Do People Really Remain Conscious When Guillotined?

for thousands of years societies from all over the world have come up with various ways to kill off anyone who either did them wrong stood in their way or simply just had to go this involved burying them alive feeding them to wild animals boiling them to death pulling their limbs from their bodies burning them at the stake hanging them cutting their heads off and death by firing squad and there goes my YouTube monetization and if we're honest none of these sound like a particularly good way to go though the majority of the world's governing bodies have done away with capital punishment prisoners are still actively being executed in 54 countries around the world which includes the United States Japan China India Taiwan Singapore Saudi Arabia and some African countries like Egypt South Sudan and Somalia in 2015 there was some debate in the US regarding which method of execution was the most Humane after fisa refused to sell the US drugs that would be used for Lethal Injections prisoners who were executed by a firing squad could be expected to live for up to 2 minutes after being shot death by electric chair can take almost 3 minutes with one watch electrocution in 19 1985 lasting 177 prisoners who were hanged could be expected to suffer for up to 11 minutes before they died and the gas chamber is nor much better since the doomed prisoner could be expected to gasp for breath for up to 18 minutes before finally suffocating and though you'd think that the lethal injection would be the most humane way to go it's not since it can now take anything between 5 minutes and 2 hours for the prisoner to be declared dead death by guillotine was actually judged to be the most Humane with death occurring almost instantly but recent studies suggest that people may remain conscious for some time after being guillotined some of the earliest stories of a person remaining conscious after death started doing the rounds in 1536 after anbin was executed according to Legend her disembodied head had opened and closed its mouth as if trying to speak following the execution of convicted assassin Charlotte cord during the French Revolution a man named legeros allegedly picked up her head and slapped her cheek and Witnesses would later claim that her disembodied head seemed insulted by the act in 1795 during the height of the French Revolution German physician and anatomist Samuel Thomas Von summering argued that death by guillotine was nothing more than torture since quote the feeling personality and self remain alive in the severed head for a few moments after the execution as proof summering cited several witnesses who'd seen the lips of decapitated heads move saw their eyes follow people around the room or seemed to try and speak before death finally took them a French doctor named Jean JF Sue backed up do sing's claims by explaining that the brain is the only organ that can process pain and that it is likely that after it's cut off from the body the brain retains perception of its execution and then afterthought of its ordeal Dr Sue went on to test this Theory by decapitating several animals and noted that their heads kept moving for a number of seconds after they' been cut off he concluded that it was possible that some feeling remained for up to a minute after decapitation and explained that quoting a single minute of pain is incalculably long wrong for the person feeling it many scientists disagreed with this conclusions with Dr leel arguing the the three conditions that we needed to sustain life we removed once a person's head is cut off and just because its reflexes are still working quote that does not prove that it's still feels and knows suffering because every day we see people who have violent convulsive movements declare when they regain Consciousness that they have no idea of having felt pain this resulted in an onslaught of opinions and theories on whether or not the soul or a person's sense of self resided in the head or the body and whether decapitation was really the most gentle method of executing someone of course at the time none of the proposed theories could be scientifically proven though some did their best one study that took place in 1791 involved probing the nerves and muscles of a recently executed criminal which resulted in the body and face muscles Contracting The Observers concluded that the spasms were evidence that the body was still conscious after death after Luigi galvani published his findings on bioelectric magnetics in 1791 scientists started attaching electric probes to the muscles and nerves in decapitated heads to try and establish whether the person remained conscious following their execution one of these gome experiments took place in Poland on the 25th of February 1803 electrical probes were attached to the nerve endings of the freshly decapitated head of a criminal and it was then held up by an assistant while the probes were attached to a battery onlookers watched on as a scientist shouted and yelled at the head and later reported that the eyes and mouth kept moving for at least 1 and a half minutes after decapitation on the 21st of November 1803 several medical students at the German city of mains performed a similar experiment by repeatedly shouting into the faces of decapitated heads seconds after their execution without the help of electrical probes however their expressions remained impassive and led the study to conclude that loss of consciousness is practically instantaneous and irrevocable upon decapitation the results of this final study seem to finally put an end to the question of whether decapitated heads retained conscious but in 1975 interest in the topic was reawakened when a study done on decapitated Lab Rats revealed that their brains remained active for up to 13.6 seconds after decapitation worse still the EG finding suggested that the rats were experiencing discomfort