Out of a midcentury spirit of desperate scientific rivalry, came an impossible dream: not a head transplant (per se), but a full-body transplant — lungs, heart, kidneys, and all the wrappings. It sounds too much like Frankenstein. It sounds like the fever dream of B-movie scientists in frightful labs. But in the end, this isn’t a Frankenstein story at all; it’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde story of a doctor with two selves, two impulses, and even two names.

Brandy Schillace, editor of the journal Medical Humanities, tells the odd(ly) compelling story of doctor Robert J. White, who, starting in the 1950s, became obsessed with advancing medicine through organ transplantation, namely, head transplants.

Preserving the life of the human brain was the end goal of everything White did in the lab — every surgery, every experiment.

It’s part biography of White and his work, and part exploration of the ideas around what constituted being alive during this period in time, including where the soul dwelled, i.e., in the head or heart. The Jekyll and Hyde metaphor stretches a bit ; White comes across as quite typical, that is, a flawed but decent person who holds some opposing ideas and has a humbler family-man side and a daring career side that believes life could be saved by transplanting living heads onto healthy, albeit otherwise dead, bodies. Extreme, but not really the drama the title and setup would indicate. Still, the story is interesting enough that it’s forgivable.

The bigger dramas are around the animal rights activists who protested his experimental surgeries, including on monkeys, and the pushback against what the general public, and some medical colleagues, considered steps too far into playing God. This is where interesting debates around life’s boundaries come into play. Even the pope gets involved.

Some of White’s work does come across as pretty extreme and Frankenstein-ian, but Schillace shows that it wasn’t for glory, fame, or even to beat the Soviets; rather:

Preserving the life of the human brain was the end goal of everything White did in the lab — every surgery, every experiment.

One of the most interesting stories here is of the Cold War-era competition fueling so much of this medical advancement. White was inspired by a Soviet scientist’s head transplants among dogs, but the Soviets remained his greatest rivals in a time when information sharing was frowned upon. Still, after White assisted in the evacuation of an American soldier injured in Moscow, he sent a collection of microsurgical textbooks and journals, then banned from being imported by the Communist government, as a gift of thanks: “He saw those textbooks in a Russian library years later.” So he rebelled against convention in many ways, and pioneered no small share of developments in surgery and theory about life and neuroscience, even if much about White and his experiments is now largely forgotten, and still a bit stomach-turning. An interesting if slightly uneven biography of a man and a development that wasn’t to be.

My thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neurologist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul by Brandy Schillace is much more than the subtitle tells. The book is a profile on Dr. Robert White, a neurologist at the forefront of his profession with many of his techniques changing the field and still in use today. In addition the book goes into the history of animal experimentation, the rise of PETA, some of the odd things people call science, which others would call creepy, and more. Dr. White was driven by the idea of transplanting the brain if one person to another, moving souls as some would say, saving and preserving life as he would want the world to think. Dr. white never seemed to doubt his quest no matter how his practice on animals, especially monkeys whose heads he cut off and sewed on, learning more each time he did.

Ms. Schlliace has a gift of making the science and biology easy to understand and interesting no matter how disgusting or odd it might become. Ms. Scholars is quite funny too, which can be good in a book that raises a lot of ethical and moral questions. How can some of the more ghoulish experiments, especially the creation of two-headed dogs in Russia help others? Is it fair that those who can afford it can either freeze or transplant failing organs into immortality? I did enjoy all these questions, even if conclusions are ambiguous and/or still being debated. Dr. White seemed like a good man, with a truly odd sense of humor, but who truly tried to make a difference. A very thoughtful intriguing book.

A biography of Dr.Robert White, the medical mind behind several lifesaving neurosurgical procedures. In his lab, he was pushing the limits of science to find a surgical technique that allows for the transplantation of the human soul, the quest for immortality.

Anything related to the brain is interesting to me. I’m fascinated by it. As soon as I read the description of the book, I figured this is a topic I would love to read more about. This book not only talked about the medical knowledge and procedures related to organ transplantation, but it also delved into the moral and ethical repercussions. It poses the question: if we CAN do something, SHOULD we do it? This book addresses several ethical dilemmas: beating-heart donors, systemic racism in the medical world, predatory organ harvesting and animal experimentation. I’d recommend to those of you interested in learning more about Dr.White’s work and ethical implications.

Thanks NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for my copy!
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