The famous Ichthyander, the hero of Alexander Belyaev's science fiction novel "Amphibian Man", is perceived by readers as pure fiction.
Meanwhile, at one time the famous researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau wrote: “It is necessary to create a homo sapiens aquaticus - a person who lives in water. An amphibian man must get artificial gills from science. There is no doubt that scientists and designers will be able to solve this problem. Moreover, nature is already trying to do this.
In ancient chronicles, there are references to phenomenal divers who allegedly could stay in the depths of the sea for almost an hour. Among them was the famous Greek diver Scyllis, whom King Xerxes hired in 470 BC to lift treasures from sunken Persian ships.
And about 333 BC. e. Alexander the Great used such frog people to destroy the booms in Tire harbor. Moreover, he himself went down into the abyss in a barrel with a viewing hole, because he wanted to be convinced of their extraordinary abilities. $ CUT $
However, due to the remoteness of the years, it is difficult to judge how these legends corresponded to reality. But in the medieval chronicles, a striking case is described that took place in the 17th century in Spain. In the small village of Lierganes on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, there lived a boy with the sonorous name of Francisco de la Vega Casar. Already at the age of five, he knew how to swim better than any of the adults, and besides, he remained under water for several minutes.
In 1672, when Francisco was sixteen years old, he went to the Biscay city of Las Arenas to study as a carpenter. For two years he patiently mastered this profession, but every evening he hurried to the river that flowed into the ocean, where he spent several hours alone.
On the eve of St. John's Day, Francisco and his friends went to a fun picnic on the river bank. After abundant libations, the young people decided to swim along it to the mouth, where it flows into the sea bay. Francisco was the first to reach this place. Suddenly a strong current caught him and he disappeared from sight.
Knowing what an excellent swimmer their friend was, the rest of the company was not too worried about his fate. But when night fell over the ocean, and Francisco was not there, the friends decided that he had drowned. His brothers wandered along the shore for several days, hoping to find the body of a drowned man, but, alas, to no avail. Soon, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, they began to forget about the missing Francisco, and only his mother could not believe in the death of her son.
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Five years have passed since the disappearance of young Kasar. In February 1679, fishermen, casting their nets in the bay of Cadiz, saw with horror how from the depths a strange creature resembling a man was heading towards them. Soon, rumors spread through the taverns and markets of the port city about a mysterious inhabitant of the deep sea who steals their catch from fishermen. He was called the "revived drowned man" and "sea devil", and the fishermen began to be afraid to go to sea alone.
Finally, three daredevils decided to figure out what was behind these rumors. They made an ingenious trap out of nets and, putting a bait of meat and bread into it, threw it into the sea. The next morning, it turned out that the bait was gone, but the mysterious creature managed to get out of the trap. And yet, after a few months, the sea monster was finally captured.
On that day, all of Cadiz ran ashore to gaze at him. To the great disappointment of the audience, the captured creature did not at all resemble the sea devil. He was a tall young man with pale, almost translucent skin and fiery red hair. In front and behind, two stripes of fish-like scales ran along his body. There was a thin brown film between the fingers, making the hands look like frog paws. The monster bellowed and roared, and it took a dozen stout dockworkers to hold it back.
The caught was placed in a Franciscan monastery. Soon the news of the emergency reached the Holy Inquisition. The head of her local branch, Domingo de la Cantolla, began to cast out demons from the captured young man, having previously tried to interrogate the prisoner. From his incoherent moo, only one word was made out: "Lierganes."
It turned out that this is the name of a small village hundreds of kilometers from Cadiz. A messenger specially sent there found that a young man named Francisco de la Vega Casar, who disappeared five years ago, lived there. According to the descriptions of fellow villagers, it was very similar to the catch of the Cadiz fishermen.
To establish the truth, it was decided to show the caught fish-man to the relatives of the missing young man. At the beginning of 1680, the cortege under heavy guard arrived in Lierganes. Old mother Francisco, shedding tears, immediately recognized her missing son in the mysterious prisoner. However, he himself did not in any way express joy at the return to his father's house.
Silently walking around the courtyard, Francisco hid in a dark corner and did not answer questions. All nine years that this strange man lived after returning home, he hardly spoke. Yes, and behaved strangely: all day long or prone on the ground, or silently walked around the yard. Francisco could endlessly devour raw fish and meat and stubbornly carried unimaginable rags. One evening, he suddenly started, as if he had heard someone calling, and went straight to the coast. Easily scattering several men trying to stop him, Francisco de la Vega Casar threw himself into the sea and disappeared forever into the misty distance.
“The legend of the fish-man has a very real basis, although for centuries there have been no attempts to present this story as folk art,” says Spanish medical scientist Sergio Rodriguez. "The testimonies of contemporaries, archival documents and church books allow us to assert that Francisco really lived in the parish of Lierganes at the end of the 17th century."
