If you read the first instalment I posted from Dr. Kevorkian’s book, you will know that doctors, in 1791, shared the opinion that human consciousness probably persisted after decapitation.
More from the doctor’s revealing book:
The same conclusion was reached by a German investigator who used electrical stimulation to cause contractions in muscles in the severed heads of men and animals. The controversy over the possible persistence of consciousness deepened and led to similar experiments in other leading nations of Europe.
At the Hotel-Dieu in Paris the famous Dr. Marie Francois Bichat (1771-1802) was among the first to study the effects of electricity on guillotined criminals.
From Turin came a report of electrical stimulation performed in August 1802, by Italian doctors on the bodies of three beheaded criminals–again, before a large audience. The first experiment began twenty minutes after execution.
One pole of an electrical voltaic pile was connected with the torso’s spinal cord, the other with the surface of the exposed heart. The latter contracted strongly and continued to contract even after the circuit was broken.
(In a way, this experiment anticipated electrical cardioversion used today to restart the heart of certain patients.)
Testing on the other bodies only five minutes after beheadings yielded even more vigorous contractions. With the aorta and other large arteries were filled with warm water and stimulated, they too contracted strongly. Heart reaction disappeared in about forty minutes, but the voluntary muscles continued to contract for a longer period.
In January 1803, authorities in England permitted a visiting Italian doctor to demonstrate his previous research on the body of a twenty-six year old man who had been hanged. The body remained outdoors in freezing temperature for an hour before being taken to a nearby laboratory equipped with an electrical pile of paired copper and zinc plates immersed in acid.
When one electrode was put on an ear of the corpse and the other on a lip, the jaws quivered and one eye opened. Next, the electrodes were attached to both ears, and all muscles contracted, the slightly protruding tongue pulled back, and the entire head moved.
The response to an ear-rectum circuit was so strong that the onlookers thought the body was coming back to life.
- from pgs 147 to 148
Doctors or mad scientists? I ask you.
