For those who love dogs a lot, I recommend not reading this.

Back in the Soviet Union era, Soviet scientists believed that isolating an organ from an animal corpse could allow it to live for a long period of time. To prove this, in 1939, Soviet physician and biomedical scientist, Sergei Brukhonenko, did research into the resuscitation of clinically dead organisms. This experiment was documented and made into a motion picture, directed by David Yashin in 1940. In the film ,“Experiment in the Revival of Organisms”, J.B.S. Haldane (British-Indian scientist) who narrated and personally saw the procedures done at an all Russian physiological congress explained how he saw it happen.

The short film is close to 20 minutes long. It begins with a canine heart being displayed and removed from the body; four tubes are subsequently attached to the organ. The heart beats as if it were alive, being powered by a device that supplies it with blood. The next scene in the film features a lung on a tray that is powered by bellows (an airbag that emits air when squeezed with two handles) that give the blood oxygen. After the lung scene, the workings of a heart-lung device called the autojektor, which is made up of two linear diaphragm pumps and what looks to be an oxygen bubble chamber. Then, the autojektor supplies arterial blood to the dog’s head, which is shown to react to outside stimuli, but the veins and arteries that are supposed to be connected to the head are not shown in the film.

We get to see the dog reacting to physical touch, light, and noises separated from its body, just the head reacting. Imagine having a glimpse of scientists operating on a dog’s head with no body; the heart and lung being pumped by the autojektor. I would probably throw up or have a trauma for life because I wouldn’t want this for my dog. Also, whether you believe this or not is up to you since there’s a lot of other people saying it’s fake or it’s some kind of sci-fi film. The film was supposed to represent a medical miracle, right? Instead, it became a horror show for those who watched it behind a screen. A true nightmare for experiments.