even more guillotine

There are accounts of victims of the French Revolution being asked to blink their eyes when they were beheaded. They are supposed to have done this for up to 30 seconds after but it is not sure whether this is mortal spasms or not.

1880. Dr. Dassy de Lignières is given the head of a murderer three hours after decapitation. He pumps blood from a living dog into the head, and for two seconds the lips and eyelids fluttered. Concludes the doctor:"I affirm that during two seconds the brain thought."

1956. Dr. Piedelièvre and Dr. Fournier conclude, "Death is not instantaneous... every element survives decapitation... (it is) a savage vivisection followed by a premature burial."

Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope columnist, was initially skeptical of claims that humans retained consciousness after decapitation, but a reader spun to him the following story of a car crash, in which his friend was decapitated:

My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me to his body and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression... and he was dead.

Adams declared that he had re-opened his mind on the subject. (http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/1998-06-11/columns.html)

During the French Revolution, when everyone was a little excited about using the guillotine, one aristocratic scientist, an Antoine Lavoisier (thanks mirv!), decided to see if there really was life after death. Sentenced to die by beheading, he vowed to perform a final experiment: he would blink for as long as he remained conscious. As his head rolled away, observers recorded that he blinked five times.

actually a chicken, the body, lived and functioned for 18 months after beheading, the owners had to poke food into the hole to the stomach and it lived, in fact it grew from 2.5 ot 8 pounds in that time... it only died because the breathing tube got a blockage and the chicken suffocated... it wasn't nerve impulses at all...

do a search about 'Miracle Mike the Chicken'...

yes heads remain conscious after decapitation... it was common in the guillotine-happy days of the French Revolution to have heads in the baskets trying to talk, looking up at the executioner and looking around... this is widely recorded history... it resulted in a practice of the executioner picking up the head out of the basket by the hair and holding it's face out to the crowd so the head(person)could see the crowd laughing and mocking it before expiring... this is history... it was so widely known doctors started doing experiments, some of which were the 'blinking' tests already mentioned...