About three centuries ago, the famous English surgeon and anatomist John Genter made a cautious assumption about three centuries ago that it is possible to prolong a person's life "even up to a thousand years, if you alternate his vigorous activity with periods of oblivion (staying frozen)." This amazing state between life and death was later called suspended animation by the Berlin professor Wilhelm Preyer. Translated from Greek, this word can be understood as "revival", "restoration".
Experiments of Professor Pouchet
Once the inventor of the microscope, the Dutchman Anthony van Leeuwenhoek decided to look through his device at a portion of sand taken from the gutter. In the dry sand, nothing special was visible, but as soon as a drop of water was added there, the smallest living creatures - rotifers - ran in it!
Levenguk made a bold conclusion that rotifers were also present in dry sand, calcined in the sun, but in a special, dead state (suspended animation), caused by strong drying. About the ability of some living things (for example, fish). having frozen, revive after thawing, it was known to commoners, as they say, from time immemorial. Scientists became interested in this phenomenon only in the 18th century.
The famous Italian naturalist at that time Lazzaro Spallanzani froze salamanders, frogs, toads, lizards, then opened them and watched what changes their internal organs underwent. Other researchers have frozen caterpillars, eels, butterflies pupae. But the first truly serious study of this phenomenon was undertaken by the University of Rouen professor Felix Pouchet.
The professor also came up with an apparatus for conducting experiments of this kind. It was a vessel in which a mixture of ice and coarse salt was placed. The mixture reduced the temperature in the vessel to -19 ° C. The animal, wrapped in oilcloth or in a rubber bag, was placed in a cooling mixture, where it was kept.
Thermometer of the Russian emigrant
Years passed, and the German zoologist Redel from Frankfurt an der Oder took up the study of suspended animation. As a result, he found out that ants can withstand a frost of 15 degrees, weevils died at a temperature of -12 ° C, and cabbage butterflies remained alive in a 25-degree frost!
In 1893, the Swiss physicist Raul Pictet reported on the results of his research on suspended animation. He also tested fish and frogs for cooling. snakes, beetles, and even tried to revive after freezing (alas, unsuccessfully) frogs, a snake, guinea pigs and even dogs.
The matter moved forward a lot when Professor of Sofia University Porfiry Ivanovich Bakhmetyev took up the study of suspended animation. He was not only a physicist, but also an entomologist, an expert on butterflies. His fate was such that in his youth he left Russia, graduated from the University of Zurich and ended up in Bulgaria for a long time.
One day in the fall of 1897, for a lecture at the university, he needed information about the body temperature of butterflies. To his surprise, he was convinced that this information was not given anywhere. The reason was simple: there was no thermometer yet to measure the temperature of such small creatures.
As a physicist, Bakhmetyev did not have much difficulty in creating a special electric thermometer. It was a thermocouple - made of two soldered wires. The temperature could be judged by the readings of the galvanometer. to which the thermocouple was connected.
Bakhmetyev's "blind spot"
The lilac hawk moth was the first test object for Bakhmetyev. She was placed in a jar, which, in turn, was immersed in a cooling mixture of ice and salt.
A thermocouple was inserted into the back of the insect, and the experiment began.
Bakhmetyev, sitting in front of the galvanometer. dictated instrument readings to his assistant. When the temperature of the butterfly fell below minus 9 degrees, an incredible phenomenon occurred at first glance: the temperature of the insect jumped sharply and stopped at -1.7 ° C! Something suddenly "warmed up" the butterfly.
The reason for the sharp jump in temperature was soon found out. It turned out that when the juices of the butterfly freeze, latent heat was released (a common physical phenomenon). But the most important thing happened after the jump: the temperature began to drop again, a state of suspended animation began. The scientist warmed the butterfly, and it always came to life.
However, this was only when the insect was cooled to a certain temperature. After her, suspended animation ended and death followed. Bakhmetyev just called this fatal limit - "dead center".
It was not difficult to freeze and then revive the simplest organisms. But how to introduce higher warm-blooded animals into suspended animation? Bakhmetyev decided to start with experiments on a bat, a creature that goes into hibernation.
The scientist took a male of a small breed. The mouse was swaddled, placed in a box with slits for breathing, and as such was placed in a metal chamber, cooled, as before, with a mixture of crushed ice and salt.
Revitalization of a Bat
The course of the experiment resembled freezing a butterfly. First, there was a decrease in the body temperature of the animal. After three hours, it turned negative. Then - a sharp jump up! And again a smooth decline. At a temperature of minus 4 degrees, suspended animation began, the mouse froze!
Bakhmetyev quickly removed it from the refrigerator. The mouse was as hard as stone to the touch! But little by little her wings began to move faintly, she began to breathe. The frozen animal gradually came back to life! Half an hour later, the mouse came to life completely …
A year later, after many years of living abroad, Porfiry Ivanovich returned to Russia. His sensational experiences were well known here. Moreover, they managed to acquire legends. They said that Bakhmetyev was about to begin experiments on freezing a person and then revive him. There were rumors that some Moscow ballerina had already agreed to a voluntary freeze. Indeed, in Moscow at a private university A. L. Shanyavsky, a special laboratory with refrigerators and equipment was built for Bakhmetyev.
As soon as he arrived home, Porfiry Ivanovich went on a tour with lectures on suspended animation. He moved from city to city: Saratov, Astrakhan, Rostov-on-Don, Odessa, Kharkov, Kiev …
Unfulfilled plans The
famous biologist M. M. Zavodovsky in his youth had a chance to listen to Bakhmetyev. He recalled: “The professor, who looked somewhat like a priest, began the lecture simply. Speech is clear and intelligent. Living thought, like sparkling spray, illuminated the consciousness of the audience. I had never before heard such a speech, full of daring thoughts."
During a trip to Russia, Bakhmetyev felt unwell and returned to Moscow completely ill. Despite intensive treatment, the disease progressed rapidly, and on October 14, 1913, Professor Bakhmetyev died, as the doctors considered, "from cerebral edema." Death took him away when he could finally embark on extensive research on suspended animation.
Almost 97 years have passed since then. Deep cooling, hypothermia. nowadays it is often used in medicine. But what about the longed-for suspended animation of a person, is it possible?
Previously, it was believed that the main obstacle to suspended animation is ice crystals formed in the cells of the body during cooling. They break apart biological molecules and kill the cell. You can resist this if you saturate the entire body with a cryoprotectant, a kind of antifreeze. But such an impregnation in itself is deadly.
Now, the most serious obstacle is the dehydration of cells during freezing, the so-called osmotic shock, which leads to many destructive destruction in the body. Will it ever be possible in the future to revive the frozen human body? Today, perhaps, no one can answer in the affirmative to this question.
Gennady Trofimov. Secrets of the XX century magazine