Elephants on acid And other bizarre experiments

Veteran debunker Boese's brief essays describe odd and seemingly misguided scientific research, such as a 1962 experiment in which an Indian elephant was given about 3000 times the level of a human dose of LSD, helpfully donated by the Sandoz company, and promptly died. A few years later, the experiment made the researchers minor celebrities within the counter-culture movement ; one of them said that when he was studying hippies during the late 1960s, he got instant access . . . as the guy who had given LSD to an elephant. Other highlights include Horny Turkeys and Hypersexual Cats, about experiments demonstrating that male turkeys will attempt to mount a stick with a turkey head attached to it and a dead turkey, not to mention sticks adorned with wooden turkey heads. As for the cats, researchers at Walter Reed . . . surgically damaged the amygdala in male cats that then became hypersexual,' attempting to mate with a dog, a rhesus monkey, and a hen. Excellent short-order reading fare, engagingly presented.--Tribby, Mike Copyright 2007 Booklist

Author Boese (Hippo Eats Dwarf, The Museum of Hoaxes) returns with another look at scientific oddities, this time focusing on unlikely but actual experiments. Included are notorious examples such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Stanley Milgram?s infamous shock treatment obedience experiment, but it?s the lesser-known studies that will generate the most interest. Disembodied heads, animal resurrection ("Zombie Kitten," "Franken-Monkey") and the direct stimulation of a subject?s emotions (via electric brain prod) are some of the more grim activities Boese describes (though, thankfully, he steers clear of examples from Nazi Germany). Lighter subjects include attempts to prove the myth that the bar patrons become more attractive at closing time and the effects of staying awake for 11 days straight. These and other tales will obviously appeal to armchair scientists, but the short, witty, ceaselessly amusing entries should delight anyone with a healthy sense of morbid curiosity. (Nov.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Chapter OneFrankensteins labBeakers bubble over. Electricity crackles. A man hunches over a laboratory bench, a crazed look in his eyes. This is the classic image of a mad scientista pale-skinned, sleep-deprived man toiling away in a lab full of strange machinery, delving into natures most forbidden and dreadful secrets. In the popular imagination, no one embodies this image better than Victor Frankenstein, the titular character of Mary Shelleys 1818 novel. Gathering material from charnel houses and graves, he created an abominationa living monster pieced together from the body parts of the dead. But he was just fictional, right? Surely no one has done that kind of stuff in real life. Well, perhaps no one has succeeded in creating an undead monster, but it hasnt been for lack of trying. The history of science is full of researchers whose experiments have, like Frankensteins, gone well beyond conventional boundaries of morality and plunged them deep into the realms of the morbid and bizarre. These are the menfor some reason, they are all menwe meet in this chapter. Prepare yourself for zombie kittens, two-headed dogs, and other lab-spawned monstrosities.The Body ElectricFrog soup, Madame Galvani wheezed. Make me some frog soup. She had been sick in bed for over a week, aching, feverish, and suffering from a wracking cough. The doctor had diagnosed consumption. Frog soup, he assured her, was just the thing to put her on the road to recovery. She asked her servants to prepare some, and soon they were scurrying about, gathering the ingredients. Painfully, she forced herself out of bed to supervise. It was just as well she did so. She found them milling around, searching for somewhere to lay out the frogs. Put them on the table in my husbands lab, Madame Galvani instructed. A servant obediently carried the tray of skinned frogs into the lab and set it down next to one of the doctors electrical machines. He picked up a knife and began to carve a frog, but just then a spark flew from the machine and touched the knife. Instantly the legs of the frog twitched and spasmed. Madame Galvani, who had followed the servant in, gasped in surprise. Luigi, come quick, she cried. The most remarkable thing has just happened. In 1780 Luigi Galvani, an Italian professor of anatomy, discovered that a spark of electricity could cause the limbs of a dead frog to move. Nineteenth-century popularizersof science would later attribute this discovery to his wifes desire for frog soup. Unfortunately, that part of the story is a legend. The reality is that Galvani was quite purposefully studying frogs, to understand how their muscles contracted, when a spark caused movement in a limb. However, the frog-soup story does have the virtue of restoring to his wife a greater role in the discovery than Galvani granted hercredit she probably deserves since she was a highly educated woman from a family of scientists. And Madame Galvani did develop consumption, and may well have b Excerpted from Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.