All language subtitles for The UnXplained s07e13 Mad Scientists.eng

WILLIAM SHATNER:
A trailblazing biologist determined to design

a half-man, half-beast hybrid.

A gifted neuroscientist

whose machine can
manipulate the human mind.

And an eccentric aristocrat

who inspired the world's
greatest mad scientist.

For thousands of years,
mankind's great thinkers

have made enormous contributions
to scientific progress.

Yet, throughout the centuries,

there have been more than
a few men of science who-

while brilliant
in their own right-

pushed the boundaries
of experimentation

to the edge of madness.

They were renegades,

known for bizarre experiments

involving human-animal hybrids,

mind control devices,

and even...

unspeakable torture.

What were these mad scientists
really trying to achieve?

And what led them
down a strange, dark path

in their pursuit of knowledge?

Well, that is what
we'll try and find out.

? ?

A Chinese district court
finds biophysicist He Jiankui

guilty of illegal
medical practices.

His crime involves
a highly controversial procedure

where the DNA of three female
embryos is genetically edited

for the purpose of creating
HIV-immune babies.

The academic
and medical communities

call the radical experiment
unsafe and unethical...

and He Jiankui is added
to a long list of geniuses

whose dangerous acts
have deemed them

"mad scientists."

NINA FARAHANY:
I think there are so many questions

about what motivated him.

Scientists are driven by
the same kinds of motivations

that other humans are driven by.

In the same way that people want
to gain fame or notoriety,

scientists may want
to gain fame or notoriety, too.

Sometimes, that ambition
drives them to cut corners

or to do unethical experiments

because it could lead
to a major breakthrough

that would advance their career.

And that desire to become
famous, to get a Nobel Prize,

to be internationally
recognized,

can really, in many ways,
poison the work

rather than improve it.

ALEX BOESE:
There's one particular

psychological bias that
scientists are more prone to

than your regular person.

And that's the idea that
they can get seduced

by the idea of
their own brilliance.

They can get attached
to an idea,

and they will go
to extraordinary lengths

to be proven right.

The mad scientist
represents this idea.

(thunder crashes)

SHATNER:
When we think of a mad scientist,

we often imagine
an obsessed madman

performing extreme
and disturbing experiments

in a dark laboratory...

...but where does
that image come from?

The term "the mad scientist"
really enters the mainstream

in 1818 with
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein was
the doctor,

and she described him
as a mad scientist,

and that's really
the character that we think of

when we think
of a mad scientist.

Victor Frankenstein created
a humanoid figure.

A monstrous humanoid figure.

He was playing God,

and therefore, he was
the ultimate mad scientist.

Mad scientists were
fanatically driven to experiment

well away from
the eyes of the population,

and often these experiments,

they're unethical,
they're immoral.

They could be grotesque
and horrifying,

as with Dr. Frankenstein.

WALTER GRUDEN:
The stereotype of the mad scientist

comes from
the early 19th century.

We know that, at that time,

many scientists worked
in isolation,

and so, this idea of
a mad scientist,

working by themselves

in some dungeon
or laboratory somewhere,

who perpetrated some great crime
against humanity,

this comes from

this Victorian-era way
of conducting science.

SHATNER:
While stories of evil geniuses

have frightened and intrigued us
for hundreds of years...

...in reality, history can point
to many gifted scientists

whose work could be
called progress...

or perversion.

And perhaps the most
surprising example of this

is a brilliant mind
from the 17th century

who laid the foundation
for modern science...

Sir Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton was

an extraordinary,
extraordinary genius.

He invented

a way of expressing
how the world works

in his mammoth book
Principia Mathematica,

which was a bestseller
in the day.

Basically, he was showing people

how to make sense of the world
through mathematical formula.

ROBERT ILIFFE:
Newton articulated the three laws of motion.

He devised the principle
of universal gravitation.

So, I think it is fair to say

that even his contemporaries

thought that the Principia
Mathematica was extraordinary,

and it almost put an end
to science.

That is to say,
there was very little

left to do after Newton's work.

