What is a severed human head thinking about? What does the head feel after chopping off.

For many centuries, people have wondered whether a severed human head is capable of retaining consciousness and thinking. Modern experiments on mammals and numerous eyewitness accounts provide rich material for disputes and discussions.

Decapitation in Europe

The tradition of beheading has deep roots in the history and culture of many nations. For example, in one of the biblical deuterocanonical books, famous story Judith, a beautiful Jewess who tricked her into the camp of the Assyrians who were besieging her hometown and, having crept into the confidence of the enemy commander Holofernes, cut off his head at night.

In the largest European states, decapitation was considered one of the most noble types of executions. The ancient Romans used it in relation to their citizens, since the process of beheading is quick and not as painful as crucifixion, which was subjected to criminals without Roman citizenship.

In medieval Europe, beheading also enjoyed special honor. Heads were cut off only to the nobles; peasants and artisans were hanged and drowned.
Only in the 20th century was decapitation recognized by Western civilization as inhumane and barbaric. Currently, beheading as a capital punishment is used only in the countries of the Middle East: in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran.

Judith and Holofernes

History of the guillotine

Heads were usually chopped off with axes and swords. At the same time, if in some countries, for example, in Saudi Arabia, executioners always underwent special training, then in the Middle Ages, ordinary guards or artisans were often used to carry out the sentence. As a result, in many cases, it was not possible to cut off the head the first time, which led to terrible torment of the condemned and the indignation of the crowd of onlookers.

Therefore, at the end of the 18th century, the guillotine was first introduced as an alternative and more humane instrument of execution. Contrary to popular belief, this instrument was not named after its inventor, the surgeon Antun Louis.

The godfather of the death machine was Joseph Ignace Guillotin, an anatomy professor who first proposed using a mechanism for decapitation, which, in his opinion, would not cause additional pain to the convicts.

The first sentence with the help of a terrible novelty was carried out in 1792 in post-revolutionary France. The guillotine made it possible to actually turn human deaths into a real pipeline; thanks to her, in just one year, the Jacobin executioners executed more than 30,000 French citizens, setting up real terror for their people.

However, a couple of years later, the decapitation machine gave a solemn reception to the Jacobins themselves to the joyful cries and hooting of the crowd. France used as capital punishment until 1977, when it was cut off last head on European territory.

But what happens during a beheading in terms of physiology?

As you know, the cardiovascular system delivers oxygen and other necessary substances to the brain through the blood arteries, which are necessary for its normal functioning. Decapitation interrupts closed system blood circulation, blood pressure drops rapidly, depriving the brain of fresh blood flow. The suddenly oxygen-deprived brain quickly ceases to function.

The time during which the head of the executed person can remain conscious in this case depends largely on the method of execution. If an inept executioner needed several blows to separate the head from the body, blood flowed from the arteries even before the end of the execution - the severed head was already dead for a long time.

Head of Charlotte Corday

But the guillotine was the ideal instrument of death, her knife cut the criminal's neck with lightning speed and very accurately. In post-revolutionary France, where executions took place in public, the executioner often raised his head, which had fallen into a basket of bran, and mockingly showed it to a crowd of onlookers.

So, for example, in 1793, after the execution of Charlotte Corday, who stabbed one of the leaders of the French Revolution, Jean-Paul Marat, according to eyewitnesses, the executioner, taking the severed head by the hair, mockingly whipped her on the cheeks. To the great astonishment of the onlookers, Charlotte's face turned red, and her features twisted into a grimace of indignation.

Thus, the first documentary report of eyewitnesses was compiled that a human head cut off by a guillotine is capable of retaining consciousness. But far from the last.

What explains the grimaces on the face?

The debate about whether the human brain is capable of continuing to think after beheading has been going on for many decades. Some believed that the grimaces that the faces of the executed were due to the usual spasms of the muscles that control the movements of the lips and eyes. Similar spasms have often been observed in other severed human limbs.

The difference is that, unlike the arms and legs, the head contains the brain, the mental center that can consciously control the movements of the muscles. When the head is cut off, in principle, no injury is caused to the brain, so it is able to function until the lack of oxygen leads to loss of consciousness and death.

severed head

There are many cases when, after cutting off the head, the body of a chicken continued to move around the yard for several seconds. Dutch researchers have done research on rats; they lived for another 4 seconds after decapitation.

Testimony of doctors and eyewitnesses

The idea of ​​what a severed human head can experience while remaining fully conscious is, of course, terrifying. A US Army veteran who was in a car accident with a friend in 1989 described the face of his comrade who had his head blown off: “At first it expressed shock, then horror, and at the end fear was replaced by sadness ...”