Doctors, zoologists, theologians, finally, just lovers of mysterious incidents tried to solve the riddle of the "fish man". In the encyclopedic work "Theater of Universal Criticism", written in the 18th century by the Spanish scholar Benito Jeronimo Feihu, an entire chapter is devoted to him. Feihu meticulously collected all the available information about this phenomenon, including the notes of priests, the testimony of scientists and educated nobles who saw Francisco with their own eyes.
Feihu himself was a staunch skeptic and a fierce opponent of all kinds of miracles. But in the case of the Spanish ichthyander, he considered that he was, although an unusual, but quite real example of the phenomenal adaptation of man to the aquatic environment.
Already in our time, in the mid-30s of the XX century, Dr. Gregorio Marañon proposed a hypothesis, which was accepted by many scientists and researchers of the paranormal. He believed that Francisco Casar suffered from the cretinism seen in severe thyroid disorders, a very common disease in the area where he lived.
Moreover, people with hypothyroidism are often excellent divers, who, due to the individual characteristics of metabolism, are able to hold their breath for a long time and remain under water. As for the "fish scales", it is a consequence of a special skin disease of ichthyosis, in which horny scales appear on the skin.
But the story of the "fish people" does not end there.
REALITY ON THE EDGE OF FANTASTIC
In the mid-90s, the authorities of the Bahamas began to receive numerous reports that fishermen had repeatedly seen a sea animal unknown to science. It supposedly resembles a person and is so smart that it steals fish from its nets.
This information was not taken seriously at first. But letters, telegrams and phone calls from concerned coastal residents continued to arrive. And on December 19, 1996, a tragic incident occurred that frightened the islanders. Fishermen Juan Manuel Alcorta and Francisco Caminero did not return from fishing. Their boat was discovered just 10 miles offshore. Moreover, the rescuers were amazed by what they saw. “On the deck lay the lifeless body of Francisco. And on his face was a mask of unimaginable horror. Alcorta sat at the stern, huddled in a corner. He was alive but completely insane,”said Miguel Sergi, one of the rescuers.
An autopsy of Francisco Caminero revealed that the cause of death was a heart failure, most likely caused by severe fright. Juan Manuel Alcorta was taken to a psychiatric clinic, where he was diagnosed with neurogenic shock. Only something extremely terrible and unusual could frighten the fishermen so much. Rumor has attributed this incident to a "sea devil" that appeared in coastal waters.
The authorities had to seriously tackle the mysterious creature. But since they did not have the necessary technical means, the French research vessel Mizar came to their aid. Its captain Charles Mercier had no doubt that the monster would be caught as soon as possible.
Indeed, after 16 days of intense searches, it was spotted in shallow water near a cliff that fishermen called Black Dragon Rock. Divers were launched overboard. When they approached, the creature, obviously sensing danger, tried to hide in the depths, but a shot with a capsule with a sleeping pill immobilized it.
After examining their prisoner, the scientists who were on the "Mizar" came to the conclusion that in front of them was a man who had mutated beyond recognition as a result of strong radiation exposure. A medallion was found on his neck with the inscription: “Ernest Hill, pilot. L. n. 3027 ".
At the request of French researchers, the American Aviation Administration replied that pilot Ernest Hill, personal number 3027, died on December 28, 1958 during the plane crash of the Dakota-3 aircraft, tail number MC16002. The plane was flying from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami and disappeared from the radar screens at 4 hours 13 minutes. Its fragments and bodies of the dead people were not found.
By transport plane, the mysterious mutant was urgently taken to a secret French laboratory in Lyon. During the five months of treatment and subsequent rehabilitation, the man remembered his native English and told his fantastic story to the correspondent of the newspaper L'Aurore, whom he met later.
According to him, he really is the pilot Ernest Hill. In December 1958, he and first pilot Robert Linkvist were tasked with delivering the container they received to Puerto Rico in Miami. To avoid an accident, they were warned that there was a highly radioactive substance in the container, and so they took it into the pilot's cabin. At five o'clock in the morning on December 28, the navigation equipment and power supply suddenly went out of order. The car fell into the sea and sank 50 miles from Miami.
Due to a coincidence, the plane, descending along a steep glide path, crashed not into a monolith, but into an underwater grotto at the base of the Black Dragon cliff. After the strongest blow, the fuselage was buried under the stones that fell on it. All passengers died, and their bodies and wreckage of the car ended up in a stone coffin and therefore were never found. Only the pilot's cabin and the three crew members who were in it survived. But the container with the radioactive substance was damaged on impact.