SHATNER:
Yet despite Newton's groundbreaking achievements,

to some,
the "Father of Physics" was also

the most famous mad scientist
of his time.

JOHN HORGAN: If you're talking
about the trope of the mad scientist,

Isaac Newton is a classic
example in the sense that,

on the one hand,
he is an emblem

of human rationality,

of using human reason

to figure out how nature works.

But Newton was also a crackpot,

we'd have to say,
in modern terms.

He was a practitioner
in alchemy,

which is this kind of occult
precursor of modern chemistry.

He actually did experiments,

hoping he could find
the philosopher's stone,

which would be a way
to turn lead into gold.

SHATNER:
In addition to his interest in alchemy,

Newton's most notable
achievements include

the invention of calculus,

the creation of
the reflecting telescope,

and groundbreaking work
in optics.

But his determination

to understand the composition
of light and color-

and how we see them-

would lead him to conduct
gruesome experiments...

on his own eyes.

Newton's experiments
with his eyeballs

are extraordinary.
There's nothing like it.

What he's trying to find out is,
how do we see things?

We have two separate notebooks

where he describes in detail
what he did,

what the effects were, because
they damaged his eyesight.

We know that his eyesight was
damaged by looking at the Sun.

So much so that,
in the last months of his life,

he recalled that he could still
see the Sun if he shut his eyes.

That he'd clearly
damaged his eyes

so much that this lasted
for 60 years.

RICHARD SPENCE: Newton was really
interested in understanding sight.

So, in the pursuit of this,

he took what he called
a bodkin, a large needle,

and he decided to see
what would happen

if he stuck it into his eye

and pushed it back
as far as it would go.

And he saw all these
little lights going off,

because if the eye is injured,

it will send little screaming
light signals to your brain.

Now, you know, most people
probably wouldn't do that.

Isaac Newton was kind of crazy.

IWAN MORUS:
On the one hand,

it's perfectly possible
to understand

the rationale of
what he was doing.

It's a perfectly
sensible question:

what does happen
to your sight when the eyeball

is distorted in various ways?

But the thought that a good way
of answering that question

would be to kind of

push a needle around
the back of your eye...

It's just this horrible,
horrible thought.

No sane person would do
something like that.

But Newton clearly thought
that this was

a perfectly sane thing to do.

You know,
there lies the mad scientist.

SHATNER:
A scruffy-looking dog is found injured

and brought
to an animal hospital.

But upon examination,
doctors soon realize

this is not a typical canine.

In fact,
this four-legged creature

is an entirely new
hybrid animal-

a unique combination of
domesticated dog

and Pampas fox.

Now identified as a dogxim,

its origins are unknown.

Was it created in nature,

like the coyote-wolf hybrid
called coywolves,

or was the dogxim man-made,
like the liger,

which is half lion, half tiger?

Our fascination
with hybrid creatures

can be traced back
for thousands of years,

and many times,
these freaks of nature

include strange,
unthinkable combinations

that are part animal
and part human.

If you go back and look
at Paleolithic art,

40,000 years old,

they were painting on cave walls

hybrids of men and birds,

women and bison.

Another famous example
is the Sphinx in Egypt.

The body of a lion
and the head of a person.

And one of the driving forces
behind this was

the idea that it might
have been possible,

using magic,

to actually acquire

some of the powers
that animals had.

(growling)

SHATNER:
While tales of half-man, half-animal creatures

have been part of folklore and
mythology since ancient times,

has modern science
now reached a point

where human hybrids
could become a reality?

This mad notion was the focus
of a Russian scientist

with a disturbing vision.

Dictator Joseph Stalin launches

the first Five-Year Plan
for the Soviet Union.

Heavy industries like steel,
coal and machinery

are the focus of
rapid industrialization.

Farmers are pressured
to increase their harvests

to support
the growing workforce.

And scientists are tasked
with figuring out

how to breed stronger livestock.

Leading this effort is
a Soviet biologist named...

Ilya Ivanov.

Ilya Ivanov started his career

as a biologist
under the czarist regime,

and one of the things
that he was very interested in

was the idea
of the artificial insemination

of horses and cattle.

