Life without a brain

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We are told that after the death of the brain, a person continues to live for a few minutes, then irreversible changes occur, inevitably leading to sudden death. Below are examples of real people who lived with either a dead (destroyed, fatally damaged) brain or no brain at all.

In all cases, these people led normal lives, went about their usual activities and retained their social status until death, usually unexpected. Official science is not yet able to explain these amazing facts, documented by doctors.

In the fall of 1917, the well-known magazine Nature and People published an article by Dr. A. Brucke "Can you live without brains?" Here are some of the incredible cases described in it.

● A 10-year-old boy was wounded in the back of the head with a rapier. The blow was inflicted according to all the rules of "art": the bone was shattered, the meninges were opened, the brain flowed freely through the wound. Beyond expectation, the boy recovered. But three years later, under the pressure of juices flowing to the weakened place, he died: he developed dropsy. The boy was dissected and found no signs of a brain. "This case is borrowed from the work of the physician Lusitanus, who lived in the 16th century in Holland. In fairness, it should be noted that there were all kinds of rumors about him, and some researchers considered some notes from his practice to be untrue.

● But here is a case described by the famous Dr. Deto. When a doctor worked in Algeria as an assistant to Professor Broca, an Arab with a shattered browbone came to their appointment. Outwardly, the wound was nothing special. The victim was bandaged and released. After some time, the patient recovered and began to lead a normal life. But after some time, he suddenly, without any symptoms of illness, died. The postmortem examination showed that instead of the frontal segment of the brain, the deceased had a huge abscess. About a sixth of the entire brain substance was disturbed, and the process of suppuration lasted at least three months.

● An even more unique case is described in a paper by Dr. Robinson at the Paris Academy of Sciences. An elderly man of sixty was wounded in the parietal region with the sharp end of a baguette. At the same time, some blood leaked out. For a month, the wound did not remind of itself in any way. Then the victim began to complain of poor eyesight. At the same time, the person did not feel any pain. After some time, the patient suddenly died with signs of epilepsy. An autopsy showed that the deceased did not have a brain - only a thin shell of the medulla was preserved, containing the products of putrefactive decomposition. For almost a month, a person lived with practically no brain.

The article cited above was written quite a long time ago, and now it is impossible to verify the reliability of the facts stated in it. Moreover, one can always suspect the exaggeration of some aspects of the incident, for example, the extent of the brain damage, and the suppression of others - the behavior of a person with such an injury. To reject such doubts, let us turn to reliable incidents of this kind that took place in our century, which the American Frank Edwards collected in his collection.

● In 1935, at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, a child was born who was completely brainless [congenital absence of the brain is called Anacephaly]. However, contrary to all medical concepts, for 27 days he lived, ate and screamed, as all newborns do. Moreover, the behavior of the child, according to eyewitnesses, was absolutely normal, and that he had no brain, no one even suspected before the autopsy.

● In 1940, Dr. Augustin Iturrica made a sensational statement at the Anthropological Society in Sucre, Bolivia and presented his colleagues with a dilemma that remains unanswered today. He and Dr. Nicholas Ortiz took a long time to investigate the medical history of a 14-year-old boy, a patient at Dr. Ortiz's clinic. The teenager was there with a diagnosis of a tumor in the brain. The young man was in complete sanity and remained conscious until his death, complaining only of a headache. When the pathologists performed the autopsy, they were amazed. The entire cerebral mass was completely separated from the inner cavity of the cranium. A large abscess has invaded the cerebellum and part of the brain. This begs the question: what was the boy thinking? The mystery faced by the doctors Ortiz and Iturric was not nearly as puzzling as the one that the famous German brain specialist Hoofland was introduced to. He completely reconsidered all his previous views after opening the skull of a man who was paralyzed. The patient retained all mental and physical abilities until the last minute. The result of trepanation was stunning: instead of a brain, a little more than 300 grams of water turned out to be in the deceased's cranium.

● In 1978, in the town of Protvin near Moscow, a fantastic incident took place. Something went wrong with the proton accelerator. Anatoly Bugorsky decided to eliminate them. However, for some reason, the blocking of the equipment did not work, and the physicist's head was "pierced" by a proton beam with a power of 70 billion electric volts. The radiation charge taken by the researcher is estimated at 200 thousand roentgens! The scientist simply had to have a brain burned out, and he, according to all medical canons, had to die. However, Anatoly Bugorsky lives, works and even rides a bicycle and plays football. After this terrible incident, he had two holes on his head: one on the back of the head, the other near the nose.

● An equally surprising incident occurred in the mid-1980s with professional scuba diver Franco Lipari from Trapani, Western Sicily. On a warm July morning, 26-year-old Franco and his friend were fixing fishing nets underwater. At a depth of three meters, they saw a large sword-fish entangled in the tackle. Franco shot her with a harpoon gun and hit her in the head. The wounded captive tore the net and rushed to the depths. Franco decided to overtake the prey. He put on his scuba gear, took his gun and dived towards the fish. She lay at the bottom at a depth of about 30 m and seemed lifeless. However, when the hunter approached her with a knife, the fish rushed swiftly straight at him. The man did not even have time to react, and the sword pierced his head to the left of the nose. Trying to free itself, the swordfish began to beat violently. With a terrible rattle echoing in the man's brain, the "swordsman of the depths" bone rostrum snapped.

