Profiles of medical courage: the courage to experiment and Barry Marshall

No abstract available. Article truncated at 150 words. “The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”-Daniel BoorsteinPreviously, four rather obscure physicians and their courageous acts have been described in this series. Barry Marshall is hardly obscure. Along with Robin Warren he won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery that H. pylori was the major cause of ulcers. He has been the subject of numerous articles and interviews. However, his story is so compelling and his courage so remarkable, that it bears repeating. Barry Marshall was an obscure medicine resident (registrar) in Perth, Australia in the early 1980’s. He had an unremarkable career as a medical student and as a resident (1). He was working 14 hour days, was married with 4 children, and his wife was finishing her degree in psychology. Against this hectic background, he took a 6 month gastroenterology rotation during the later half of 1981