So this was a way to take

particular desirable
biological traits-

find the stallion
who had the traits you wanted,

and if you milked the sperm

and artificially inseminated it,

that one horse can fertilize
five thousand mares.

BOESE:
Before the 20th century,

artificial insemination was

looked at as something
that just would not work.

Ivanov helped to prove
that this was not the case.

And he began
using these techniques

to create strange new creatures.

He created
a zebra-donkey hybrid

called a zedonk

and a bison-cow hybrid
called a zubron.

And it was amazingly successful.

He became the foremost expert
in the world

on artificial insemination.

But then,
he had an even bigger idea.

He thought, could we breed

a human with a chimpanzee?

SHATNER:
To most of us, the idea of

a half-human,
half-chimpanzee hybrid

sounds, well, insane.

But Ilya Ivanov was convinced

such a combination was possible,

and he became obsessed
with the idea

of creating an entirely
new species called...

humanzee.

FARAHANY:
Ilya Ivanov wanted to create a crossover

between apes and humans.

He called these
the "humanzee" experiments.

It was government-funded
research.

Part of what people believe
he was trying to show

is that humans really did
evolve from apes.

And by showing this kind of
interspecies impregnation,

it would, in theory, prove
that kind of evolutionary link.

As far as we know, Ilya Ivanov

tried this
in a lot of different ways.

He tried to get human women

to be willing to be inseminated
artificially by ape sperm.

He tried to transplant tissue

from the uterus of a human woman

into an ape.

He was willing to do it
in any way that was possible.

BOESE:
For one of his experiments,

in the summer of 1927,

Ivanov managed to bring back
to the Soviet Union

a male orangutan.

He named him Tarzan.

And he actually managed to find

five female volunteers
in the Soviet Union.

One of the women
memorably commented that

"I'm willing
to volunteer for this

because I feel that my life
has no more sense anymore."

So, I think he was somehow
tapping into the suicidal women

in the Soviet Union who were
just gonna abandon all hope

to participate
in this gruesome experiment.

But Ivanov had failed
in his attempt,

because the orangutan
promptly died.

Soon after that,
one of his colleagues

reported him for
counterrevolutionary activities

and he got arrested
in one of Stalin's purges.

They exiled him to Kazakhstan.

Two years later,
he died of a stroke.

That was the end of
his research project.

SHATNER: Was Ilya Ivanov's dedication
to his delusional hybrid project

simply to prove that human
beings had evolved from apes...

...or was there
a more diabolical plan

driving the 10-year odyssey
to create a humanzee?

Why would a Soviet scientist
want to create a humanzee?

Well, we don't really know,
but we can take some guesses.

One of those would be
that he was trying to

create a super soldier.

When you talk
about a chimpanzee,

you're talking about
more stamina, more strength.

If you can pull some of
those traits into a soldier,

you would have, essentially,
a real-life Captain America,

and if you ask me, it's probably
what Ivanov was trying to do.

SHATNER:
While it's widely believed

that Ivanov's controversial
experiments failed...

his work still raises

some very important
ethical questions.

Even if Ivanov could create
an ape-man in a laboratory,

should he have
ever been allowed

to try in the first place?

The humanzee experiments raise
so many ethical concerns.

Ilya Ivanov really regarded,

you know,
whether it was humans or apes,

not as, you know,
beings that required

and demanded our respect,

but really as instruments

for his different
scientific experiments.

So, imagine for a moment

that the humanzee experiments
had actually succeeded.

We have no idea
what the consequences

for the woman would have been.
Would it have

destroyed her health?

And how would
we regard that species?

Would we think that was a human

that had all of the same rights
as a human?

It's almost impossible

to grapple with
the full set of implications

of an experiment like that.

Why, for thousands of years,

have humans been so obsessed

with creating hybrid creatures?

One thing that many
mad scientists have in common

is that they rarely consider

the consequences
of their experiments.

Which was the case
with the Harvard professor

whose research into mind control

may have turned
one of his students

into a dangerous madman.

