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Is this video of the Soviet Dog Revival Experiment real?

In this video a dog's head is brought back to life by artificially injecting blood and air. The dog's head reacted to sound and touch and used its tongue to taste.

I am not skeptic about its possibility , but I am skeptic if it was possible in 1940.

Links and sources: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms Youtube Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrIkUXwsNk Youtube Part 2 (killing and reviving a dog): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjBa6scGIPQ Dog head robot: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Russian_Experiment_Dead_Dog.html

• medical-science
• soviet-union
• experiments

• 1 i know this is an old questuon, but perhaps OP is still at large: could you define more accurately what you accept as 'back to life'? muscles of dead animals can be made to twitch if immersed in a physiologic solution, and stimulated - nerves, especially severed ones will provide such stimulus if themselves immersed. but the 'to taste' part implies intent rather than reflex - this is much more improbable after oxygen deprivation of brain for 10 minutes... –  bukwyrm Commented May 19, 2019 at 7:37

In answer to the question

if [what is depicted in linked video] was really possible in 1940?

The answer is unequivocally YES - in fact quite a bit earlier. Reanimating a severed head was hypothesised in 1812, first attempted in 1857 and, for the most part, perfected in 1928-29.

In 1812, French Physiologist Julian Jean Cesar Legallois hypothesised that a head could theoretically be kept alive in isolation from its body by maintaining a supply of blood. However this hypothesis was not tested until 1857 when Dr Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard lopped off the head of a dog, drained the blood and after 10 minutes injected fresh blood back into the arteries. He reported signs of life displaying what appeared to be voluntary movements of the eyes and face. This continued for a few minutes until the head once again "died".

Source: Brown-Séquard, E (1858) L'encephale, apres avoir complement perdu ses fonctions et ses proprietes vitales peut les recouvrer sous l'influence de sand change d'oxygene. Jounal de la physiologie de l'homme et des animaux.

Similar research continued with Dr Jean-Baptiste Vincent Laborde who was first to fill a severed human head with blood. The results were disappointing, nothing much happened. Laborder blamed this on the delay between getting the head from the gallows (The subject was reported to be a murderer named "Campi") to his labratory.

Laborde subsequently tried again, this time on the murderer "Gagny" whose head he received a mere 7 minutes post-mortem. By 18 minutes he had connected the carotid artery to that of a still-living dog. Laborde reported that the facial muscles contracted, while the jaw snapped violently shut. No signs of conciousness were reported.

Around the same time, Paul Loye (A collegue of Laborde) erected a guillotine in his office and used it to decaptitate hundreds of dogs in order to study their reaction After Laborde and Loye, a handful of doctors pursued this line of research but for real breakthroughs the world needed to wait until the late 1920s when Soviet Physician Sergei Brukhonenko succeeded in keeping the isolated head of a dog alive for three hours. What made this possible was the use of anti-coagulant drugs and a primative heart-lung machine (developed by Brukhonenko) which he called an autojector.

Source: Brukhonenko, S (1929). Experiences avec la tete isolee du chien II: Resultats des experiences. Journal de physiologie et de pathologie generale.

Which leads us back to the question. In 1940 a film was released detailing the work of Dr S.S Brukhonenko and entitled "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms". Dr Brukhonenko is credited with Writing and Technical Direction roles.

A remaining question is whether the video in question is an accurate depiction of the very real scientific work of Brukhonenko et al. The answer to that question, I am still looking for references!

Much of this answer has been researched with help of the (rather fun) book: Elephants on Acid (ISBN:9781743291870)

• Don't they put the dog's head back on its body and its running around healthy at the end of the video? I think that's the main issue with it. –  Razie Mah Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 23:21
• @RazieMah No, they bring a dog to clinical death and then revive it as far as I could tell. There was no head removal in that part of the experiments/video. –  Jamiec ♦ Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 7:59
• Are there any reports of similar experiments in this time? This experiment can be repeated on more complex animals now with greater chance of success (ignore the ethical grounds). –  smUsamaShah Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 11:23
• 11 @LifeH2O: you cannot just "ignore the ethical grounds". Nowadays, and rightly so, if you don't have full ethical approval you are not able to experiment on animals. And you would have an incredible hard time getting approval to do something like that... –  nico Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 18:04
• The Russians also experimented with "head transplants" on dogs; they had similar success as detailed in this answer. –  user11643 Commented Feb 14, 2017 at 23:34

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Watch Soviet Scientists Bring a Dog’s Decapitated Head Back to Life

What was supposed to be the stuff of medical miracles ended up being a horror show..

