REVIVING THE DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 56, 9 March 1929, Page 7

REVIVING THE DEAD

XQ§SIBILITY REVEALED

1 , RESUSCITATION'^ .RUSSIA Australian , Press Association. Js^-v-v, MOSCOW, Bth March. Professor Theodoro Androiev, of Moscow, has made. an astonishing declaration on the principle of the revival 'of the dead. Ho had already demonstrated, he declared, that it only required that surgeons should work out the technique to 'achieve practical results. Provided tho heart, lungs, and essential organs were structurally intact, it should ,be possible to revive those dead for several years (hours?). A corpse was placed on the operating table and Professor /Andreiev injected a Ringer-Locke solution and andrenaliu, in the presence of a group of assistants! Tho dead man's heart began to heave violently, and gurgling sounds came from the throat, causing the frightened assistants to decamp. The heart beat for twenty^miautes. The experiment was repeated, but owing to the public; prejudice against the use of human bodies, dead dogs were used, from, whom,tho blood was extracted, or they were killed by injections of poison. Ono dog was pois-; oned, and was revived again. It was then poisoned, and several months later again revived, and. continued to live normally. Professor' Kuliabko, an-'i other pioneer in the work, revived dead fishes. The science of electro-eardio-graphy recently had proved that life iinger3 after clinical' death or the cessation 'of breathing. A remarkable series of electro-cardiographic charts show hearts that are alive sometimes sixty minutes after death is pronounced. This interval would provide doctors an opportunity to effect a revival.

A reference of the above message to a medical authority in Wellington shows that the information, is not new. In the 6th edition of a text book on "Physiology" published in 1910, by G. N. Stewart, M.D., a well-known physiologist, the following appears: "Not only can the beat of the fresbly-excis-' ed mammalian heart be long maintained by artificial circulation, but many houi-3 or even days after somatic death pulsation may bo restored by the perfusion of such a solution of inorganic salts as Locke's through the coronary vessels. Kuliabko in this way was able to restore a rabbit's heart which had been kept forty-four hours in tho ice-chest. Even after an interval of three to five days from the death of the animal, ■in other experiments, pulsation returned in certain parts of the heart, while twenty hours after death from double pneumonia the heart 'of a boy throe months old was restored, and went on beating foi over an hour. ' He obtained also more or less complete restoration of the • beat in the hearts of persons dead from bronchitis combined with peritonitis or meningitis, and from cholera infantum, but was unsuccessful in cases of diphtheria complicated with septicaemia or erysipelas, and in cases of pleurisy with effusion," ■ It-can be said, added the medical man, that the experiments referred to in the cable message appear to bo of a more daring nature than have hitherto been attempted. -