SHATNER: Since
its founding in 1636,

some of the brightest minds
in science

have taught at
this esteemed institution...

...including James Watson,
a pioneer in the science of DNA,

Nobel-Prize-winning physicist
Sheldon Glashow,

and the highly controversial
psychologist

named Dr. Henry Murray.

GENTILE:
Henry Murray was a psychologist

who, during World War II,
worked for the OSS.

The OSS is the precursor
to the CIA.

So this is
military intelligence.

And what he was trying
to find out was,

how far can you push
a man before he breaks?

He was testing
the limits of soldiers

put under interrogation
and pressure.

After the war,

Murray went to work at Harvard
as a psychologist.

COBB:
During his time at Harvard,

Henry Murray was very interested

in how people respond
under extreme stress,

how personality is shaped
and changes.

He was committed
to do so at any cost.

And if that meant
subjecting students

to extreme stress to do it,

then Henry Murray was,
was okay with that.

SHATNER:
At Harvard,

Murray began
a new research project

titled "Multiform Assessments

of Personality Development
Among Gifted College Men."

He would experiment

with intelligent
Harvard undergraduates

to observe
how they responded to extreme

psychological stress.

GENTILE:
He wasn't looking for

students that had
a sense of self-confidence.

He wanted students that were

feeling isolated, out of place,

having trouble
acclimating to college.

He wanted weak people
to be part of this experiment

not strong ones,

because the weak mind

is just much easier to break.

So, he conducted
very in-depth interviews

with these students that were
potentially for the study.

He wanted to know
what their values were,

what their fears were,
what they believed,

what made them proud,
what made them nervous,

what made them ashamed.

And, from there,
selected 22 students

to be part of the program.

SHATNER:
From 1941 to 1962,

Dr. Murray engaged
five groups of 22 men.

Each group committed to
200 hours of intensive testing

from their sophomore
to senior years.

After collecting information

about each subject's life,
beliefs and values,

they were confronted with

"vehement, sweeping and
personally abusive attacks,"

all intended to trigger

crippling levels of stress
and mental collapse.

TONY McMAHON:
He was using tactics

that he'd learnt working
in the intelligence services

during the Second World War.

Murray's methodology was to,
first of all,

have a brightly lit room
in which he'd create

what were termed
"confrontational scenarios."

So, his subjects would
be covered in electrodes

and then basically shouted at,
yelled at,

and this was hugely distressing.

COBB:
In essence, Murray would spend many sessions

just berating students,

and they would use those things

that were dear to those students

to deflate their self-esteem.

To make them feel
like they were worthless.

To give them a sense that,

the things that they believe,

the things that define them,

were horrible things.

Even Murray,
by his own admission, said

that these were
vehement assaults on the ego

with the intention
of breaking individuals down.

There was some controversy

and some dissentment
among his colleagues

that he was
a fringe psychologist.

And when one considers
lonely undergrads

and the developmental period
in which they're in,

that kind of treatment,

that kind of torture,

it stays with the person.

The students of Murray's
experiments, 25 years later,

noted serious
negative side effects

of both physical health,
mental health, social health

that remained with them.

(yelling)

SHATNER:
What motivated Dr. Murray

to conduct such disturbing
and cruel experiments

on vulnerable young minds?

Was it a radical act
in the name of science,

or was there a bigger force

influencing
the psychologist's mad project?

While it's a matter of debate,

some believe
Henry Murray may have been

working for
the U.S. government's

Central Intelligence Agency.

There are rumors
that he was, in fact,

still working for the CIA,

trying to develop techniques
of mind control.

I mean, when asked,
Murray was quite cagey

about, you know,
just what he was trying to do.

Though I do sometimes wonder,

was Murray really capable of

controlling the way
other people thought

as a result of his experiments?

SHATNER: Is it possible that Murray's
diabolical Harvard experiment

was secretly a mind control
program for the CIA?

We can only speculate.

But what we do know

is that one of
Murray's test subjects

died in a supermax prison

for a crime spree that caused
death and destruction

across the United States.

His name was Ted Kaczynski,

also known as The Unabomber.

