and helped us make further advances in neuroscience. There is one man though who suffered the worst for a scientific discovery: Douglas Mawson.
Douglas Mawson along with Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz were out in the barren land of Antarctica. Mawson heard a dog whine behind him and turned around to look for the source. He did not see his friend Belgrave Ninnis who was driving the sled behind him. He went back to figure out where he went and he saw a colossal crevasse in the ground and on a shelf a little way down he saw a dog with a broken back. There was no …show more content…
The book Phineas Gage tells us that Phineas had a 3 meter long iron bar blown through his head and was conscious for the whole ordeal. He also suffered an infection in which the doctor had to lance his nose to drain it. He later suffers from epilepsy due to the damage dealt to his frontal lobe. Phineas became very antisocial and an outcast who only got along with animals. Henrietta’s family had suffered when they learned that she became a “lab experiment” without their permission. Although both of these people and their families suffered greatly, Douglas Mawson suffered quite a bit