Tag Archives: scienziato

Unearthing Gorini, The Petrifier

This post originally appeared on The Order of the Good Death

Many years ago, as I had just begun to explore the history of medicine and anatomical preparations, I became utterly fascinated with the so-called “petrifiers”: 19th and early 20th century anatomists who carried out obscure chemical procedures in order to give their specimens an almost stone-like, everlasting solidity.
Their purpose was to solve two problems at once: the constant shortage of corpses to dissect, and the issue of hygiene problems (yes, back in the time dissection was a messy deal).
Each petrifier perfected his own secret formula to achieve virtually incorruptible anatomical preparations: the art of petrifaction became an exquisitely Italian specialty, a branch of anatomy that flourished due to a series of cultural, scientific and political factors.

When I first encountered the figure of Paolo Gorini (1813-1881), I made the mistake of assuming his work was very similar to that of his fellow petrifiers.
But as soon as I stepped foot inside the wonderful Gorini Collection in Lodi, near Milan, I was surprised at how few scientifically-oriented preparations it contained: most specimens were actually whole, undissected human heads, feet, hands, infants, etc. It struck me that these were not meant as medical studies: they were attempts at preserving the body forever. Was Gorini looking for a way to have the deceased transformed into a genuine statue? Why?
I needed to know more.

A biographical research is a mighty strange experience: digging into the past in search of someone’s secret is always an enterprise doomed to failure. No matter how much you read about a person’s life, their deepest desires and dreams remain forever inaccessible.
And yet, the more I examined books, papers, documents about Paolo Gorini, the more I felt I could somehow relate to this man’s quest.
Yes, he was an eccentric genius. Yes, he lived alone in his ghoulish laboratory, surrounded by “the bodies of men and beasts, human limbs and organs, heads with their hair preserved […], items made from animal substances for use as chess or draughts pieces; petrified livers and brain tissue, hardened skin and hides, nerve tissue from oxen, etc.”. And yes, he somehow enjoyed incarnating the mad scientist character, especially among his bohemian friends – writers and intellectuals who venerated him. But there was more.

It was necessary to strip away the legend from the man. So, as one of Gorini’s greatest passions was geology, I approached him as if he was a planet: progressing deeper and deeper, through the different layers of crust that make up his stratified enigma.
The outer layer was the one produced by mythmaking folklore, nourished by whispered tales, by fleeting glimpses of horrific visions and by popular rumors. “The Magician”, they called him. The man who could turn bodies into stone, who could create mountains from molten lava (as he actually did in his “experimental geology” public demonstrations).
The layer immediately beneath that unveiled the image of an “anomalous” scientist who was, however, well rooted in the Zeitgeist of his times, its spirit and its disputes, with all the vices and virtues derived therefrom.
The most intimate layer – the man himself – will perhaps always be a matter of speculation. And yet certain anecdotes are so colorful that they allowed me to get a glimpse of his fears and hopes.

Still, I didn’t know why I felt so strangely close to Gorini.

His preparations sure look grotesque and macabre from our point of view. He had access to unclaimed bodies at the morgue, and could experiment on an inconceivable number of corpses (“For most of my life I have substituted – without much discomfort – the company of the dead for the company of the living…”), and many of the faces that we can see in the Museum are those of peasants and poor people. This is the reason why so many visitors might find the Collection in Lodi quite unsettling, as opposed to a more “classic” anatomical display.
And yet, here is what looks like a macroscopic incongruity: near the end of his life, Gorini patented the first really efficient crematory. His model was so good it was implemented all over the world, from London to India. One could wonder why this man, who had devoted his entire life to making corpses eternal, suddenly sought to destroy them through fire.
Evidently, Gorini wasn’t fighting death; his crusade was against putrefaction.

When Paolo was only 12 years old, he saw his own father die in a horrific carriage accident. He later wrote: “That day was the black point of my life that marked the separation between light and darkness, the end of all joy, the beginning of an unending procession of disasters. From that day onwards I felt myself to be a stranger in this world…”
The thought of his beloved father’s body, rotting inside the grave, probably haunted him ever since. “To realize what happens to the corpse once it has been closed inside its underground prison is a truly horrific thing. If we were somehow able to look down and see inside it, any other way of treating the dead would be judged as less cruel, and the practice of burial would be irreversibly condemned”.