Ted Kaczynski was only 16 years
old when he was at Harvard.

This is a very,

very impressionable
developmental period

and one can't help but think,

what exactly was the role

of Murray's experiments

on Ted Kaczynski's
future behavior?

The Unabomber carried out
a series of bombings

in which
three people were killed

and 23 injured.

And, of course,
people have wondered

was it as a result of
Murray's experiments

that Kaczynski went on
to become

this sociopathic serial killer?

We know that for a fact
from his manifesto,

where Kaczynski
specifically went after

the American
scientific community

and he attacked psychology
as a field.

Now, we can't make a direct,
exact correlation that,

did this experiment
in mind control

cause Ted Kaczynski

to become, essentially,
a domestic terrorist?

We can't do that.

But certainly these experiments

built Kaczynski's worldview.

The psychological
mind control experiments

conducted by Dr. Murray
are distressing,

to say the least.

But there's another
mad scientist

whose fascination
with electric medicine

led to the creation of
manipulative-

and shocking-

experiments.

SHATNER:
Cardiologist Dr. Claude S. Beck

is performing
open heart surgery...

...when his patient suddenly
goes into cardiac arrest.

In that moment,
Beck decides to use

an untested invention
of his own design

and saves his patient's life
by shocking him

with 1500 volts of electricity.

Dr. Beck's invention,
called a defibrillator...

...and other devices,
like the pacemaker

and the cochlear implant,

has transformed lives
through electric medicine.

But while it's easy
to see the benefits

electricity has offered
medical advancement,

it is not without controversy.

Such is the case
surrounding a troubling tool

invented by
a brilliant brain scientist

named Jos� Delgado.

Jos� Delgado, I'd say,

is the most flamboyant,
outrageous,

fascinating scientist I've ever
interviewed personally.

He moved to Yale in 1950.

And while he was there,

over the next
two and a half decades,

he did all these experiments
involving brain implants.

And he spelled this out
in a book

that was published in 1969

called Physical Control
of the Mind.

For example,
he developed something

called the stimoceiver,

which is a device
about the size of a half dollar

that could be inserted
inside the skull,

and had electrodes
inserted into the brain

that could both detect signals

being passed from one part
of the brain to another

and also stimulate the brain

to get various effects.

Through this period, Delgado did
a lot of experiments on monkeys.

He had all these monkeys
in a chamber,

and there was
one big alpha male bully and...

and a bunch of females.

Delgado put a stimoceiver

in the brain of the male monkey,

and when he pushed the lever,

it would pacify the male

and the male would
suddenly become

meek and mild
and cower in the corner.

There was a little bit of this

kind of mad scientist
aspect of him.

Through this period also,

Delgado had been experimenting

not only on animals
but also on humans.

So, in the 1950s, he was going

into mental hospitals

and inserting brain implants
into mental patients,

most of whom had epilepsy
or schizophrenia.

He's trying to show
the power of these technologies

for treating
severe mental illness,

In his book
Physical Control of the Mind,

he was showing that he could
control people's emotions.

He could make them laugh,

he could make them feel rage,

just by pressing a button

which was controlling
the, uh, the stimoceivers

implanted in their brains.

He wanted to take
the technology as-

as far as it could possibly go.

SHATNER: Delgado claimed that his
radical experiments with the stimoceiver

showed evidence that human
behavior could be manipulated

by applying electricity
to the brain.

And to prove it, Delgado created
a public demonstration

of his mind control machine

after embedding his device

in the brain of a bull.

Delgado famously went
into a ring with a bull.

And the only thing
he was holding in his hand

was a radio receiver.

And as the bull charged
toward him,

he pressed a button

and the bull suddenly stopped.

And what he was trying to show

was that it was possible
to control behavior

of other species
through electrodes.

But what it also did
was show people

how powerfully
the brain can be manipulated

and induce fear in the public

about the possibility
of brain control

and external brain control

by what could be seen
as a mad scientist.

The problem
with his technology is

it isn't designed
to suddenly change somebody

from charging at you
to stop charging at you.

