“3. A locust lived for fifteen days without a head—fifteen!
“That is an experiment duly attested.
“So far as the severed organ is concerned, there were these certified cases.
“This persuaded me that the brain and the body, if properly treated, would be able to live, each independently, for the few minutes of separation which the work requires. However that may be, the necessary slowness of trepanning induced me as a rule to exchange not brains, but heads, having learned from Brown Séquard that a dog’s head injected with oxygenated blood, had survived decapitation a quarter-of-an-hour.
“From this period date heteroclite creatures—a donkey with a horse’s head—a goat with a stag’s head—which I should like to have preserved, because the beasts which composed them were somewhat distant from one another, although they belonged to the same family—a distance which I have never been able to increase by this means.
“Alas! on the night of your arrival, Wilhelm left the doors open, and those monsters, worthy of Dr. Moreau, escaped, with many other subjects which were under observation. You may boast of having come into Fonval like a bull into a china shop!
“I resume; but in order to avoid exhausting the attention of a convalescent, I shall pass over, as far as details are concerned, the abandonment of this method, the discovery of the Lerne trepanner with an ultra-rapid-circular-saw, that of the brain-preserving globes or artificial meninges, that of the ointment for joining nerves, the recognized efficacy of the injection of morphia, approved of by Broca, for contracting the blood vessels, and so diminishing the loss of blood, the generally accepted employment of ether as an anesthetic, the manipulation of brains for the purpose of fitting them exactly to skulls, etc., etc.
“Thanks to all that, I exchanged the personalities of a—ah, I can never remember that word—squirrel and a wood-pigeon. That wasn’t bad! Then that of a wren and a viper. Then that of a carp and a blackbird—hot blood and cold blood. It was perfect!
“In face of these prodigies, my aim, that of human substitution was mere child’s play.
“At this juncture Karl and Wilhelm volunteered to submit themselves to the convincing test. It was quite epic. Otto Klotz had left me. Hum! Macbeth was not to be trusted! I operated alone, with the help of Johann and automatic machines.