Doctors can perform some of the most miraculous life-saving measures, but one physician and medical researcher took things a bit too far when he attempted to bring dogs back from the dead using a disturbing 'see-saw' method.
Everybody knows that death is unfortunately the end, and while there are a handful of extremely rare cases where people have seemingly managed to 'come back to life' after being medically declared dead, the most you can generally do is to extend your life as much as possible.
One doctor sought to change that, though, as he believed that he could bring living beings back from the dead – if only briefly – and he did so by using controversial and highly unethical measures.
As revealed by Alpha History, the man in question here was Californian physician and medical researcher Robert E. Cornish, who was licensed to practice medicine at the age of just 21 but became obsessed with the possibility of reanimation.
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He became famous, probably for the wrong reasons, at the age of 30 when he developed the unusual 'see-saw' method, which he somewhat successfully used to bring dead dogs back to life.
Cornish’s 'patients' were strapped to a large see-saw device, and then 'teetered' aggressively back and forth in order to restore circulation throughout the body while being injected with adrenaline and heparin so that the blood would be thinner.
At first, these wild experiments didn't work, and while most would write it off as a failure and move on, Cornish persevered and came to the conclusion that the bodies he was using had been dead for too long.
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That's when he decided to opt instead for dogs that had only recently been euthanised, acquiring five separate fox terriers that he aptly named Lazarus in reference to the biblical figure who was raised from the dead by Jesus Christ.
While three of the dogs used in Cornish's revised experiment remained dead, two were successfully revived — although with a major caveat, as both were brought back to life with blindness and in a state of total insensibility.
Even though you might now be shocked at the unethical and extreme measures that Cornish used for his experiments, they were received as a major success at the time, and he even had a film dedicated to his work.
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Cornish did go 'quiet' for a little while after that, preferring instead to focus on more traditional research, but he returned to the limelight in 1947 with an even wilder experiment, as he wanted to bring a human back to life this time.
He wanted to obtain the permission of child killer Thomas McMonigle, who would be handed over to Cornish after facing the death penalty for his crimes. Instead, the experiment was blocked by the state of California, which some would consider to be the right move.
We'll never quite know if Cornish's experiment would have worked on humans and what results it would produce if it were successful, but that's probably for the best in the long run.