The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

The miracle of life is granted, and how that miracle can be defective is a nuance that I am most interested in understanding.

I hear them marvel at my work--my indignant science. I hear them call out in fear of what they see. And there are some gentlemen who doubt what I will tell them. They call me a liar and a charlatan or a quack. But in time the methods of science that I now employ to convince people will surely set them free--alas, this I cannot explain to the angry fools. (Spencer Black)

I have butchered many men. All are innocent and equaled when they are on the table. All are exquisite and grotesque. —Dr. Spencer Black

Doctors are not gods; but we do their work. —Dr. Spencer Black

Our consciousness, our awareness, is a symptom of our body and it is secondary to the mystery of our physical chemistry.

A child born without arms may be a confused body that lacked the information to produce wings, of a harpy perhaps.

How can the body, being designed and charged to a specific task, mutate and abandon its function without the fulfillment of another one?

When one dies they neither ascend to the heavens nor descend to hell, they instead become cured—freed from an illness and healed from the suffering of mortality. Our consciousness, our awareness, is a symptom of our body and it is secondary to the mystery of our physical chemistry.

And yet I feared my father more than I feared my God

Dr. Black’s findings are like the far-fetched and fantastic dreams of a child, not the ideas of a modern scientist.… His claims ought to be written in a novel, where the audience is more prone to delight in the hysterics derived from monsters. —Dr. Joab A. Holace

Nature governs its creations equally; a man can perish as easily as a plant can be destroyed beneath one’s heel.

The sustainable body of scientific evidence is derived from the contractions made by the objective observer, not the parroting of the learned scholar. —Dr. Spencer Black

He asserted that he could change the genders and ages of his patients. He performed his surgeries live on stage, in what surely must have been macabre performances

He believed that the mutations were manifestations of the ancient past he had written about—evidence of a genetic code that was not completely eradicated.

The entire body is the soul, and my knife cuts deep into the flesh; I vow to be always reverent with the edge of my scalpel.

Throughout the international tour, Black claimed he had the power to raise the dead, to make people live longer or even forever. He asserted that he could change the genders and ages of his patients. He performed his surgeries live on stage, in what surely must have been macabre performances.

How it pains me that of all the flowers to bloom this spring, she is the one I will not see.

I knew nothing when I was young; I was far from death, I couldn't taste it on my teeth as I do now.

When falsehood is covered long enough, it becomes the truth and sustains its own existence.

I have butchered many men. All are innocent and equaled when they are on the table. All exquisite and grotesque.

When one dies they neither ascend to the heavens nor descent to hell, they instead become cured—freed from an illness and healed from the suffering of mortality.

He leapt (...) with all of his heart, chasing after death to seek out its hiding place.

Of all the terrible sins a man might commit, stealing the dead seemed among the worst.

When death arrives, the very life inside of you knows its own fate; it writhes and claws with a ferocity that has no equal. Then in a quick moment, there is no more pain and you can hear the sound of death. She travels to you gently, as though water had been suspended in the air in-between. The song of her voice greets you with a messenger's reverence and a diplomat's neutrality so that you might me soothed by her meaning nd calmed by her presence.

Steam rose off our aged horse. The mist of her breath was comforting: she was an innocent creature...

You are like a child at practice on a piano. You balance a stick on the backs of your hands just along the knuckles while you play, ensuring proper posture. Then you play something bland and unimaginative; however, the stick will never fall to the floor, bravo! When I perform, the stick falls, then a symphony flows from me. —Black

A man, scientist or not, who can manipulate nature through vivisection or any means to this end does not practice science but instead knows it––and possesses a power that no man should wield, for this work no man should have wrought. —William J. Getty, M.D., F.R.S.C. (Professor of Surgery in the Anatomy Department of the University of Medical Science, New York)

They were gathering in crowds like swarms of pests, murmuring and confused. Suspicious shadows cast over their faces gave an eerie countenance to all who looked upon my work and believed in what they saw. They saw the vestige of life’s history.