It seems to be far fetched, but what if people really lost weight the moment they died? The ‘Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance’ by Duncan MacDougall was, apparently, published in 1907 and suggests that an apparent weight loss at the moment of death signifies the possible presence of a soul substance.
This study seems to be the first one of its kind. What if our soul really had a weight? What does ‘a stone falls off my soul’ as an expression of relief really mean? If we link our souls to other people, how does the expression ‘partier c’est toujours mourir un peu’ relate to that? If we are absent minded we would commit a mistake ‘lightheartedly’. Who would be in a position to repeat such tests? What alternative interpretations could we offer to any weight loss happening at that moment? In Dr. MacDougall’s investigations, did anyone hold the hand of the dying?
What happens if you take a newspaper with printed letters, and one without printed letters – i.e., just the blank paper; would the one with everything on it be a tad bit heavier than the one without? Would that surprise us? Would that weight be conclusive about anything other than ink as substance matter? What if the printing machines abraded a bit of paper in the process and the printed newspaper would turn out to be lighter than the unprinted paper? Would a loss of 0.04 grams in a newspaper of 200 grams total weight disturb you if you used a regular kitchen scale?
From Reto U. Schneider’s book “Das Buch der verrueckten Experimente”:
The story “The 21-gram soul” in 1907 was so hot that even the New York Times carried it. ?Soul has weight, physican thinks,? read a headline on page 5 of the newspaper on March 11, 1907. The article reported the curious experiment of a certain Duncan MacDougall, a doctor from Haverhill, Massachusetts.
MacDougall had long been working on the nature of the soul. According to his peculiar logic, if the psyche continues to function after death, it must occupy space in the living body. And because everything that occupies space also has weight, according to the ?latest conception of science,? the soul could be detected ?by weighing a human being in the act of death.? So MacDougall constructed a precision weighing machine: a bed arranged on a framework whose weight, with contents, could be ascertained to within exactly 5 grams.
The very sensitivity of the scales, however, greatly restricted the choice of research subjects. ?It seemed to me best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion, the death occurring with little or no muscular movement, because in such a case the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted,? wrote MacDougall later in the journal American Medicine. People dying of pneumonia, for example, were unsuitable. They would ?struggle sufficiently to unbalance the scales.?
The best subjects proved to be patients with tuberculosis, whose last moments would be ?as nearly inactive as could be found.? MacDougall found them at the Cullis Free Home for Consumptives. It is not known whether the patients or their families gave consent for the experiments. What is known is that some people were skeptical of MacDougall?s studies in biological theology. In the case of one of the research subjects who had been weighed, MacDougall complained that the ?scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference by people opposed to our work.?
MacDougall placed the first dying patient on his scales at 5:30 in the evening. Three hours and 40 minutes later, ?He expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible strike hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound.? MacDougal had to place two dollar-coin pieces on the scale to bring it back into balance. The difference was 21 grams.
The next five subjects painted a confusing picture: in two cases the measurements were unusable; a third patient?s weight decreased after death but remained stable after that; the weight of two others decreased and then went back up again; and the fifth patient?s weight sank, went back up, then sank again. In addition, MacDougall had difficulty specifying the exact time of death.
Yet such details did not deter him in his belief that he had proved the existence of the human soul. Indeed, he carried out a second experiment that confirmed his finding: 15 dogs (?between 15 and 75 pounds [6.8 and 34 kilograms]?) perished on the scales?all without the slightest loss of weight. MacDougall did not reveal in his article in American Medicine how he was able to persuade the dogs to die on his weighing machine, but in all likelihood he poisoned them. MacDougall has not happy with this experiment. Not because he found it reprehensible to kill 15 healthy dogs out of scientific curiosity, but because the results could not be compared directly with those of his research subjects. Ideally, the test should have been done on dogs that also were so diseased that they could not move, wrote MacDougall: ?It was not my fortune to get dogs dying from such sickness.?
Opinions of scientists on MacDougall?s soul-weighing machine diverged widely. Some of his colleagues thought the experiments were silly; others felt MacDougall had made ?the most important addition to science that the world has known? and discussed how his method could be improved. The use of dying subjects struck them as particularly troublesome because the rapid onset of decomposition could explain the change in weight. ?How much more satisfactory it would be if the subjects were normal men in perfect health,? a New York doctor was quoted as saying in the Washington Post. He suggested hanging the electric chair on a scale and determining a condemned person?s weight before and after electrocution.
MacDougall conducted further experiments and attracted attention again in 1911 when he affirmed that he had observed the soul leaving the body, ?a strong ray of pure light.?
The only enduring legacy of this experiment is the weight loss that occurred in the first research subject: for a hundred years the idea that the soul weighs 21 grams has persisted in popular culture. In 2003, that notion even made it into the movies. In a film titled ?21 Grams,? director Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu explored the deeper meaning of life and death.