A warning: the video above contains imagery of medical experiments conducted on animals that some might find disturbing.

In 1940, Soviet scientists reanimated a dead dog.

Dr. Sergei Brukhonenko had done pioneering work in blood transfusion several years earlier, a procedure which still remains essential in modern hospitals. But if you can move life-giving blood from one individual to another, why stop there?

While the Americans experimented on primates, the Soviet scientists experimented on dogs. Brukhonenko was able to isolate individual organs and maintain them in working order: a heart would keep pumping blood, lungs breathed on their own.

But those pieces, while important to life, do not a life make. The next step was to reanimate an entire head, brain, face and all, by pumping oxygenated blood through the arteries with the help of a contraption called the “autojektor.” With a blood supply to the brain, the head reacted to stimuli as it would in life, twitching its ears and eyes at pokes and prods. It even licked a substance off its own nose.

Next, another dog, this one completely intact, was given a clinical death, then brought back to life with the autojektor. “After the experiment,” the narrator of Experiments in the Revival of Organisms says over triumphant music, “the dogs live for years, they grow, they put on weight, and have families.”

Some have suggested that the whole thing is a hoax, an elaborate scheme to intimidate American scientists, but no evidence of fakery has been revealed. A contemporary video shows a puppy surgically attached to the torso of another dog , and images of a robot suit piloted by a dog’s head and brain have surfaced online. The only reason these experiments haven’t been recreated since is that the blatant animal abuse and disregard for modern standards of medical ethics would turn stomachs even more that this 1940 video does.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email [email protected] .

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Soviet scientists managed to keep a dog’s chopped head alive, the horrific experiments of sergei brukhonenko.

by Andrei Tapalaga | May 4, 2023 | Science

Overview of Soviet Scientists’ Experiments on Dogs

The techniques developed by the Soviet scientists allowed them to replicate human-like heart activity in animals with artificial hearts. This breakthrough paved the way for future advancements in heart surgery and organ transplantation technology. In addition to this remarkable accomplishment, they also managed to keep a severed dog’s head alive for days after it was cut off from its body – an experiment that has been widely studied since then as a key example of experimental medical science.

Sergei Brukhonenko and His Research

Throughout his career, Sergei Brukhonenko was a pioneer in the field of medical research and surgery. His revolutionary experiments with artificial hearts and primitive life support systems pushed the boundaries of what was possible in science at the time, allowing for incredible advances in organ transplantation and tissue research which have since been built upon by subsequent generations of scientists. Despite some ethical controversy surrounding his methods, Brukhonenko’s legacy lives on as one of the most important figures in modern medicine.

The Dog’s Head Experiment

The apparatus constructed by Sergei Brukhonenko for his experiment is known as Autojector IV-A (also known as ‘the Dog’s Head Apparatus’) and is now on display in Moscow’s Museum of Science. It consists of several components: an airtight glass box containing the severed dog’s head; two electric pumps connected by hoses filled with saline solution; two glass containers also connected by hoses; a rubber hose connecting the glass box to one container; and a set of electrodes attached to the head itself in order to monitor any brain activity present.

Reactions to the Head Transplant

The Two-Headed Dog Experiment

To this day, there are still those who view Sergei Brukhonenko’s experiment as unnecessary or even dangerous. Despite this criticism, however, his achievements remain celebrated as one of the most important figures in modern medicine who pushed boundaries beyond what people thought possible at the time. His pioneering research into organ transplantation and tissue preservation will always be remembered as an incredible milestone in medical science history that has opened up many possibilities for future generations of scientists and doctors alike.

Legacy of Sergei Brukhonenko and His Experiments

The impact of Sergei Brukhonenko and his experiments is unquestionable. His pioneering work in the 20th century was a major milestone in the field of organ transplantation and tissue research, setting a new standard for what could be achieved. This achievement enabled scientists to develop more sophisticated treatments such as heart transplants, leading to enhanced medical care for those who are ill or have suffered trauma or injury.

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Soviet Experiments in the Revival of Dead Organisms

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms is a 1940 film documenting Soviet research into the resuscitation of clinically dead tissue.

The film shows the use of a heart-lung apparatus called the autojektor to revive a heart, a lung, and a severed dog head. It then shows a severed dog head connected to the machine, and it seems to be alive. After that, a dog is slowly brought to clinical death by draining its blood, and then revived.

According to the film, the dog recovered and continued to live a healthy life.

The film states that several dogs were resuscitated in the same way, including one which was the offspring of parents who were both also resuscitated.

British scientist J. B. S. Haldane appears in the film’s introduction and narrates. The operations are credited to doctors Boris Levinskovsky and Sergei S. Bryukhonenko.

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How Vladimir Demikhov Actually Made A Two-Headed Dog

Though it's hard to believe that soviet scientist vladimir demikhov actually made a two-headed dog, these surreal photos are the proof..

Calling Soviet doctor Vladimir Demikhov a mad scientist may be undercutting his contributions to the world of medicine, but some of his radical experiments certainly fit the title. Case in point — though it may seem like myth, propaganda, or a case of photoshopped history — in the 1950s, Vladimir Demikhov actually created a two-headed dog.

Vladimir Demikhov’s Pioneering Career In Medical Research

Even before creating his two-headed dog, Vladimir Demikhov was a pioneer in transplantology — he even coined the term. After transplanting a number of vital organs between dogs (his favorite experimental subjects) he aimed, amid much controversy, to see if he could take things further: He wanted to graft the head of one dog onto the body of another, fully intact dog.

Bettmann/Getty Images Laboratory assistant Maria Tretekova lends a hand as noted Russian surgeon Dr. Vladimir Demikhov feeds the two-headed dog he created by grafting the head and two front legs of a puppy onto the back of the neck of a full-grown German shepherd.

Starting in 1954, Demikhov and his associates set about performing this surgery 23 times, with varying degrees of success. The 24th time, in 1959, was not the most successful attempt, but it was the most publicized, with an article and accompanying photos appearing in LIFE Magazine . This is thus the two-headed dog that history remembers most.

For this surgery, Demikhov chose two subjects, one a large stray German Shepherd that Demikhov named Brodyaga (Russian for “tramp”) and a smaller dog named Shavka. Brodyaga would be the host dog, and Shavka would supply the secondary head and neck.

With Shavka’s lower body amputated below the forelegs (keeping her own heart and lungs connected until the last minute before the transplant) and a corresponding incision in Brodyaga’s neck where Shavka’s upper body would attach, the rest was mainly vascular reconstruction — other than attaching the vertebrae of the dogs with plastic strings, that is.

Bettmann/Getty Images Vladimir Demikhov’s lab assistants feed the two-headed dog made from Brodyaga and Shavka after the surgery.

Thanks to the team’s wealth of experience, the operation took a mere three and a half hours. After the two-headed dog was resuscitated, both heads could hear, see, smell, and swallow. Although Shavka’s transplanted head could drink, she was not connected to Brodyaga’s stomach. Anything she drank flowed through an external tube and onto the floor.

The Sad Fate Of Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dog

In the end, this two-headed dog lived only for just four days. Had a vein in the neck area not accidentally gotten damaged, it may have lived even longer than Demikhov’s longest-living two-headed dog, which survived 29 days.

Even setting aside the deaths of the canine subjects, the moral implications of Demikhov’s experiment are tricky. This head transplantation, unlike some of his other advancements in the field of transplantology, had no real-life applications. Yet there were certainly very real implications for the dogs.

Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images Vladimir Demikhov with his two-headed dog.

However, as outrageous as this all sounds, a head transplant wasn’t even that radical for the 1950s. As early as 1908, the French surgeon Dr. Alexis Carrel and his partner, American physiologist Dr. Charles Guthrie, attempted the same experiment. Their dual-headed canine initially showed promise, but degraded quickly and was euthanized within a few hours.

Today, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero believes that head transplants will be a reality in the very near future. He is closely involved in the first human attempt, which is slated to occur in China, where there are fewer medical and ethical regulations. Canavero said last year , “They have a tight schedule but the team in China say they are ready to do it.”

Nevertheless, most everyone else in the medical community believes that a transplant of this kind is still science-fiction fodder. But in the not-too-distant future, such a surgery may actually become a reality.