First aid was rendered monstrously illiterate - his friend, trying to take out a piece of the sword with pincers, broke off the end sticking out at the nose. After that, Franke had every chance to go to the next world. An hour later, he was taken to the nearby Mazzari del Vallo hospital, where X-rays were taken of the victim. However, the doctors did not take the liberty of rescuing him and took him to a specialized clinic in Palermo, the journey to which took two hours. A council was urgently called here. Surprisingly, Franco's breathing, blood pressure and pulse were all normal! When the 6-centimeter wound on the face was washed, a fragment of a sword was discovered, barely protruding beyond its edges. X-rays showed that the fragment was 16 cm long and located at an angle of 25 degrees to the base of the skull, passing from left to right and from top to bottom.

The participants of the council found that the fragment was firmly stuck and its tip almost touches the vertebral artery, so any inaccurate movement of it could cost the victim his life. It was considered inappropriate and dangerous to remove the fish rostrum fragment surgically. To extract a foreign body strictly in the direction of its axis, a special tool was needed. It was developed overnight by one engineer and several mechanics. After 13 hours, the structure resembling a miniature overhead crane was ready. She was tested on a fragment of a swordfish rostrum, similar in length and shape, which was specially acquired for this purpose. Finally, 38 hours after Franco's admission to the clinic, the operation began.

For seven hours, the doctors made desperate attempts to remove the sword, but they were all unsuccessful. Franco's position was hopeless, as the doctors informed his parents. Hearing the verdict, the young man's father began to beg to give him the body of his son without this terrible debris. One of the surgeons, who promised to do this, went up to the young man and jerked the piece with his hand. And - oh, a miracle! ~ it was removed immediately. After that, Franco quickly recovered and a month later was discharged from the hospital. He began to dive again, and only a scar on his face is the only reminder of a terrible adventure.

● Finally, the most incredible event happened in 1996 with 29-year-old Oscar García Chirino. On October 14, he staggered across the threshold of the city hospital with his head pierced through by a harpoon fired from a spearfishing gun. The diver made it there without assistance. Oscar worked as a catcher inspector at one of the reservoirs near Havana. On that ill-fated day, he hunted fish with a friend. Carried away, Oscar's partner confused him in algae and mud with a large fish and aimed a shot in the head. The misfortune happened 80 meters from the shore, and Oscar swam the entire distance to the rescue station himself. During transportation to the hospital, neither consciousness nor coordination of movements left him.

Despite the unprecedentedness of the case, the doctors were not at a loss. They immediately proceeded to remove the harpoon from their heads. At first, the arrow was sawed from both sides, then the strong stainless steel had to be bitten with pliers. After that, a complex operation was carried out to remove a foreign body, at the moment of which the victim was exposed to mortal danger for the second time. Currently, Oscar feels fine and does not even rule out that he will return to his favorite business - spearfishing.

A few more facts.

● In 2002, a little girl from Holland underwent a major operation due to a neuroinfection (diagnosed with Rasmussen's syndrome). She had her left brain hemisphere removed, which is still believed to contain speech centers. Today, the child amazes professional doctors by the fact that he has perfectly mastered two languages and is learning a third. The girl speaks to her sister in perfect (for her age) Dutch, and speaks to her mother in Turkish. Dr. Johannes Borgstein, observing the little Dutch woman, says that he has already advised his students to forget all the neurophysiological theories they are studying and will continue to study. (Anomalous News, no.31 (94) 2002).

● A pathology similar to that recorded by Hufner (water instead of a brain) was discovered during the autopsy of a 55-year-old Dutchman, Jan Gerling, who died in 1976. The relatives were outraged by the information received from the doctors. She seemed offensive to them, because Jan was one of the best watchmakers in the country.

● A 22-year-old student from Sheffield, Scotland, suffering from migraines, surprised medical luminaries. The doctor sent him for an x-ray, but the skull scan showed no brain. The student's medical record contained an almost hopeless entry: hydroencephalus. As a result of such a disease, patients die at an early age, and if they survive, as a rule, they remain morons. In this case, the student is not only a full-fledged person, but also has an IQ of 126, which is slightly above the average.

● And again about the beheaded. In the St. Petersburg press there was a description of a mysterious case: one mushroom picker discovered an explosive device in the forest and could not think of anything better how to take a hellish machine in his hands. The thundering explosion completely blew off the poor fellow's head. In front of the astonished witnesses, the headless mushroom picker managed to walk two hundred meters, and the three meters headless body walked along a narrow board across the stream.

How can such incredible facts be explained? There is a version that some parts of the brain in extreme conditions can replace others. But what about when there is practically nothing left of the brain? Here it is quite obvious - no substitution will help.

All these phenomena can be explained if we understand that the biological body is only the foundation for our essence, and compensatory mechanisms sometimes make it possible to do without a brain at the physical level, due to the work of the brain, thinking, consciousness at other levels.

You can get some idea of these levels from the movie "New knowledge about the essence, soul, life after death …":