The French Scholar’s Resurrection Blueprint
For centuries, Christians have believed that on the Day of Judgment, all the dead will rise from their graves. Over a hundred years ago, French scholars were convinced that through science, they had found a shortcut to resurrection. All that was needed was to rhythmically pull the tongue.

‘The treatment requires patience,’ instructed Dr. Jean Baptiste Vincent Laborde, a Parisian physician and scientist, to journalists. Laborde cured from death. He revived drowning victims, poisoned and asphyxiated individuals, just a few among several cases in his records. He even revived a dog and a guinea pig. Newspapers around the world at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries wrote about his machine, which prevented the dead from wandering in the afterlife. It was believed that the rapidly advancing field of medicine could even solve problems like resurrection.
Scientific Approach to Death
A hundred years ago, the determination to scientifically unravel the mystery of death was greater than ever before. Equipped with new technological advancements, scholars attempted, among other things, to precisely determine the moment of departure from this world and its resulting consequences. The French and the English led the way. For instance, Jules Antoine Josat invented a device that squeezed the nipples of the deceased. The inflicted pain was meant to be so unbearable that anyone mistakenly declared dead would undoubtedly wake up. Meanwhile, the Englishman Jacob Winslow advised pouring hot wax over the deceased body or, alternatively, pouring warm urine into their mouth. Lack of reaction meant that one had to ultimately accept God’s judgment.
Similarly, the famous American physician Duncan MacDougall, in the early 20th century, published a series of articles in both daily newspapers (e.g., ‘The New York Times’) and specialized journals (e.g., American Medicine’). He argued that the human soul weighed 21 grams. MacDougall used a special bed-scale on which he weighed people in an agonal state, just before and immediately after death. The observed loss of mass, according to him, was directly related to the departure of the soul.

Attempts to revive fish heads
Therefore, it’s no wonder that in Paris, the practicing Russian medic Aleksiej Kuliabko appealed at the beginning of the last century to all medical societies to establish — quite fittingly — an institute to study the phenomenon of death.
‘These institutes can render humanity extremely important services, primarily minimizing or entirely preventing medical errors that send living people to their graves,’ emphasized Dr. Kuliabko.
He based his thoughts on numerous experiments conducted, among others, on fish. He severed their heads and connected them to a vessel with blood. ‘The head revived and performed all vital functions,’ assured the doctor.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Dr. Laborde (born in 1830) was one of many scholars fascinated by the medical exploration of the phenomenon of death. It must be acknowledged that before he believed in the discovery of a way to stop what’s final, he had established quite a reputation in Paris. He solidified this with numerous publications and membership in prestigious scientific societies. He authored books such as ‘The Physiological Process of Dying’ (1894) and ‘Automatic Signs of True Death’ (1900). He was a member of the first Paris Anthropological Society and a lecturer at the School of Anthropology of Paris, a school founded by the eminent surgeon and anthropologist Paul Broca.
He served as vice president in the Society of Biology. He himself founded the Society of Public Health and Hygiene. In 1887, he was elected to the authorities of the National Medical Academy in Paris. Upon his death in 1903, the ‘British Medical Journal’ bid him a worthy farewell, recalling Laborde as ‘a freethinker.’ A man of upright convictions whom he could defend credibly’ and an ‘energetic humanist engaged in campaigns combating tuberculosis and alcoholism.’

How to Revive the Dead
At the end of the 19th century, when Laborde presented his latest discovery to the scientific world, due to the author’s certain reputation, the scientific community didn’t consider him a man lacking sanity. Inspired by the incident of a boy saved after drowning, the Frenchman claimed to have developed a method that could revive the deceased.
‘A drowning victim pulled out of the water without any signs of life can come back to life after a few hours,’ Laborde assured.
He presented his theory supported by alleged practice in a book titled ‘Physiological Approach to Death and Rhythmic Pulling of the Tongue,’ published in 1897. He referred to the story of a 16-year-old who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of France (he was underwater for ten minutes). After being pulled out, attempts were made to resuscitate the drowned boy in various ways. Laborde claimed that someone then applied a strange method involving pulling the youth’s tongue, quite literally. After three hours, the boy regained consciousness.
This unusual report apparently convinced Laborde that there was a remedy for death, prompting him to try it in laboratory conditions. He used his assistant’s dog for the experiment, euthanizing it for the sake of science, then placing it on the operating table. News of the Frenchman’s experiment spread across Europe.
‘For a long time, rhythmic pulling of the tongue was applied to the dog, but it did not lead to the desired result, and the doctor stopped the experiment. The laboratory assistant, who was very fond of the dog, continued the experiment, and the dog came back to life,’ newspapers reported in September 1900. The article emphasized that ‘similar tongue pulling should be conducted continuously for several hours.’