It's designed
to suddenly change behavior

and to make people
or species into puppets.

HORGAN:
Delgado had a vision

for humanity being reshaped

by these technologies
that he was developing.

In his book
Physical Control of the Mind,

he said that technologies
like the one he was developing

had the capacity to transform
human society for the better,

to create this kind of utopia,

but he's describing his patients
as though they are puppets.

He can make their limbs
move up and down.

He can make them wave their arms
and clench their fists.

He can make them
laugh on command.

And what-what's creepy is that

often these people thought
they were

doing these things
of their own free will.

SPENCE:
Where does it cross the line

between understanding
how the brain works

and then making it work
in a particular way?

So, if we could just
have a remote control,

and press a button and make
them behave in certain ways,

the next question becomes,
why not?

BOESE:
If we think of what Delgado was doing

to control human movement
and behavior,

then that raises the question of

who gets to play God,
in that sense?

Who-who, then,
gets to control that behavior?

If we are like puppets,

then who is pulling the strings?

The idea of creating
an army of human puppets

is certainly unnerving.

But when it comes to conducting
diabolical human experiments,

the medical atrocities committed

during World War II stand alone,

and earned one mad scientist

the terrifying nickname...

"the Angel of Death."

SHATNER: The Auschwitz-Birkenau
state museum, Poland.

During World War II,
it was the site

of some of the worst atrocities
in all of human history.

Over one million
innocent victims

were murdered here by the Nazis.

And later, survivors would speak

of a sadistic doctor
stationed here,

responsible for
truly horrific experiments

on the prisoners,

named Dr. Josef Mengele.

MORUS:
There's no more notorious example

of the extremes
of scientific experimentation

than Josef Mengele at Auschwitz

during the course of
the Second World War.

His victims called Mengele
"The Angel of Death."

When he came around,
they knew they were going to die

in horrible, vicious ways.

SPENCE:
Mengele joins the Nazi party in '37.

Early on,
he's actually a combat doctor.

He's wounded
on the Russian front,

sent back to Germany to recover,

and then reassigned
as the chief medical officer

of this prison industrial
extermination complex

with an almost unlimited
supply of test subjects,

and given relatively free reign

to conduct whatever research
it was that he wanted.

That consisted of things like

removing a kidney
from a prisoner

and then putting them
back in their work detail

to see whether or not
they could continue to do that.

He deliberately infected
prisoners with various diseases.

But he was very interested
in genetics.

One of his favorite things

was to work with children,

particularly sets of twins.

And he would take the twins

and use one as the experiment

and the other as a control.

What is so inexplicable
about Mengele

is he could be so kind
and warm and gentle

to these children one day,

giving them chocolates,
giving them candy,

and the next day, turn around
and torture and murder them.

What kind of monster
does it take

to do something like that?

SHATNER:
What madness causes a man of science

to become a sadistic monster?

Some believe the answer
may be found

by examining a secret Japanese
program during World War II.

Tucked away in this city
of ten million people,

a group of brick buildings
stand as a grim memorial.

It is the home of
a research and development unit

created by the Japanese
during their occupation of China

in the 1930s and 1940s.

And it is the place
where thousands of prisoners

were the victims
of heinous experiments

conducted under the direction

of Senior Army Surgeon
Shiro Ishii.

Shiro Ishii was born in 1892

into a wealthy family,
a land-owning family.

His father grew rice
and made sake.

Ishii, though, didn't want
to follow in Daddy's footsteps.

Instead,
he wanted to go into medicine.

He joined the army
to become a military surgeon.

Ishii was interested
in studying cholera,

epidemic hemorrhagic fever,

bubonic plague-
which was one of his favorites-

but he also recognizes

that you can weaponize
these diseases,

so he proceeded
to examine biowarfare

as an option for Japan.

SHATNER:
To test bioweapons for Japan,

Ishii formed
a military research group

known as Unit 731.

And between 1937 and 1945,

they performed
deranged experiments

on thousands of
prisoners of war and civilians.

General Ishii was focused
on the military research.

But again,
the atrocities are unimaginable.

