It is a brave attempt made by mankind to fight death, disease and time.
From a very early stage, human beings have been dreaming of freezing the human body. 1962, Robert Ettinger, a physics teacher at the University of Michigan, published "Immortal Vision", in which he drew a wonderful blueprint: freezing human beings will be an important medical technology in the future. Critically ill patients will be able to be frozen and wait for scientific and technological developments to save them.
If this technology really matures, human beings won't even need a time machine -- as long as your eyes are closed and frozen, the next second you open your eyes, you may already be in the year 3000 AD.
The ideal is beautiful, but the reality is cruel. In those days, people were just beginning to figure out how to freeze people, while avoiding cellular tissue because of moisture crystallization and crushing, and how to thaw and revive the subsequent is clueless. But these optimistic scientists have high expectations for their future generations: no matter what, we'll freeze people first, and then we'll leave it to you to do the rest!
The idea was soon put into practice, and on January 12, 1967, a man named James Bedford became the first person ever to be cryopreserved. It was a milestone in human history, and today he still lies in a supercooled storage tank, waiting for someone to wake him up in the future.
James Bedford (web photo)
James, a psychology professor in California, was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1965, and soon after the tumor metastasized to his lungs.In 1966, he met Robert Nelson, the president of the California Cryonics Society, and learned from him about the emerging cryonic technology.
James was an adventurous man - in 1958, at the age of 64 and freshly retired, he went on a life-and-death expedition to the savannahs of Africa and the jungles of the Amazon. Predictably, James was intrigued by the technology and readily signed a volunteer letter to participate in the experiment, hoping that future technology could eventually revive and cure him.
But at that point in time, he probably didn't think he'd be the first experiment.
At 1:15 p.m. on Jan. 12, 1967, James experienced cardiopulmonary failure in a nursing home and was immediately rushed to the nearest hospital for resuscitation.
In a handful of minutes, doctors gave James first aid in CPR while James' wife and children frantically called Nelson. They knew that James was in a critical condition, that the cancer had wiped him out to the point of desiccation, that there was little time left to delay, and that freezing had become the only way to save their loved one. Nelson instructed them on the phone to place James on a bed of ice to cool him down, and about an hour later he showed up at the hospital with a full set of freezing equipment and a couple of technicians.
The cryonization was actually prepared in haste, and the technicians who performed it had nervous hands. By this time, James had lost his heartbeat as well as his ability to breathe on his own, and the technicians first injected him with heparin to prevent his blood from clotting, then they injected a cryoprotectant called DMSO through both of James's powerful arteries and kept him circulating with chest compressions and ventilation through a balloon respirator.
The withered James lay on his back as technicians gave him first aid with a mask and compressors while injecting the protective agent into the side of his neck (web photo)
Afterward, James was wrapped in a brand-new polyester-mylar sleeping bag and later placed in a holding tank filled with dry ice at temperatures as low as -79 degrees C. After cooling down completely, he was removed from the hospital and transported to the Arizona to a refrigerated warehouse. Here, James was then transferred into liquid nitrogen at a temperature of just -196 degrees Celsius.
The insulated tanks used for transportation (web photo)
People transfer James to the liquid nitrogen tanks (web photo)
After James lay down in the tanks of liquid nitrogen, technicians filled them up with liquid nitrogen (web photo)
Liquid nitrogen is the best method of refrigeration so far, they don't consume electricity, have a constant temperature, and are less likely to be accidental. James' "stay" is set for an indefinite period of time, and when medicine is able to cure all diseases, that's when he will wake up.
James' daughter, standing next to the cryo tank (Web photo)
On May 25, 1991, after 24 years of slumbering in liquid nitrogen, James was transferred again, this time into a more advanced cryo tank. Temperature logs showed that during those 24 years, the temperature inside the liquid nitrogen tank he was in topped out at minus 145 degrees Celsius.
James was again transferred into a state-of-the-art freezing tank (web photo)
Since James was frozen in 1967, more than 400 people have been lying in liquid nitrogen, and as many as 3,000 people have now signed up to volunteer. Perhaps one day in the future, when technology has advanced enough to break free from the shackles of old age and death, these first brave men and women of the world will arrive at their tomorrows with their eyes open and resume living their dreams.