That’s when it hit me.


This was exactly what made his work so relevant: all Gorini was really trying to do was elaborate a new way of dealing with the “scandal” of dead bodies.
He was tirelessly seeking a more suitable relationship with the remains of missing loved ones. For a time, he truly believed petrifaction could be the answer. Who would ever resort to a portrait – he thought – when a loved one could be directly immortalized for all eternity?
Gorini even suggested that his petrified heads be used to adorn the gravestones of Lodi’s cemetery – an unfortunate but candid proposal, made with the most genuine conviction and a personal sense of pietas. (Needless to say this idea was not received with much enthusiasm).

Gorini was surely eccentric and weird but, far from being a madman, he was also cherished by his fellow citizens in Lodi, on the account of his incredible kindness and generosity. He was a well-loved teacher and a passionate patriot, always worried that his inventions might be useful to the community.
Therefore, as soon as he realized that petrifaction might well have its advantages in the scientific field, but it was neither a practical nor a welcome way of dealing with the deceased, he turned to cremation.

Redefining the way we as a society interact with the departed, bringing attention to the way we treat bodies, focusing on new technologies in the death field – all these modern concerns were already at the core of his research.
He was a man of his time, but also far ahead of it. Gorini the scientist and engineer, devoted to the destiny of the dead, would paradoxically encounter more fertile conditions today than in the 20th century. It’s not hard to imagine him enthusiastically experimenting with alkaline hydrolysis or other futuristic techniques of treating human remains. And even if some of his solutions, such as his petrifaction procedures, are now inevitably dated and detached from contemporary attitudes, they do seem to have been the beginning of a still pertinent urge and of a research that continues today.

The Petrifier is the fifth volume of the Bizzarro Bazar Collection. Text (both in Italian and English) by Ivan Cenzi, photographs by Carlo Vannini.

 

The Petrifier: The Paolo Gorini Anatomical Collection

 

The fifth volume in the Bizzarro Bazar Collection will come out on February 16th: The Petrifier is dedicated to the Paolo Gorini Anatomical Collection in Lodi.

Published by Logos and featuring Carlo Vannini‘s wonderful photographs, the book explores the life and work of Paolo Gorini, one of the most famous “petrifiers” of human remains, and places this astounding collection in its cultural, social and political context.

I will soon write something more exhaustive on the reason why I believe Gorini is still so relevant today, and so peculiar when compared to his fellow petrifiers. For now, here’s the description from the book sheet:

Whole bodies, heads, babies, young ladies, peasants, their skin turned into stone, immune to putrescence: they are the “Gorini’s dead”, locked in a lapidary eternity that saves them from the ravenous destruction of the Conquering Worm.
They can be admired in a small museum in Lodi, where, under the XVI century vault with grotesque frescoes, a unique collection is preserved: the marvellous legacy of Paolo Gorini (1813-1881). Eccentric figure, characterised by a clashing duality, Gorini devoted himself to mathematics, volcanology, experimental geology, corpse preservation (he embalmed the prestigious bodies of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Rovani); however, he was also involved in the design of one of the first Italian crematory ovens.
Introverted recluse in his laboratory obtained from an old deconsecrated church, but at the same time women’s lover and man of science able to establish close relationships with the literary men of his era, Gorini is depicted in the collective imagination as a figure poised between the necromant and the romantic cliché of the “crazy scientist”, both loved and feared. Because of his mysterious procedures and top-secret formulas that could “petrify” the corpses, Paolo Gorini’s life has been surrounded by an air of legend.
Thanks to the contributions of the museum curator Alberto Carli and the anthropologist Dario Piombino-Mascali, this book retraces the curious historic period during which the petrifaction process obtained a certain success, as well as the value and interest conferred to the collection in Lodi nowadays.
These preparations, in fact, are not silent witnesses: they speak about the history of the long-dated human obsession for the preserving of dead bodies, documenting a moment in which the Westerners relationship with death was beginning to change. And, ultimately, they solve Paolo Gorini’s enigma: a “wizard”, man and scientist, who, traumatised at a young age by his father’s death, spent his whole life probing the secrets of Nature and attempting to defeat the decay.

