Anubis: The Weigher of Souls

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Hollander, Lewis E., Jr. " Unexplained Weight Gain Transients at the Moment of Death". Journal of Scientific Exploration 15 (4): 495-500 a b c d e Roach, Mary (6 September 2012). Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Penguin. ISBN 978-0241965016.

This panel may have formed a single image for private devotion or it may have been part of a larger scene depicting the ‘Last Judgement'. The archangel Michael was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. People throughout Europe revered him for his powers of protection and because of the part he was thought to play at the Last Judgement. At this time, depictions of the Last Judgement usually show Christ seated on a throne surrounded by the Apostles, who sit in judgment with him. Below, the dead rise from their tombs. On the right of Christ, angels conduct the favourably judged souls to heaven. On the left, devils carry the damned down to the torments of hell. St. Michael often appears in the lower foreground of the image, holding the scales. Grams, Missing Cosmonauts, Sound of Death (TV episode). Dark Matters: Twisted But True. 28 September 2011. In Christian teaching, at the Second Coming of Christ the dead will rise from their tombs to be judged and sent to heaven or to hell. St Michael holds the scales of judgment and weighs the souls of the resurrected. A righteous soul will tip the balance of the scales downward. In this panel we see small devils trying to tip the scales in their favour. MacDougall teamed up with Dorchester's Consumptives' Home, a charitable hospital for late-stage tuberculosis, which at that time was incurable. MacDougall built a large scale, capable of holding a cot and a dying tuberculosis patient. Tuberculosis was a convenient disease for this experiment, MacDougall explained in his paper, because patients died in "great exhaustion" and without any movement that would jiggle his scale.a b Hood, Bruce (1 June 2009). Supersense: From Superstition to Religion – The Brain Science of Belief. Hachette. p.151. ISBN 978-1849012461.

Bosveld, Jane (12 June 2007). "Soul Search: Will natural science pin down our supernatural essence?". Discover magazine . Retrieved 20 March 2020. MacDougall then repeated the experiments on 15 dogs and found no loss of weight — indicating, to his mind, that all dogs definitely do not go to heaven. St Michael is fairly clear, although his facial features have gone, and so is the left-hand pan (i.e. the one on the right in the picture) of the balance. There are some faint confused details to the right of this pan – they may have shown devils trying to interfere with the balance. Michael wears a long robe and cloak here, but he is often found in armour, or/and with feathered legs signifying his angelic status, as at South Leigh (link in the table below).

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MacDougall's first patient, a man, died on April 10, 1901, with a sudden drop in the scale of 0.75 ounce (21.2 grams). And in that moment, the legend was born. It didn't matter much that MacDougall's next patient lost 0.5 ounce (14 grams) 15 minutes after he stopped breathing, or that his third case showed an inexplicable two-step loss of 0.5 ounce and then 1 ounce (28.3 g) a minute later. a b c d Wiseman, Richard (1 April 2011). Paranormality: Why We see What Isn't There. Macmillan. pp.32–34. ISBN 978-1743038383. Before MacDougall was able to publish the results of his experiments, The New York Times broke the story in an article titled "Soul has Weight, Physician Thinks". [6] MacDougall's results were published in April of the same year in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, [7] and the medical journal American Medicine. [8] Criticism [ edit ] Despite its rejection as scientific fact, MacDougall's experiment popularized the idea that the soul has weight, and specifically that it weighs 21 grams. [1] [5] The title of the film 21 Grams references the experiment. [2] [4] [5] MacDougall, Duncan (1907). "Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together With Experimental Evidence of the Existence of Such a Substance". Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. 1 (1): 237. ISBN 9785874496289.

In December 2001, physicist Lewis E. Hollander Jr. published an article in Journal of Scientific Exploration where he exhibited the results of a similar experiment. He tested the weight of one ram, seven ewes, three lambs and one goat at the moment of death, seeking to explore upon MacDougall's purported findings. His experiment showed that seven of the adult sheep varied their weight upon dying, though not losing it, but rather gaining an amount of 18 to 780 grams, which was lost again over time until returning to their initial weight. [10] In 2009, Hollander Jr.'s experiment was subjected to critical review by Masayoshi Ishida in the same journal. Ishida found Hollander's statement of a transient gain of weight was "not an appropriate expression of the experimental result", though he admitted "the cause of the force event remains to be explained". He also warned about possible malfunctions of the weighing platform in two of the cases. [11] While MacDougall believed that the results from his experiment showed the human soul might have weight, his report, which was not published until 1907, stated the experiment would have to be repeated many times before any conclusion could be obtained. [4] [5] Reaction [ edit ] The New York Times article from 11 March 1907The 21 grams experiment refers to a scientific study published in 1907 by Duncan MacDougall, a physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts. MacDougall hypothesized that souls have physical weight, and attempted to measure the mass lost by a human when the soul departed the body. MacDougall attempted to measure the mass change of six patients at the moment of death. One of the six subjects lost three-quarters of an ounce (21.3 grams). Wass, Mike (10 August 2015). "Niykee Heaton Gets Serious With Dark, Sprawling "21 Grams": Listen". Idolator. Archived from the original on 16 July 2017 . Retrieved 16 July 2017. For Xbox gamers, Cult of The Lamb has 37 achievements that offer a total of 1000 Gamerscore. Achievement Name