MacDougall, who thought that the soul must have mass, therefore believed that the soul could have a weight that could be weighed. To prove this, he measured how much weight the patients lost by weighing dying patients on a precision scale before, at the time of death, and immediately after death.
His result was 21 grams! This experiment, which took an important place in popular culture, was not accepted in the scientific world due to many inconsistencies.
MacDougall selected six dying patients from a nursing home for his extraordinary experiment.
Four of these patients suffered from tuberculosis, one had diabetes and the other had an unspecified illness. He weighed the first patient, who did not have much time, on his precision scale. He added losses such as sweat, urine, and oxygen to his calculation and switched to waiting.
After waiting for about four hours with pulse measurements, the patient breathed his last.
When he measured the patient’s body, he saw that the weight loss was 21 grams. After this patient, he measured other patients in the same way, the loss was again 21 grams. He noticed a loss of 21.3 grams at the time of death in only one patient, but ignored this result because he thought he might not have adjusted the scales well enough.
He tried the similar method this time with 15 dogs.
He found that unlike humans, dogs did not lose any significant weight. He attributed this to the idea that dogs may not have souls. This interesting experiment was published in the journal American Medicine in April 1907.
Unsurprisingly, the experiment attracted media attention but was not taken seriously by the scientific community.
According to the respected medical journal The Lancet; The doctor and his assistants had drawn the findings in the direction they wanted. MacDougall remained silent for 4 years after this article was published.
In 1911, he appeared on the scene this time with a much crazier idea: He was going to photograph the moment the soul leaves the body!
Although he made some attempts with the thought that he could achieve this, of course he could not. Nine years after this claim, he died of liver cancer at the age of 42. While waiting for his death, he also took a close look at his own body and described it as “the most interesting death he’s ever seen”.
This unscientific experiment nonetheless gained an important place in popular culture.
Although it does not describe this event, a movie was called “21 Grams” because of the popularity of the claim that the soul has weight. There are still many people today who think that the soul really is 21 grams.
Sources: 1, 2, 3
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