more guillotine

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Monsieur le Docteur Joseph-Ignace Guillotin did not invent that instrument which bears his name. Such devices had been in use in Europe for two centuries. But the times being what they were, some such mechanized expedient was called for. Or perhaps the contraption's excellence cried out for use -- a better mousetrap and all that.

There would be much to recommend such a device. Avoid a reprise of the Mary, Queen of Scots debacle, whose neck took three great whacks and still she didn't lose her head -- the discomfited headsman had to saw through the last bits of integument with his hip knife before the job was quite done. How embarrassing for him. During the interim between the first and the second chops, the poor former queen loosed such a wrenching and protracted groan that the crowd, usually intoxicated in such festive circumstances with blood lust, gaped in horrified silence. So, then -- live and learn, eh?

But what about these heads? Does consciousness survive for some brief moments within the disembodied -- or would it be disbodied -- head? Anecdotal evidence abounds. The heads of two National Assembly rivals were placed into a sack -- when later removed, one had bitten into the cheek of the other so deeply it could not be pried off. The executioner of Charlotte Corday -- who murdered Jean-Paul Marat -- held up her severed head and slapped its cheek; witnesses claimed the face blushed and looked indignant. A soldier who witnessed the decapitation of a friend in a 1989 auto accident relates how the head opened and closed its mouth several times, taking on an expression of shock or confusion, then of terror or grief; its eyes moved from the soldier, to its separated body, then back to the soldier -- direct eye contact, then hazy, then absent and dead.

Which brings to mind the report of Dr. Beaurieux, who, staid man of science that he was, resolved one early summer morning in 1905 to settle once and for all the question of whether a severed head retains for any appreciable time some measure of consciousness, and if so, for how long.

Observe, then, condemned murderer Henri Languille, who mounts with notable sangfroid the scaffold to kneel beneath the blade.

Next, consider his severed head, which fortuitously lands stump-down on the neck, thus perfectly oriented for observation. The doctor notes the eyelids working in irregular contractions for five seconds or so, then they are still and half-closed, the face relaxed. The doctor calls out sharply, "Languille!" The eyelids lift slowly and smoothly, as an awakening, and the eyes focus very definitely upon the doctor's -- clearly, undeniably living. A pause of several seconds, and then the eyes close again. One might almost hear a sigh. Again the doctor cries out, "Languille!" -- and again, smoothly, slowly, the eyelids lift and the eyes fix on the doctor's, with perhaps even more intelligence than the first time. Then a drooping of lids, a fading, a third calling of the name, Languille! but there is no response, and the eyes are glazed, empty, gone. Thirty seconds have passed.

The issue is murky, though. No fewer than three physicians attended the 1879 beheading of one Theotime Prunier, amenable to their end if not his own. The triumverate of medicos immediately snatched up the head and shouted in the face, stuck it with pins, placed ammonia under the nose and candle flames in the eyeballs. No response but a look of astonishment on Prunier's visage, which need have no special significance -- slack jaw and gawking eyes would be expected.

All of it need mean nothing. Two severed heads in a bag need not have been snarling and snapping at each other; one might have been placed sometime after the other, but immediately after its own severing -- and the bite a mere spasmodic reflex. A severed head's cheek might well blush, because blushing is certainly dependent upon capillary blood, but not necessarily upon vascular bloodflow: slaps cause redness. Expressions of shock or of horror are instinctive and universal to the human condition -- perhaps they have no more meaning than the galvanic twitching of frog legs. Eyes widen at a loud sound -- as it happens in this case, the loud calling of a name. Yes. It may all be true, and at the same time meaningless.

The very idea is absurd, that a severed head should be alive. It takes eight seconds to choke a man into unconsciousness -- as I, the third most dangerous middle-aged man west of the Mississippi, ought to know. A severed head can have no blood pressure whatsoever, so one might think that unconsciousness, if not death, must be instantaneous.

But upon deeper reflection, the oxygen that is present, remains present -- it doesn't just remove itself along with the body. Capillaries do not drain themselves in a great Niagara of gore. So we might expect something like eight seconds of consciousness. Further, what effect does having one's entire body mass instantly reduced to some 10 pounds have on the metabolic rate of oxygen usage? Perhaps when the brain doesn't have to think about running the body, it uses less oxygen. And it may be that the concept of consciousness and unconsciousness -- lucidity and dreaming -- takes on an almost incomprehensible meaning, upon the shocking loss of one's bodily appendage. We know the spirit lingers -- heart stoppage isn't death, anymore.

