Captain's Orders

as a CPB or cardio pulmonary bypass machine. The CPB circulates blood and oxygen throughout the body during surgery, essentially acting as a temporary replacement for one's heart and lungs, hence its other name, the heart lung machine. Although the CPB sounds like modern science, something that must have only existed for a handful of years, right, in reality, it dates back to eighteen eighty five. An Austrian German physiologist named Maximilian von Frey built one, although that was only

a prototype. Then around ninety six, a Russian scientist named Sergey Bruconenko took things a few steps further. In May of that year, he attended a conference where he showed off what he had been working on, he had created his own heart lung machine, which he called the auto jector. When he hooked up an organ, it would extract the blood, warm it in a glass container, oxygenated, and then pump it back into the body. Except he didn't do this with a heart or a pair of lungs. He used

a dog's head instead. Brucon Enko was able to keep a dog's head alive for over an hour and a half before the blood clotted and could no longer be pumped. The auto injector was a leap in medical technology and became the talk of the medical community. Doctors and scientists imagine a world where the human body, limited by organs that broke down over time, could probably live forever with

the help of one of these devices. About ten years later, in California, another doctor named Robert E. Cornish conducted similar experiments with dogs. Not only did his techniques differ from bruco Enko's, but so did his intended results. He didn't want to just keep an organ from dying. He wanted to reanimate the already dead. Cornish believed that if a corpse was strapped to a large teeter totter and moved up and down, quickly. The force of the movement would

circulate the blood inside. Meanwhile, a breathing tub would be inserted into the mouth, while a mixture of adrenaline, anticoagulants, and other ingredients would chemically shock the body into returning to life. And just like his Russian counterparts, he looked to the canine family for help. Now, Cornish was known for having strange ideas. For example, he once invented a pair of reading glasses meant for use underwater. However, he

didn't believe himself to be a mad scientist. No, he felt he was doing the world favor, so he started testing his theories on fox terriers that he named last Risk, a reference to the gospel story about a man Jesus race from the dead. After three unsuccessful attempts, Cornish finally started making progress. His fourth test subject, Lazarus the Fourth, was resurrected after five minutes and let out a small bark.

The dog did suffer serious side effects like blindness and brain damage, but was functioning normally after about a week. Lazarus the Fifth came back to life after thirty minutes dead, having been deceased longer than any of his predecessors and with fewer problems afterward. Unfortunately, Cornish was only one of a few people interested in this research. Honestly, other scientists

just felt like his experiments were vulgar. But in seven Cornish was finally able to apply his Frankenstein like methods to something a bit bigger than a terrier, an adult human cadaver, or at least that was the plan. Thomas mcmonagle had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and he reached out to Cornish about these experiments. He wanted the doctor to revive him after his execution at

sam Quentin Prison. However, the idea was almost immediately shut down. First, mcmonagle was to be executed via gas chamber and his body could not be recovered until the room was clear of toxic gas, which would take an hour or more, far too long for the body to remain viable. And Secondly, the warden fought against the planned tooth and nail. There was no way he was going to allow his prisoner

to be resurrected after death. Cornish's work, as well as that of Brukonnenko's, led to further investigation well into the nineteen fifties, the Soviet Union performed countless experiments on animals, limbs, and organs in an effort to not just cheat death, but maybe put death out of business. The U. S Military even had its own department dedicated to reviving the dead, which ran into the late nineteen sixties. Since then, the idea has mostly well died out due to the ethical

dilemma it presents. There may come a day when the body can exceed its lifespan through the use of external machines or cybernetic enhancements, or even a complete upload of our brains to the cloud. The question is will any of us live to see it. There isn't much you can do when the cards are stacked against you, and that was certainly the case for Wilhelm Voight, who was born into a poor Mennonite family in the city of Tilsit near Berlin. As the son of a cobbler, he

was destined to follow in his father's shoes. No pun intended, I swear. Gainful employment and career advancement didn't exactly exist at the turn of the twentieth century, at least not for someone like Wilhelm. So he did what any child might do in a world where nothing seems within grasp, he stole at the age of fourteen, Wilhelm earned his first prison sentence, serving two weeks for theft, but the

crimes didn't end there. In fact, they escalated so much so that he was denied residency papers in Prussia, which made it impossible to work in the country. With nothing left to do, Wilhelm continued on the path he had set for himself, this time landing his largest sentence yet, fifteen years in prison for fraud. He was promptly kicked out of Prussia entirely, and that's when Wilhelm had an idea that would change the course of his life, a plan that carried with it an ingenuity that had evaded

him in his younger days of crime. Now a veteran of fifty seven years, you might say that he saved his best act for last. It started by him sneaking back into Berlin, where he wasn't allowed to be. He made his way through various second hand clothing shops and acquired for himself a full Prussian Army captain's uniform, piece by piece. After completing his costume on October sixteenth of nineteen oh six, he walked right into the local army barracks and ordered a small company of soldiers to come

with him. Seeing his captain's uniform, they willingly obeyed. As Captain Wilhelm White passed firing range, he gathered even more troops, and as his entourage grew, you can bet he began to feel his grand master plan coming to fruition. With his small army in tow, Wilhelm marched them twenty five miles to Copennick with a very specific goal in mind. He wanted to get a passport, which in turn would

allow him to get a job. Upon arriving in town, he told his men that the mayor and the accountants were both guilty of some financial indiscretions against Prussia, a lie, but one they all believed. Then Wilhelm split his forces, sending half to escort the new prisoners to the guard house in Berlin, while the other half were to guard

the town hall. Unfortunately for Wilhelm, there was no passport in the building, so rather than go home empty handed, he relieved the town hall of its cash reserves and then fled the scene. However, Wilhelm couldn't keep his mouth shut about what he'd done. He told numerous friends about his little adventure, and ten days later he was arrested by a rather irritated Prussian army. He was sentenced to

four years in prison. Just when it seemed like his life was over, fortune struck again, well, laughter struck more like it. You see, the story of this little adventure made it all the way up to the stern Kaiser, Wilhelm, the second Emperor of Prussia, who found the whole story so amusing that he granted him a personal pardon. Void's name lit up the headlines the next day, the papers calling him the man who made the Kaiser laugh. Never want to miss an opportunity, Wilhelm began to sell photos

of himself to his new adoring fans. Six days after his relief, Berlin's famous waxwork show unterd and Lynden had not one but two Wilhelm voids in their midst, one posing with the other. His fame became so widespread that even Barnum and Bailey Circus helped out funding his tour

around Germany, where he reprised his role as captain. In the end, Wilhelm even received his Holy Grail a passport, although it wasn't from Germany, but rather Luxembourg, where he would live out the rest of his days until his death in nine two. He even after he was gone, though Wilhelm voids, legend and likeness has lived on his wax sculpture. It made its way to the famous Madame Tussau's in London, and a statue was even built of him in Copaeck, proving once again that if you try

hard enough, even a lie can become the truth. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World

of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.