These were usually
Chinese prisoners of war,

but it was really
any non-Japanese.

He infected patients with
tuberculosis, anthrax,

all kinds of diseases,

just to see what would happen

and if he can find ways
to make his soldiers immune

or how to treat them.

And this was his justification.

SHATNER: It is estimated that
Shiro Ishii's bioweapons experiments

killed over 10,000
test subjects.

After World War II,
both Ishii and Mengele

were never punished for
their crimes against humanity.

But ever since their horrific
secret experiments

were revealed to the world,

we still don't understand

why these deranged doctors

would do such despicable things.

One answer that Mengele
and Ishii both offered

was that they were doing it
for nationalism.

They were trying
to further, perhaps,

important military aims
of their country.

But I think, beyond that,

part of the answer is that

these two were
clearly psychopaths.

They enjoyed doing this.

We really don't know
what would drive a person

to dehumanize another person.

What happens in their mind?

Do they snap for some reason?

Is there some trauma
inflicted upon them as a child?

How could a scientist be drawn

to this type of experimentation?

I think this is
one of life's great mysteries.

SHATNER: Sitting
on a lonely hilltop

is an imposing stone fortress

that dates back
to the year 1252.

Known as Castle Frankenstein,

after the family who first
laid claim to this land,

legend says it is the location
that inspired

Mary Shelley's world-famous
gothic horror novel.

But surprisingly,
Shelley's Frankenstein

is not about the original
13th-century family.

(thunder crashes)

It is said inspiration
for her mad doctor

would come from tales
of grotesque experiments

conducted at the castle
centuries later

by an eccentric scientist named

Johann Dippel.

GENTILE:
In 1673, in Castle Frankenstein,

was born the perfect man
for that name.

That was Johann Konrad Dippel.

He was technically a theologian.

He went to college to study God.

Dippel was a man
fascinated with death,

with other people's death,
with his own death,

and wanted to prolong his own
as long as he could.

He believed that the soul
was a physical liquid

inside the human body.

And he procured cadavers,
legally and illegally,

to perform experiments
on bodies in all kinds of ways.

What it entailed was
sticking a tube-

usually made of
animal intestine-

into a cadaver,

extracting the fluids
from the cadaver

and then transfer it
into another cadaver.

The goal being
to reanimate that cadaver

with this other one's soul.

MORUS:
It makes sense that,

if the soul has a specific,
physical location in the body,

then you can kind of
extract it, and-

and put it-
put it in another body.

So about half a century
or so previously,

the French philosopher
Ren� Descartes

had developed a view of humans

that the soul has a physical
location inside the body.

In case you're interested,
your soul is there.

That's where
the pineal gland is.

And the pineal gland,
according to Descartes,

is where the soul lives.

But nevertheless,

even by the standards of
the early 18th century,

if Dippel did indeed carry out

these experiments on the dead,

trying to transfer the soul

from one body to another...

This sounds,
from our point of view, mad.

BOESE:
Like the famous fiction,

these stories of
horrendous experiments...

they serve as cautionary tales

about the pursuit of knowledge.

You really have to ask:

is the way science
is being pursued,

is it being done with wisdom

or do we risk creating
Frankenstein's monster?

The mad scientist, for me,
leaves me conflicted.

We need to push science forward.

We also have to maintain
our ethics and our dignity.

But there are experiments
that may require us

to forego our ethics,

even if just for a moment,

for the greater good.

And I think that's why
the "mad scientist" archetype

will continue to persist.

As long as we pursue
the boundaries of science,

we'll always be questioning
our own boundaries as humans.

Were Johann Dippel's attempts
to resurrect the dead

driven by ambition, curiosity...

or plain old madness?

Maybe it was all of the above.

And it stands to reason
that a unique combination

of genius and insanity

may also apply to other great
thinkers throughout history.

But no matter
how potentially groundbreaking

their outrageous experiments
might be...

they serve
as a chilling reminder

that the price of progress

is often paid in blood.

Whether it's ego or a warped
notion of right and wrong,

what ultimately motivates
these mad scientists remains...

...unexplained.

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