Why the tongue, of all things?
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why the idea of seeking a remedy for prolonging life centered on the oral cavity. Over a hundred years ago, various medical hypotheses associated the tongue with several ailments. One of them claimed that the wrong shape or positioning of this organ caused stuttering. Meanwhile, the American physician William Osler, living at the turn of the century, recommended pulling and stretching the tongue for hiccups. Medical literature from the beginning of the last century also preserved similar recommendations in treating this ailment by the French authors Jean Viaud and Raphael Lepine.
Laborde took it a step further. John Reynolds Francis’s ‘Encyclopedia of Death and Life in the Spiritual World,’ published in 1898 (a vast work collecting reports of people who survived their deaths and the scientific theories accompanying their cases), states that the scientific community accepted the reports of the Parisian doctor with interest and ‘strong support’:
‘The tongue-pulling method can be effective not only in suffocation, drowning, or carbon monoxide poisoning. Dr. Laborde also assures of its effectiveness in choking, lockjaw, and similar conditions.’ The encyclopedia also recalls the story of a man who accidentally drank an entire bottle of a strong bromine solution. ‘Several hours after the heart stopped, this man was brought back to life and cured by pulling his tongue,’ Francis describes.

Resurrection creates a stir in the media
Little is known about eyewitnesses to Laborde’s miraculous procedures or the accounts of those brought back from Hades by him. The credulity, even within medical circles, is somewhat understandable. We’re talking about an era when humanity was indoctrinated with the imminent victory of science over death. Doctors claimed that death was often declared hastily, leading, for instance, to burying the deceased with a string so that if one woke up in the coffin, they could pull it to activate a bell on the surface. In such circumstances, the legend of Laborde took on a life of its own. The French doctor became a hero in American newspapers at the turn of the century.
‘The Daily Journal’ reported on 40 confirmed cases ‘cured from death.’ Laborde himself, quoted in the article, claimed that this therapy ‘primarily requires patience.’ ‘Star,’ citing the ‘British Medical Journal,’ predicted a ‘true medical breakthrough.’ It also suggested that ‘Laborde’s rhythmic tongue pulling stimulates the laryngeal nerve, thereby affecting the stimulation of the respiratory system.’ A ‘Star’ reporter who met with the French scientist claimed to have seen with his own eyes how he revived a previously drowned guinea pig.
In 1900, the editorial board of the specialized journal ‘The Philadelphia Medical Journal’ decided to analyze this phenomenon. Dr. Francis Eustace Fronczak summarized Laborde’s discovery in an enthusiastic tone. The article recommended using this method in cases such as stillborn babies. Fronczak also guaranteed that it would work even if dealing with a person who had passed away an hour and a half before the intervention.

Resurrection Machine
Riding the wave of interest in his death remedy, Laborde decided to improve it. Together with his assistant, a certain Monchel, they constructed a resurrection machine that rhythmically and precisely pulled the tongue 120 times per minute. In the first version, a clockwork mechanism was used. However, this made it difficult for the hours-long procedures since the device needed to be wound up every five minutes. Soon, the apparatus was upgraded by employing an electric motor powered by two batteries. In this way, tongue pulling was now conducted for three consecutive hours without moving the device.
Laborde’s machine wasn’t particularly complex, as confirmed by the surviving sketches. It consisted of an electric puller that ended with a clamp mounted on the patient’s tongue. Next was the motor, a transmitter, a resistance cylinder regulating the flow of electrical current, and the aforementioned pair of batteries. The American ‘Lewiston Saturday Journal’ wrote:
‘After a longer operation, the patient first emits a deep sigh, then there may be vomiting, but immediately after, when the procedures continue, the breath returns incredibly quickly.’
Abandoned Method
We don’t know how many units of Laborde’s machine were created. There’s also no knowledge of any part of it surviving to our times. Most likely, the device was not even used on the eccentric scientist himself when he passed away in April 1903.
Interestingly, Laborde was never exposed. On the contrary, before his death, the National Medical Academy awarded him a prize of 2,500 francs. More curiously, in some medical dictionaries, the term ‘Laborde’s method’ has been preserved. It refers to the stimulation of the respiratory system in suffocation by rhythmically pulling the tongue. Yet, it would be futile to seek a licensed doctor who recommended or applied this method in any therapy.
Unless we’re talking about speech therapy exercises. In these, stretching and exercising the tongue muscles help in better articulation of sounds. Practical medicine shamefully abandoned Laborde’s sensational theories as quickly as it initially admired them.
“A Man of Medical Innovations”
In the aforementioned obituary in the ‘British Medical Journal,’ however, it was written about the French scholar that he ‘permanently inscribed himself in the annals of medical innovation as the man who discovered a way to bring the dead back to life.’ Laborde’s body, as noted by the journal, was cremated, and his brain was handed over to the Paris Museum of Anthropology.
Speaking of the brain, in a definition of death formulated over half a century after Laborde’s death by the distinguished Harvard anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher, a deceased person began to be recognized as someone whose functions of that organ had irreversibly ceased. If someone today pulls someone’s tongue for any purpose, it’s only metaphorical.
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