The Brain in the Aquarium

by Cal Meacham

It’s one of the basic science fiction images: the disembodied living brain, floating in a jar or a glass. There it is in a Gahan Wilson cartoon, saying to the seated person looking at it: “The… doctors… say… they’ve… never… seen… a… case… like… it.” It’s listed in the “clichés” entry of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It’s in scads of science fiction movies and TV shows, from Donovan’s Brain to RoboCop 2 to Star Trek. It’s in artistic recreations at science fiction convention art shows, and it’s reproduced in gelatin at Halloween parties. So where does it come from?

We can start with a often-posted question of the Straight Dope Message Board: Do heads that have been removed by the headsman’s axe or the blade of the guillotine retain their consciousness? The question produced serious contemplation among some early scientists, who suggested that providing the head with oxygenated blood might restore consciousness. In 1857 Dr. Charles Eduoard Brown-Sequard tried just that, and believed that he saw a positive response.

Many others repeated the experiment over the years, but none with greater sophistication than Sergei S. Brukhonenko and S. Techetchun of the Chemical-Pharmaceutical Institute in Moscow. They used anticoagulants in the blood and a new device, invented by Brukhonenko, for circulating the blood: the “autojector.” In 1925 they claimed success, presenting papers at the Congress of Soviet Physiologists in Moscow. They reported the results in the Journal de Physiologie et de Pathologie Generale in 1929 (Vol. 27 [1] pp. 31-45 and 64-79) as “Experiences avec la Tete Isolee du Chien” (experiments with the head of a dog). It was also reported in Umshau 33 p. 50 (19 Jan. 1929). Years later, the experiment was reproduced on film. Related films can be seen here  and here.  )

Judging from the responses to those videos, people are very skeptical. Today Brukhonenko is viewed as a pioneer in the development of the heart-lung machine, with several articles devoted to him in that role; they generally soft-pedal his work on dogs’ heads, though. (See, for example, “Sergei S. Brukhonenko: The Development of the First Heart-Lung Machine for Total Body Perfusion” by I.E. Konstantinov and W. Alexi-Meskishvili, The Annals of Thoracic Surgery 69 [3]962-6 [2000].)

At the time, however, the work on disembodied heads was all the rage, appearing in several popular science magazines and much discussed throughout Europe. Someone asked George Bernard Shaw what he thought of it, and his reply was printed in both the German newspaper Berliner Tageblatt and in the New York Times:

The experiment should be tried on a scientist whose life is endangered by an incurable organic disease…What is easier than to save such genius from the deathbed by cutting off the head, thereby freeing the brain from disease, and keeping up artificial circulation in the arteries and veins so that the great man may continue to lecture and advise us without being impeded by body infirmities.