Dr. Ox's Experiment

1872 novella by Jules Gabriel Verne

Dr. Ox's Experiment (, "A Fantasy of Doctor Ox") is a humorous science fiction short story by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1872. It describes an experiment by one Dr. Ox, and is inspired by the real or alleged effects of oxygen on living things.

The setting of the story is the imaginary village of Quiquendone in West Flanders (now part of Belgium) whose citizens are described as "well to do folks, wise, prudent, sociable, with even tempers, hospitable, perhaps a bit heavy in conversation as in mind"; and where even "the dogs don't bite, and the cats don't scratch". Van Tricasse, the town's mayor, claims that "the man who dies without ever having decided upon anything in his life has very nearly attained to perfection." It was published in installments between March and May of the same year in the magazine Musée des Familles, and from January 6 to February 6 in Journal d'Amiens. The story was re published in 1874 by Hetzel as the main piece of a Verne short story anthology, Doctor Ox, that included three older tales.

Dr. Ox reappears as the main villain of the play Journey Through the Impossible, written by Verne in 1882. The original story was adapted by Jacques Offenbach as Le docteur Ox, an opéra bouffe in three acts and six tableaux, premiered on 26 January 1877 with a libretto by Arnold Mortier, Philippe Gille and Verne himself. Another version by Annibale Bizzelli, Il Dottor Oss, was published in 1936. In 1964 Pierre Max Dubois adapted the story as a ballet son a libretto by José Bruyr. It was also adapted by Gavin Bryars as Doctor Ox's Experiment, an opera in two acts with a libretto by Blake Morrison, first performed on 15 June 1998.

The H. G. Wells's novel The Food of the Gods (1904) has similarities to Dr. Ox's Experiment, "both dealing with the alterations in humankind and its environment due to changes in the chemicals the species is supplied". The story was adapted to comics strip form by Mathieu Sapin, and it inspired a 1950 comics album by André Franquin It also was adapted in 1964 by Mino Milani with illustrations by Grazia Nidasio for the Italian children's magazine Corriere dei Piccoli and extended with several original stories featuring the same character, published therein from 1964 to 1969. An audio version was broadcast by the radio station France Culture in 2017.