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April
25, 2008
Today's
Monstrous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
What
could be more horrific than creating a two-headed dog? (See the previous
morbid fact.) What about keeping the severed head of a dog alive apart
from its body! Ever since the carnage of the French Revolution, when
the guillotine sent thousands of severed heads tumbling into baskets,
scientists had wondered whether it would be possible to keep a head
alive apart from its body, but it wasn't until the late 1920s that someone
managed to pull off this feat.
Soviet
physician Sergei Brukhonenko developed a primitive heart-lung machine
he called an "autojector," and with this device he succeeded
in keeping the severed head of a dog alive. He displayed one of his
living dog heads in 1928 before an international audience of scientists
at the Third Congress of Physiologists of the USSR. To prove that the
head lying on the table really was alive, he showed that it reacted
to stimuli. Brukhonenko banged a hammer on the table, and the head flinched.
He shone light in its eyes, and the eyes blinked. He even fed the head
a piece of cheese, which promptly popped out the esophageal tube on
the other end.
Brukhonenko's
severed dog head became the talk of Europe and inspired the playwright
George Bernard Shaw to muse, "I am even tempted to have my own
head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without
being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without
having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce
masterpieces of dramatic art and literature."
Culled
from: The
Museum Of Hoaxes
Generously submitted by: Christina
**********************************************************************
And
our friend You Tube also has footage of the dog's head reacting to stimuli.
It breaks my heart, but it's unbelievably fascinating to view. The segment
on the dog's head starts at 4:24:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ap1co5ZZHYE
*******
Frightening
Festivals!
For
those of you looking for something to do this summer, why not visit
the Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Convention? I'll try to be there.
http://www.flashbackweekend.com/index.shtml
Thanks
to Jason for the link.
*******
Morbid
Meditation!
I've
never been one to meditate because it's all too boring for my overactive
Western mind, but I think I may have found a manner of meditation to
my liking! Maradhîtâ Kumâri sends the following fascinating
e-mail:
Hello.
This may sound weird but there is morbidity in Buddhism. Buddhism is
known for the practice of meditation, most popular is Zen meditation.
But most people do not know that there is a meditation called “corpse
meditation” or Asubha. This type of meditation is rarely practiced
now because there are few charnel grounds, where corpses of varying
degrees of decomposition can be meditated upon, nowadays because of
the difficulty of finding appropriate corpse (unless you meditate in
a morgue). Corpse meditation is used to make the meditator realize that
our physical bodies are made up of impurities, and that everything is
impermanent. This is also used to make the meditator not cling to the
human body.
There have been many instances, mentioned in the Buddhist Canon (the
Tipitaka/Tripitaka), when the Buddha recommended this kind of meditation
to his disciples, especially to those who are overcome with lust and
are obsessed with the body. And there have been many instances where
people became enlightened or became Arhats by meditating upon a corpse.
There is an instance when the Buddha had the decomposing body of a courtesan
auctioned to the woman’s former clients. It served as a lesson
to his disciples that the human body is impermanent and disgusting and
not worth clinging to.
In any case, it was the body of a dead person, carried by mourning relatives
to the cremation grounds, which was one of the “Four Signs”
that made the Buddha renounce his princely life and seek enlightenment.
Anyway, corpse meditation is divided into ten categories (depending
on the state of the corpse). I will mention the original Pali (language
used by the Buddha and Theravada monks) word and the corresponding English
translation. The descriptions are taken from chapter VI of “Vissudhimagga”
(The Path of Purification) by Bhadantâcariya Buddhaghosa, a 5th
century monk.
1. Uddhumâtaka – the bloated: it is bloated because bloated
by gradual dilation and swelling after the close of life, as a bellows
is with wind.
2. Vinîlaka – the livid: this is a term for a corpse that
is reddish-colored in places where flesh is prominent, whitish-colored
in places where pus has collected, but mostly blue-black, as if draped
with blue-black cloth in the blue-black places.
3. Vipubbaka – the festering: what is trickling with pus in broken
places is festering.
4. Vicchiddaka – the cut up: what has been opened up by cutting
it in two is called cut up…. The cut up is found on a battle field
or in a robbers’ forest or on a charnel ground where kings have
robbers cut up or in the jungle in a place where men are torn up by
lions and tigers.
5. Vikkhâyitaka – the gnawed what has been chewed here and
there in various ways by dogs, jackals, etc. is what is gnawed.
6. Vikkhittaka – the scattered: This is a term for a corpse that
is strewn here and there in this way: ‘Here a hand, there a foot,
there the head’.
7. Hatavikkhittaka – the hacked and scattered: this is a term for
a corpse scattered in the way just described after it has been hacked
with a knife in a crow’s-foot pattern on every limb.
8. Hitaka – the bleeding: it sprinkles, scatters blood, and it
trickles here and there…. The bleeding is found at the time when
blood is trickling from the opening of the wounds received on battle
fields, etc., or from the openings of burst boils and abscesses when
the hand and feet have been cut off.
9. Pulapaka – the worm-infested: this is a term for a corpse full
of maggots… when at the end of two or three days a mass of maggots
oozes out from the corpse’s nine orifices, and the mass lies there
like a heap of paddy or boiled rice as big as the body, whether the
body is that of a dog, a jackal, a human being, an ox, a buffalo, an
elephant, a horse, a python, or what you will.
10. Atthika – a skeleton: this is a term for both a single bone
and a framework of bones.
Detailed instructions are described in that same book. The author has
also warned not to go to the corpse, especially the bloated corpse,
immediately, because the meditator might be attracted to the body, and
thus perform necrophilia instead of meditation. The meditator is also
prohibited to touch and handle the corpse and body parts as it can remove
the disgust for the human body.
There is a nice verse at the end:
This filthy body stinks outright
Like ordure, like a privy’s site;
This body men that have insight
Condemn, is object of a fool’s delight.
A tumor where nine holes abide
Wrapped in a coat of clammy hide
And trickling filth in every side,
Polluting the air with stenches far and wide.
If it perchance should come about
That what is inside it came out,
Surely a man would need a knout
With which to put the crows and dogs to rout.
I have heard of a Western monk who tried to do the corpse meditation.
He didn’t last long.
It is said that this is one of the most difficult meditation practice.
Aside from the danger from wild dogs, wolves other animals and men,
there is a risk of having hallucinations during the meditation. The
meditator would also have to deal with the stench from the corpses,
and the swarm of flies and insects. For these reasons, too, that corpse
meditation is rarely practiced.
I would like to suggest this kind of meditation for morbid lovers, but
I’m telling you of the risks involved. If you want to try this,
seek a teacher first. The teacher will know if you are ready for that
kind of meditation.
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