In the ensuing months he received numerous death threats. He was called a Frankenstein and a “reviler of our holy religion.” Local farmers claimed his insects had escaped and were ravaging their crops, and a priest performed an exorcism on the hill above his house.
Ironically, though his electrical-insect experiments occurred long after the publication of Shelley’s novel, it is possible that Crosse was the original role model for the character of Victor Frankenstein. Twenty-two years earlier, in 1814, he had delivered a lecture in London on “Electricity and the Elements.” He described the network of wires strung around his country estate that allowed him to conduct bolts of lightning into his house. Sitting in the audience was a young Mary Shelley. His speech reportedly made a great impression on her.
Meanwhile, in 1836, the British scientific community didn’t know what to make of Crosse’s discovery. A few, such as Cambridge geology professor Adam Sedgwick, angrily denounced it. But others were intrigued. The surgeon William Henry Weekes repeated the experiment, and after a year claimed to have obtained “five perfect insects.” But four other researchers—John George Children, Golding Bird, Henry Noad, and Alfred Smee—repeated it and obtained nothing. Likewise, the esteemed biologist Richard Owen examined the insects and pronounced them nothing more than common cheese mites. That judgment pretty much ended the debate over the electrical Acarus crossii . They were downgraded from an extraordinary discovery to a common pest.
More than one hundred years later, in 1953, two researchers at the University of Chicago performed an experiment in a similar vein. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey combined water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a flask, and subjected this chemical brew to periodic electrical discharges. 3 Their goal was to mimic the atmospheric conditions thought to exist on the primitive earth, to see whether the building blocks of life would emerge. They did. Within a week Miller and Urey found high concentrations of organic compounds, including many of the amino acids that form proteins in living cells. However, they reported no sign of cheese mites. Andrew Crosse would have been disappointed.
Severed Heads—an Abbreviated History
The weighted blade of the guillotine crashes down and with a whack severs the neck. Another head rolls into the executioner’s basket.
The French Revolution and the decades following it were productive years for the guillotine. But as the heads piled higher, a disturbing question formed in the minds of onlookers. Did those decapitated heads retain consciousness for any length of time? Were they aware of what had happened to them? Amateur researchers tried yelling at the heads to see whether they could get a response, but such efforts proved futile. However, they did inspire men of science to ponder a more far-reaching question: Could a head be made to survive isolated from the body? Having thought of the question, they were determined to find an answer.
In 1812 the French physiologist Julian Jean Cesar Legallois speculated that an isolated head might survive if provided with a supply of blood, but it wasn’t until 1857 that his theory was put to the test. Dr. Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard lopped off the head of a dog, drained its blood, and after ten minutes injected fresh blood back into the arteries. Soon, he reported, the severed head stirred to life, displaying what appeared to be voluntary movements in the eyes and face. This continued for a few minutes until the head once again died, accompanied by “tremors of anguish.”
Isolated-head research continued with Dr. Jean-Baptiste Vincent Laborde, a man whose brain weighed exactly 1,234 grams. We know this because Laborde was a member of the colorfully named Society of Mutual Autopsy. This society was a social club with one purpose—dissecting one another’s brains. Thankfully, the group waited until a
Ironically, though his electrical-insect experiments occurred long after the publication of Shelley’s novel, it is possible that Crosse was the original role model for the character of Victor Frankenstein. Twenty-two years earlier, in 1814, he had delivered a lecture in London on “Electricity and the Elements.” He described the network of wires strung around his country estate that allowed him to conduct bolts of lightning into his house. Sitting in the audience was a young Mary Shelley. His speech reportedly made a great impression on her.
Meanwhile, in 1836, the British scientific community didn’t know what to make of Crosse’s discovery. A few, such as Cambridge geology professor Adam Sedgwick, angrily denounced it. But others were intrigued. The surgeon William Henry Weekes repeated the experiment, and after a year claimed to have obtained “five perfect insects.” But four other researchers—John George Children, Golding Bird, Henry Noad, and Alfred Smee—repeated it and obtained nothing. Likewise, the esteemed biologist Richard Owen examined the insects and pronounced them nothing more than common cheese mites. That judgment pretty much ended the debate over the electrical Acarus crossii . They were downgraded from an extraordinary discovery to a common pest.
More than one hundred years later, in 1953, two researchers at the University of Chicago performed an experiment in a similar vein. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey combined water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a flask, and subjected this chemical brew to periodic electrical discharges. 3 Their goal was to mimic the atmospheric conditions thought to exist on the primitive earth, to see whether the building blocks of life would emerge. They did. Within a week Miller and Urey found high concentrations of organic compounds, including many of the amino acids that form proteins in living cells. However, they reported no sign of cheese mites. Andrew Crosse would have been disappointed.
Severed Heads—an Abbreviated History
The weighted blade of the guillotine crashes down and with a whack severs the neck. Another head rolls into the executioner’s basket.
The French Revolution and the decades following it were productive years for the guillotine. But as the heads piled higher, a disturbing question formed in the minds of onlookers. Did those decapitated heads retain consciousness for any length of time? Were they aware of what had happened to them? Amateur researchers tried yelling at the heads to see whether they could get a response, but such efforts proved futile. However, they did inspire men of science to ponder a more far-reaching question: Could a head be made to survive isolated from the body? Having thought of the question, they were determined to find an answer.
In 1812 the French physiologist Julian Jean Cesar Legallois speculated that an isolated head might survive if provided with a supply of blood, but it wasn’t until 1857 that his theory was put to the test. Dr. Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard lopped off the head of a dog, drained its blood, and after ten minutes injected fresh blood back into the arteries. Soon, he reported, the severed head stirred to life, displaying what appeared to be voluntary movements in the eyes and face. This continued for a few minutes until the head once again died, accompanied by “tremors of anguish.”
Isolated-head research continued with Dr. Jean-Baptiste Vincent Laborde, a man whose brain weighed exactly 1,234 grams. We know this because Laborde was a member of the colorfully named Society of Mutual Autopsy. This society was a social club with one purpose—dissecting one another’s brains. Thankfully, the group waited until a
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