Popular Science Monthly
February 1935, Vol. 126 No. 2
Raymond J. Brown, Editor
By J. E. Ford

This machine, invented by Dr. R. E. Cornish, center, is designed to be used in restoring a person to life after asphyxiation

Can Science Raise the Dead?

Amazing experiments, now being conducted by experts, indicate the possibility of starting the heart again after it has ceased to function

In a spotless laboratory three white-gowned men stand around an operating table. On a cloth lies a perfectly sound and healthy terrier. One of the men fixes a mask over the dog’s muzzle, while another turns the valve on a tank of nitrogen. Its supply of oxygen cut off by a gas that itself cannot support life, the dog after a time ceases to move. The muscles relax. The dog is dead.

Then, for what seems an eternity, the white-gowned men busy themselves with hypodermic needles and mysterious liquids in tightly corked vials. Four minutes pass. One of the men looks at his watch. Another fills a needle from one of the containers, then thrusts it into the chest of the dead dog until the point pierces the heart. An oxygen mask is placed over the dog’s muzzle.

Nerves grow taught as the experimenters strain forward over the dog. A stethoscope is placed over its heart. The man using the instrument gives a cry of excitement. The heart has begun to beat. The dog, dead four minutes, is living again. In a day or two he will take food. Within a few weeks he will walk, run, play and obey commands.

As simply as this is realized a dream that has fascinated men for centuries. The dead has been brought back to life. True, it is only a

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