When the plane sank into the water, the pilots decided they were finished. However, a miracle happened. Their "Dakota" landed precisely in an underwater tunnel leading to a grotto deep in the cliff. The rockfall that flattened the fuselage blocked it, but the pilot's cabin survived, because it was in a cave a moment before. Thanks to the cracks in the rock and the bottom located above sea level, it turned into a giant air bubble. Obviously, rainwater flowed down the cracks into the grotto, because its half-meter layer was fresh.
For months, the three surviving pilots tried to break through to the top. They ate only mollusks living at the bottom of the grotto. Moreover, the water level in it gradually increased. In the end, due to radiation and harsh living conditions, first pilot Robert Linkvist and navigator Ted Burks were killed.
Ernest Hill was lucky, if what happened to him can be called luck. Under the influence of radiation, his body began to mutate, adapting to the environment, as rainwater gradually flooded almost the entire cave. He developed skin respiration, the hairline disappeared, and his body became covered with mucus. The eyes adapted to the darkness, as only diffused light penetrated into the cave through one of the cracks in the vault.
Hill doesn't know how many years passed before the waves washed away the stone plug that was blocking the tunnel and he was able to get out. But that didn't change much for the mutant. He forgot the human language and did not seek to return to the society of people that frightened him. Lived in the sea, ate fish and shellfish. But in recent years, fish have become scarce, and Hill was forced to steal it from fishing nets until he was caught.
The newspaper L'Aurore, which told this incredible story, wrote that the "sea monster" Ernest Hill had been undergoing rehabilitation for many years, which basically returned his body to normal. But he retained an irresistible craving for water, in which he spends a lot of time.
AMPHIBIAN HUMAN DOESN'T NEED GILLS
However, despite the transformation of an American pilot into an ichthyander as a result of a mutation, scientists believe that creating an amphibian should be done in a different way: you need to endow him with the ability to extract oxygen from water, the reserves of which are unlimited. That is, to teach to breathe water.
Statistics say: the vast majority of people drown not because their lungs are filled with water, but because the body's defensive reaction is triggered - the so-called lock. It is enough for one drop of water to get on the sensitive cells of the bronchi, as the annular muscle squeezes the throat, spasms occur, and then suffocation. Therefore, in order for a person to breathe in the water, the lock must be “turned off”.
Meanwhile, as practice shows, a newborn does not have such a reflex. And it's not just human babies that adapt well to water. Kittens and rabbits raised by nutria, chickens, whose adoptive mother from birth was a duck, felt like fish in the water, and when they grew up, they continued to remain waterfowl.
But there are other difficulties as well. At normal atmospheric pressure, too little oxygen is dissolved in water, which is necessary for breathing, that is, to supply it with millions of cells in our body. In addition, ordinary water, if it manages to overcome the lock and enter the delicate alveoli of the lungs, will cause fatal edema. And yet the situation is not at all hopeless.
Under high pressure, water can be saturated with oxygen to the same concentration as air. Or, instead, use a special saline solution, the composition of salts in which will be the same as in blood plasma. Moreover, if you make it twice as dense as water, then it will not be absorbed by the lungs and the threat of their edema will disappear. It will be quite possible to breathe such a liquid.
These theoretical calculations have already been verified experimentally. At Leiden University, mice were put into a chamber filled with a special solution. Through the transparent walls, the researchers observed their behavior, which justified the calculations.
After the first unrest, the rodents calmed down and did not seem to suffer much from being in such an unusual environment for them. They slowly and rhythmically inhaled and exhaled liquid, holding on in this mode for several days. However, then they died.
But, as it turned out, not at all from a lack of oxygen, but because of the difficulty of removing carbon dioxide from the body. The fact is that the viscosity of the liquid was 36 times higher than the viscosity of air. Therefore, breathing in it required 60 times more energy than breathing air. When the mice ran out of power, the rodents died, poisoned by carbon dioxide.
Research and experimentation with underwater breathing continues. Scientists are confident that the time is not too far away when a person can literally breathe liquid. In any case, in one of the defense research institutes of Russia they switched to experiments with volunteers, during which new "fish" methods are tested.
One of them was attended by a well-trained, experienced diver. As a result of a surgical operation due to a dangerous pathology, his larynx was removed. There was no need to fear that when fluid enters the lungs, a lock will appear - that very innate reaction to water when the annular muscle squeezes the throat.
The experiment was quite successful. A special solution was poured into a person, first into one lung, and then into another. After working his abdominal muscles to mix the liquid, he plunged into the water and remained there for a while.
After the completion of the experiment, the fluid from his lungs was painlessly removed. According to experts, in the future, ordinary people with a normal throat will be able to breathe under water, since overcoming the body's reflex reaction to liquid is only a matter of technology.