Dr. Heidegger, an eccentric aged scientist, invites four elderly friends (Mr. Medbourne, a destitute man, who was a merchant in his youth but had squandered his wealth in wrong investments; Colonel Kiligrew, an elderly ailing man who had indulged himself in ‘sinful pleasures’; Mr. Gascoigne, a forgotten politician who displayed hypocrisy throughout his career; and the Widow Wycherley, a once-beautiful woman ostracised by her community for having a number of scandalous relationships, including with the three) to participate in an experiment in his mysterious, gloomy study.

They wish to taste the water, hoping it will restore their youth and give them an opportunity to live life again, free from the mistakes they made when they were young.

The story was first published anonymously as "The Fountain of Youth" in the January 1837 issue of Lewis Gaylord Clark's The Knickerbocker magazine in New York.

[3] An anonymous reviewer in the Boston Daily Advertiser, however, noted that the stories in the collection were of "unequal merit" and preferred "the grace and sweetness of such papers as 'Little Annie's Ramble,' or 'A Rill from the Town-pump,' to those of a more ambitious cast, and in which the page glows with a wider and more fearful interest, like 'The Minister's Black Veil' and 'Dr.

'"[4] Edgar Allan Poe reviewed the second edition of the collection in 1842 and wrote that "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" was "exceedingly well imagined and executed with surpassing ability.