Allan Blair

Who was Allan Blair?

Allan Walker Blair was a professor at the University of Alabama's medical school who is best known for allowing himself to be bitten by a black widow spider in order to investigate the toxicity of its venom in humans. As a result of the experiment he was hospitalized for two days, but later made a full recovery. The test convinced skeptics of the time who thought that the black widow's venom might not be dangerous to humans.

The front-page headlines of the November 16, 1933, edition of the Tuscaloosa News read, "U. Of A. Professor Lets Spider Bite Him, Suffers 3 Days Agony." The physicians who attended to him praised him for "his courage but also for his persistence and skill in carrying on his investigation so long to such a successful conclusion."

According to the September 12, 1942, edition of The New Yorker, the results of his experiment were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, December, 1934, issue. It was written by Samuel Hopkins Adams ["A Reporter at Large - Notes on an Unpleasant Female"] that Dr. Blair conducted the experiment, "with a view to providing an opportunity for complete scientific observation."