And Now For Something Completely Different

Or: Two Heads are Better Than NONE!!!

Bryukhonenko wasn't alone in his fascination with bringing dead things back to life. As one might expect from a country that lost 6 million people to the Nazi's during World War Two, the science of resuscitation was something of a scientific and medical obsession The Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, where Bryukhonenko's dog experiments took place, was founded in 1936 by Vladimir Negovsky, a Soviet doctor who spent much of the Forties working on the front lines of the war with resuscitation teams, working to revive Soviet soldiers who were bleeding to death, and in some cases, had already bled to death. Negovsky's work prior to the war involved experiments with dogs, and Bryukhonenko was but one of many Soviet scientists working in this field.

In 1961, Negovsky defined his peculiar scientific specialty as "Reanimatology." From his obituary:

"Negovsky was able to develop reanimatology as a new medical discipline in the Soviet Union and trained and mentored several generations of "reanimatologists" in the communist countries, for whom anesthesiology, out-of-hospital emergency care and other acute clinical practices, became sub-specialties of reanimatology. Every hospital in Russia and former Soviet Republics has a Department of Reanimatology lead mostly by Negovsky's trainees."

Bryukhonenko also had protégés of his own, most notably Vladimir Demikhov, who in 1954 reportedly grafted a second head onto a living dog. You can see clips from his experiments here. The best view of Demikhov's creature is in the sixth clip (marked number "005").

Holy. Shit.