Agree. That's perhaps the biggest implicit or latent achievement of his and his wife's. Separating out the actual subject matter they worked in--which I greatly respect cuz I think there's so much potential to explore that area--you have this incredible sort of self experimentation done in a sustainable and safe Way. And I don't know that much about it but basically it seems he combines some animal assessments with reasoning based on the structure as well as trialing tiny amounts and grading it up. I haven't heard him his wife called a genius but they most certainly are, like the Curies perhaps but I suppose better at survival. And I can only hope that like the Curies their inventive era heralds a future explosion in applied technology of a similar scale but hopefully a positive valence. A Renaissance of exploration of these forms of consciousness technology.

My friend I'm sure we probably have a different definition of animal experimentation because if you look through the write-ups from some of the chemicals there: He clearly states that he's doing rectal hyperthermia bioassays with rabbits and that he finds that you know disgusting but it's an effective way to tell if the compound is a stimulant or depressive by the respective increase or decrease in body temperature, and in the ballpark amounts in which it's effective.

To paraphrase him he says something like "inserting thermocouples into that rectums of restrained rabbits is not something that I'm much enthused about and I have a jaundiced view of."

I'll try to find that link and update it heh :)

So for your reference that's exactly what I meant by animal experimentation obviously helped him stay safe by giving him some more data on the compound before he took it himself.

edit: link: last paragraph here https://erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal125.sht...

IIRC shulgin worked in a lab developing this stuff (sandoz?). He could just be giving his observations of practices at work. It is unclear though.

Then again <https://dirtworship.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/sasha-shulgin-o...>

"This (MME) is one of the very few compounds with which I actually risked (and took) the lives of experimental animals" - worth reading the rest

I don't really think it's unclear. I feel he definitely did this stuff. But I agree that it's unknown (at least from that source, heh :)) whether he did it in his home lab or at work.