MacDougall, who thought that the soul must have mass a weighable weight of the soul He believed he could. To prove this, he measured how much weight the patients lost by weighing dying patients on a precision scale before, at the time of death, and immediately after death.
His result was 21 grams! in popular culture This experiment, which occupied an important place, was not accepted in the scientific world due to many inconsistencies.
MacDougall selected six dying patients from a nursing home for his extraordinary experiment.
Four of these patients had tuberculosis, one had diabetes and the other had unspecified disease. He weighed the first patient, who didn’t have much time, on his precision scale. sweat, urine, oxygen He added such losses to his calculation and went on hold.
After about four hours of waiting for heart rate readings, the patient breathed his last.
When measuring the patient’s body, the weight loss He saw that it was 21 grams. After this patient, he measured other patients in the same way, the loss was again 21 grams. He noted a loss of 21.3 grams at the time of death in only one patient, but ignored this result because he thought he might not have adjusted the scales well enough.
He tried the same method this time with 15 dogs.
He found that dogs, unlike humans, did not lose significant weight. If the reason for this dogs can’t have souls bound to his mind. This interesting experiment was published in the journal American Medicine in April 1907.
Unsurprisingly, the experiment attracted media attention but was not taken seriously in the scientific community.
According to the respected medical journal The Lancet; doctor and his assistants, they took the findings in the direction they wanted. MacDougall went silent 4 years after this article was published.
In 1911 he took the stage this time with a much crazier idea: he was going to photograph the moment when the soul leaves the body!
Though he made some efforts thinking he could achieve this, of course he couldn’t. Nine years after this claim, he died of liver cancer at the age of 42. While waiting for his death, he also carefully examined his own body, and “The most interesting death I’ve ever seen” while he spoke.
This unscientific experiment nevertheless gained an important place in popular culture.
Although he does not relate this event, due to the popularity of the claim that the soul has weight, one movie was called “21 Grams”. There are still many people today who think that the soul is really 21 grams.
Sources: 1, 2, 3
Source: Web Tekno
I’m Maurice Knox, a professional news writer with a focus on science. I work for Div Bracket. My articles cover everything from the latest scientific breakthroughs to advances in technology and medicine. I have a passion for understanding the world around us and helping people stay informed about important developments in science and beyond.