What is a soul?
Can it be touched?
Does it have mass?
The soul leaving the body by Luigi Schiavonetti, circa 1810.
The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce.
The bladder evacuated one or two drams of urine.
Getting upon the bed myself, my colleague put the beam at actual balance.
Inspiration and expiration of air as forcibly as possible by me had no effect upon the beam.
My colleague got upon the bed and I placed the beam at balance.
Forcible inspiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect.
In this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce.
Is it the soul substance?
How other shall we explain it?
MacDougall observed similar loss of weight in his other patients, but the results were not consistent.
MacDougall disregarded the results of the other two patients on the grounds the scales were not finely adjusted.
MacDougall then repeated his experiment with fifteen dogs.
It was published in 1907 in theJournal of the American Society for Psychical Researchand the medical journalAmerican Medicine.
A story about the experiment also appeared inThe New York Times.
Augustus P. Clarke wasnt the only one to criticize MacDougalls experiments.
The doctor was roundly derided by the scientific community as being flawed and even falsified.
MacDougall did not have any more breakthroughs regarding his experiments with the human soul.
His soul itself passed away into the other world in 1920.
The title of the 2003 movie21 gramswas taken from this belief.
