Let's see. In the last few months we've covered crucifixion, kidney theft, and now 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 above story, with the added detail that the scientist was the pioneering French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, beheaded in 1794 during the Reign of Terror. Not likely. The standard biographies of Lavoisier make no mention of the blinking incident. The expert quoted on the TV show, neurosurgeon Robert Fink, says he heard the story from a colleague. The colleague says he read it in a book, but can't remember which. He admits 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 held her head aloft and slapped her cheek. 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 that 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 speaking person fifteen minutes after being 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 fifteen seconds; that's how long cardiac arrest victims last before blacking out. (Dr. Fink's colleague put the window of awareness at five seconds.) He also pointed out that people have remained alert after their spinal cords were severed. Still, this didn't seem like the sort of question that could ever be conclusively resolved.
Or so I thought. Then I received a note from a U.S. Army veteran who had been stationed in Korea. In June 1989 he and a friend were riding in a taxi that 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 repent my previous skepticism on this subject.
Is there something you need to get straight? Cecil Adams can deliver "The Straight Dope" on any topic. Write Cecil Adams at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago, IL 60611; e-mail him at [email protected]; or visit "The Straight Dope" area at America Online, keyword: Straight Dope.