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Lerne, Doctor. Doctor Lerne was created by the French author Maurice Renard (Richard Ciruguel) and appeared in Le Docteur Lerne - Sous-Dieu (1908).

Doctor Lerne is an Evil Surgeon Mad Scientist. Two years in the future, the renowned French scientist Dr. Frederic Lerne is visited by his cousin, Nicholas Vermont. Lerne has tried to dissuade Vermont from visiting, but with little success. When Vermont arrives at Lerne’s estate, he discovers that his uncle has been transplanting organs from animals to plants, and vice-versa. The more Vermont pries into Lerne’s doings, the worse things appear: Lerne has been vivisecting humans and transplanting organs between men and animals. Lerne and his men capture Vermont and put his brain into a bull’s body, and the bull’s brain into his.

Although Lerne soon reverses the operation, he goes even farther and acquires the ability to telepathically transfer his personality into plants. Vermont eventually discovers that Lerne’s former assistant Klotz, who Lerne murdered for romancing Lerne’s mistress, had earlier transferred his brain into Lerne’s body–but when Lerne’s body died Klotz transferred his consciousness into the car that Vermont was driving. And at the end of the novel, when the car dies, Klotz begins to seize control of Vermont.

* I'm including Le Docteur Lerne - Sous-Dieu in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because the novel is fun. Science fiction-horror novels used to be more common than they are now; fear of technology and scientific advancement was more prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries than they are now, when we reassure ourselves that we've mastered our technology and that scientific advancement seems to mean good things. Le Docteur Lerne is one of the best sf-horror novels of its time. Renard's style is good, but the ideas--ah, the ideas. Le Docteur Lerne never quite goes where one thinks it's going--the plot twists and turns, driven by ever-more complicated and sophisticated ideas of transplantation and communication, until we get to a properly horrific end that is a long, long way from the start of the novel. Recommended. 

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