In the answer about the guillotine in your on-line archive, you say that “the fatal blow induces immediate unconsciousness.” In actuality the human head does remain conscious 15 to 20 seconds after decapitation. This was proven when a scientist condemned to the guillotine in the 1700s told his assistant to watch and that he would blink as many times as he could. The assistant counted 15 to 20 blinks after the head was severed, the blinks coming at intervals of about one second. So the head does remain briefly alive. –Joel Brusk, via AOL
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A lot of people disputed my claim that victims of the guillotine blacked out immediately. Many had seen a TV show on the Discovery Channel called The Guillotine, in which a medical expert tells the above story, with the added detail that the scientist was the pioneering French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, beheaded in 1794 during the Reign of Terror.
But let’s return to the original question, appalling though it may be: Is a severed head aware of its fate? People have been debating the point since the invention of the guillotine, and not just out of morbid curiosity. Some felt the guillotine, far from being quick and painless, was an instrument of the most profound and horrible torture: to be aware of having been beheaded. Numerous anecdotes and bizarre experiments have been adduced as evidence on either side. After Charlotte Corday was guillotined for murdering Jean-Paul Marat, the executioner held her head aloft and slapped her cheek. Witnesses claimed the cheeks reddened (without blood?) and the face looked indignant. According to another tale, when the heads of two rivals in the National Assembly were placed in a sack following execution, one bit the other so badly that the two couldn’t be separated.
I repent my previous skepticism on this subject.
