In the 1920s, a Soviet Doctor Removed a Dog’s Head and Kept It Alive Without Its Body

Until now, it’s clear that humans are totally obsessed with performing weird experiments especially, on dogs. Another one of the bizarre animal testings ever undertaken is the one that was carried out on a bodiless dog head.

Sergei Brukhonenko, a Soviet physician in 1928, developed an outlandish heart-lung machine called an autojector, which was successful in keeping the bodiless head of a dog alive. The world saw the result of the machine that was showcased at an international scientific conference.

Brukhonenko’s decapitation experiment was remarked upon by George Bernard Shaw, who stated, “I am even tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature.”

Here’s a short film showing the dog’s head attached to Brukhonenko’s autojektor:

Some commentators have questioned the film’s authenticity, given that none of the more dubious experiments are shown in any full-frame shots. According to some scientists who claim to have seen the experiments in the film, the severed dog head only survived for a few minutes when attached to the artificial heart, as opposed to the hours claimed in the film.

Brukhonenko did not stop there. He continued to perform a series of more such experiments. He developed a new version of the autojektor for use on human patients in the same year; it can be seen today on display at the Museum of Cardiovascular Surgery at the Bakulev Scientific Center of Cardiovascular Surgery in Russia. Brukhonenko was posthumously awarded the prestigious Lenin Prize.