Eight Real-Life Doctor Frankensteins Who Pushed the Boundaries of Life and Death

snap to viewMary Shelley help gain ground the science fiction genre with her tale of a scientist who brings a man build of corps to living . But in real life , plenty of unhinged and not - so - brainsick scientists have played with human and fauna bodies ( and organic structure parts ) to gain a greater understanding of the limits on life . After the parachuting , right real - life scientist who have performed shocking experiment on the nature life and decease . Johann Dippel : An actual indweller of Castle Frankenstein , Dippel is believed by many to be an aspiration for Shelley ’s story . His life ’s employment was to discover the Elixir of Life , which would make anyone immortal , and create “ Dippel ’s vegetable oil , ” an philosopher’s stone made from bones , parentage , and other bodily fluid and wide used as a neurostimulant . He was also rumored to have been an ardent vivisectionalist , oftentimes stealing corpses from the local burying ground . Andrew Ure : Ure was also look for the secret of life in human cadaver . He obtained and experimented on the body of John Clydesdale , a criminal who had been executed by hanging . Ure caused a stir among the scientific residential district when he unveil the nature of his experiements . He claimed that man who had died of suffocation , drowning , or dangling could be restored to life through the foreplay of the phrenic nervus .

Giovanni Aldini : Luigi Aldini discovered that a anuran ’s legs would quetch as electricity move around through the muscles . His nephew Giovanni necessitate the find a footstep further . He studied the effects of galvanizing human and animal trunk . He publicly electrified a late severed cad ’s head , giving it the appearance of lifetime . He also performed experiments on lately go malefactor , churning electricity through them to accomplish momentary reanimation . His corpses convulsed , grimaced , and even raised their limbs , much to the shock of onlookers . Aldini was also the first to apply electric shock to the brain in the handling of neurological disorders , a exercise still in use today . Gabriel Beaurieux : France ’s use of the guillotine contribute to Beaurieux ’s fascination with severed chief . He examined heads straight off after decapitation and mark that the head would open their eyes , unsex their pupils on the objects before them , and even react to their own name for several second before appearing to completely drop off cognisance . Robert Cornish : Building on the work of George Washington Crile , who pioneered the stemma transfusion , Cornish process in come to stagnant animal . After asphyxiating andiron in a lab , Cornish would localize the bodies on a teeterboard while infusing them with saline , oxygen , and epinephrine . The quaternary and 5th dogs in the experiment ( named Lazarus , as were their less fortunate herald ) were successfully revive , although they never fully recovered . Cornish went on to encounter himself in Life Returns a moving picture about a doc who crop to revive the dead . Sergei Bryukhonenko : We have mentioned Soviet scientist Sergei Bryukhonenko before . Another fan of canine experimentation , Bryukhonenko make up the autojektor , a heart and lung machine , and prove its efficacy by attaching it to a severed dog ’s head , which stay on alert , feed and drinking .

Vladimir Demikhov : We can credit Demikhov with many modern advances in organ transplants , but he is perhaps intimately remembered for his work in two - headed cad . Demikhov transplanted the head and front legs of one dog onto a second dog ’s body . Both cad were awake , aware , and hungry . He made 20 of these two - headed creatures , but , tragically , due to weave rejection , none of them go longer than a calendar month .