and pain before the brain finally stopped showing any activity so is it possible that humans do remain conscious after decapitation since this considered to be unethical to decapitate people for the sake of science the only reliable way we have to determine whether not humans remain conscious after decapitation is by relying on the studies that are made on decapitated Lab Rats the 1975 study has since come under far as it sample size only consisted of 10 rats but a more recent study was performed in Denmark in 2011 and worked with a sample of 22 rats although only 17 of them delivered results the Danish study explains that there is a need for rodent brains that aren't contaminated by gases or anesthetics and so many scientists conclude that the most humane way of euthanizing these rats is by decapitation because of the findings of the 1975 study the question is often asked whether or not decapitation should be considered Humane and so the team was tasked with finding out just how long rats remain conscious after beheading during the study one group of rats were given anesthesia while the other were left fully aware of their surroundings electrodes were placed on their heads and an EG reading for each route was taken for 30 seconds before decapitation to establish a baseline afterwards the EG recordings lasted for 5 minutes to capture any brain activity that may take place after decapitation once the readings were analyzed the scientists observed a notable dip in brain activity in both groups of rats immediately following decapitation brain activity then spiked for around 2 to 3 seconds before dying off completely within 10 seconds of decapitation this led the scientists to conclude that the rats lost Consciousness within 3 seconds of decapitation and would have lost all sense of pain after that most interestingly though was a final upsurge in brain activity between 60 and 80 seconds after decapitation they speculate that this is a result of the brain dying from a lack of oxygen resulting in the neurons dying out the final wave was subsequently called the wave of death neurologists have since recorded the same phenomenon occurring in human brains a recent study that was published in the magazine neurobiology of disease in November 2023 explains that they'd studied EEG readings of patients who were taken off life support to determine how long a human brain can survive once the oxygen supply to the brain is cut off they confirm that a similar process takes place in human brains or whole brain activity ceases after a few seconds and then a final wave is observed after all the available oxygen in the brain has been used up this critical event called anoxic depolarization induces neuronal death throughout the cortex like a swan song it is the true marker of transition towards the cessation of all brain activity in 2022 a similar phenomenon was observed after an 87y old patient with epilepsy unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack while connected to an EEG machine unlike the patients in the 2020 3 study this patient had been awake and conscious when they suffered cardiac arrest and the Machine showed a decrease in brain activity within the first 10 to 30 seconds after the person was declared to be legally dead the doctors also noted that the areas of the brain that were still active were the ones associated with cognitive processes and memory recall supporting the theory that patients who are dying experience a recall of life before all brain function ceases this in turn a spark debates regarding when a person can be considered to be dead when the heart stops beating or when the brain stops showing any activity and this brings us back to the original question do people remain conscious once they're decapitated all the evidence suggests that once someone is decapitated they'll lose Consciousness within the first two seconds after which their brain slowly dies from oxygen deprivation so no people aren't aware of what is happening around them once they've been decapitated but why is this question still relevant there is only currently one country in the world that still practices decapitation as a form of capital punishment and that's Saudi Arabia male prisoners decapitated using a sword called a sulan and according to One account from 1989 it often takes more than one blow with a sword to fully decapitate someone judge Alice kazinski of the 9th us Circuit Court of Appeals explained that it was also highly unlikely that the US would reinstate the guillotine as a form of execution since quote the guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos however in 2013 Italian neurosurgeons Sergio canavero suggested that it might be possible to perform a successful head transplant in humans once more sparking interest in the question of whether or not his patients would retain their Consciousness after surgical decapitation canavero would later join up with Ren xaing a Chinese orthopedic surgeon and together they would come up with a method for performing successful human head transplants however neither one of them has been able to prove their widely contested theories and the only person who' publicly volunteered to be their test subject backed out in 2018 after became a father to a little boy however if they are to be successful there are several hurdles they must overcome first the least of which is how they plan on keeping the brain alive for more than a minute without losing brain function until then head transplants and Talking Heads in jaars are going to remain in the realm of Science Fiction a possibility we won't have to consider for at least another 100 years or so

Channel: Into the Shadows

Views: 631,893

Keywords: guillotine, capital punishment, amazing facts, amazingfacts, interestingfacts, interesting facts, amazing, execution, beheading, biology, facts

Id: BORHA3XGrtA

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024