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Mad Scientist #17: Robert Cornish

Max Hartshorn — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 04:57:00 +0000

March 1934. The groan of creaking wood fills Dr. Robert Cornish’s laboratory as the rocking teeterboard strains under Lazarus’ dead weight. Rocking provides a crude form a circulation—a weak substitute for Lazarus’ heart, which has stopped beating.¹

With an urgency more commonly found among the living, the Berkeley-based doctor plunges a brew of adrenaline, liver extract, gum arabic, and blood into the corpse’s thigh.¹ He then puffs bursts of oxygen into Lazarus’ gaping mouth as the rocking board slowly draws the solution up and down the body.¹

A leg twitch—a gasp—an unmistakable heartbeat.¹

The wooden teeterboard, typically used to launch circus acrobats to death-defying heights, is being employed by Cornish to raise something far more dangerous—the dead.

Raising the dead is one of mad science’s most secretly cherished goals. Imagine a wondrous world where Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve continued to be hosted by Dick Clark—where you could be served at a TGI Fridays by zombie Einstein—or have your groceries bagged by zombie Abraham Lincoln.

Tobacco smoke enema. They won't teach you this in lifeguard training folks.

Problem was Cornish had no idea where to start. CPR didn’t come about until the 1950s.² Before then even the most basic resuscitation methods had this old-wivey quality. Common guidelines for reviving a drowned person back in the day included:

Rolling the victim over a barrel on their back.²
Using a bellows to pump air into their mouth [and presumably right out their nose]. ²
Siphoning tobacco smoke up the victim’s bum. ²

If reviving an unconscious drowning victim seems ludicrous with these methods, imagine using them to bring back the dead. Robert Cornish tried virtually every reanimation method known to man,³ at one point even jiu-jitsuing a dead sheep,³ without producing so much as a single zombie—or even your basic C.H.U.D.

By the mid 1930s, Cornish finally hit on a winning combination: A rocking teeterboard, adrenaline-based injections, and Fox Terriers.³ Sweet, trusting, Fox Terriers, as opposed to humans, gave him control over both the means of death, and the timing. In 1934, Cornish was able to resuscitate a dead dog, Lazarus IV, 5-minutes after its heart had stopped.⁴ Dogs that stayed dead for longer didn’t fare so well (see Lazaruses I-III).^1,5,6

One of Cornish's lil' pups.

But for some reason, the public found the idea of killing/zombifying Fox Terriers oddly repellant. After much bad press, Cornish was ousted from his UCLA laboratory and forced to conduct studies in a more suitable mad-science locale, his home.⁶

The young doctor needed some way to convince people that his research was not only humane, but vital. This improbable wish was granted in the form of Life Returns⁷, a Universal horror flick that seemingly exists only to advertise Robert Cornish and his research.

In the film, John Kendrick (Onslow Stephens) is a doctor obsessed with life restoration, who works for a drug company that funds his research. When his employer urges him to study something a little more “practical,” Kendrick snaps and spirals into insanity and depression. Somehow it works out that the only way the doctor can win back the respect of his son Danny (George Breakston) is to enlist the help of an on-screen Robert Cornish in reviving his beloved dead dog (uncredited).

Cornish is Kendrick’s former colleague. While Kendrick was foolish enough to throw his lot in with big pharma, Cornish went about research the right way and (in the movie) has become a huge success.

No animals were killed an not subsequently brought back to life in the making of this film.

Amazingly, Robert Cornish actually portrays himself in the film.⁸ Even more amazingly, the dog revivification footage used in the film’s climax is actual footage from one of his Lazarus experiments (spoiler alert: this movie’s terrible).⁸

Life Returns might have turned the public tide in Cornish’s favor, if it wasn’t instantly forgettable. Over the next decade our disputable doctor began to slip steadily into the clammy waters of obscurity. He might have disappeared entirely, if it weren’t for a proposed experiment so ghastly it made killing and reviving dogs look like an invisible man taking a nude dip in an invisible lake, which is to say like nothing.

