Life & Death

Vague reports have been reaching the U. S. that Russian scientists have revivified corpses. Last week such reports became more definite.

Two Moscow chemico-pharmacists, Theodore Andreiev and Alexei Alexandrovich Kuliabko, pumped a modified Ringer's solution* into the veins of a man dead 29 hours. After some hours the cadaver's heart began to beat feebly. The body developed a slight warmth. The throat gurgled. The eyelids fluttered. The reactions resembled the partial reviving of a drowned person. Unbearably horrified, the experimenters stopped their pumping. They let the corpse subside and go on to its normal course of decay.

Akin to this experiment was the decapitation of a dog by two other Moscow men. S. S. Brukhanenko and Sergei Chechulin. To the head arteries they connected a pump which forced oxygenated blood to the amputated head, which, like John the Baptist's rested on a plate. The head's eyes moved. They closed when a strong light was flashed at them. The ears wiggled. The tongue ejected a piece of cotton soaked with acid, and swallowed a piece of cheese. For three and a half hours these natural reactions continued. By that time the venous blood became too heavy for the pump to oxygenate thoroughly. The dog's head began to yawn for the air which its lungs would have used so vitally. Gaping, like a pneumonia victim, the head died completely.

*Ringer's solution (after Sidney Ringer, English physiologist, 1835-1910) resembles blood serum in composition. One formula contains sodium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, water.