The 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time
The Museum of Hoaxes‘ Alex Boese has written a new book, Elephants on Acid, about history’s most bizarre scientific experiments. He’s excerpted twenty of them on his web site. No. 3 on the list is Vladimir Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dogs:
In 1954 Vladimir Demikhov shocked the world by unveiling a surgically created monstrosity: A two-headed dog. He created the creature in a lab on the outskirts of Moscow by grafting the head, shoulders, and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a mature German shepherd.
Demikhov paraded the dog before reporters from around the world. Journalists gasped as both heads simultaneously lapped at bowls of milk, and then cringed as the milk from the puppy’s head dribbled out the unconnected stump of its esophageal tube. The Soviet Union proudly boasted that the dog was proof of their nation’s medical preeminence.
Over the course of the next fifteen years, Demikhov created a total of twenty of his two-headed dogs. None of them lived very long, as they inevitably succumbed to problems of tissue rejection. The record was a month.
Demikhov explained that the dogs were part of a continuing series of experiments in surgical techniques, with his ultimate goal being to learn how to perform a human heart and lung transplant. Another surgeon beat him to this goal — Dr. Christian Baarnard in 1967 — but Demikhov is widely credited with paving the way for it.
A Russian video about Demikhov’s experiments:
* More: A 1955 Time magazine article about Demikhov
* Previously in the Proceedings: Experiments in the Revival of Dead Organisms
[Del.icio.us | Reddit | Digg]
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.











