In 1901, a doctor by the name of Duncan MacDougall made a discovery that he thought would revolutionize science—a way to measure the mass of the human soul. While it may seem crazy, the loss of mass that was experienced by his patients is documented as real.
MacDougall began by recruiting participants who were in their last few days of dying from tuberculosis. He took his six participants, laid their beds on a large scale, and closely monitored their weight before and immediately following their passing. What he discovered was astonishing: The subjects lost, on average, 21 grams (0.75 oz) in body weight when they died. With no other possible explanation, MacDougall concluded that this must be the exact weight of the human soul.
He claims that the weight drop couldn’t be a result of evaporation, sweat, or loss of bowels because of how rapidly the drop occurred. He also claimed that it could not have been loss of air in the lungs, because when he attempted to force air back into the patients, the scale didn’t change. His colleague and critic, Augustus Clarke, believed the weight change to be caused by the sudden rise in body temperature as the blood stops being cooled and circulated—but Dr. MacDougall maintained his theory, testing it on dogs as well as other animals and finding no weight drop as he did in humans. MacDougall believed that his hypothesis should be put up to more testing due to his small sample size, but his research ended when he abruptly died in 1920.
Scientific discoveries often stem from the sacrifice of others, and the discovery of human digestion is no different. William Beaumont was a surgeon for the United States Army during the 1800s. He came across a man by the name of Alexis St. Martin who had been injured while working for a fur company. St. Martin was shot in the stomach by a buckshot-loaded shotgun, which ripped a large hole right through his skin but let his organs remarkably intact. Despite Beaumont’s belief that St. Martin was going to die from his injuries, he survived—albeit with a gaping hole that gave a clear view into his stomach.
Beaumont knew St. Martin could no longer work at the fur company, so he hired him as a handyman. As Beaumont examined St. Martin’s odd injury, he did as most scientists would and snatched up the opportunity to see human digestion in action. Beaumont ran digestion experiments on St. Martin for years by extracting his stomach juices and even lowering pieces of food into the hole tied on a string. Beaumont was able to discover that stomach acids, and not just the movement of the stomach, play a huge role in the process of digestion.
Understandably, St. Martin grew tired of being Beaumont’s science project and left for Canada. Their paths crossed yet again in 1826 when St. Martin was again ordered to be Beaumont’s handyman. The experiments increased in their intensity as Beaumont put digestion up against the effects of temperature, exercise, and emotion. Beaumont was able to publish a book on his findings, though the two men eventually parted ways for the last time later that year.
Since the beginning of time, humans have been fascinated by death—what it feels like, when it occurs, what we think about as we’re dying—yet to this day many of these questions are still unanswered. On the evening of November 25, 1936, Dr. Edwin Katskee, with the use of cocaine, set out to document this last stage of life by injecting a powerful and lethal dose into himself. He planned to document his thoughts and feelings at each stage on a wall that has come to be known as his death diary.
There had been a note scribbled on the wall stating he did not intend to kill himself, as well as detailed instructions on how to use a pulmotor to revive him, but they were found too late. The rest of his notes are so erratic and illegible that the only way to discern their order is by tracking a visible decrease in legibility over time. Some of the earlier notes included “Eyes mildly dilated. Vision excellent,” “Partial recovery. Smoked cigarette.” But as the drug began to take its toll, Katskee began suffering from seizures and paralysis in waves. High on the wall there was a note that said “Now able to stand up” and another that read “After depression is terrible. Advise all inquisitive M.D.’s to lay off this stuff.”
One of the more difficult-to-read notes reads “Clinical course over about twelve minutes.” Katskee was fascinated by his “staggering gait” and noted that his voice was “apparently ok” despite the fact that no sound came out when he spoke. His final note was only one word, “paralysis” which tapered off into a wavy line down to the floor. An antidote was found with him, but it was never used.
While there is some evidence Dr. Katskee wanted to commit suicide, it is more likely that he meant to document as many stages of death as possible and then ring for help at the last moment, and he tragically underestimated how impaired he would become.
Though many of Dr. Katskee’s scribbles are ultimately illegible and useless, his tragically fatal experiment stands as a testament to the dedication, bravery, and madness of history’s greatest scientific minds.