Ah well. It's all speculation. That is, the speculation is speculation. The observations are what they are: phenomena translated into neural impulses within the brain, to manifest eventually as expressions of opinion.

So? Do I have a point? No. I could drag the islamists into it, what with their holy sacrament of beheading infidels and insufficiently subservient women. I could make some bitter correlation between aborted fetuses and still-conscious but not-legally-human-anymore severed heads. I could make it a metaphor for loss and mourning. I could try to blame God for it all. But sometime I just like to chat, share a little of the odd things that have collected in my brain. You know -- the way buddies just talk to each other, sometimes. Let's call this one of those times. Okay? Pal? Because we have voices. We can communicate with each other, in complex ways, with more than just blinking. So that we can know for sure that we're alive.

........

In actuality, the human head does remain conscious fifteen to twenty 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 fifteen to twenty blinks after the head was severed, the blinks coming at intervals of about one second. So the head does remain briefly alive.

........

Let's see. Over the years we've covered crucifixion, kidney theft, and now a second helping of decapitation. What next, you ask — how to perform your own spinal tap? But bear with me. New facts have come to light.

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 story above, with the added detail that the scientist was the pioneering French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was beheaded during the Reign of Terror in 1794.

Not likely. There's no mention of the blinking incident in the standard biographies of Lavoisier. When I contacted the expert quoted on the TV show, neurosurgeon Robert Fink, he said he'd heard the story from a colleague. The colleague said he'd read it in a book, but couldn't remember which. He admitted the story may be apocryphal.

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 slapped her cheek while holding her severed head aloft. 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 the two couldn't be separated.

It doesn't get any better. In one early series of experiments, an anatomist claimed that decapitated heads reacted to stimuli, with one victim turning his eyes toward a speaker 15 minutes after having been beheaded. (Today we know brain death would have occurred long before.) In 1836 the murderer Lacenaire agreed to wink after execution. He didn't. Attempts to elicit a reaction from the head of the murderer Prunier in 1879 were also fruitless. The following year a doctor pumped blood from a living dog into the head of the murderer and rapist Menesclou three hours after execution. The lips trembled, the eyelids twitched, and the head seemed about to speak, although no words emerged. In 1905 another doctor claimed that when he called the name of the murderer Languille just after decapitation, the head opened its eyes and focused on him.

Is it possible? The aforementioned Dr. Fink believed the brain might remain conscious as long as 15 seconds; that's how long cardiac arrest victims last before blacking out. (Dr. Fink's colleague put the window of awareness at 5 seconds.) He also pointed out that people have remained alert after having had their spinal cords severed. Still, this didn't seem like the sort of question that could ever be resolved.

Then I received a note from a U.S. Army veteran who had been stationed in Korea. In June 1989 the taxi he and a friend were riding in collided with a truck. My correspondent was pinned in the wreckage. The friend was decapitated. Here's what happened:

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.

I've spoken with the author and am satisfied the event occurred as described. One can of course never be certain that anyone in this predicament is aware of his surroundings and realizes (briefly) what has happened to him. But I concede the possibility that he might.

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The Medical Answer:
The current medical consensus is that life does survive, for a period of roughly thirteen seconds, varying slightly depending on the victim's build, health and the immediate circumstances of the decapitation. The simple act of removing a head from a body is not what kills the brain, rather, it is the lack of oxygen and other important chemicals provided in the bloodstream. To quote Dr. Ron Wright "The 13 seconds is the amount of high energy phosphates that the cytochromes in the brain have to keep going without new oxygen and glucose" (Cited from urbanlegends.com, no longer extant). The precise post-execution lifespan will depend on how much oxygen, and other chemicals, were in the brain at the point of decapitation; however, eyes could certainly move and blink.

Do You Remain Aware?:
This solely technical survival forms only part of the answer; the second question is 'how long does the victim remain aware?' While the brain remains chemically alive, consciousness can cease immediately, caused by the loss of blood pressure or if the victim is knocked unconscious by the force of the decapitating blow. If that weren't to happen immediately, an individual could in theory remain self-aware for part of the thirteen-second period. There is no consistency in this answer, as the precise length of both actual, and practical, survival will vary depending on the victim. Of course, this applies to many forms of swift decapitation, and not just to the victims of the guillotine.