h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well the man who wanted to behead GBS, was GBS himself.

As for the Pomeranian and the head-swap operation. I'll sort that all out in the write up.

You can try and get either of the scientists involved but unless like Feisor you have a freakishly accurate knowledge of 1920's science of the fringes of the acceptable, you'll likely not get it.

Those Russian names are fiendishly unforgettable

and my knowledge of "1920's science of the fringes of the acceptable" is not "freakishly accurate" - I just happen to delight in surfing the net, finding macabre stories of research and remembering them.

A little like Clive

This post has been removed.

QI -A real head case

Posting:
Once the guillotine had been invented as a more efficient and effective means of dispatch, the natural questions arose, how soon after use did death occur, and could a head, once severed, be made to live again?

In 1812 Jullian Jean Cesar Legallois proposed if an isolated head were given a fresh supply of blood it might regain consciousness.

This hypothesis was put to the test in 1857 by Dr Charles Edouar Brown-Sequard.

QI has met Mr Sequard before. He was the progenitor behind the testicle-reassignment surgery thread F7180006?thread=7303514

He used a severed dog's head, drained of blood then reinjected with a fresh supply. He reported signs of life, but the decapitated dog, lapsed back into death with "tremors of anguish"

In 1884, after having his head removed, the criminal known only as "Campi" 9becuase 19th century newspapers only ever referred to criminals by single names) faced an hour-long trip t the laboratory of Dr Jean Baptise who tried infusing Campis head with blood - with disapointing results: nothing happened.

Baptise declared the wait from block to lab had been the reason.

HE re-organised and next time was present for the execution of a murderer Gagny, receiving his head after a mere 7 minutes had elapsed from it's removal, and a further 9 minutes later was surgically attached to a dog, who began donating blood via Gagny's Carotid artery.

Again nothing much happened apart from some facial tremors and the jaw snapping shut.


Things kick into gear in the 1920 when the Soviets try their hand. Sergei Brukhonenko succeeded in keeping a dog's head alive for over three hours.

To do this he used a number of anti-coagulant drugs, and crucially he developed a primitive heart-and lung machine (the forerunner of today's dialysis machines) which he called an "autojector"

Brukhonenko still living dog's heads would react to stimuli around them including pupil contraction in bright light, flinching from a sound, licking it's lips to remove drops of citric acid placed there, or in instance swallowing a piece of cheese only to have it pop out the other end of the severed oesophageal tube.

Naturally, they filmed it.
http://www.archive.org/details/Experime1940

This video has some disturbing scenes and contains footage of a severed dog's head and other animal experiments.

You have been warned.

The figure introducing the film is J.B.S Haldane, fellow of Oxford, Cambridge and the University College London in one order or another, population geneticist, and later, marxist.

The film is a re-creation of Brukhonenko's 1920's work in 1940, originally this was first shown to an international audience of scientists in the Third Congress of Physiologists in 1928

This news sensationalised Europe.

And it was this that prompted George Bernard Shaw to write a letter to The Berlinner Tageblatt, March 17 1929, opining that Brukhonenko's technique could be used to prolong life and musing apparently quite seriously:

"I am even tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having to do anything other that to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature."

*Untranslated German pinched by moderators, reposted with these words removed*

( / )

Well, well, wel!

If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would find myself calling you a fraud!!!!!

(Not to be taken seriously, Clive!)


GT

QI - A Real Head Case
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Correct (+3)
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Feisor (58)
GBS Shaw offered himself as a likely candidate."


QI Bonus (+6)
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Gandalf's Twin (4)
"Lady Astor and the dead-headed flowers"


DGI Bonus (+1)
------------------------
Gandalf's Twin (41)
"Becuase of his Nobel Laureate Status"

Gandalf's Twin (45)
"He refused the cash - believing in art for art's sake"

Feisor (48)
"Experiments reactivating heads"



Klaxon (-5)
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Gandalf's Twin (33)
"One of Shaw's critics"

Gandalf's Twin (41)
"Because of GBS's affiliation with elements of Irish Nationalism"


Elf Bonus (+2)
------------------------
Clive




Total to be added or subtracted.
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Feisor +4
Clive +2
Gandalf's Twin -2


Proving two heads isn't necessarily better than one, it' our resident genius of the macabre - Fesior with +4

Holding the basket beneath the guillotine of Life and hoping to catch the flying heads of interestingness, I your humble QI researcher remarks "It's a a funny old life." "You're not kidding." said the dismembered head at the bottom of the bucket.

Experimentally opening one eye, then the other. Something is wrong he can't feel his legs - HE'S A DISEMBODIED HEAD IN A JAR!! He tries to cry out, but is silenced by the sight of a mad Russian in medical fatigues advancing towards him with a cheese board and a set of tweasers - it's Gandalf's Twin with an horrific -2

Weird that film of dog's head on a medical slab is less offensive than german.

I nominate that for Quote of the Week.