The Petrifier is available for pre-order at this link.

Stoned spiders

1948, University of Tubingen, Germany.
Zoologist H. M. Peters was frustrated. He was conducting a photographic research on the way orb-weaver spiders build their web, but he had encountered a problem: the arachnids he was studying insisted on performing this task of astounding engineering only during the night hours, very early in the morning. This schedule, besides forcing him to get up at an ungodly hour, made photographic documentation quite hard, as the spiders preferred to move in total darkness.
One day Peters decided to call on a collegue, young pharmacologist Dr. Peter N. Witt, for assistance. Would it be possible to somehow drug the spiders, so they would change this routine and start weaving their webs when the sun was already up?

Witt had never had any experience with spiders, but he soon realized that administering tranquilizers or stimulants to the arachnids was easier than he thought: the little critters, constantly thirsty for water, quickly learned to drink from his syringe.
The results of this experiment, alas, turned out to be pretty worthless to zoologist Peters. The spiders kept on building their webs during the night, but that was not the worst part of it. After swallowing the medicine, they weren’t even able to weave a decent web: as if they were drunk, the arachnids produced a twisted mesh, unworthy of being photographed.
After this experience, a disheartened Peters abandoned his project.
In Dr. Witt’s mind, instead, something had clicked.

Common spiders (Araneidae) are all but “common” when it comes to weaving. They build a new web every morning, and if byt he end of the day no insect is trapped, they simply eat it. This way, they are able to recycle silk proteins for weeks: during the first 16 days without food, the webs look perfect. Whe nthe spider gets really hungry, it begins sparing the energy by building a wider-meshes web, suitable to catch only larger insects (the spider is in need of a substantial meal).
After all, for a spider the web isn’t just a way to gather food, but an essential instrument to relate with the surrounding world. Most of these arachnids are almost totally blind, and they use the vibrations of the strands like a radar: from the perceived movements they can understand what kind of insect just snagged itself on the web, and if it is safe for them to approach it; they can notice if even a single thread has broken, and they confidently head in the right direction to repair it; they furthermore use the web as a means of communication in mating rituals, where the male spider remains on the outer edges and rythmically pinches the strings to inform the female of its presence, in order to seduce her without being mistaken for a juicy snack.

peter-witt

During his experimentation with chemicals, Dr. Witt noticed that there seemed to be a significative correspondence between the administered substance and the aberrations that the spiderweb showed. He therefore began feeding the spiders different psychoactive drugs, and registering the variations in their weaving patterns.
Dr. Witt’s study, published in 1951 and revised in 1971, was limited to statistical observation, without attempting to provide further interpretations. Yet the results could lead to a fascinating if not very orthodox reading: it looked like the spiders were affected in much the same way humans react to drugs.

webs

Under the influence of weed, they started regularly building their web, but were soon losing interest once they got to the outer rings; while on peyote or magic mushrooms, the arachnids movements became slower and heavier; after being microdosed with LSD, the web’s design became geometrically perfect (not unlike the kaleidoscopic visions reported by human users), while more massive doses completely inhibited the spiders’ abilities; lastly, caffeine produced out of control, schizoid results.

Spiderweb after high doses of LSD-25.

Clearly this “humanized” interpretation is not scientific to say the least. In fact, what really interested Witt was the possibility of using spiders to ascertain the presence of drugs in human blood or urine, as they had proved sensitive to minimal concentrations, which could not be instrumentally detected at the time. His research continued for decades, and Witt went from being a pharmacologist to being an entomology authority. He was able to recognize his little spliders one by one just by looking at their webs, and his fascination for these invertebrates never faded.
He kept on testing their skills in several other experiments, by altering their nervous system through laser stimulation, administering huge quantities of barbiturics, and even sending them in orbit. Even in the absence of gravity, in what Witt called “a masterpiece in adaptation”, after just three days in space the spiders were able to build a nearly perfect web.

