Soul Catcher

[link to www.boingboing.net]
In 1901, Massachusetts surgeon Dr. Duncan MacDougall attempted to prove the existence of the soul by weighing a person before, and right after, death. He hacked an industrial beam scale so that it could be attached to a hospital bed. Then, he began to seek out a subject in the terminally ill patients at the hospital. First up was a man dying of tuberculosis. According to MacDougall, “The instant life ceased, the opposite scale pan fell with a suddenness that was astonishing – as if something had been lifted from the body.” Apparently, 21 grams was missing from his body. MacDougall reproduced the experiment several more times. The physician's work has become a classic tale that, of course, is still widely cited by philosophers, skeptics, and "believers." And yes, it's MacDougall's experiments that inspired the film 21 Grams too. Fortean Times weighs the truths, half-truths, and unknowns of "the strange deathbed experiment of Dr. MacDougall." From FT:

Deducing exactly what went on in MacDougall’s laboratory after more than a century has passed is no easy task, but a possible insight comes from some written correspondence between MacDougall and Richard Hodgson. These letters (which were later published by the American Society of Psychical Research) start in November 1901, after MacDougall’s first experiment, and continue until May 1902, when the entire project was halted. They contain a full description of MacDougall’s methods, results and the circumstances of all six patients which, when compared with his American Medicine paper, offer some clues to the solution of this mystery.
MacDougall’s letters make it plain that, with the exception of the first patient, all the experiments were beset with problems that may be broadly divided into one of two categories. The first problem was in ascert­aining the exact time of death, an issue that appears to affect patients two, three and six. MacDougall acknowledged this with the second patient, where the period of uncertainty lasted for 15 minutes, but with patient three it is only in his letters that we learn of “a jarring of the scales” made while trying to determine “whether or not the heart had ceased to beat”. Patient six was excluded for other reasons (see below), but in his letters MacDougall remarks that “I am inclined to believe that he passed away while I was adjusting the beam”, which again suggests uncertainty as to the exact moment of death.

The second issue was a problem relating to the measuring equipment itself, which MacDougall himself cited as a reason for voiding the results of patients four and six. However, with the fifth patient the measured drop in weight at death was later followed by an evident malfunction, as the scales could not afterwards be made to re-balance themselves correctly. In any object­ive experiment this uncertainty would have voided the result, but at no point does MacDougall question the reliability of his set-up. Thus, of the six patients, just one (the first) appears to have been measured without mishap, but repeated troubles with the equipment and with determining the moment of death perhaps casts doubt on even these results. Thus, rather than trying to find a physical cause for the loss of weight at death, it is conceivable that there was no loss of weight at all, or that it might not have coincided with the moment of death. Only a complete retrial with human patients will answer these questions, and that has so far not been forthcoming.

[link to historicmysteries.com]

The 21 Grams Theory:


On 10 April 1901, an unusual experiment was conducted in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Dr. Duncan MacDougall was going to prove that the human soul had mass, and was therefore, measurable.

Dr. MacDougall conducted this experiment on six dying patients who were placed on specially made Fairbanks weight scales just prior to their deaths. Dr. MacDougall’s intention was to weigh each body before and after death to determine any differences measured by the delicate scales. The patients were selected based upon their imminent death. Two patients were suffering from tuberculosis, 5 were men and one was a woman.

In the company of four other doctors, Dr. MacDougall carefully measured the weight of his first patient prior to his death. Once the patient died, an interesting event occurred.

“Suddenly, coincident with death,” wrote Macdougall, “the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce.”

The experiment continued on the next patient with the same results. Dr. MacDougall felt he was on to something extraordinary. A quote from the 11 March 1907 New York Times article captures the historic moment:

“ The instant life ceased the opposite scale pan fell with a suddenness that was astonishing – as if something had been suddenly lifted from the body. Immediately all the usual deductions were made for physical loss of weight, and it was discovered that there was still a full ounce of weight unaccounted for”.