After this look at how Vladimir Demikhov created a two-headed dog, see some astounding photos of two-headed animals found in nature . Then, read up on Laika, the Cold War-era Soviet dog who was sent into space and became the first animal to orbit the Earth .

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The history of the two-headed dog experiment

VLADIMIR DEMIKHOV WAS a pioneering surgeon.

Without his contributions to science and medicine, organ transplant and coronary surgery may not be as developed as it is today – a fact that is not well known because his papers were written in Russian while living on the bleaker side of the Cold War and through World War II.

Some of his peers noticed though.

Christiaan Neethling Barnard, the South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant, said in 1997: “I have always maintained that if there is a father of heart and lung transplantation then Demikhov certainly deserves this title”.

Gazing back at Demikhov’s early experiments that led to many successes in the operation rooms, however, can offer an uncomfortable experience.

He was the first person to perform a successful coronary artery bypass operation on a warm-blooded creature but, yet, became more famous for his two-headed dog.

In fact, many of his  experiments were carried out on dogs. He transplanted lungs and hearts, took organs out to see how long dogs would survive and watched their reactions to the new organs.

By far the most unusual experiments and surgeries included the transplantation of the head or half the body. In 1948, he wrote about the “surgical combination of two animals with the creation of a single circulation”.

In this image, Demikhov shows photographers how he stitched the head and upper body of a two-month-old puppy onto the neck of a four-year-old mongrel Mukhtar.

The work was carried out in the reanimation lab of the A.A.Bogomolets Physiology Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

In 1968, Demikhov transplanted another puppy’s head onto the neck of another dog. The creatures survived for 38 days. Its bodies were then stuffed and in 1988 given to Riga’s Museum of History of Medicine.

For the past two years, it has travelled around Germany for exhibitions. It returned to Latvia earlier this week.

(Warning: Graphic images that some viewers may find too disturbing)

(YouTube Credit: RussianFootageCom )

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At the Cutting Edge of the Impossible

Vladimir P. Demikhov (1916–1998) performed the world's first experimental intrathoracic transplantations and coronary artery bypass operation. His successes heralded the era of modern heart and lung transplantation and the surgical treatment of coronary artery disease. Even though he was one of the greatest experimental surgeons of the 20th century, his international isolation fueled speculation, suppositions, and myths. Ironically, his transplantation of a dog's head drew more publicity than did his pioneering thoracic surgical accomplishments, and he became an easy target for criticism. An account of Demikhov's life and work is presented herein.

What I want and aim at is confoundedly difficult, and yet I do not think I aim too high. I want to do drawings which touch some people … I want to progress so far that people will say of my work, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly—notwithstanding my so-called roughness, perhaps even because of it. It seems pretentious to talk this way now, but this is the reason why I want to push on with all my strength. What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity or an eccentric and disagreeable man—somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low. Very well … then I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less on anger than on love. 1 —Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)

Vladimir P. Demikhov's success with experimental coronary artery surgery and intrathoracic organ transplantations heralded the modern era of heart and lung transplantation and the surgical treatment of coronary artery disease. However, Demikhov is known today mainly as a legendary surgeon who experimentally transplanted a second head onto a dog. His international isolation fueled speculation, suppositions, and myths. Although Demikhov's contributions to cardiothoracic surgery became internationally recognized during recent decades, 2–10 almost no details were known about him. Presented here is the biography of the man behind the legends—one of the greatest experimental surgeons of the 20th century.

Demikhov's Early Years

Vladimir P. Demikhov was born on 18 July 1916, into a family of peasants in the village of Yarizenskaia in Russia's Voronezh region. His father was killed during the Russian civil war. His mother was apparently a very determined woman: although she was herself minimally educated, she strove to provide a higher education for all 3 of her children.

In 1934, Demikhov left home in order to study biology at the University of Moscow. Upon arriving, he faced his first challenge: fulfilling the university's requirement that all newly admitted students present a photograph of themselves wearing a white shirt and a necktie. Demikhov had never had a white shirt or a tie, or the money to buy them. A kind photographer solved this problem for him by superimposing this apparel onto Vladimir's picture ( Fig. 1 ).