Near the end of the Seventies, Witt discontinued his research. In 1984 J. A. Nathanson re-examined Witt’s data, but only in relation to the effects of caffeine.
In 1995 Witt saw his study come back to life when NASA successfully repeated it, with the help of statistic analysis software: the research showed that spiders could be used to test the toxicity of various chemicals instead of mice, a procedure that could save time and money.

Anyway, there is not much to worry regarding the fate of these invertebrates.
Spiders are among the very few animals who survived the biggest mass extinction that ever took place, and they are able to resist to atmospheric conditions which would be intolerable to the majority of insects. Real rulers of the world since millions of years, they will still be here a long time — even after our species has run its course.

Robert E. Cornish

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Robert E. Cornish, classe 1903, era un bambino prodigio. Si laureò con lode all’Università della California a soli 18 anni, e conseguì il dottorato a 22. Eppure talvolta una mente brillante può smarrirsi all’inseguimento di sfide perse in partenza e di scommesse impossibili: di sicuro, pur con tutte le sue doti, il Dr. Cornish non eccelleva per lungimiranza.

Così, appena accettato un posto all’Istituto di Biologia Sperimentale presso l’Università, immediatamente si impelagò in una serie di ricerche che non avevano un futuro, come ad esempio un progetto per un paio di lenti che permettessero di leggere il giornale sott’acqua. (Se pensate – a ragione – che questa sia un’idea bislacca, date un’occhiata ai brevetti di cui abbiamo parlato in quest’articolo).

Nel 1932, a ventisette anni, Cornish cominciò ad essere ossessionato dall’idea di poter rianimare i cadaveri. Mise a punto una tavola basculante, una sorta di letto rotante fissato su un fulcro, su cui avrebbe dovuto essere legato il morto da riportare in vita. Ovviamente il decesso doveva essere accaduto da poco, e senza gravi danni agli organi interni: secondo le sue stesse parole, “facendolo muovere in su e in giù, mi aspetto una circolazione artificiale del sangue”.

revive_dead

Erano gli anni ’30, e non era più facile come un tempo procurarsi dei corpi freschi su cui sperimentare come facevano i “rianimatori di cadaveri” di una volta (vedi questo articolo), ma Cornish riuscì comunque a testare la sua tavola su vittime di attacchi cardiaci, morti per annegamento o folgorati. Purtroppo, nessuno di essi tornò in vita dopo essere stato sbatacchiato in alto e in basso. In un rapporto confidenziale per l’Università della California, Cornish segnalava che dopo un’ora passata a basculare il cadavere di un uomo “il suo volto sembrava essersi improvvisamente riscaldato, gli occhi erano tornati a brillare, e si potevano osservare delle deboli pulsazioni in prossimità della trachea”. Un po’ pochino per affermare che la tecnica fosse efficace.

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Così Cornish decise che, prima di ritentare sugli uomini, sarebbe stato più saggio mettere a punto il suo metodo sugli animali. Nel 1934 iniziò gli esperimenti che gli avrebbero dato la fama e che, allo stesso tempo, avrebbero decretato la fine della sua carriera.

Le vittime sacrificali di queste nuove ricerche erano cinque fox terrier, chiamati (neanche troppo ironicamente) Lazarus I, II, III, IV e V. Per ucciderli, Cornish usò una miscela di azoto ed etere, asfissiandoli fino alla completa cessazione del respiro e del battito cardiaco. Dichiarati clinicamente morti, i cani venivano poi sottoposti alle tecniche sperimentali di rianimazione, che prevedevano – oltre al basculamento –  delle iniezioni di adrenalina ed eparina (un anticoagulante), mentre Cornish aspirava dell’ossigeno da una cannuccia e lo soffiava nella bocca aperta del cane morto.

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Lazarus I, II e III furono un buco nell’acqua, ostinandosi a rimanere deceduti. Ma ecco la sorpresa: nel 1934 e 1935, con Lazarus IV e V, qualcosa effettivamente successe. I cani ripresero conoscenza, e ritornarono a respirare e a vivere. Certo, i danni cerebrali che avevano subito erano irreparabili: i cani erano completamente ciechi e non riuscivano a stare in piedi da soli. Ma la stampa amplificò questo piccolo successo a dismisura, e in breve tempo Cornish acquistò la fama di novello Frankenstein, anche grazie al suo strabismo divergente che gli donava uno sguardo da vero e proprio scienziato pazzo.

