Summary
December 20, 2008: From the 1920s to the 1950s, a Soviet scientist named Sergei S. Bryukhonenko worked on reanimating dogs, as well as causing a severed dog's head to react to stimuli. He then exaggerated his results in a movie called Experiments in the Revival of Organisms, showing feats of reanimation that were clearly impossible. Later, another Soviet scientist named Vladimir Demikhov created a two-headed dog by attaching parts of a puppy to a fully-grown dog, although it is unclear whether he succeeded in keeping the creature alive for any length of time.
An American scientist named Robert E. Cornish later succeeded in reanimating clinically dead dogs, but they were brain damaged and blinded in the process. Another scientist, Robert J. White, created a two-brained dog as well as transplanted a living brain from one money to another, although the monkey was paralyzed from the neck down.
Source
Game and Story Use
- These make for good examples of mad scientists.
- In a cinematic setting, they might be able to create "improved hybrids" with enhanced capabilities… and they might be used to attack the PCs. After all, a two-headed dog can bite twice as often…
- A mad scientist working on similar experiments can cite Bryukhonenko's work as corroborative detail adding versimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing plot device.
- Of course it may not be science … even if the scientist thinks that it is, some supernatural power may be messing him about. Alternatively he may be using some kind of wierd magic/technology hybrid like artifice.