Fig. 1 Vladimir P. Demikhov (1916–1998), upon his admission to the University of Moscow in 1934 (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

Education, Enthusiasm, and Early Experiments

In 1937, Demikhov designed the first mechanical cardiac-assist device. Although it was too large to be installed inside the chest of a dog (the primary animal upon which Demikhov experimented), it could take over cardiac function for approximately 5 hours. His experiments were the first ever in which circulation was maintained in an animal whose heart had been excised. 2

Implantation of an artificial heart had appeared to be impossible. The pioneering nature and practical implications of this innovation were not appreciated, and yet Demikhov was not overly troubled. He was young, and full of energy, enthusiasm, and new ideas. Young men of that time dreamed about aviation, and Demikhov was no exception. He studied gliding and even took a flight, the recollection of which made him smile. A rumbling truck dragged his glider across a field as his friends ran behind. The glider took off, and it flew for a couple of minutes at about 2 meters above the field before it hit the ground and flipped over. When the disoriented Demikhov clambered out, his friends, all gasping for air, surrounded him. One of them finally managed to catch his breath and ask, “How was it in the sky?” Thus ended his short-term passion for airplanes. At that moment, he vowed to undertake activities that were more terrestrial.

Upon his graduation from the University of Moscow in 1940, Demikhov began working there as an assistant in the Department of Physiology. He transplanted a heart into the inguinal region of a dog. Not long thereafter, he realized that “because of its anatomical and physiological features, the heart can only function actively when it is transplanted into the thorax. If it is transplanted to the vessels of the neck or into the inguinal region, it cannot take an active part in the movement of the blood, and it is a neutral organ, living on the recipient's blood.” 3,4

World War II, and Demonstration of Character

His research was disrupted by World War II. After completing basic military training, Demikhov was accorded the rank of lieutenant. He served as a pathologist in a field evacuation hospital and saw, firsthand, all the horrors of war. His exemplary sense of honesty—a hallmark of his life—was challenged with potentially fatal consequences during this time. Years after the war, after having heard many tales about her father's honesty, his daughter asked, “Did you ever lie?” “Yes,” he replied, “I lied a lot.” Demikhov told her that the stress in the combat zone was overwhelming, and that many soldiers shot themselves in order to “escape” to the comparative refuge of the hospital. This was considered a war crime, the punishment for which was death. Demikhov was consulted as a forensic expert regarding such shootings. Although in most patients it was obvious to him that an injury was self-inflicted, he tried his best to attenuate the evidence, and thus he considered himself to have lied. His “lies” saved many lives. Demikhov knew all too well what fate would have befallen him had his falsehoods been revealed.

The Postwar Years

When Germany capitulated, Demikhov was in Berlin. The USSR declared war on Japan. Earlier in 1945, Demikhov and his unit had traveled by train halfway around the world, from Berlin to Harbin, China. At the year's end, Demikhov was able to return to Moscow. His siblings were working there: his brother as an accountant, and his sister as a biology teacher ( Fig. 2 ).

Fig. 2 Vladimir Demikhov (right) with his brother Viacheslav (1913–1970) and sister Julia (1919–), 1946 (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

In early 1946, experimenting on dogs, Demikhov performed intrathoracic transplantations of a heart, a lung, and the heart and lungs together—the first successful procedures of this kind that had been performed in any mammal. 7 Demikhov performed these transplantations without the use of cardiopulmonary bypass or hypothermia; instead, he relied heavily on speedy surgery and his self-designed technique of organ preservation during transfer. On 30 June 1946, a dog survived heterotopic heart–lung transplantation for 9.5 hours, marking Demikhov's first genuine success with this procedure. In 1969, Cooper 5 credited Demikhov with achieving transplantation of the heart and both lungs into an orthotopic locus, stating that Demikhov's “ingenious” technique “enabled the blood supply to the brain to be maintained continuously throughout the operation, with the exception of 2 to 3 minutes at the critical stage.”

Demikhov began his 52-year marriage to his wife, Lia, in August 1946. Their only child, daughter Olga, was born on 16 July 1947.

Demikhov's experimental animals lived as long as 30 days after undergoing transplantation of both lungs, due in part to his preservation of the nerves of the diaphragm and normal function of abdominal organs after intrathoracic transplantation.

From 1947 into 1955, Demikhov conducted his experiments in Moscow at the Institute of Surgery ( Fig. 3 ). 10 Alexander V. Vishnevsky directed the Institute. In the 1950s, a review committee of the Soviet Ministry of Health decided that Demikhov's work was unethical, and he was commanded to cease his research projects. However, Vishnevsky was surgeon-in-charge of the Soviet armed forces and was thus independent enough to be able to disobey the Ministry of Health and shelter Demikhov's research activities. Demikhov later worked at the Sechenov Medical Institute in Moscow (1955–1960) ( Fig. 4 ) and with the Sklifosovsky Emergency Institute (1960–1986).

Fig. 3 Vladimir Demikhov (standing, 4th from left), Alexander V. Vishnevsky (seated, 4th from left), and their colleagues at the Institute of Surgery in Moscow, 1953 (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

Fig. 4 Vladimir Demikhov and one of his experimental dogs, in front of his laboratory at the Sechenov Medical Institute in Moscow (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

In the early 1950s, Demikhov insisted that his mother come to live with his family. The 4 of them lived in 2 tiny rooms from 1954 until 1972, when his mother died at age 77. Besides his relatives, Demikhov often kept an experimental dog at home so that he could keep an eye on it all the time. Fortunately, he had a very supportive family ( Fig. 5 ).

Fig. 5 Vladimir Demikhov with his wife Lia and daughter Olga, 1960s (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

The Use of the Heart–Lung Preparation

Demikhov kept his donor heart–lung preparations viable during transfer by means of closed-circuit circulation. Blood from the left ventricle was pumped into the aorta; then, through the coronary vessels that sup-plied the myocardium, it passed into the right atrium, the right ventricle, and the lungs, where the blood was reoxygenated and returned to the left atrium. 3,4,11 Demikhov based his design of this heart–lung preparation on the original work of Ivan P. Pavlov. In 1886, Pavlov and his associate N.J. Chistovich had designed the first preparation in which the heart and the lungs were maintained alive as they functioned on their own power. This preparation was subsequently useful in research into the pharmacologic action of various drugs. 12 In 1912, Knowlton and Starling described a modified heart–lung preparation (Starling's preparation). 13 Demikhov simplified this preparation and used it in the early 1950s, saying that “in the future, when the transplantation of the human heart and lungs is a practical possibility, the transfer of the organ in a functioning state will be facilitated by the use of this preparation.” 4 Subsequently, Robicsek and colleagues 14 reported their modification of the preparation, which would enable clinically applicable preservation of the heart and lungs. In 1987, Hardesty and Griffith 15 reported their successful use of modified, autoperfused heart–lung preparation in clinical transplantation. In the 1950s, however, it had seemed impossible that heart–lung preparation would ever achieve any clinical use.

The First Coronary Bypass Operation

Experimenting on a dog, Demikhov performed the first successful coronary bypass operation, on 29 July 1953. To achieve the coronary anastomosis, Demikhov used his personal adaptation of Payr's technique, which had originally been described in 1900. Four dogs survived longer than 2 years, and anastomotic patency was proved in all. 3,4 Demikhov explored possible clinical application by experimenting on cadavers and baboons.

Because the widespread clinical application of coronary bypass surgery seemed impossible in the early 1960s, Demikhov's experimental work of the previous decade was initially regarded by many as impractical and quite eccentric. 16 Undaunted by such criticism, V.I. Kolesov in Leningrad undertook further experiments. From 25 February 1964 through 9 May 1967, the department of surgery that Kolesov directed was the only place on earth where coronary bypasses were performed. Kolesov acknowledged Demikhov's pioneering contributions in his first publication 17 and in many thereafter.

Head Transplantation and the Firestorm of Controversy

In 1954, Demikhov performed canine head transplantation ( Fig. 6 ). The maximal survival of any animal was 29 days. 3,4,8 Ironically, the news of this pioneering surgery spread around the world far more rapidly than had any reports of Demikhov's earlier experiments. The operation raised many eyebrows and even more ethical questions: newspapers everywhere were imbued with discussions of various perspectives, ethics arguments, and controversies. In 1997, one author 18 recalled that in 1962 he had been “sitting in the surgeon's changing room when a report of Demikhov's head transplant appeared in the Cape Argos newspaper. The news was conveyed to Christiaan Barnard, who was clearly put out. He stormed out with the retort that ‘anything those Russians can do, we can do, too.’ The same afternoon, Barnard transplanted the head of a dog onto a recipient dog, which survived for several days. Animal-rights protectors were incensed, and the medical students built a papier-mâché 2-headed dog for their RAG [raising and giving] parade. Barnard had already walked the tightrope between genius and vulgarity.”

