Forbidden History - The Real Frankenstein

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

In this episode we uncover the true origins of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a story born from scientific curiosity and the eerie promise of reanimation. Over 200 years later, its questions about creation, responsibility, and the limits of human ambition are more prominent than ever in the age of artificial intelligence... Cast List: Guy Walters: Author, historian and journalist  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. There's a myth we all think we know. The story of a mad scientist, a stitched-together monster, and the terror of science gone too far. There were a lot of attempts throughout history to bring the dead back to life.

It's something that's deeply imprinted in us. most people don't realize is that the story behind Frankenstein has, you know, a direct historical inspiration. You know, we're not stitching together bodies and chucking electricity through them. But we are doing things that are kind of Frankenstainian, you know, in very unexpected ways. I mean, you've got cloning, you've got stem cell research, you've got genetic modification. But what if Frankenstein was more than just fiction? What if Mary Shelley's novel was a warning? Not from imagination. but from history.

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we dive into the secret world of 18th and 19th century science, where men of medicine gathered in candlelit labs to conduct experiments that bordered on the unholy, where corpses twitched, eyes flickered, and humanity dared to conquer death itself. Joining us for this story is historian Guy Walters,

who's explored the real roots behind Shelley's monster. What you're about to hear isn't speculation. It's a true account of the scientific inspirations behind Frankenstein. The story of Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, you know, of course, is sort of iconic. Frankenstein's monster is a sort of iconic figure of what mankind tries to achieve. You create some scientific advance and you end up creating a monster. Shelley was just 18 years old when she began the novel that would go on to haunt the Western imagination, as well as changing modern literature forever.

So there's a kind of very metaphorical element to the whole Frankenstein story that I think we find completely fascinating. But her story was born in a very specific time, a world grappling with the newfound power of electricity and other inventions never seen before. And her inspiration came not from fantasy, but from real experiments that shocked the public. But what I think most people don't realise is that the story behind Frankenstein has a direct historical inspiration, and that kind of lies in the scientific advances that were carried out in the 18th, 19th centuries. Advances that included a new mysterious force, electricity. You've got to remember that the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, she was influenced by

real-life scientists. You have men like Luigi Galvani, and he experimented with bioelectricity. In 1780, Italian scientist Luigi Galvani discovered something unsettling. While dissecting frogs, he touched a scalpel charged with static to the creature's spinal cord. Its legs twitched. The frog was dead, but it moved. Galvani believed he had found what he called animal electricity, the very spark of life. And then you had this other guy called Giovanni Aldini, who conducted electric experiments to try and animate corpses. Aldini, who is actually Galvani's nephew, wasn't quite content with frogs. He took things further, much further.

In one famous demonstration, he applied electricity to the... corpse of an executed criminal. Before a horrified crowd, the dead man's eyes flickered open. His jaw clenched, his arms jerked, and some onlookers even fainted. As the corpse convulsed, the audience gasped, but a question lingered in the air. If we can make the dead move, should we? And then you've got this other figure, a man called Andrew Yeur, who's this very contra-reversed. surgeon and he claimed to have briefly revived a hang criminal using electrical stimulation. So there was very much this feeling at the time amongst seemingly respectable scientific figures that Shelley's novel is drawing on that's, you know, reflecting a fascination and a fear of scientific

progress and its moral implications, but also drawing on what was felt to be a legitimate branch of science that was to basically use electricity to animate life. This wasn't fringe science. These were respected men, publishing papers, giving lectures, and being taken seriously. The world was watching as they prodded at the edge of life and death. And Mary Shelley was watching too. Her novel wasn't just fantasy. It was inspired by what was happening at the time.

So one of the biggest influences on Shelley and the whole story of Frankenstein is what's become known. what's become known as galvanism. And galvanism is the study of electricity's effects on biological tissue. And it's named after the guy you pioneered it in the late 18th century, one Luigi Galvani. Now, what Galvani discovered, you know, I think by accident, actually, is that with an electric current, you can cause the limbs of dead frogs to twitch. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the line between science, science and horror blurred even further.

The public had witnessed corpses twitch and frogs leap, but some scientists wanted more. They didn't just want to animate the dead, they wanted to bring them back. And that quest led to a disturbing new chapter, where experiments left the laboratory and crossed into something far darker. There were a lot of attempts throughout history to bring the dead back to life. You know, it's something that's deeply imprinted in us. Of course, you know, it happens in the New Testament. You know, people come back to life.