All five doctors took their own measurements and compared their results. Not all the patients lost the same weight, but they did lose something that could not be accounted for. Unfortunately, only four of the six patient’s results could be counted due to mechanical failures or the patient dying prior to the test equipment being in place.

But what about the consistent weight loss? Everything was taken into account, from the air in the lungs to bodily fluids. It still could not be explained. An interesting variation occurred on the third patient, who maintained his same weight immediately upon death. But after one minute, he lost about an ounce of weight. Dr. MacDougall explained this discrepancy as follows:

“ I believe that in this case, that of a phlegmatic man slow of thought and action, that the soul remained suspended in the body after death, during the minute that elapsed before its freedom. There is no other way of accounting for it, and it is what might be expected to happen in a man of the subject’s temperament”.

Following the experiment and consulting with the other attending physicians, it was determined that the average weight loss of each person was ¾ of an ounce. Dr. MacDougall concluded that a human soul weighed 21 grams.

Dr. MacDougall conducted the same experiment on 15 dogs. The experiments showed no change in weight following their death. MacDougall concluded that this may signify only humans have souls.

H. LaV. Twining, a physics teacher at Los Angeles Polytechnic High School, attempted the same experiment on mice in 1917. His conclusion was in line with that of Dr. MacDougall. There was no deviation of weight when the mice died.

Dr. MacDougall was a respected physician of Haverhill and the head of the Research Society that was conducting work in this field for six years prior to the experiment. Although this experiment would be considered unethical in modern times, it is still a peculiarity that sparks a lot of criticism, ranging from the methodology used to various religious implications

Dr. MacDougall admitted that more research needed to be done, but following these experiments, Dr. MacDougall diverted his attention to obtaining the ability to photograph the soul as it left the human body. Unfortunately, following his soul weight experiments, Dr. MacDougall failed to establish any further scientific breakthroughs. Dr. Duncan MacDougal passed away in 1920.

Of Note: A great movie titled “21 Grams” made in 2003 references Dr. MacDougall’s experiments. Click here for more details.

References: Snopes, Dr. Duncan MacDougall on Wikipedia, A Soul’s Weight, New York Times archived article, March 11, 1907

21 grams :)
interesting nonetheless
[link to funney.webnode.cz]

Interesting pic

intuition..

[link to en.wikipedia.org]
In 1907, MacDougall weighed six patients while they were in the process of dying from tuberculosis in an old age home. It was relatively easy to determine when death was only a few hours away, and at this point the entire bed was placed on an industrial sized scale which was apparently sensitive to the gram. He took his results (a varying amount of perceived mass loss in most of the six cases) to support his hypothesis that the soul had mass, and when the soul departed the body, so did this mass. The determination of the soul weighing 21 grams was based on the average loss of mass in the six patients within minutes or hours after death. Other studies were soon put forward to confirm the results. Experiments on mice and other animals took place. Most notably the weighing upon death of sheep seemed to create mass for a few minutes which later disappeared. The hypothesis was made that a soul portal formed upon death which then whisked the soul away.

MacDougall also measured fifteen dogs in similar circumstances and reported the results as "uniformly negative," with no perceived change in mass. He took these results as confirmation that the soul had weight, and that dogs did not have souls. MacDougall's complaints about not being able to find dogs dying of the natural causes that would have been ideal have led at least one author to conjecture that he was in fact poisoning dogs to conduct these experiments.[1] In March 1907, accounts of MacDougall's experiments were published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and the medical journal American Medicine, while the news was spread to the general public by New York Times.

Although generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit,[1][2] MacDougall's finding that the human soul weighed 21 grams has become a meme in the public consciousness. It lent itself to the title of the 2003 film 21 Grams.

This guy talks about Duncan MacDougall on the soul towards the end of the video but it's not really informative. As far as videos in relation to this subject, I havent really been able to find that much information so if anyone has any videos pertaining to this topic and could post that material I would appreciate it very much...

Last Edited by unspoken411 on 05/24/2010 05:26 AM