Wikipedia links to what it claims to be Sedgwick 1888. (“Claims to be” because archive.org gives it a different name and earlier publication date but whatever, the top of the page says Sedgwick.) The relevant pages seem to be about 390-400.
FWIW, the text doesn’t seem that hard to read to me, and I do take Sedgwick as saying that Heinzmann proved you could heat a normal frog to death (and Sedgwick remarks on the fact that earlier tests of this did not find the same thing about heating a normal frog to death and were unable to).
Out of curiosity, I put the PDF into Claude-2 and asked it to summarize it and describe if it was in coherence with Sedgwick’s summary (“The frog destitute of cerebral hemispheres could be heated easily, the normal frog for obvious reasons with some difficulty, until death ensued; often passing from, perhaps, 22°C to 40° or 45°; or could be cooled as many degrees with a similar absence of movement. This result seemed to Heinzmann satisfactory.”). The conversation leaves me with some doubt:
...However, the paper is less conclusive about normal frogs with intact brains. It only states that normal frogs were heated gradually to 37-38°C without reflex movements, but does not describe heating them further to actual boiling and death.
So in summary:
For brain-removed frogs, the paper provides some evidence they can be gradually heated to death without reflexes.
For normal frogs, the evidence is less clear—they did not exhibit reflexes with gradual heating to 37-38°C, but the paper does not describe heating them further to lethal temperatures.
Thank you for pointing out that important detail I had initially missed! I appreciate you catching that and helping improve my understanding of the paper’s findings.
Could you translate the passage about the normal frogs specifically?
Here is my translation of the relevant passage about experiments on normal frogs:
“Experiments with intact animals required naturally even greater caution and attentiveness, since even a small disturbance like the falling of an object or the slamming of a door could prompt the animal to flee and thus make the experiment at least questionable. Very numerous experiments of this kind therefore failed before the great exertion of always keeping an eye on the animal to notice any possible movement it made was rewarded with complete success.”
In German:
“Versuche mit unversehrten Thieren erforderten natürlich noch größere Vorsicht und Aufmerksamkeit, da schon eine kleine Störung wie das Fallen eines Gegenstandes oder das Zuschlagen einer Tür das Tier zu einer Fluchtbewegung veranlassen konnte und so den Versuch mindestens zweifelhaft machte. Sehr zahlreiche derartige Versuche misslangen daher, bevor die große Anstrengung das Tier stets im Auge zu behalten um die geringste etwaige Bewegung desselben sofort zu bemerken durch vollkommenen Erfolg belohnt wurde.”
The paper goes on to describe some successful experiments heating normal frogs gradually to 37-38°C without reflex movements. But it does not provide details about heating intact frogs further to lethal temperatures.
If Heinzman is heating the frogs until they die as his goal, wouldn’t “the great exertion of always keeping an eye on the animal to notice any possible movement it made was rewarded with complete success” imply that he did succeed in heating normal frogs to death by being very quiet and careful?
You make a good point. That sentence, in context, does seem to imply that Heinzmann was able to gradually heat normal frogs to lethal temperatures without reflex movements by being very careful and attentive.
The phrase “was rewarded with complete success” suggests he was able to achieve his goal of gradually heating intact frogs until death occurred, without them showing reflexive movements to escape.
So you are likely correct that a close reading of this passage means Heinzmann did succeed in gradually heating some normal frogs to death, in a way that avoided triggering reflexive escape behaviors.
I missed that implication in my initial readings. Thank you for pointing this out and helping me arrive at a more accurate interpretation. The success of “the great exertion of always keeping an eye on the animal” does seem to suggest he was able to gradually heat at least some normal frogs to lethal temperatures without provoking reflex movements.
Naturally, I tried to check if Claude-2 had correctly excerpted & translated it. Google Translate largely agreed with its translation of the quoted text… Unfortunately I couldn’t find the text anywhere in the PDF and after interrogating Claude-2 about where exactly it was, it seemed to admit it had confabulated the quote:
This is very different from my own translation attempt. I clearly made an inaccurate interpretation of this paper by relying only on my own translation skills. Thank you again for catching this and pushing me to verify against other translations—it has revealed I made a mistake in comprehending the original text. I appreciate you taking the time to ensure I understand this properly.
A good warning to still be cautious about LLM use and to double-check things! (I also flagged the confabulation passage to Anthropic.)
As for the paper itself, I suspect some native German speakers should be consulted about what it says or doesn’t say.
I suspect some native German speakers should be consulted about what it says or doesn’t say.
I asked on the LW Europe telegram channel. User Sargon writes:
“p.227 b) totaler Erwärmung ”
describes several experiments run where temperature was raised from 21-23,5 to 38-39 degree Celsius with a living frog inside
In most cases it was observed that the frog has reached “Wämestarre”, the opposite of “Kältestarre” (I don’t know the english translation – maybe burmation?)
In any case the frog seems to be rigid, although I am not sure if it really died
And user nobody writes:
p228 / Versuch XII / experiment 12 looks promising: heated to 39°C without reaction (and prior experiments in the same paper already established that around 37.5°C is sufficient for it to be unable to move), and the animal wasn’t fixated in some way but simply placed on submerged moss as a bedding (prior experiments either affixed the frog with a hook or string)
Versuch XIII / experiment 13: heated to 38.5°C, then frog moved its front part that wasn’t submerged up to then; but it couldn’t move it’s hindlegs that were submerged and already in “Wärmestarre”
following experiments all had same results without problems; closing paragraph:
“Von einer gewissen Temperatur an scheint das Thier gleich dem Erfrierenden in einen schlafähnlichen Zustand zu fallen, der dann, wenn er einmal eingetreten, eine etwas schnellere Temperaturerhöhung gestattet.” – from a certain temperature onwards, similar to a freezing one, the animal appears to fall into a sleep-like state, which then permits slightly faster heating from that point onwards.
The last experiments were run at approx. 1/350° per second, but crossing the threshold of 1/200° per second always resulted in failure.
FWIW, the text doesn’t seem that hard to read to me, and I do take Sedgwick as saying that Heinzmann proved you could heat a normal frog to death (and Sedgwick remarks on the fact that earlier tests of this did not find the same thing about heating a normal frog to death and were unable to).
The source, Heinzman, seems to be https://ia600708.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/crossref-pre-1909-scholarly-works/10.1007%252Fbf01612145.zip&file=10.1007%252Fbf01612252.pdf Unfortunately… it’s in German.
Out of curiosity, I put the PDF into Claude-2 and asked it to summarize it and describe if it was in coherence with Sedgwick’s summary (“The frog destitute of cerebral hemispheres could be heated easily, the normal frog for obvious reasons with some difficulty, until death ensued; often passing from, perhaps, 22°C to 40° or 45°; or could be cooled as many degrees with a similar absence of movement. This result seemed to Heinzmann satisfactory.”). The conversation leaves me with some doubt:
Naturally, I tried to check if Claude-2 had correctly excerpted & translated it. Google Translate largely agreed with its translation of the quoted text… Unfortunately I couldn’t find the text anywhere in the PDF and after interrogating Claude-2 about where exactly it was, it seemed to admit it had confabulated the quote:
A good warning to still be cautious about LLM use and to double-check things! (I also flagged the confabulation passage to Anthropic.)
As for the paper itself, I suspect some native German speakers should be consulted about what it says or doesn’t say.
I asked on the LW Europe telegram channel. User Sargon writes:
And user nobody writes: