The April 1907 issue of American Medicine featured a paper by Dr. Duncan Macdougall describing his experiment whereby the beds of dying patients were placed on a sensitive balance.聽Believe it or not, he was trying to weigh the human soul! The paper was titled 鈥淗ypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance.鈥� Macdougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts聽placed six dying patients on the specially constructed balance and concluded that at the moment of death there was a loss in weight of about three quarters of an ounce, or 21 grams. He had previously determined the weight loss attributed to evaporation of moisture form the skin, and by comparison this was sudden and much larger. He even controlled for weight loss due to urine and fecal eliminations and concluded that these could not account for the change in weight. Air loss from the lungs was not the answer either, as he determined by lying on the scale himself and noting that breathing had no effect on weight. After weighing his six patients, Macdougall went to work on dogs. How he got his hands on 15 dying dogs is not clear, but he found no weight loss at the moment they expired. He wasn鈥檛 surprised of course because he didn鈥檛 think dogs had souls.聽No one since has confirmed Macdougall鈥檚 findings but the movie 鈥�21 Grams鈥� was based on this idea.
