Optogram

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Wilhelm Friedrich Kuhne pioneered the science of optograms.  An optogram is the last thing an organism sees with visual light, preserved on it's retina.  At one time the idea was the darling of forensics, as such a picture could be a game changing crime investigative tool.  But it proved a dead end.
In order to fix the image, the visual purple (rhodopsin) must be stabilized before further light hits the retina.  Kuhne used a solution of alum to do so.
Dr. Kuhne would put rabbits and frogs in cages, secured so all they could look at was a window. After he killed them, he immediately removed the eyes and fixed the image in alum.  This is what he found-


  

Rabbit eye post-mortem image.  I imagine rabbit was on the menu a lot.



The same image reversed to show normal orientation.  Eye images are upside down and are corrected by our brains.  I think that is how it works.



Finally in 1880 Erhard Gustav Reif was guillotined for killing his children, and about time too.  The above drawing is Dr. Kuhne's from the murderer's retina.  Some see a guillotine blade but it is more likely the steps up to the machine, if anything.  One cannot see the blade when in position to be executed.


Herr Professor Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhne, 1837-1900.

      Elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1898.  Coined the word "enzyme".  I wonder that Germany did not honor him with something or the other.  I guess his work did not lead to improved explosives or he lacked a "Von" in his name.  He died as the head of the department of physiology at Heidelberg U.  The Jack the Ripper case used optography to no avail.  Fritz Angerstien  was convicted of killing 8 members of his family and optographs were used.  But it was his confession that sealed the deal, and in 1911 experts said that the Angerstien photos were worthless.


In 1975 Heidelberg tried again with Dr. Evangelos Alexandridis re-evaluating Kuhne's work.  He did reproduce the rabbit experiment successfully but concluded that optography was useless to forensics.
My prediction is that this will become a courtroom tool, considering what we will have available.  We are on the edge of being able to recover thought from a brain, so why not?


Be seeing you!

Comments

  1. Perfesser BearDecember 25, 2020 at 9:30 PM

    IIRC, this philosophy was part of the script of the 1999 version of The Wild, Wild West:

    "According to the Retinal Terminus Theory... a dying person's last conscious image is burned into the back of the eyeball like a photograph."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Billy D BunnyDecember 28, 2020 at 10:28 AM

    Maybe someday such things will be used in forensics, but the lab experiments only proved that a controlled image could be recovered. Maybe someday the brain can yield recordings, but that is a long way off. Still, the idea has merit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. chaosfive55February 20, 2021 at 9:24 PM

    In iZombie, the main character eats the brains of murder victims and learns who killed them!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Billy D BunnyFebruary 24, 2021 at 9:56 AM

    This new learning amazes me!

    ReplyDelete

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