TEXT C Los Angeles cabinet-maker
Edward Stewart may be a modern Dr. Frankenstein. In 1959, he claims, he restored
a dead friend to life with a simple technique. He opened the dead man’s chest,
rubbed his heart with a "secret, life-giving’plant juice, then stimulated the
heartbeat with 110 volts of electricity. The friend, says Stewart, has been
living in Hawaii ever since. Stewart also claims his
revivification technique works on the small animals he suffocates in jars in his
garage. It takes three hours to revive a dead mouse, he reports, and five hours
for a small dog. "Some-times, "he adds , "I buy those little chicken hearts in
the super-market, and I make them beat again using my plant juice before I cook
them for dinner." According to Stewart, he discovered the plant
juice one day while cutting hedges around his former home in Hawaii. Juice from
one of the plants splattered onto his wrist, he says, and he suddenly noticed
the skin begin to twitch. Nonetheless, he adds, he can’t reveal the name of the
plant. "When the juice is zapped with electricity, "he says, "it gives off a
deadly gas." To promote his idea, Stewart has spent the past
decade sending his papers to the University of California, he Army, and a number
of government agencies. One scientist who evaluated the concept was Lynn
Eldridge, of the Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Research Center, in Los Angeles. She
says Stewart may not be joking. "The extracts from plant like belladonna are
used to supply nutrients to human organs, which must be kept alive while
traveling to a transplant. So Stewart might cut the heart out of a mouse and
keep it alive with plant juice. But this effect is short-lived, and the organ
must be placed into a healthy body or it dies. It’s impossible to place a live
organ in a dead body and expect it to revive every other organ in that body. I
think Stewart has observed a basic scientific phenomenon, but his interpretation
is crazy." Stewart found certain plant juices were useful in his experiments when he ______.
A.realized they gave off gas fumes B.saw they contained electricity C.noticed their effect on his skin D.discovered their secret names