1. Vladimir Demikhov: Creating a Two-Headed Dog?
In 1954, Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov revealed his masterpiece to the world: a two-headed dog. An adult German Shepherd was grafted with the head of another small puppy. The second head could drink milk, and it even didn't need other food; milk flowed down the neck through an incompletely connected esophagus. Although the two puppies eventually died due to bodily rejection, this did not stop Demikhov from continuing his experiments. Over the next 15 years, he conducted 19 more such experiments.
2. Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death
Josef Mengele was a hospital doctor in the Nazi SS, responsible for screening prisoners to decide who would be killed, who would be used for forced labor, and who would be subjects for experiments in concentration camps. Among these doctors, Mengele was called the "Angel of Death." At Auschwitz, Mengele conducted many twin experiments; after the experiments, the twins were either killed or their bodies dismembered. He once performed a surgery that sewed two Gypsy children together to form conjoined twins. The children's hands had severe infections due to being cut off. Mengele was particularly obsessed with drawing blood from twins, and some people died this way due to bloodletting.
Alexander Decke, a former Auschwitz prisoner, said: "I could never accept that Mengele thought of his work as serious and meticulous rather than reckless; he was just testing his power. He could easily run a slaughterhouse. Once I witnessed an abdominal surgery where Mengele removed the person's organs without anesthesia. Another time, he removed a heart without anesthesia. It was terrifying. Mengele went insane under his power. No one asked why this person died, why that person died. The number of people who died at his hands is incalculable. He conducted these experiments in the name of science, but in reality, it was pure madness."
3. Johann Conrad Dippel: The Giver of His Own Doom
Johann Conrad Dippel was born in 1673 at Frankenstein Castle near Darmstadt, Germany. He is rumored to have been the prototype for Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein," although this claim is still disputed.He was a philosopher and alchemist, who extracted animal oil, the famous 'bone tar', from the bodies, bones, and blood of animals, dreaming of creating the elixir of life as described by alchemists. It is said that he cooked various limbs in large barrels, and he also attempted to transfer a soul from one corpse to another using funnels, tubes, and lubricating oil.
4. Sergei Bruyukhonenko: Dog Butcher?
Before Vladimir Demikhov, Bruyukhonenko's experiments on dogs promoted the later development of heart surgery. He developed a machine called the autojektor (a kind of heart-lung machine). Using this primitive machine, he kept several dog heads alive separately. In 1928, he demonstrated one of these dog heads in front of an audience. To prove the head was alive, he tapped the table, and the head recoiled in pain; when a beam of light was shone into its eyes, the dog would blink. When fed cheese, the food would come out of an externally connected esophageal plastic tube. All of this caused disgust among the viewers.
5. Andrew Ure: Scottish Butcher?
Although he achieved much as a Scottish doctor, he is best known for the four experiments he conducted on the corpse of Matthew Clynd on November 4, 1818. The first experiment was making a small incision on Matthew's neck and removing a section of the vertebra; then he made an incision on the left buttock and heel. Two connected electrodes were inserted into the neck and buttock incisions, causing the deceased to tremble violently. The second electrode was then inserted into the heel, making the corpse's legs kick strongly and uncontrollably, almost hitting an assistant. The second experiment made the chest of a deceased person named Foster rise and fall as if he had come back to life. Ure said Foster's blood had not drained, claiming that Foster's neck was broken due to hanging, and he said he had brought Foster back to life. The third experiment involved making an incision on Foster's forehead and inserting an electrode, causing Foster's face to display anger, fear, extreme pain, horror, and a contorted smile. These expressions terrified the audience, and one doctor vomited on the spot. The final experiment aimed to convince people that Foster was indeed alive. Ure made a small cut on Foster's index finger; when the electrode was inserted, Foster's hand rose and pointed at the audience. Needless to say, this caused another panic.6. Kevin Warwick: The First Cyborg
Kevin Warwick is a British scientist and a professor studying cybernetics. He is very fascinated by robots and is striving to become the world's first cyborg. In 1998, a simple electronic sensor was implanted into his skin to control nearby doors, lights, heaters, and other computer devices. He said the main goal of this experiment was to test the limits of the human body and the difficulty of receiving signals through the implants. In 2002, a more complex chip was implanted into his nervous system to receive his neural signals. The experiment was very successful, as the signals successfully enabled a robotic hand to mimic his hand movements. Later, his wife also had a chip implanted, and the media did extensive coverage of this experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to attempt mind transfer and telepathy through computers, and this experiment was also very successful. His experiments are still ongoing.
