"Professor Dowell's Head" by Alexander Belyaev

Today I have a classic in my hands - this is Alexander Belyaev "Professor Dowell's Head". This work occupies a special place in Russian science fiction. In its naturalism, in its physiological nature, in its horrifying display of all simplicity, the medical clarity of what the human mind does with the surrounding nature, when a person perceives nature not as a temple, but as a workshop.

This book shows simple solutions to complex problems. Neither then, at the time of writing the book, nor today, medical science, including neurosurgery, including physiology and intensive care, have a solution to these medical problems. That is, we can transplant the head from one dog to another, but to live such a dog will be bad and not for long, not to mention a person or, for example, a monkey.

It's not that the nervous tissues do not fuse well and heal, we just can not recreate everything as it should be. But science walks with leaps and bounds and already live and well the people to whom the whole hand is transplanted and the hand has taken root, they use it as their own, all the nervous reflexes have recovered. The brain and consciousness, the autonomic nervous system, fully perceive this part of the body as its own. Moreover, there is a person in Germany who was transplanted both hands. He lost them as a result of the accident and from the donor he was transplanted to two dead human hands and he uses them, owns them.

Mad than this, only frames with bionic prostheses, which now really exist, are controlled by electromagnetic impulses of the brain. And of course, this person, who reminds us of the Terminator from the cinema, is already the reality of our days. These prostheses become cheaper and soon, finally, a huge number of people who are unlucky in this life who suffer, will be able to get at least some relief.

So the problem of the existence of the head apart from the body is a problem that has not only a physiological explanation, but a problem that has a certain mystical dimension. Because not without reason, the location of courage, the spirit of man, the ancients revered - the belly, and the heart is considered the receptacle of emotions and soul. Because we endow organs that have absolutely nothing to do with this, these functions, can not explain their consonant work and friendly existence.

A person is not only the mind, it is his body. And just Belyaev puts these questions in full swing. Man can not exist without a body. And the man who is driven by the conditions of life in inhuman circumstances - existence without movement, without external factors, and we know a fine example - is Stephen Hawking, a man who has to accept that his body does not function at all and it has been happening for decades, in fact his entire conscious life. He became very young man, the disease progressed and lost even his speech, even the opportunity to communicate with people, he did not despair, he did not go insane. And thanks to the voice synthesizer and electronic control system, the technique that surrounds it, he continues to think, communicate, exist in society. Notice, I now ignored the fact that this is a completely brilliant scientist.

So Belyaev foresaw all this and set all these problems. Belyaev, of course, the conflict of inhuman, anti-human treatment of man, as a guinea-pig, set and decided in his book. And when we read this heart-rending story, we are very empathizing. For example, when I read this book as a child, I was deeply shocked. Only the court on Ichthyander and its creator, in the novel "Amphibian Man", are comparable in strength of moral influence with these moments.

When you read all this, you are amazed at the relevance of all these moral problems. About a lot of this now, only just humanity began to think. About a lot of this in connection with the achievements, about which I said above in the measure of my poor knowledge, humanity has not even thought about and tried to reason. And of course, we are not ready to solve these moral problems.

But Alexander Belyaev has already written a book that is not just interesting with his detective story and the tragic fate of the characters, which not only captures with its absolutely fantastic entourage, because all this laboratory romance is stunning and striking with its medical naturalism. And when you read this, you understand that this is one of the most important books in connection with the rapid, philosophical and moralsteps, the development of science, which, as I have said, develops by leaps and bounds.

Read and enjoy Alexander Belyaev's book "Professor Dowell's Head" - a work that will excite, I think, many more generations of readers.

I took the pages of the book from a Russian version of this novel, which was only recently released in one of the Russian publishing houses. I thought that many people do not like reading text without pictures :)