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Frankenstein. Science and Reanimation Special thanks to Khalif Boyd: Multimedia Design Engineer Hersh Choksi: CEO Junice Hwang: Still Frame Design Engineer. Science. Luigi Galvani Giovanni Aldini Count Alessandro Volta Benjamin Franklin Johann Wilhelm Ritter Andrew Ure
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Frankenstein Science and Reanimation Special thanks to Khalif Boyd: Multimedia Design Engineer Hersh Choksi: CEO Junice Hwang: Still Frame Design Engineer
Science • Luigi Galvani • Giovanni Aldini • Count Alessandro Volta • Benjamin Franklin • Johann Wilhelm Ritter • Andrew Ure • Professor James Jeffray • What do all of these men have in common?
Dr. Andrew Ure Dr. James Jeffray • Scottish medical professor Andrew Ure convinced his colleague, James Jeffray, to participate in an experiment.
Andrew Ure and James Jeffray • Ure, knowing that a famous murderer, Matthew Clydesdale, was to be hanged, began to ask to have the body for an experiment. • Ure and Jeffray conducted a famous experiment on Clydesdale on November 4, 1818.
Andrew Ure and James Jeffray • Ure created a giant galvanic battery that was attached to several nerves, including the phrenic nerve just off the top of the spinal column. ←
Andrew Ure and James Jeffray • They passed a current through a recently dead murderer, Matthew Clydesdale, using a battery. • Electricity was sent through different nerves, making the corpse kick violently at one point and at another grimace and smile. • When they sent the electricity through the phrenic nerve, the man’s diaphragm began pumping, making it seem he was breathing again.
Andrew Ure and James Jeffray • Witnesses thought Clydesdale had been brought back to life — in other words, reanimated. • With retelling, the accounts got more and more bizarre and gruesome. People swore that Clydesdale had walked and talked. • One account had it that Clydesdale actually tried to escape and was only stopped when Jeffray cut off his head with a special sword blessed by some ministers!
Andrew Ure and James Jeffray • Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley) read about the experiment and it gave her the idea of a doctor who had gone too far to try to bring life to the dead.
Ure’s Notes to the Royal Society • Every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements resembling a violent shuddering from cold. ... On moving the second rod from hip to heel, the knee being previously bent, the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain tried to prevent its extension. The body was also made to perform the movements of breathing by stimulating the phrenic nerve and the diaphragm. When the supraorbital nerve was excited 'every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer's face, surpassing far the wildest representations of Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.'
Special Thanks • Curious Tales:Tales from a Hidden History by George Rosie, Thomas Dunne Books, 2006, pp. 136–140. • Illustration of Dr. James Jeffray, courtesy of the University of Glasgowhttp://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/images/UGSP00470_m.jpg • Illustration of Dr. Andrew Ure, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institutionhttp://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/hst/scientific-identity/fullsize/SIL14-U001-02a.jpg • Illustration of the phrenic nerve, courtesy of Bartleby and NeuroTalkhttp://www.bartleby.com/107/Images/large/image808.gif