07-02-2013, 11:41 AM
Dr. Josef Mengele Experiments on Twins
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INTRODUCTION
Although Dr. Josef Mengele was the most infamous of doctors in the Auschwitz camp, there were many others who did jobs just as bad, but they were not made as public. Dr. Herta Oberheuser would kill the children in the camp by injecting hot oil into their blood stream. After she injected them, she would dissect and remove the vital organs with no anesthetic. Death would occur within three to five minutes.
Dr. Karl Brandt was Hitler’s personal doctor and ended up becoming the highest ranked. Dr. Brandt would participate in the gas killings of nursing homes, insane asylums of the elderly, the incurably ill, and deformed children. He would refer to them as “useless eaters” meaning that they were wasting the food that could be used to keep people alive.
Dr. Carl Clauberg came to the Auschwitz camp towards the end of 1942. He was put in the camp to sterilize the women with chemical injections into their wombs. The injections would cause “horrible pain, inflamed ovaries, bursting spasms in their stomachs, and bleeding (McCune 2004).” He would also place both men and women between tow x ray machines which would cause them to get painful radiation burns, which would make them unable to work. If they were unable to work, they were gassed because they were no longer needed.
Experiments on Twins
Dr. Josef Mengele had a strange desire to study twins. He wanted to understand how similar the twins actually were. When he used humans as guinea pigs, however, he lost sight of his role of as a scientist. Although, when Mengele was not experimenting on the twins, he treated them very well. He made sure they were fed enough and he even gave them sweets and toys. Because of this, the children trusted him. Mothers would give up their twins in the hope that they would receive special treatment because they knew that Mengele was looking for twins. When experimenting on twins, Mengele would perform different experiments including anthropometric, morphological, x-rays, and psychiatric evaluation.
For the anthropological exams, they would measure each body part of the child. For the twins, they would compare each result and document descriptions of their bodies including the shape of the mouth and the color of the eyes. These tests would last for hours on end and the children stood in front of the doctors completely naked. The doctors would add drops of unknown liquid chemicals to the children’s eyes in attempt to change their eye color. This substance would make them blind for short periods of time. Up to twenty cubic centimeters of blood would be taken from each pair of twins, and they would also take urine, stool, and saliva samples to test as well.
Other Medical Experiments
Another option to the mass killings were specific experiments on patients such as freezing the body, which then resulted in trying to bring the body back to normal temperature in various ways. After freezing the body, one option was to put the patient under a Sun Lamp. The doctors would keep the patient under the lamp until sweat was pouring from their body. Another way to revive the body after freezing it was placing the patient in a Hot Bath. The warm water would slowly bring the person back to a normal temperature, but if the water was too hot, the patient would die from shock. The last option of warming a person from being frozen was Internal Irrigation. With internal irrigation, the doctors inject hot, blistering water into the patient’s stomach, bladder, and intestines. There is no record of any patient living from this experiment.