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Captain's Orders · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. When a vital organ, such as the heart,
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  Speaker 1: needs to be replaced, doctors utilize a complicated device known
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  Speaker 1: as a CPB or cardio pulmonary bypass machine. The CPB
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  Speaker 1: circulates blood and oxygen throughout the body during surgery, essentially
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  Speaker 1: acting as a temporary replacement for one's heart and lungs,
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  Speaker 1: hence its other name, the heart lung machine. Although the
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  Speaker 1: CPB sounds like modern science, something that must have only
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  Speaker 1: existed for a handful of years, right, in reality, it
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  Speaker 1: dates back to eighteen eighty five. An Austrian German physiologist
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  Speaker 1: named Maximilian von Frey built one, although that was only
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  Speaker 1: a prototype. Then around ninety six, a Russian scientist named
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  Speaker 1: Sergey Bruconenko took things a few steps further. In May
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  Speaker 1: of that year, he attended a conference where he showed
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  Speaker 1: off what he had been working on, he had created
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  Speaker 1: his own heart lung machine, which he called the auto jector.
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  Speaker 1: When he hooked up an organ, it would extract the blood,
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  Speaker 1: warm it in a glass container, oxygenated, and then pump
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  Speaker 1: it back into the body. Except he didn't do this
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  Speaker 1: with a heart or a pair of lungs. He used
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  Speaker 1: a dog's head instead. Brucon Enko was able to keep
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  Speaker 1: a dog's head alive for over an hour and a
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  Speaker 1: half before the blood clotted and could no longer be pumped.
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  Speaker 1: The auto injector was a leap in medical technology and
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  Speaker 1: became the talk of the medical community. Doctors and scientists
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  Speaker 1: imagine a world where the human body, limited by organs
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  Speaker 1: that broke down over time, could probably live forever with
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  Speaker 1: the help of one of these devices. About ten years later,
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  Speaker 1: in California, another doctor named Robert E. Cornish conducted similar
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  Speaker 1: experiments with dogs. Not only did his techniques differ from
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  Speaker 1: bruco Enko's, but so did his intended results. He didn't
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  Speaker 1: want to just keep an organ from dying. He wanted
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  Speaker 1: to reanimate the already dead. Cornish believed that if a
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  Speaker 1: corpse was strapped to a large teeter totter and moved
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  Speaker 1: up and down, quickly. The force of the movement would
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  Speaker 1: circulate the blood inside. Meanwhile, a breathing tub would be
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  Speaker 1: inserted into the mouth, while a mixture of adrenaline, anticoagulants,
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  Speaker 1: and other ingredients would chemically shock the body into returning
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  Speaker 1: to life. And just like his Russian counterparts, he looked
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  Speaker 1: to the canine family for help. Now, Cornish was known
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  Speaker 1: for having strange ideas. For example, he once invented a
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  Speaker 1: pair of reading glasses meant for use underwater. However, he
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  Speaker 1: didn't believe himself to be a mad scientist. No, he
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  Speaker 1: felt he was doing the world favor, so he started
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  Speaker 1: testing his theories on fox terriers that he named last Risk,
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  Speaker 1: a reference to the gospel story about a man Jesus
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  Speaker 1: race from the dead. After three unsuccessful attempts, Cornish finally
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  Speaker 1: started making progress. His fourth test subject, Lazarus the Fourth,
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  Speaker 1: was resurrected after five minutes and let out a small bark.
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  Speaker 1: The dog did suffer serious side effects like blindness and
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  Speaker 1: brain damage, but was functioning normally after about a week.
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  Speaker 1: Lazarus the Fifth came back to life after thirty minutes dead,
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  Speaker 1: having been deceased longer than any of his predecessors and
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  Speaker 1: with fewer problems afterward. Unfortunately, Cornish was only one of
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  Speaker 1: a few people interested in this research. Honestly, other scientists
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  Speaker 1: just felt like his experiments were vulgar. But in seven
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  Speaker 1: Cornish was finally able to apply his Frankenstein like methods
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  Speaker 1: to something a bit bigger than a terrier, an adult
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  Speaker 1: human cadaver, or at least that was the plan. Thomas
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  Speaker 1: mcmonagle had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death,
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  Speaker 1: and he reached out to Cornish about these experiments. He
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  Speaker 1: wanted the doctor to revive him after his execution at
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  Speaker 1: sam Quentin Prison. However, the idea was almost immediately shut down. First,
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  Speaker 1: mcmonagle was to be executed via gas chamber and his
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  Speaker 1: body could not be recovered until the room was clear
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  Speaker 1: of toxic gas, which would take an hour or more,
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  Speaker 1: far too long for the body to remain viable. And Secondly,
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  Speaker 1: the warden fought against the planned tooth and nail. There
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  Speaker 1: was no way he was going to allow his prisoner
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  Speaker 1: to be resurrected after death. Cornish's work, as well as
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  Speaker 1: that of Brukonnenko's, led to further investigation well into the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, the Soviet Union performed countless experiments on animals, limbs,
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  Speaker 1: and organs in an effort to not just cheat death,
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  Speaker 1: but maybe put death out of business. The U. S
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  Speaker 1: Military even had its own department dedicated to reviving the dead,
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  Speaker 1: which ran into the late nineteen sixties. Since then, the
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  Speaker 1: idea has mostly well died out due to the ethical