Fig. 6 Experimental dog with two heads (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

The head transplantation by Demikhov was arguably the most controversial experimental operation of the 20th century. It fomented waves of indignation in medical circles, and Demikhov—whose experiments were always an easy target for criticism—was accused of being a charlatan. Why did he perform head transplantation? There will never be a clinical application of this procedure in any modification. This is simply impossible. This is the only operation of Demikhov's that will never find its clinical application. Or … or will it?

Belated Recognition

Due to the Cold War, Demikhov rarely appeared outside the Soviet Union. In 1958, he gained peer recognition after he demonstrated experimental transplantations in Leipzig, Germany ( Fig. 7 ). On 16 September 1960, Demikhov was given membership in the Royal Scientific Society of Uppsala, Sweden. That same year, his monograph 4 was published in Moscow, and it was translated and further published (in New York, 1962 3 ; in Berlin, 1963; and in Madrid, 1967). This was the world's first book that discussed intrathoracic transplantation. A year after the first translation, James Hardy performed the first transplantation of a human lung. Other surgeons became eager to visit Demikhov's research facilities, but only a few succeeded. One of those few was Christiaan Barnard, who visited Moscow as a tourist in 1962 and was able to divert himself from the planned itinerary. In 1997, Barnard wrote to me that Demikhov “was certainly a remarkable man, having done all the research before extracorporeal circulation. I have always maintained that if there is a father of heart and lung transplantation, then Demikhov certainly deserves this title.”

Fig. 7 Vladimir Demikhov performs heart–lung transplantation on 16 December 1958 in Leipzig, Germany (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

In April 1989, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation was “privileged to present the first Pioneer Award to Professor Demikhov of the Soviet Union for his leadership role in the development of intrathoracic transplantation and the use of artificial hearts.” 9 At that year's meeting of the Society, in Munich, Germany, Demikhov personally received the award ( Fig. 8 ) in front of an appreciative audience that included his daughter Olga. This tribute to his achievements, belated though it was, partially made amends for his decades of labor in comparative obscurity.

Fig. 8 Christian Cabrol (left) presents the Pioneer Award of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation to Vladimir Demikhov on 25 April 1989 in Munich, Germany (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

Final Years, and Death

Stroke with memory loss made it impossible for Demikhov to update his 1960 monograph, as he had desired ( Fig. 9 ). In April 1998, Demikhov was hospitalized with recurrent stroke. He was paralyzed and developed pneumonia. His wife Lia died on 11 July, and he never recovered from this loss. Although Demikhov was discharged after some months in the hospital, he remained bedridden. He died in his small apartment outside Moscow on 22 November 1998. The world of medicine as Demikhov left it was almost unrecognizable from the world that he had entered—most of his ideas were now a routine part of clinical practice.

Fig. 9 Vladimir Demikhov with his unpublished monograph revision, January 1998 (photograph courtesy of Olga V. Demikhova).

Demikhov's Legacy

The paradox surrounding Vladimir Demikhov was that he was always exploring the unknown, far ahead of the times. His work produced much anxiety in lay and medical circles. Public and scientific attitudes toward his work changed many times. Immediate judgment was difficult—too new and unconventional were his experiments. Some of his contemporaries considered his work to be on the cutting edge of surgical research, and they were eager to meet him. Others deemed his work fanciful or vulgar and were reluctant to admit any association with him. Regardless of the attitudes toward Demikhov's accomplishments, his work touched some people and made them believe in what seemed impossible. Only upon the passage of time can one appreciate the true impact of his innovations.

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to Dr. Olga V. Demikhova for providing unique photographs from her family archives and for recalling many interesting episodes in her father's life.

Address for reprints : Igor E. Konstantinov, MD, PhD, Department of CardiacSurgery, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia E-mail : [email protected]

This paper draws from and expands upon the author's previous works: Konstantinov IE. Pioneers in Cardiology: Vladimir P. Demikhov, PhD. Circulation 2008;117:f99-102; and Konstantinov IE. A mystery of Vladimir P. Demikhov: the 50th anniversary of the first intrathoracic transplantation. Ann Thorac Surg 1998;65(4):1171–7.

