A GRUESOME THEORY.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 157, 31 December 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

A GRUESOME THEORY.

The old question as to whether death instantaneously follows upon the severance of the head from the body has of late received considerable attention in Paris, where the guillotine ha? recently been much in evidence. Dr. Cinel asserts (says the Family Doctor) that decapitation does not immediately affect the brain. He says that the blood which flows after decapitation comes from the large vessels of the neck, and there is hardly any call upon the circulation of the cranium. Tlie brain remains intact, nourishing itself with the blood retained by the pressure of the a ; r When the blood remaining in the head at the moment of separation, is exhausted there commences a state not of death, but inertia, which lasts up to the moment when the organ, no longer fed, ceases to exist. Dr. Cinel estimates that the brain finds nourishment in the residuary blcod for about an hour after decapitation. The period of inertia would last for about two hours, he thinks, and absolute death would not ensue till the space of three hours altogether. If, he adds, a bodiless head indicates by no movement the horrors of its situation, it is because it is physically impossible that it should be so, all the nerves which serve for the transmission of orders from the brain to the trunk being severed. But there remain the nerves of hearing, of smell, and sight, and he concludes that the guillotine does not cause instant death. If this be true, could any other form of death be more merciless?