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Consciousness Continuing After Beheading / Decapitation

carole

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Someone told me that during the French Revolution the exectuioner would hold the severed head up so that the last thing the dying eyes could see was its own headless body . . . how long does a severed head still retain its sense for??

:confused:

Carole
 
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I heard a nasty story from a newsgroup my brother uses, about this poor chap who was decapitated in an accident. Another man was stood nearby, and the severed head rolled to near his feet, he looked down in horror and saw a look of passing recognition and sadness in the poor cyclists eyes before he died :(

Awful stuff.
 
I believe there are 2 schools of thought about post decapitation awareness.
One is that the shock of the blow to the ganglia at the base of the neck plus the loss of blood pressure renders the victim at least unconcious instantly. Any blinking, eye-roling, or mouth movements are just nervous reactions.

The other says that there is no necessity for the shock to cause unconciousness in fact with a sharp blade the less likely it is & loss of blood pressure of itself does not cause immediate loss of awareness. These say the eye and mouth movements are reasoned

If you know anyone willing to undertake a small experiment, ---please do not refer them to me
 
Hello all, well if you think about it, the vocal chords would obviously be severed so there would be no chance of speech ( without the lungs to pass air over any that survived there would be no chance even in a low cut ) but the other muscles would be capable of functioning.

The brain would be capable of operating for at least a time since it controls the body rather than vice versa, so the only real reasons I can see for the head to fail instantly would be for a lack of blood pressure or the shock.

Shock is reacted to differently by different people so this is a variable ( even in massive amounts ) so the one thread of this I can think of following up on is for the sudden failing of blood pressure.

If anyone knows someone who works in an accident and emergency department or a surgical department in the hospital, can they check this theory with them?

I personally would extrapolate the theory that there is ample possibility for several seconds concious survival after a "clean" severance where the head is otherwise untraumatised.

fascinating subject

thanks

Uncle Bulgaria
 
intaglio said:
If you know anyone willing to undertake a small experiment, ---please do not refer them to me

There's already been one. It was some female aristocat in the French Guillotine. Her head was taken back to a laboratory where it was paced on a tray of blood. What is supposed to have happened next is that she opened her eyes looked shocked and tried to speak.

This was from a program on the History Channel, I think entitlted Mdme Guillotine.
 
UncleBulgaria said:
The brain would be capable of operating for at least a time since it controls the body rather than vice versa, so the only real reasons I can see for the head to fail instantly would be for a lack of blood pressure or the shock.

Shock is reacted to differently by different people so this is a variable ( even in massive amounts ) so the one thread of this I can think of following up on is for the sudden failing of blood pressure.

Doing this under local would also help reduce shock (I guess)


Would the head even know the body had gone?:eek!!!!:
 
From the story I heard it appeared the chap had some understanding of what had happened to him :(
 
The muscles can do strange things after death. My mum used to tell gory tales about her nursing days. Rigor mortis moments of corpses sitting up and gasping, etc.

And if there's an oxygen/blood supply to the brain, surely it would continue to function, however briefly?

Mmm. I'm going to try and stop thinking about this now.
 
Would the head even know the body had gone?

People now ( with attached bodies but severed limbs ) sometimes experience "ghost" limbs where they get pains in their fingers ( for example ) when there is not even an arm there.

Control of the body seems a hugely complex process and the body does not always have to give feedback for the brain to work. It also seems a bit of a grey area as to what the limits are for survival - is it one millisecond, one second, one minute etc for the conditions to cause the brain to shut down. Tricky one.

After all, how do they keep those brains alive in jars in Futurama ;)

thanks

Uncle Bulgaria
 
Mdme Guillotine

Did anyone watch "Secrets of the Guillotine" last night?

Liked the evidence of the heads remainig conscious for 2 or 3 minutes after decapitation, I've never been a believer in 'Instant Death'. Wonder what goes through the mind, must be surreal being lifted out of the basket and looking out over the crowd as your head is displayed.

Does this hold any hope for the permanantly paralysed ?
Could they receive body transplants from people who have been killed by a shot through the head?
 
I don't think you actually see anything after the first few seconds, as all the blood inside your head will be draining out very rapidly. If you've ever had that type of fainting fit that happens when you stand up too suddenly, you'll know that vision is the first thing to go - you feel a sharp dragging pain behind your eyeballs then the brown mist descends. Then your balance and orientation goes. You probably get the most godawful headache as your cranial blood vessels suddenly clamp - maybe your sinuses start hurting as well. But, luckily, the brain is shutting down rapidly by that time, so the pain doesn't last for long - your 'centre of conciousness' is shrinking fast, like a deflating baloon. All the noises of the crowd fade away. Finally, you are left in the dark, wondering "Wha....???"
 
youre not kidding, thats how my last life ended up and theres some things you dont want reminding of.:eek!!!!:
 
Someone has built a working guillotine it seems, and claims it was easier to construct than a gallows. HOW DOES HE KNOW? and WHY???

Didn't a self-made guillotine feature in the FT 'Strange Deaths' section a couple of years back?
Brrr.
 
dunno

but i did dream that i had taken my head off and was inspecting the back for grey hairs the other day. What i couldn't work out was how I could see.

I read somewhere that marie antoinette's mouth was opening and closing when they lifted her head up.
 
there is about enough oxygen in the blood in the head to keep the brain going for seven seconds after decapitation, although it may be longer.
i think shock would mean you didn't feel a thing though.
 
Re: dunno

tasha said:
I read somewhere that marie antoinette's mouth was opening and closing when they lifted her head up.
And she was probably saying "...gottle o' geer...gottle o' geer..." :blah:
 
I would have thought that, since you have a narrow point travelling quite rapidly (9.81 ms^-2 acceleration is motoring)that the subject would be knocked out by the compression wave of material getting out of the way of the blade.

8¬)
 
twenty-five to thirty seconds

Link is dead. See post below for text of the MIA webpage.


I heard somewhere (but cannot find it on the web) that Dr. Guillotin theorized the blade of 'his' machine cut through and activated pleasure sensors in the brain, giving the victim a pleasant sensation during death. Anyone else hear this?
 
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Okay so somebody already posted that one - sorry
 
UrbanDruid said:
Someone has built a working guillotine it seems, and claims it was easier to construct than a gallows. HOW DOES HE KNOW? and WHY???
He doesn't!

I have to build and construct fairly complex projects for a living and there are so many reasons that this statement isn't true that I can only suspect that the person you quote has never touched a meccano set never mind a hammer and nails.

Incidentally the Last Word section of the New Scientist covered the beheading question a few months ago. If someone can please tell me how I "quote" a page from another web-site I can show you exactly where. (Excuse my ignorance but I only recently discovered the internet wasn't powered by steam).
 
rynner said:
Sometimes a story does get into the public realm, however - there was a case involving an MP a few years ago.

Plus one involving a certain popstar.

As for Marie Antoinette, if anyone's morbidly interested, the blade that 'done 'er' is exhibited in Madamme Tussauds in London.

As for claims of short-lived consciousness, there is the historical case of the guy in Revolutionary France (whose name and source of this anecdote escape me) who had his servant inspect his head immediately after execution. The eyes rolled and the tongue extended [I'm not sure, but it may also have uttered 'vultures'] - possibly a simple reflex action.

On a more humerous counter-pointed note, there is the guy whose head managed one word: "Ouch!"; or the Charles Hawtrey character in Carry On Don't Lose Your Head, who was informed of a message that had just arrived as he lay beneath the guillotine. "Drop it in the basket," he said. "I'll read it later."

Finally, back to the real world: The Nazis used the guillotine during WWII for the efficient (and armament-sparing) execution of enemy captives and dissidents. And the guillotine (according to the same source programme aired a couple of years back) was not abandoned (and may have been used? [bit hazy on that]) in France as late as the 1960s.
 
Spook said:
Incidentally the Last Word section of the New Scientist covered the beheading question a few months ago. If someone can please tell me how I "quote" a page from another web-site I can show you exactly where. (Excuse my ignorance but I only recently discovered the internet wasn't powered by steam).
Various ways: try this - find the page you want to link to, click on its URL in the address bar to highlight it, then Copy it (CTRL+C).

Now start a reply to the appropriate thread: you can simply Paste the URL straight into your reply (CTRL+V) - it doesn't matter if it's a long one, the MB can handle it - or you can click on the "http://" button above the answer space. In this case, you then enter a prompt in the box (eg "see this site"), click OK, and then you have to enter the URL in the box, which again is just CTRL+V. Basically that's it.

If you just want to use a paragraph or two from a long web page, you could simply Copy and Paste them into your answer.

Any problems, just PM me.
 
Cheers rynner. Okay, as I said the New Scientist covered this a while back. If you are interested try clicking here.
Bugger me it works! Igor, Igor it lives, it lives. Ta rynner.
 
Yeh, I was wondering how that worked, but was too shy to ask . . . he's a clever lad, is our Rynner!

Carole
 
I'm glad it worked, Spook: the link on the NS page to the Guillotine website is worth following. (I'm not normally too keen on sites with frames, but this one is excellent.)
 
As for the guillotine in France, I remember reading that it was only retired in the early '80s when capital punishment was abolished across the Channel.
 
It's all very very very very horrible. What must it be like to realise that you are in such a condition that nothing can possibly save you? I mean, lying there, in the basket, for those few seconds. How very distressing.
 
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