And scientists and doctors have long been trying to do it. So as well as having, you know, Aldini's electrical experiments, you've got medical practitioners in the early 19th century. I mean, they are experimenting with things like artificial respiration, blood transfusions and even injections of chemicals to try and restart vital functions. But how far did some of these experiments? actually go.

There have been, certainly experiments in reanimation. So if we go back to the early 20th century, you have a Russian scientist called Sergei Breakinenko, and what he does is tries to work on resuscating decapitated dogs by using this very primitive heart-lung machine. I mean, you know, he wasn't very successful, I can exclusively reveal. In 1939, Sergei Bruckenko, unveyored by the same Sergei Bruchinenko unveiled one of the most unsettling devices of the era, the autojector,

a crude heart-lung machine designed to keep organs functioning after death. But Brucheneenko didn't test it on volunteers. He tested it on the severed head of a dog. With the autojector pumping blood, Brucheneenko claimed to keep the dog's head alive for several minutes. eyes blinked, ears twitched, the mouth moved. Soviet propaganda proclaimed it as a medical breakthrough. But for many, it was pure nightmare fuel.

And then you have an American scientist called Robert E. Cornish. And what he tries to do is to revive dead animals with huge shots of adrenaline and artificial circulation of blood. And, you know, they achieve some sort of motion and twitching, but this is not actual reanimation or resurrection. You're just making tissue move. Cornish reported minor success, such as limb movement, spasms, even something like breath. But his request to test the method on human corpses was understandably rejected. That's the key.

None of these early reanimation experiments brought back any actual consciousness. No memory or soul, just twitching. But when filtered through newspapers and cinema, these trials became something else. Proof that maybe death wasn't final. Audiences were gripped. Zombie science, they called it. Frankenstein had stepped off the page and into real life.

More recently, we do see experiments on continued brain activity in dead pigs. And that, of course, has, you know, re-ignited kind of debates about, you know, whether reanimating life is something that's ethical to do. In 2019, a team at Yale University made headlines.

Using a chemical solution, they restored some cellular function in pig brains, a whole four hours after death. The brains weren't alive, but they weren't quite dead either. Neurons fired. and blood vessels dilated, causing a new grey area to open, between life and lifelessness. That's the space Mary Shelley imagined over 200 years ago, and it seems like we're still living in it.

You've got to remember if you chopped someone's head off, they apparently stay conscious for 90 seconds. Even though they're effectively dead, you know, there is still this kind of liminal, you know, threshold world between life and death. A world of blurred boundaries, a world where science walks hand in hand with ethics, myth, and fear. Coming up after the break, we leave behind the graveyard experiments of the past and step into the modern age, where real-life Frankensteins aren't just reanimating the dead, they're building life from scratch. From gene editing to synthetic humans. What if the monster isn't ahead of us?

What if it's already here? Reanimation might have failed, but the dream of creating life never died. In fact, today it's thriving. Scientists around the world are no longer trying to resurrect the dead, but instead they're trying to build the living. From gene editing to synthetic biology to lab-grown brains, today's real-life Frankensteins aren't haunted figures in stone towers. They wear lab coats, they publish peer-reviewed journals,

and they're rewriting the very definition of life itself. Historian and author, Guy Walters, elaborates. If you look at Frankenstein experiments, you're going to ask, what are the modern equivalent? You know, we're not stitching together bodies and chucking electricity through them. But we are doing things that are kind of Frankensteinian, you know, in very unexpected ways. I mean, you've got cloning. that's been going on for a long time.

You've got stem cell research, you've got genetic modification, and they're manipulating life in ways that seem frankly as magical as what Frankenstein was doing. It feels quite unnatural. We're tinkering with the building blocks of life. Take CRISPR, for example,

short for clustered, regularly interspaced, short, palindromic repeats, a name as awkward as it is powerful. With CRISPR, scientists can now cut and rewrite the very code of life, our DNA. It's already been used to modify human embryos, and in 2018, a Chinese scientist announced the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies. The scientific community was stunned. Many were outraged. We know that scientists can grow human organs in labs. We can modify DNA with a form of technology called CRISPR,

and we can even create synthetic bacteria. All right, so there's a lot of stuff that we can do that comes close. And it doesn't stop there. Some researchers have even begun experimenting with something known as brain organoids, and these are very tiny lab-grown human brain structures. And again, if you're creating a brain, you've got whole new ethical, concerns similar to those raised in the novel Frankenstein.

What does it mean to be a human? Are you only human if you are produced with sexual reproduction by other humans? Or will we one day be able to create a human totally synthetically, but yet it's functionally as human as you and me? It's not just biology anymore, it's technology too. With brain-computer interfaces, we can now link minds to machines. AI can simulate human thought. Synthetic biology can generate artificial life.

