In the novel by A. Belyaev "The Head of Professor Dowell" the scientist created a solution with which the human head can lead a relatively full life. He is convinced that his discovery will bring benefit to people - life extension. But can a person really live separately from the body?
"Nonsense, absolutely unreal!" the educated reader will exclaim. However, do not jump to conclusions.
In 1902, the famous Russian physiologist AA Kulyabko, after a successful revitalization of the child's heart - taken out of a corpse, it acted outside the body for several hours (experimental data published in Izvestiya Akademii Nauk) - tried to revive the head.
Kulyabko observes the experiment
In the beginning it was the head of a fish. A special liquid, blood substitute, was supplied through the blood vessels into the severed head of the fish. The result was incredible: the head moved its eyes and fins, opened and closed its mouth - all this eloquently testified. that she lives!
In 1928, physiologists S. S. Bryukhonenko and S. I. Chechulin demonstrated the living head of a warm-blooded animal - a dog. Connected to a heart-lung machine, she was quite active. When a swab soaked in acid was placed on the tongue of the dog's head, signs of a negative reaction were visible.
They were expressed by grimaces, chomping, an attempt to throw away the stimulus. If a piece of sausage was placed in the mouth, the head would be licked. A blinking reaction was noted when the air stream was directed into the eye.
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In 1959, the Russian professor V. P. Demikhov repeatedly conducted successful experiments with dog heads. At the same time, he was convinced that it is quite realistic to maintain life in the human head.
Demikhov's dogs
According to the available information, American scientists are working in this area.
Thus, in 1973, American professor Robert White, convinced that the brain of outstanding personalities must be preserved in the future, conducted a series of experiments with animals. And he managed to perform a monkey head transplant. The details of this fantastic operation are as follows.
Professor R. White, despite all the unusualness of his experiment, already had a predecessor - the French surgeon Jean Labordea, who tried to revive the severed head 150 years ago. These experiments ended unsuccessfully.
Professor R. White experimented on rhesus monkeys. Animals of the same age were prepared for the experiment. During an 8-hour operation, he separated the monkey's head from the body in such a way that they remained connected to each other with only two arteries and two veins. It turned out that this is quite enough for the continuation of the functioning of the brain.
And in the neighboring operating room, the clinic staff conducted a similar experiment on another monkey, which, according to the plan of the surgeons, was to be transplanted with a new head. According to R. White, the most difficult moment of this operation was the separation of the head from the veins and arteries and its connection to a new organism. The difficulty lay primarily in the extraordinary tightness of the time allotted for this operation - only 4 minutes. This is exactly the time, exceeding which leads to irreversible processes in the brain.
This transplant, and three more that have followed recently, have shown that transplanted heads respond to light, sound, and smell. Monkeys squint their eyes when they shine a flashlight, follow with their eyes the people who are in the ward, open their mouths when they ask for bananas.
The rest of the body, although it continues to live, is paralyzed: none of the signals from the brain reaches the organs, since the transmission of nerve impulses in the transplanted body is interrupted.
Well, now about the most incredible. Of course, everyone is worried about the question: have such experiments been carried out with the human head? This question is not easy and is connected with moral and deep social problems that surgeons will inevitably face when transplanting the head of one person to the body of another. Therefore, this kind of information is always under the cover of secrecy.
And yet, in the mid-1970s, a sensational report flashed in the press. Two German neurosurgeons Wallner Kreiger and Henry Couridzh managed to keep an amputated human head alive for 20 days.
The body of a 40-year-old man who had just been injured in a car accident was delivered to the clinic. His head was almost cut off from the body and was held only by a few veins. Man's salvation was out of the question. In this situation, neurosurgeons decided to try to keep life at least in the victim's brain.
A life support system was connected to the head, and for almost three weeks after that, the brain of a person whose body had long been dead was kept active. Moreover, the doctors made contact with the head. True, her head could not speak, she did not have a throat, but the scientists "read" many words from the movement of her lips, from which it clearly followed that she understood what was happening to her:
Finally, Philadelphia physician Truman Doughty did the seemingly impossible. In 1989, his wife Brenda was diagnosed with cancer. The terrible news pushed Truman to develop a life support device. The disease progressed rapidly, and Aesculapius lost hope of saving the entire body of the dying woman. He made an attempt to save his head.
The most difficult, according to Doughty, was to connect the wife's head to the created device. First of all, the Aesculapius connected the power system, and then began to amputate the head. The whole operation took about 6 hours. Doughty knew full well that if this risky undertaking ended in failure, he would inevitably go to jail on a murder charge. The doctor risked, but, as it turned out, risked not in vain. The fantastic experiment ended in triumph. By the way, Brenda did not doubt for a minute about the necessity of the operation and agreed to it.
For several years, Truman hid that his wife's head was alive and well. Only Brenda's mother and her doctor knew about this. Only recently did the world learn about an incredible event. According to Doughty, Brenda is able to speak using a special device.
Information about the fantastic experiment by scientific and religious circles was received sharply negatively.
“They claim that I have taken on the role of God! - says T. Doughty. - I think the real reason for their criticism is different: ignorance and black envy. I'm just extending my wife's life. Let them say whatever they want, but one day they will understand that I have taken the first step on a path that will radically change our world."
All this is hard to believe because what is said here is beyond the bounds of the probable. But one thing is clear: the scientific ideas of A. Belyaev have become a reality.