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Nel 1935 anche Hollywood cercò di far cassa sulla popolare vicenda, con la realizzazione del (pessimo) film Life Returns, ispirato alle ricerche di Cornish: quest’ultimo compare in una scena del film, nei panni di se stesso, mentre esegue dal vero uno dei suoi esperimenti di “rivitalizzazione” di un cane.

Life_Returns_FilmPoster
Forse Cornish pensava che l’esposizione mediatica gli avrebbe consentito maggiori fondi e più libertà di ricerca, ma accadde l’esatto opposto. Questi esperimenti erano un po’ troppo estremi, perfino per la sensibilità del tempo, e l’Università della California di fronte alle proteste degli animalisti decise di bandire Cornish dal campus, e tagliò tutti i ponti con lui.

Ritiratosi nella sua casa di Berkeley, Cornish mantenne un basso profilo per tredici anni. Ogni tanto doveva calmare l’ostilità dei vicini, per via delle fughe di pecore e cani dal suo laboratorio, o per varie esalazioni di componenti chimici che appestavano l’aria e scrostavano la vernice dagli edifici della zona. Ma nel 1947, eccolo ritornare sulla ribalta, affermando di aver finalmente perfezionato la tecnica, e dichiarandosi pronto a resuscitare un condannato a morte. L’audace impresa sarebbe stata tentata, questa volta, senza l’aiuto di tavole basculanti (concetto che aveva ormai completamente abbandonato), ma grazie ad una macchina cuore-polmoni assemblata in maniera artigianale e quantomeno fantasiosa: era composta dall’aspiratore di un aspirapolvere, dal tubo di un radiatore, da una ruota d’acciaio, da alcuni cilindri e da un tubo di vetro contenente 60.000 occhielli per lacci da scarpa.

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Un detenuto del braccio della morte di San Quintino, Thomas McMonigle, condannato per l’omicidio di una ragazzina, si propose volontariamente come cavia – con l’intesa che, se anche l’esperimento fosse riuscito ed egli fosse sopravvissuto alla camera a gas grazie all’apparecchio di Cornish, sarebbe comunque rimasto in carcere.

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Le autorità della California negarono però nettamente la richiesta di Cornish di poter sperimentare con il corpo del condannato a morte. Con quest’ultima sconfitta, la sua ricerca non aveva più alcuna possibilità di continuare. Ritiratosi nuovamente a vita privata, sbarcò il lunario vendendo un dentifricio di sua invenzione, il “Dentifricio del Dottor Cornish”, fino alla sua morte improvvisa nel 1963.

Controllo della mente

Uno degli scienziati più controversi, divenuto col passare degli anni un “mostro” assoluto ma sempre più nebuloso nella mitologia del XX secolo, è José Delgado.

Spagnolo di origine, classe 1915, si trasferì in America accettando la cattedra di fisiologia alla prestigiosa università di Yale nel 1946. Era particolarmente interessato agli studi di neurofisiologia, allora agli albori, e in dettaglio la sua ricerca consisteva nell’esplorare le reazioni del cervello stimolato da impulsi elettrici. Mise a punto lo stimoceiver, un microchip radiocomandato che poteva stimolare le onde cerebrali monitorandole al tempo stesso mediante elettroencefalogramma. Questo permetteva libertà di movimento al soggetto dell’esperimento, e il controllo a distanza da parte degli sperimentatori.

Impiantò gli stimoceiver nei cervelli di gatti, scimpanzè, scimmie, gibboni, tori e anche esseri umani. Stimolando la corteccia motoria, era in grado di controllare i movimenti degli animali indipendentemente dalla volontà di questi ultimi. Poteva far loro alzare una gamba, muovere la testa, senza che i soggetti potessero opporvisi. Nell’esperimento a suo dire più importante, impiantò nel cervello di un gibbone dominante e aggressivo un microchip collegato ad una leva: ogni volta che la leva veniva azionata, lo stimolo elettrico induceva nel gibbone un’immediata quiete. Pose la leva all’interno della gabbia, e alle femmine di scimmia occorse poco tempo prima di scoprire che tirare la leva inibiva gli attacchi del “bullo” in questione. Così le femmine impararono a tirare la leva ogniqualvolta il comportamento del gibbone aggressivo diveniva minaccioso.

