"Dr. Ox's Experiment"
is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 writer and pioneer of science-fiction, Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

, published in 1872. It describes an experiment by one Dr. Ox and his assistant Gedeon Ygene. A prosperous scientist Dr. Ox offers to build a novel gas lighting system to an unusually stuffy Flemish

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

 town of Quiquendone. As the town bore no charges, the offer is gladly accepted. The hidden interest of Dr. Ox is however not lighting, but large scale experiment on effect of oxygen on plants, animals and humans. He uses electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The latter is being pumped to the city causing accelerated growth of plants, excitement and aggressiveness in animals and humans. The story ends up by destruction of the oxygen factory of Dr. Ox - by accident, oxygen and hydrogen got mixed causing a major explosion. Jules Verne acknowledges in the epilogue that the described effect of oxygen is a pure fiction invented by him.

The text was re-published in a Verne short-story anthology, Doctor Ox

Doctor Ox

Doctor Ox is a short-story collection by Jules Verne first published in 1874 by Pierre-Jules Hetzel.It consists of four varied works of Verne's youth:*"Une fantaisie du docteur Ox" Doctor Ox is a short-story collection by Jules Verne first published in 1874 by Pierre-Jules Hetzel.It consists of...

, in 1874.

Opéra-bouffe

It was adapted by Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

 under the same title as an opéra-bouffe in three acts and six tableaux, produced on 26 January 1877 with a libretto by Arnold Mortier, Philippe Gille

Philippe Gille

Philippe Gille was a French dramatist and opera librettist. He wrote over twenty librettos between 1857 and 1893, the most famous of which are Massenet's Manon and Delibes' Lakmé.-Librettos by Philippe Gille:...

and Verne himself.

External links

• Dr. Ox's Experiment (Translation from 1874)