In 1947, condemned child slayer Thomas McMonigle contacted Dr. Cornish with a bizarre offering—his body.⁹ Awaiting a death sentence in San Quentin, Cornish believed McMonigle could be revived using a home-made heart-lung machine and 60,000 shoelace eyes.¹⁰ All he needed was immediate access to the corpse.⁹

Unfortunately, prison warden Clinton Duffy was dead set against the idea.¹¹ McMonigle was set to be executed in a gas chamber.¹² This chamber required at least an hour to air out after the execution before anyone could safely enter.¹² If Robert Cornish wished to resuscitate the inmate almost immediately after he was put to death, another Robert Cornish would need to be on hand to resuscitate the resuscitator. And that Robert Cornish, succumbing himself to gas poison, would in turn require a third Robert Cornish to resuscitate him. And so on and so forth ad infinitum. But, of course, there are only a finite number of Robert Cornishes. So we can easily see why this is impossible.

Robert Cornish in Life Returns. "Now sit still, this will only kill you just a little bit."

Cornish and Duffy’s bizarre feud snagged headlines nationwide, with the doctor threatening at one point to gas and revive a sheep as proof of concept.¹³

But beyond practical concerns, there is an even more troublesome legal consideration. If someone on death row is put to death, then subsequently revived, have they already served their death sentence? Would they then, like this former Iranian prisoner, be free? After all, double jeopardy prevents anyone from being tried twice for the same crime.

And do we want to live in a world where zombie Ted Bundies and Timothy McVeighs are free to roam the Earth? I doubt even the judge from Night Court would want to be around when that precedent is set.

B-b-b-b-rains??? Photo by Cory Cousins.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why should we subject humans to this bizarre experimentation when we’ve yet to perfect it on animals? Dr. Cornish was able to revive a dog that had been dead for just 5 minutes.⁴ If you’re a first responder speeding across town in an ambulance, that window may be just long enough. But if you a last responder, which is to say some sort of criminal mastermind intent on breaking into the city morgue and raising a brood of zombie lackeys to do your bidding, you’re going to need a bit more time.

In 2003, scientists in Pittsburgh discovered that you could revive dogs after they had been dead for up to 2 hours.¹⁴ First, researchers bled their animal subjects to death. They then pumped a near-freezing saline solution into the dogs’ veins. This kept the creatures in a state of suspended animation, chilling their organs to prevent lasting damage. Finally, they swapped the saline solution with the original blood and defibrillated their tiny little hearts back into existence with carefully timed electric shocks. 24 of the 27 dogs tested live to bark about it.¹⁴

"Cornish will revolutionize the world," says random actress from Life Returns.

When it comes to revivification science, it’s tough to separate the practical benefits (i.e. reviving the drowned, shocked, and asphyxiated) from the obvious creep factor. Robert Cornish’s bizarre research style certainly didn’t help with this distinction. From his biblically named Lazaruses (Lazari? Lazarodes?!), to his horror movie cameo, to his plot to turn dead men walking in to the walking dead, it’s like this guy’s trying to come off as a mad scientist.

So the next time you find yourself trapped in an abandoned warehouse, pursued on all sides by brain-ravenous zombies, as you wait out the precious final moments of your human existence, take a couple minutes to think about Robert Cornish, and the mad scientists who made your inevitably grisly demise possible.

Sources:
1. Science: Lazarus, dead & alive (1934, March 26) Time Magazine. Retreived from: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,747260,00.html
2. Eisenberg. M. S. (2005). History of the Science of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. In J. P. Ornato & M. A. Peberdy (Eds.), Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (pp. 1-9). Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
3. Swain, F. (2013). How to make a zombie: The real life (and death) science of reanimation and mind control London, UK: Oneworld Publications.
4. Science: Dog no. 4 (1934, October 8). Time Magazine. Retrieved from: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,770001,00.html
5. Science: Dog no. 3 (1934, April 30). Time Magazine. Retreived from: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,787857,00.html
6. Science: Dog no. 3 (cont’d) (1934, June 4). Time Magazine. Retreived from: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,754224,00.html
7. Life Returns (1935). Stream for free here: https://archive.org/details/LifeReturns
8. Weaver, T., Brunas, M. Brunas, J. (2007) Universal horrors: The studio’s classic films, 1931-1946. McFarland & Company.
9. Murderer offers body: Dr. Cornish would revive dead man. (1947, March 14). Lodi News-Sentinel, p. 1. Retrieved from: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19470314&id=F8czAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p-4HAAAAIBAJ&pg=2614,4837678
10. New Scientist (2009). How to make a tornado: The strange and wonderful things that happen when scientists break free. London, UK: Profile Books.
11. Prison warden bans ‘resurrection’ attempt. (1947, March 14). The Miami News, p. 7A. Retrieved from: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2206&dat=19470314&id=5gctAAAAIBAJ&sjid=h9UFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6320,6111564
12. Doomed convict asks effort to bring him back to life. (1947, March 14). The Saratosa Herald-Tribune, p. 8. Retrieved from: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19470314&id=ZeIcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=n2QEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6321,6372170
13. Test may bring dead to life. (1947, June 8). The Tuscaloosa News, p. 10. Retrieved from: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19470608&id=Ae8-AAAAIBAJ&sjid=FE0MAAAAIBAJ&pg=6390,464891
14. Behringer, W. et al. (2003). Survival without brain damage after clinical death of 60-120 mins in dogs using suspended animation by profound hypothermia. Critical Care Medicine, 31(5), 1523-31.

