Spooks

5 Real-Life Experiments That Shouldn’t Have Taken Place (But They Have Happened)

2018-05-01 , 10:47 am

Last Updated on 2020-11-18 , 6:03 pm

It is of no doubt that science and technology has shaped the modern world. From simple household tools to complicated machinery, science has revolutionized the world.

But it is not enough. It’s always never enough, right?

In order to come up with better and more advanced science and technology, scientists are often experimenting around with ideas to come up with something revolutionary.

However, there are some researchers, who in order to come up with “technology indistinguishable from magic”, have chose to do experiments that are just cruel and bone-chilling. Ethics? Who cares when you can create something that will change people’s lives forever?

Here are five of the scariest real life experiments done by former researchers. Former, because, well, they might not have ethics, but every place has got its own laws.

1. The Electrification of Corpses

In the early 1800s, in Europe, two Italian scientists discovered that a single spark of electricity could cause dead animal tissues to twitch and they wondered what would happen to dead humans if they electrified them.

One of the scientists’ nephew, Giovanni Aldini, embarked on a tour of Europe in which he offered audiences the chance to see this stomach-turning spectacle by putting a 120-volt battery to the body of the executed murderer George Forster.

When Aldini placed wires on the mouth and ear, the jaw muscles quivered and the murderer’s features twisted. The left eye opened as if to gaze upon his torturer. And for the grand finale Aldini hooked one wire to the ear and plunged the other up the rectum.

Forster’s corpse broke into a hideous dance in broad daylight, scaring many people and one particular observer to death. Literally.

Well, it’s not every day you see a dead body jump up and start dancing around.

2. Two-Headed Dogs

While it may sound like fiction to most of you, one scientist actually tried to do it. Between 1954-1955, in Moscow, a scientist known as Vladimir P. Demoikhov carefully severed the head of a smaller dog or puppy and stitched it onto the torso of a larger dog.

The first surgery took about 12 hours. In the end, the resultant dogs (or dog, if you prefer to see it as one now) survived, and could drink and eat from both the mouths. However, the dogs died due to rejection and the maximum survival recorded was 29 days.

Man, that’s just pure animal cruelty.

3. The Stanford Prison Experiment

This popular experiment was conducted in Stanford University in 1971. The objective of this experiment was to see whether evil can be induced into good people, and the results are going to make you lose faith in humanity.

The experiment consisted of 24 students, of which half were prisoners and half were guards. Although it sounded normal, the results were beyond expected and the experiment was halted in 6 days.

The first day seemed normal but on the second day, it seemed that the guards have taken their role too seriously. The powerlessness of prisoners, coupled with the power in the hands of the guards, had changed the way they interacted with each other. Despite warnings, the guards started physical and mental torture. The prisoners reacted by banging beds onto the doors of their cells.

And remember, they all knew they were in a social experiment.

The guards became increasingly cruel and most of them exhibited sadistic tendencies. They also took it on their own accord to dish out horrible punishments such as confinement, humiliation, forcing the prisoners to clean toilet bowls, stripping their clothes, putting bags on their heads, etc., were just a few of them.

In other words, give a good man power and a dose of evilness, he’ll still become a murder.

4. Nazi Human Experiments (Angel of Death)

This occurred during World War II in the Nazi concentration camps. A particular scientist, known as Dr Josef Mengele, who is also referred to as the Angel of Death, was particularly interested in heredity. To satisfy his interest, he isolated twins and used them as guinea pigs for his “research”.

In one experiment, the twins were stitched together in order to get conjoined twins. The pair soon died due to infection at surgical site and gangrene. Others included killing 14 pairs of twins and dissecting them to study anatomical similarities and differences. He injected dyes into the eyeballs of children to see if the color of eyeball changes.

Other procedure included limb amputations and vivisections. During that time, he experimented on a shocking total of 1,500 twins.

5. Soul Transplant

Once again, this sounded very fictional and more likely to occur in fantasy or games, but believe it or not, one man actually tried it. In the early 1700s, Johann Konrad Dippel, who was an alchemist, theologian and philosopher, was in search of the ‘elixir of life’, but put forth controversial ideas and views that were beyond the normal conventions.

In this pursuit, he studied and dissected several animal cadavers, boiled and distilled bones and flesh, and in addition to this, it was said that he attempted soul transplants on human corpses based on his claim that souls can be transferred from one body to another by using a funnel. Once his deeds became known to the public, well, he was publicly driven out of town and named a devil (remember, it was 1700s).

Image: Cathy Keifer / Shutterstock.com (Image is for illustration purpose only)