Herbert West: Reanimator

Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak
only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister
manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of
his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago,
when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University
Medical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his
experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he
is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and
possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.

The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever
experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it
happened when we were in the medical school1 where West had already made himself
notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility
of overcoming it artificially. His views, which were widely ridiculed by the
faculty and by his fellow-students, hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature
of life; and concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind by
calculated chemical action after the failure of natural processes. In his
experiments with various animating solutions, he had killed and treated immense
numbers of rabbits, guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had become the
prime nuisance of the college. Several times he had actually obtained signs of
life in. animals supposedly dead; in many cases violent sign5; but he soon saw
that the perfection of his process, if indeed possible, would necessarily
involve a lifetime of research. It likewise became clear that, since the same
solution never worked alike on different organic species, he would require human
subjects for further and more specialised progress. It was here that he first
came into conflict with the college authorities, and was debarred from future
experiments by no less a dignitary than the dean of the medical school himself
-- the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the
stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham.

I had always been exceptionally tolerant of West's pursuits, and we frequently
discussed his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries were almost
infinite. Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process,
and that the so-called "soul" is a myth, my friend believed that artificial
reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and
that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs
may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as
life. That the psychic or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight
deterioration of sensitive brain-cells which even a short period of death would

be apt to cause, West fully realised. It had at first been his hope to find a
reagent which would restore vitality before the actual advent of death, and only
repeated failures on animals had shewn him that the natural and artificial
life-motions were incompatible. He then sought extreme freshness in his
specimens, injecting his solutions into the blood immediately after the
extinction of life. It was this circumstance which made the professors so
carelessly sceptical, for they felt that true death had not occurred in any
case. They did not stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly.