The two friends, arm in arm from Dr. Ox's Experiment (French: Une fantaisie du docteur Ox, "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 (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"; A scientist Dr. Ox comes to the authorities and offers to build a novel gas lighting system, at no cost to the town. The offer is gladly accepted. Dr. Ox and his assistant Gédéon Ygène (whose surnames happen to form the word oxygène, "oxygen") propose to use electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, and pump the two gases through separate pipes to the city. The doctor's secret plan is however to conduct a large scale experiment on the effect of oxygen on plants, animals and humans,
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