And when you fuse the two, biology and AI, you get something that feels dangerously close to Shelley's monster. You know, you are pushing the boundaries of what it means to create life. Now, once you put AI into tissue that can actually animate, you know, you're going to have an AI-driven fake dog or even a human. And so that is how Frankenstein's monster is going to be created. Perhaps it's possible that we're on the brink of turning science fiction into science fact. The big question is can we ever create a kind of real Frankenstein's monster?

We're getting very close to creating artificial life. But here's the real question. Should we? That's the heart of Frankenstein. Not the science, but the ethics. When we build life, who is responsible for it? Who decides what's human? Who gives it its rights?

What are the consequences of pushing nature's boundaries this far? All these ethical dilemmas faced by Frankenstein in the book, what is the responsibility he has for his creation? They're echoed in all the modern debates that we're all having about designer babies. Can I choose my baby's eye color, his or her height? And all the ethics around AI and again increasingly, you know, worries about synthetic life forms. You know, could we create a whole race of synthetic human slaves? Should they have human rights?

How do we know? You know, this is stuff we see in Blade Runner with the replicants. You know, what does it mean to be a human? These are debates that are never going to end. These aren't sci-fi hypotheticals. They're real debates in bioethics and philosophy today. And as the lines between man and machine, science and spirit blur, Shelley's 200-year-old warning sounds louder than ever.

But what was it that Mary Shelley truly feared? And why is her monster more human than we'd like to admit? Mary Shelley didn't just write a horror story. It's argued she wrote a prophecy. Frankenstein isn't about a monster, it's about a maker, and what happens when a man creates life and walks away. Shelley's Frankenstein is a hugely influential book, you know, massive impact on society, a real warning shot actually.

You know, because it's actually one of the earliest depictions of the kind of mad scientist, you know, meme or archetype. It really influenced how we perceive, you know, scientific ambition and innovation. And, you know, and I think what the novel also kind of really, you know, helped to do was to shape fears about what happens if scientific, exploration is completely unchecked. The mad scientist trope we see in everything from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Jurassic

Park to Oppenheimer, all starts with Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein was brilliant, but he was reckless. His pursuit of knowledge led not to salvation, but to suffering. And more than anything, Shelley's novel asked a question that science still hasn't answered. Just because we can, does that mean we should? So the role of Victor Frankenstein is that of a cautionary figure. You know, he's a reckless guy. The pursuit of knowledge isn't leading to something beneficial.

It's leading to something tragic. And I think that discussions about AI and biotech today, we're always referencing Frankenstein as a warning against scientific overreach. You know, don't go too far because you can't end up creating Frankenstein's monster. Well, we've heard that a lot of times, and we will continue to do so as these advances become even more spectacular. And that warning echoes not just through science, but through culture too. Since Frankenstein was published in 1818, its shadow has stretched across art, film, and pop culture. From Blade Runner to Westworld, from The Matrix to the island of Dr. Moreau.

The monster has many faces, but the theme is always the same. We create something and then lose control. The novel Frankenstein is incredibly influential, not just on the way we think about science, but also in a cultural way. Lots of horror films, clearly, lots of literature, TV, comic books, the idea of scientists creating life. Yeah, that's come so popular. And I think that actually more recently, that kind of Frankenstein's monster figure is no longer one of horror but more one of isolation and a figure that we feel immense sympathy for.

The monster wasn't born evil. He was made and then abandoned. He was feared, hunted and misunderstood. And in the end, the real villain of Shelley's novel isn't the creature, it's the creator. In our modern age, as we clone cells, build sentient machines, and stretch the boundaries of what life even means, we have to ask, are we building a better future? Or are we like Frankenstein, creating something we won't understand until it's too late? Frankenstein teaches us a hell of a lot about the future of science. It's a cautionary tale about when, you know, scientific arrogance gets out of control. control. It tells us that we've got to be responsible and there are a lot of unintended consequences if we advance too far too quickly. We've got AI, we've got genetic engineering, we've got synthetic

biology. That's all here and now. Mary Shelley wrote her story during a stormy night in 1816, but her questions are timeless. Who are we to create life? And what becomes a the thing we make when it starts asking the same. Frankenstein, the novel, is as relevant today as it was when Shelley wrote it. In fact, even more so, because we really do have the power today to create a Frankenstein's monster. And it is just around the corner knocking on our doors. And it's up to us to make sure it doesn't get out of control. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more.

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