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  Speaker 1: dilemma it presents. There may come a day when the
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  Speaker 1: body can exceed its lifespan through the use of external
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  Speaker 1: machines or cybernetic enhancements, or even a complete upload of
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  Speaker 1: our brains to the cloud. The question is will any
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  Speaker 1: of us live to see it. There isn't much you
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  Speaker 1: can do when the cards are stacked against you, and
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  Speaker 1: that was certainly the case for Wilhelm Voight, who was
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  Speaker 1: born into a poor Mennonite family in the city of
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  Speaker 1: Tilsit near Berlin. As the son of a cobbler, he
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  Speaker 1: was destined to follow in his father's shoes. No pun intended,
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  Speaker 1: I swear. Gainful employment and career advancement didn't exactly exist
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  Speaker 1: at the turn of the twentieth century, at least not
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  Speaker 1: for someone like Wilhelm. So he did what any child
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  Speaker 1: might do in a world where nothing seems within grasp,
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  Speaker 1: he stole at the age of fourteen, Wilhelm earned his
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  Speaker 1: first prison sentence, serving two weeks for theft, but the
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  Speaker 1: crimes didn't end there. In fact, they escalated so much
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  Speaker 1: so that he was denied residency papers in Prussia, which
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  Speaker 1: made it impossible to work in the country. With nothing
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  Speaker 1: left to do, Wilhelm continued on the path he had
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  Speaker 1: set for himself, this time landing his largest sentence yet,
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  Speaker 1: fifteen years in prison for fraud. He was promptly kicked
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  Speaker 1: out of Prussia entirely, and that's when Wilhelm had an
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  Speaker 1: idea that would change the course of his life, a
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  Speaker 1: plan that carried with it an ingenuity that had evaded
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  Speaker 1: him in his younger days of crime. Now a veteran
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  Speaker 1: of fifty seven years, you might say that he saved
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  Speaker 1: his best act for last. It started by him sneaking
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  Speaker 1: back into Berlin, where he wasn't allowed to be. He
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  Speaker 1: made his way through various second hand clothing shops and
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  Speaker 1: acquired for himself a full Prussian Army captain's uniform, piece
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  Speaker 1: by piece. After completing his costume on October sixteenth of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, he walked right into the local army
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  Speaker 1: barracks and ordered a small company of soldiers to come
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  Speaker 1: with him. Seeing his captain's uniform, they willingly obeyed. As
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  Speaker 1: Captain Wilhelm White passed firing range, he gathered even more troops,
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  Speaker 1: and as his entourage grew, you can bet he began
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  Speaker 1: to feel his grand master plan coming to fruition. With
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  Speaker 1: his small army in tow, Wilhelm marched them twenty five
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  Speaker 1: miles to Copennick with a very specific goal in mind.
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  Speaker 1: He wanted to get a passport, which in turn would
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  Speaker 1: allow him to get a job. Upon arriving in town,
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  Speaker 1: he told his men that the mayor and the accountants
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  Speaker 1: were both guilty of some financial indiscretions against Prussia, a lie,
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  Speaker 1: but one they all believed. Then Wilhelm split his forces,
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  Speaker 1: sending half to escort the new prisoners to the guard
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  Speaker 1: house in Berlin, while the other half were to guard
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  Speaker 1: the town hall. Unfortunately for Wilhelm, there was no passport
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  Speaker 1: in the building, so rather than go home empty handed,
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  Speaker 1: he relieved the town hall of its cash reserves and
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  Speaker 1: then fled the scene. However, Wilhelm couldn't keep his mouth
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  Speaker 1: shut about what he'd done. He told numerous friends about
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  Speaker 1: his little adventure, and ten days later he was arrested
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  Speaker 1: by a rather irritated Prussian army. He was sentenced to
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  Speaker 1: four years in prison. Just when it seemed like his
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  Speaker 1: life was over, fortune struck again, well, laughter struck more
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  Speaker 1: like it. You see, the story of this little adventure
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  Speaker 1: made it all the way up to the stern Kaiser, Wilhelm,
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  Speaker 1: the second Emperor of Prussia, who found the whole story
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  Speaker 1: so amusing that he granted him a personal pardon. Void's
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  Speaker 1: name lit up the headlines the next day, the papers
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  Speaker 1: calling him the man who made the Kaiser laugh. Never
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  Speaker 1: want to miss an opportunity, Wilhelm began to sell photos
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  Speaker 1: of himself to his new adoring fans. Six days after
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  Speaker 1: his relief, Berlin's famous waxwork show unterd and Lynden had
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  Speaker 1: not one but two Wilhelm voids in their midst, one
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  Speaker 1: posing with the other. His fame became so widespread that
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  Speaker 1: even Barnum and Bailey Circus helped out funding his tour
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  Speaker 1: around Germany, where he reprised his role as captain. In
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  Speaker 1: the end, Wilhelm even received his Holy Grail a passport,
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  Speaker 1: although it wasn't from Germany, but rather Luxembourg, where he
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  Speaker 1: would live out the rest of his days until his
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  Speaker 1: death in nine two. He even after he was gone,
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  Speaker 1: though Wilhelm voids, legend and likeness has lived on his
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  Speaker 1: wax sculpture. It made its way to the famous Madame
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  Speaker 1: Tussau's in London, and a statue was even built of
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  Speaker 1: him in Copaeck, proving once again that if you try
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  Speaker 1: hard enough, even a lie can become the truth. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.