Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
It’s a little complicated to weigh a dying person on a hospital bed, but that didn’t deter Duncan MacDougall. In the early 20th century, MacDougall’s unique bed-scale detected that 21 grams left the human body at the moment of death.
He had finally discovered it: the weigh of the human soul ... or so he thought.
Read more about the cultural legacy of MacDougall's flawed but influential experiment: popsci.com/science/21-grams-experiment
It’s a little complicated to weigh a dying person on a hospital bed, but that didn’t deter Duncan MacDougall. In the early 20th century, MacDougall’s unique bed-scale detected that 21 grams left the human body at the moment of death.
He had finally discovered it: the weigh of the human soul ... or so he thought.
Read more about the cultural legacy of MacDougall's flawed but influential experiment: popsci.com/science/21-grams-experiment