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Mad Scientist #11: Sidney Gottlieb

Max Hartshorn — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:42:25 +0000

A top secret CIA work retreat in the fall of 1953 took a turn for the weird when agency operative Sidney Gottlieb slipped LSD into his colleagues’ after dinner cocktails.¹ Most people on acid return to normal after a few hours—guest Frank Olson wasn’t so lucky.

The following morning Olson found himself in the grips of an LSD-induced psychotic episode.² Several days later, in a fit of drug-triggered paranoia and despair, the agent leapt to his death from a 10th floor hotel window.²

It’s hard to think of a group of people less suited to tolerate the effects of acid than paranoid, McCarthy-era spies.

Yet tolerate they did—in quantities that would make even the most mildewy Bard sophomore recoil in disbelief. After all, this was Allen Dulles’ CIA here. The 50s incarnation of the venerable intelligence agency was secret agentry at its most swashbuckling. These noble agents would let nothing stand in the way of the truth, or rather, the development of a psychopharmacological serum to extract truth from unwilling subjects.

Artist's rendition of Frank Olson's suicide.

Villainous narcotics like pot, heroin, cocaine, speed, laughing gas, amyl nitrate, PCP, and goofballs were routinely tested by agency and army scientists as potential truth serum candidates.¹ No drug was too obscene, even LSD, which at the time was little more than a scientific curiosity, devoid of any mystico-religious overtones.¹

Today it seems a bit silly. Acid-trippers aren’t exactly known for their faithful adherence to literal facts. Yet there was something about the drug that captivated government spooks. ¹

Several thousand times more potent than mescaline, LSD could induce hour-long fits of psychosis with a mere dab on one’s skin.² The drug was colorless, tasteless, and odorless—powerful enough to dose entire cities, yet subtle enough to discredit that meddlesome leftist intellectual with a well-timed bout of insanity during a key speech.²

People in the CIA began to wonder, was this an interrogation drug they had on their hands—or something more outrageous? Could it be used as a torture device? A bioweapon? Or perhaps even as a brainwashing agent? Could they use acid to control the minds of entire populations? Were the Soviets already doing this?

And so it was, in a series of paralogical leaps not unlike those forged during a typical drug-fueled gabfest, the CIA went from studying truth serums, to investigating LSD mind control tactics.¹ They created their own super-secret program for overseeing such research (codenamed MKULTRA), and placed at its head today’s anti-hero, the club footed, folk-dancing biochemist Sidney Gottlieb.¹

CIA director Allen Dulles kinda looking like a badass.

Gottlieb’s LSD Research Initiative

The first phase of Gottlieb’s LSD research program was simply to have everyone of his staff members drop acid themselves.¹

Once self-experimentation proved too predicable, Gottlieb and his men moved on to the second phase: surprise acid tests. Like some sort of twisted Just For Laughs gag, agents would slip tabs of acid into their colleagues’ drinks at work, and hang around to record the effects.¹

While Gottlieb’s men started out just experimenting on each other, the operation quickly expanded. Soon any CIA official in the wrong place at the wrong time could find themselves victim of a covert drugging.¹

After all, agents were going to be deploying this drug in the field on people who probably hadn’t even heard of LSD. They needed to know how people would react when they truly had no idea what was coming. This is science people! You gotta control your variables!

Experimental rigor aside, most agents didn’t take kindly to being dosed in the name of national security.² What’s more, as Frank Olson’s suicide confirmed, surprise LSD testing really was dangerous.¹

Under pressure from his superiors, Gottlieb quit drugging his coworkers, and focused his efforts on the third phase of MKULTRA’s LSD research: blind acid tests on the general public.²

Highly ranked Google image search result for "bad acid trip."

Operation Midnight Climax

Operation Midnight Climax was a classic bait and switch maneuver.¹ Gottlieb employed prostitutes to lure men back to a CIA-financed cathouse in San Francisco.¹ The hooker would lure the unsuspecting john back to her pad, at which point she’d offer him an acid-laced refreshment. All the while a secret agent would be stationed on a portable toilet behind a two-way mirror, watching the sleazy action and recording the—um—scientific results.¹

Crazy as it may seem, government-backed bordellos formed the backbone of the CIA’s in-house LSD research initiative for the better part of a decade.²

As agents got comfortable with San Fran’s seedy underbelly, they branched out and began drugging people in public.² Gottlieb even had his men studying femme-fatale-style sexpionage tactics, seeing as they were spending so much time around prostitutes anyway.¹

So what exactly did the CIA glean from all this drug and sex research? Well—um—uhhhhh—gotta go!

Oh, you’re still here? Yes—um—well the truth is we don’t really know what they learned, because for ass-protecting reasons Gottlieb ordered his staff not to keep records of the testing.² MKULTRA was dismantled in the early 60s, and CIA director Richard Helms ordered all related documents destroyed in 1973.²

There were some Senate hearings in 1977, but an eerily well-timed fit of amnesia prevented Gottlieb from testifying to much of anything.¹ So what we’re left with is just a smattering of documents, and a couple great books.

LSD Mind Control in Practice

Certainly it became clear over the course of Gottlieb’s experimentation that acid was not an all-powerful mind control agent.² But I’d wager the CIA found at least some use for it during their 10+ years of research.

Gottlieb himself is probably best remembered for his (apocryphal?) plot to slip Castro an LSD-laced cigar, though this plan never materialized (I think). Other similarly weird conspiracies have slipped into popular lore—like the plot to make Castro’s beard fall out with thalium salts²—or the plot to drizzle poison onto Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s toothbruth. Who knows what bizarre schemes were actually deployed as a result of Gottlieb’s research?

“One leftist professor in a Latin American university who had opposed the CIA says that he was working alone in his office one day in 1974 when a strange woman entered and jabbed his wrist with a pin stuck in a small round object. Almost immediately, he become irrational, broke glasses, and threw water in colleagues’ faces. He says his students spotted an ambulance waiting for him out front. They spirited him out the back door and took him home, where he tripped (or had psychotic episodes) for more than a week. He calls the experience a mix of “heaven and hell,” and he shudders at the thought that he might have spent the time in a hospital “with nurses and straitjackets.” Although he eventually returned to his post at the university, he states that it took him several years to recover the credibility he lost the day he “went crazy at the office.” If the CIA was involved, it had neutralized a foe.”²

Ironically, the most obvious effect of the CIA’s acid program was that it put LSD firmly in the minds of the 60s countercultural elite. Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey were among the many influential hippies who experienced their first trips as subjects in government-funded drug experiments.² Even the august Aldrous Huxley dropped his first tab at the hand of government spook turned acid evangelical “Captain” Alfred M. Hubbard.¹

Actor and all around cool guy Cary Grant got into acid in his late 50s.

Dredging through hot muck in Congolese jungles, or slinking through the crowd at Central American political rallies, Sidney Gottlieb comes across today as less a real person than some kind of shadowy anti-figure of hippy enlightenment, irreparably disfigured by the acid he once sought to control.

Mad scientists, after all, are nothing but conduits of insanity in its purest form—insanity which seeks only to perpetuate its own existence. If Gottlieb’s bizarre LSD-laced machinations speak to the sickness of his own mind, they also inadvertently opened a door to even more extreme forms of drug-fueled mania.

The hippie madness of Bart Huges—the psychiatric crimes of Ewan Cameron and Harry Isbell—the sinister mind control applications of José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado—what daemons are unleashed upon humanity when already megalomaniacal scientists come face to face with the most powerful hallucinogen the world has ever known?!

Hippie Scientists.

1. Lee, M.A., & Shlain, B. (1985). Acid dreams, the complete social history of LSD: The CIA, the sixties, and beyond. New York, NY: Grove Press.
2. Marks, J. (1979). The search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and mind control. New York, NY: Times Books.
3. Ronson, J. (2005). The men who stare at goats. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

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