Head Transplants: A History

The first human head transplant is scheduled for 2017. But the possibility of transplants has transfixed scientists for most of the last century.

Move over Igor, the first human head transplant is tentatively scheduled for 2017 . The proposed recipient, a 30 year old computer coder, suffers from muscular atrophy. The donor will be clinically brain dead, but otherwise healthy. There are many questions about whether this plan is even remotely feasible, but, as outlandish as it sounds, head transplants have a surprisingly long history.

In the 1950s, Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov transplanted the head of one dog onto the body of another , resulting in a two-headed dog. This was replicating an experiment conducted by C.C. Guthrie in 1908. In 1965, Dr. Robert White of Cleveland, Ohio, not to be outdone, transplanted the brain of one dog into another dog. But one brain wasn’t switched for the other; White inserted the donor dog’s brain into a space in the other dog’s neck, surgically giving it two brains. The second brain did not function as a brain, but it did survive—as did the host dog—for up to 5 days before it was removed. The purpose of the experiment was to learn about the brain’s functions once it’s removed from its natural physiological mechanisms.

Nevertheless, having exhausted the possibility of a two-headed dog, White moved on to transplant monkey heads using an updated version of Demikhov’s procedure . After transplantation, both monkey heads remained alert, able to process sensory information and react to events. It took a large, round-the clock-team and a lot of money to keep each two-headed monkey alive, and out of ten transplants, the longest any of the recipient monkeys lived was 36 hours. As with the dogs, White was very clear that the experiment was not performed with human head transplants in mind.

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The results of these experiments, however, do not naturally assume the successful possibility of a human head transplant. At least not yet. For one thing, the host body has to survive without a head long enough for the new head to be attached, a feat yet to be accomplished. Medical ethicists have also raised concerns, citing the tricky ethics of organ donation and the high risk for the patients involved.

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All things creepy!

Reanimation of dead dog's head, 1940's experiment.

You've Probably Heard About The Scientist Who Created A Two-Headed Dog

If you have heard the name Vladimir Demikhov, it's probably for the  science fiction-sounding experiments he conducted, in which he transplanted the head of one  dog to another, in effect, creating a two-headed dog. According to Russia Beyond , by the time the Associated Press released the news of the Soviet doctor's experiments to the world in 1959, he had already been experimenting with these transplants for five years ... with mixed results. 

The most famous of these, at least in the West, is Demikhov's twenty-fourth attempt, which Life covered, appropriately enough, as "Russia's Two-Headed Dog." The article followed an operation in which Demikhov's team attached the head and forelegs of one dog to the neck of another. When the operation was completed "[both] heads could see, hear, smell, and swallow."

Unfortunately, the two dogs — Brodyaga and Shavka — only survived for four days, due to a vein in the neck receiving accidental damage. Most of Demikhov's dogs, in fact, barely made it to six days. The longest surviving canines managed to live for twenty-nine days after the operation, thus proving the concept that such transplants were possible. When explaining the failures of the transplants, Demikhov pointed out that it was always the transplant that gave out first: "[Even in our best case] it was the small head, not the host dog, that sickened first. Had we acted in time, we could have saved the host dog."

The real reason why you should've heard of him

The image of Demikhov adding transplanted dog heads does give the impression of an eccentric pursuing a pointless path. However, Vladimir Demikhov was actually blazing a genuine path of scientific inquiry, not science fiction , which he called "transplantology," or the study of organ transplants.

In an article for The Annals of Thoracic Surgery , Dr. Harris Schumacker lauds Demikhov as being the first person to "transplant an auxillary heart into the thorax of a warm-blooded animal, first to replace the heart with a homograft organ, first to carry out a pulmonary transplantation, and first to perform a complete heart and lung replacement." Even in the case of the two-headed dogs, there was an actual point to them, as Demikhov explained in the Life article: His tests revealed that the failure lies with the transplanted part, so a woman who was bothering him for a leg transplant, for instance, could now receive one with minimal risk: "The main problem will be joining the nerves so the woman can control her movements... But I am sure we can lick that problem too." 

While attaching human heads to new bodies still seems out of reach, according to Popular Science , the fact that we can take a beating heart and put it inside another person's body would have struck an early twentieth century scientist as fanciful. Now, it's perfectly possible.