Science: Dog No. 4

The first two dogs returned briefly to life, died a second and final death. The third dog, which like its predecessors, has been put to death clinically and revived by chemical and mechanical means, did better (TIME, April 30 et seq.). Slowly Dog No. 3 learned to crawl, sit up on its haunches, eat, bark, snap flies. Last week it was eating 12 oz. of meat per day. But it could not stand alone, did not behave like the normal mongrel terrier it had once been. Lean, jet-haired Dr. Robert E. Cornish concluded that a taste of death had irreparably injured its brain.

Dr. Cornish decided to try nursing yet another dog up the steep ascent from death. In his Berkeley, Calif, laboratory last fortnight the sallow young experimenter, with all the care and skill that experience had taught him, asphyxiated a fourth mongrel, revived it a half-hour after breathing had stopped, five minutes after its heart was stilled. Last week Dog No. 4 was rolling in delirium. But its blood pressure was rising, its pulse was nearly normal, and it was swallowing liquid food. Dr. Cornish reported that Dog No. 4’s first week was vastly more encouraging than Dog No. 3’s had been.