Duncan MacDougall (doctor)

Duncan MacDougall (* 1866, † October 15, 1920 ) was an American physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts who attempted in the early 20th century, to determine the " Weight of the Soul" by weighing dying patients.

1901 MacDougall weighed six dying patients as an attempt to Psycho Stasie. He wanted to prove that the soul was material and measurable - the weight difference between living and dead patients was according to him an average of 21 grams ( 8-35 g). In March 1907 a report on this study in the New York Times and two reports appeared in the same year in the medical journal American Medicine.

MacDougall still poisoned fifteen dogs and presented during their dying may not be losing weight permanently, from which he concluded that dogs possess no soul. Later he tried to recognize the human soul as a "shadow image " on radiographs.

In the 1930s, the teacher and Wissenschaftsenthusiast H. LaVerne Twining repeated the experiments McDougall in Los Angeles with mice. At first, he managed to measure a weight loss at the moment death of the animal also died of cyanide at a mouse. In another experiment, he locked the dying animal but in a hermetically sealed glass container. The weight remained the same. Twining concluded that the body of the mouse at the moment of death suffered a severe fluid loss, which would explain the weight drop. Since the fluid could not escape from the closed container, the overall weight remains the same. This also explained the variations of weight loss in McDougall's experiments. Different people with different heavy fluid balance would also have lost a lot of different liquid. McDougall's experiments are now considered unscientific, but his 21 -gram hypothesis plays in popular culture continues to play a role.

According to MacDougall's approach and its results, the film was nominated 21 Grams 2003.

Publications

  • Duncan MacDougall: Hypothesis Concerning soul substance together with experimental evidence of the existence of tested substance. In: American Medicine, April 1907, Vol II, 240-243.
  • Duncan MacDougall: Hypothesis Concerning soul substance. In: American Medicine, July 1907, Vol II, 395-397.

Swell

  • Len Fisher: Weighing the Soul: Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre. Arcade Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1559707321 (page 14/15 to LaVerne Twining ).
Weighing of souls
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