Medical People: A gruesome question about Guillotines.

[BlueJazz]

I was watching a French film tonight and saw a few beheadings..anyway, when a person is guillotined, how long does the person retain consciousness and are they actually aware of things for awhile?

Yeah..I know it's gross but where else could I have asked this....?

[Wilber_Stool]

1. I've read a little about that subject

and the most common number used is about 40 seconds. That's why they take the head and show it the bleeding body so that the last thing you see is your own death.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. The moment the neck is severed it is over

that is why it is gruesome but humane...

[JVS]

3. 5 days

[ogradda]

4. roflmao

nuh-uh!

[pk_du]

5. For Rove it would be as long as it takes to put the Stake in

the heart.

[TheDebbieDee]

15. Wrong! Everybody knows Rove doesn't even have a heart!

[ogradda]

6. i saw a special on the discovery channel once

one guy getting beheaded was a scientist and he told his friend he would blink as long as he could after his head was chopped off. after he was beheaded his friend counted 23 blinks:scared:

[Elidor]

12. That is scary

[underseasurveyor]

17. I saw that one

About the history of the guillotine. Fascinating show actually.

[chookie]

7. According to a famous forensic anthropologist

The late Dr Bill Maples, director of the Pound Laboratory of the University of Florida, wrote in his book, Dead Men Do Tell Tales, that the guillotine is not a quick painless death. He reports records of eyes looking about after decapitation, or lips trying to form words. He explained this as the result of blood flow to brain continuing for a few seconds after decapitation, which enables movements of the facial muscles, consciousness, and, presumably, thought.

Yikes.

[fluffernutter]

9. yikes is right.

:scared:

[chookie]

11. Maybe 13 seconds

According to Dr. Ron Wright, a forensic pathologist and former chief medical examiner of Broward County Florida, "After your head is cut off by a guillotine, you have 13 seconds of consciousness (+/- 1 or 2). <...> 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."

[baby_bear]

8. No consciousness with a real guillotine

The blade drops so fast and freely from a significant height that death is essentially immediate. The blade drops freely from 10 or more feet above the person, so has great effective weight due to acceleration. The anxiety preceding clearly would be devastating though.

As for the "manual" decapitations we have been seeing or hearing about lately - those must be much slower. Until the spinal cord is severed, pain will be felt unless the person is unconscious for some reason. I can only hope they were.

Once the spinal cord is severed, there is no pain, even if there is residual bodily movement.

What a dreadful thing to contemplate. I can't imagine what the families/loved ones of the "slow" decapitations must suffer in their waking and sleeping nightmares.

b_b

[CanuckAmok]

10. There was research done in France in the 19th Century

I'm sorry but I don't have a link, but there was a feature in Harper's a few months ago.

Experiments were performed on guillotined prisoners, and the 'blink' test determined that consciousness could be maintained for as long as a minute. One subject agreed to communicate with a series of blinks when he was able to hear his name after beheading, and he blinked, apparently voluntarily, for nearly a minute, before the eyes remained open permanently.

[EstimatedProphet]

13. That must be a hard experiment to get volunteers for

[baby_bear]

14. I was thinking of pain

But you are correct that the original question did not limit it to pain but to awareness. I have been so disturbed by the decapitations in the Middle East that I have thought only about the pain these people endure.

I am curious about the article you recall reading, concerning consciousness and blinking after decapitation (I don't doubt it, but one has to wonder about the scientists conducting such tests). I think that has more to do with the death experience.

Good point, in any case.

b_b

[nini]

16. I'm gonna have nightmares tonight.

I just know it :scared: