MEMORIAL of Cassem Aga, the Tripoli Ambassador at the Court of Great-Britain, concerning the petrifed City in Africa, two Days Journey South from Ouguela, and seventeen Days Journey from Tripoli by Caravan to the South-East.

AS one of my Friends desired me to give him, in Writing, an Account of what I knew touching the petrified City, I told him what I had heard from different Persons, and particularly from the Mouth of one Man of Credit, who had been on the Spot; that is to say.

That it was a very spacious City, of a round Form, having great and small Streets therein, furnished with Shops, with a vast Castle magnificently built; that he had seen there several Sorts of Trees, the most Part Olives and Palms, all of Stone, and of a Blue or rather Lead Colour.

That he saw also the Figures of Men in a Posture of exercising their different Employments; some holding in their Hands Stuffs, others Bread; every one doing something, even Women suckling their Children, and in the Embraces of their Husbands, all of Stone.

That he went into the Castle by three different Gates, tho' there were many more, where he saw a Man lying upon a Bed of Stone.

That there were Guards at the Gates, with Pikes and Javelins in their Hands: In short, that he saw in this wonderful City many Sorts of Animals, as Camels, Oxen, Horses, Asses, Sheep, and Birds, all of Stone, and the Colour above-mentioned.

In the Hospital of the School of Health in this capital, there is a phenomenon well worthy all the attention and researches of Physicians and Naturalists. It is an Englishman, whose limbs are partially petrified, at the same time that the blood continues to circulate in all the parts which are not in a petrified state.

In 1952 Delgado co-authored the first a peer-reviewed paper describing long-term electrode implantation in humans. Much of Delgado’s work was funded by the Office of Naval Intelligence, a conduit for CIA funding in the 1950s and 1960s. He implanted a stimoceiver in at least 25 humans — mostly women diagnosed with schizophrenia or epilepsy. The device was heralded as a great scientific contribution in the 1960s and 1970s. In his article in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1968) he stated that “brain transmitters can remain in a person’s head for life.” In 1969, Delgado published Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society, in which foresees a new era when humans will undergo “psycho-civilization” by linking their brains directly to machines.

Delgado’s stimoceiver was used clinically to inhibit or incite aggression in patients which Delgado viewed as a humane alternative to lobotomy. Several of Delgado’s experiments were recorded on film. One shows a woman calmly playing a guitar until an electric current remotely stimulates her brain, at which point she jumps up violently and smashes her guitar against the wall. The experiment was repeated three days in a row. Delgado also used non-invasive remotely controlled electromagnetic radiation. He proudly summed up how he has “used electrodes implanted for days or months to block thought, speech, and movement, or to trigger joy, laughter, friendliness, verbal activity, generosity, fear, hallucinations, and memory.”