10 Immoral Truths About Vladimir Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dog

6 /10 The Heart Of A Doctor

He continued experimenting, not always too pleasant results, on animals with the hope of moving his techniques and understanding onto humans in the future.

With that aim, he learned how to reroute blood flow and restructure arteries during operations, which allowed him to eventually perform the first coronary artery bypass operation, which has become a staple lifesaver of the medical community today.

5 /10 The Mind Of A Madman

Vladimir learned how to connect living parts of the body to other living parts.

Organs were replacing organs, tissue, and arteries and veins all connecting.

This formed the basis that led to his most strange experiments during the 40s and 50s, including transplanting different organs into dogs, giving one an extra working heart that he kept around until it also died.

And through it all, though many dogs killed at his hands, he was always optimistic about it.

4 /10 The Two-Headed Dog

In 1954, he made history by recording and documenting a procedure where he transplanted the upper half of one dog onto the lower back of another, creating a two-headed and six-legged dog.

The creature did not live for very long, but both heads were responsive, active, and very much alive.

He continued performing experiments of this kind for five years until his last subject in 1959 in East Germany.

He routinely acquired his dogs from catchers.

They were strays, owned by no one, and in turn, he became their caretaker until it was their time on the operating table.

3 /10 Dr. Demikhov

He received his official doctorate after finally writing a monograph, or a single-author technical journal, of all his techniques and experiments, in which he coined the term Transplantology.

The medical community reviewed his work as groundbreaking, if also morbid and dehumanizing.

Though his two-headed dog experiment was seen as the peak of spectacle in his career, he accomplished things far more extraordinary soon.

2 /10 Accept No Substitutes

Artificial organ transplants were already a thing in the 1950s and 60s.

Many organ replacements were done with artificial ones, rather than live or living organs as Demikhov had worked with.

His practices standardized the routine and led to more options with surgery and medical knowledge.

In 1967, he performed the world’s first heart transplant operation from one person to another, and both subjects lived.

For that, he was called the “Father of Heart and Lung Transplantation.”

1 /10 Two Heads, One Legend

Although his success did not come without sacrifice, Dr. Demikhov was not a man who let his losses be wasted on anything but progress.

In his experiments’ notes, where he took very detailed step by step procedural breakdowns of everything he did, he was not morose or downbeat.

He did not mourn the dogs he used.

Even as they died, he was thankful for them and optimistic about what he had done.

He had a mad scientist’s correct attitude, but not an evil one, and his madness proved to be vital to his ambition.

When the world was staring at a wall where no progress could be made, he dared to do the dirty work and circumvent it, just like he bypassed the organs he reattached.