In quella che fu la sua più spettacolare dimostrazione, Delgado si improvvisò torero. Sceso pubblicamente nell’arena di un allevamento di tori a Cordoba, José sfidò un toro a cui era stato impiantato lo stimoceiver. Quando il toro lo caricò, all’ultimo istante, come un abile prestigiatore della mente, Delgado premette il pulsante del suo radiocomando, e il toro interruppe la corsa, allontanandosi confuso. Un altro suo esperimento riguardava i “fusi neuromuscolari” (sequenze di onde cerebrali con una specifica frequenza): ogni volta che il cervello della scimmia Paddy ne produceva uno, il chip stimolava la materia grigia della scimmia con una “sensazione di avversione”. Nel giro di poche ore, i fusi erano notevolmente diminuiti.

La ricerca sugli umani non andò altrettanto bene. Un soggetto chiudeva il pugno in modo involontario, confessando al dottore che “la sua elettricità è più forte della mia volontà”. Un altro, la cui testa si girava a destra e a sinistra in modo incontrollato, non riusciva invece ad abbandonare l’idea del libero arbitrio, e affermava “Lo sto facendo volontariamente. Sto solo cercando le mie pantofole”. Ma in generale Delgado notò che le risposte erano talmente soggettive che non potevano essere ritenute rilevanti. Così, nonostante le pressioni (molti pazienti con problemi mentali chiedevano insistentemente di essere “curati” con il microchip), Delgado finì per sperimentare la sua invenzione su una percentuale bassissima di volontari.

Questo non gli impedì di preconizzare una società futura “psicocivilizzata”, in cui ogni istinto sovversivo o criminale potesse essere inibito con la semplice pressione di un bottone. Stupri? Istinti aggressivi e violenti? Sarebbero tutti spariti grazie al microchip. Le tendenze reazionarie della sua visione del mondo non tardarono a catalizzare su di lui l’indignazione e la condanna pubblica. In un mondo in cui ogni mente è controllata, nessuna ribellione è possibile.

Così, nonostante il suo stimoceiver facesse la fortuna degli scrittori di fantascienza, Delgado si ritirò nuovamente in Spagna e gradualmente scomparve dalla ribalta internazionale, verso la metà degli anni ’70. Il suo nome venne citato sempre meno frequentemente nelle ricerche, e alcuni pensarono addirittura che fosse morto. Ma José Delgado è vivo e vegeto, e alla veneranda età di 95 anni, anche se non lavora più, è ancora elettrizzato dalle nuove scoperte nel campo della stimolazione cerebrale.

Delgado divenne con il tempo un nome associato alla scienza “malvagia”, quella deriva nazista e senza scrupoli che, figlia degli esperimenti di Mengele, aspira ad ottenere il controllo sulle menti e le vite dei cittadini. In realtà i microchip sono recentemente tornati alla ribalta e, come spesso accade nella tecnologia più controversa, gli esperimenti di Delgado hanno spianato la via ad un utilizzo della tecnologia degli impianti cerebrali per curare patologie come distonia, epilessia e Parkinson. Ultimamente, poi, le terapie cerebrali hanno sviluppato tecnologie sempre meno invasive che implicano l’utilizzo di caschi stimolanti le varie aree cerebrali, sperimentati anzitempo da Delgado in prima persona e da sua figlia Linda.

Oggi i vari saggi e le relazioni sui nuovi esperimenti citano raramente Delgado, che è divenuto una sorta di paria della scienza a causa delle sue posizioni troppo “estremiste” e “destrorse” negli anni ’70. Il placido vecchietto che oggi è José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado guarda distaccato alle accuse dei cospirazionisti di voler controllare la mente delle persone, scuote la testa, e dice semplicemente: “È pura fantascienza”.

Ecco un articolo dettagliato sulle ricerche di José Delgado.