Mechanism for the execution of the death penalty by decapitation

According to eyewitnesses, English king Charles I and Queen Anne Boleyn, after being executed by the executioner, moved their lips, trying to say something.
Strongly opposing the use of the guillotine, the German scientist Sommering referred to the numerous records of doctors that the faces of the executed were contorted in pain when the doctors touched the cut of the spinal canal with their fingers.

The most famous of this kind of evidence comes from the pen of Dr. Borier, who examined the head of the executed criminal Henri Langil. The doctor writes that within 25-30 seconds after decapitation, he called Langil twice by name, and each time he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on Boryo.

Conclusion

Eyewitness accounts, as well as a number of experiments on animals, prove that after decapitation, a person can remain conscious for several seconds; he is able to hear, look and react.
Fortunately, such information may still be useful only to researchers from some Arab countries where decapitation is still popular as a legal capital punishment.

CHANCE FOR THE HEAD

One executioner, who executed the death sentences against French nobles at the end of the 18th century, said: “All executioners know very well that heads after being cut off live for another half an hour: they gnaw the bottom of the basket into which we throw them so much that this basket has to be changed according to at least once a month...

In the famous collection of beginnings present century"From the realm of the mysterious", compiled by Grigory Dyachenko, there is a small chapter: "Life after cutting off the head." Among other things, it notes the following: “It has already been said several times that a person, when his head is cut off, does not immediately stop living, but that his brain continues to think and muscles move, until, finally, the blood circulation stops completely and he will die completely ... ” Indeed, a head cut off from the body is capable of living for some time. The muscles in her face twitch, and she grimace in response to being poked with sharp objects or having electrical wires connected to her.

On February 25, 1803, a murderer named Troer was executed in Breslau. The young doctor Wendt, who later became a famous professor, begged for the head of the executed man to spend with her. scientific experiments. Immediately after the execution, having received the head from the hands of the executioner, he applied the zinc plate of the galvanic apparatus to one of the front cut muscles of the neck. A strong contraction of muscle fibers followed. Then Wendt began to irritate the cut spinal cord - an expression of suffering appeared on the face of the executed. Then Dr. Wendt made a gesture, as if wanting to poke his fingers into the eyes of the executed man - they immediately closed, as if noticing the impending danger. Then he turned the severed head to face the sun and his eyes closed again. After that, a hearing test was done. Wendt shouted loudly into his ears twice: "Troer!" - and with each call, the head opened its eyes and directed them in the direction from which the sound came, moreover, it opened its mouth several times, as if it wanted to say something. Finally, they put a finger in her mouth, and her head clenched her teeth so hard that the one who put the finger felt pain. And only two minutes and forty seconds later my eyes closed and life finally died out in my head.

After the execution, life flickers for some time not only in the severed head, but also in the body itself. As historical chronicles testify, sometimes decapitated corpses with a large crowd of people showed real miracles of tightrope walking!

In 1336, King Louis of Bavaria sentenced the nobleman Dean von Schaunburg and four of his landsknechts to death because they dared to rebel against him and, as the chronicle says, "disturbed the peace of the country." Troublemakers, according to the custom of that time, had to cut off their heads.

Before his execution, according to chivalric tradition, Louis of Bavaria asked Dean von Schaunburg what his last wish would be. The desire of a state criminal turned out to be somewhat unusual. Dean did not demand, as was "practised", neither wine nor a woman, but asked the king to pardon the condemned landsknechts if he ran past them after ... his own execution. Moreover, so that the king would not suspect any trick, von Schaunburg clarified that the condemned, including himself, would stand in a row at a distance of eight steps from each other, but only those whom he, having lost his head, were subject to pardon. can run. The monarch laughed out loud after hearing this nonsense, but promised to fulfill the wish of the doomed.

The executioner's sword fell. Von Schaunburg's head rolled off his shoulders, and his body ... jumped to his feet in front of the numb with horror of the king and courtiers present at the execution, irrigating the ground with a stream of blood frantically gushing from the stump of the neck, swiftly rushed past the landsknechts. Having passed the last one, that is, having made more than forty (!) steps, it stopped, twitched convulsively and collapsed to the ground.

The stunned king immediately concluded that the devil was involved. However, he kept his word: the landsknechts were pardoned.

Almost two hundred years later, in 1528, something similar happened in another German city - Rodstadt. Here they were sentenced to beheading and burning the body at the stake of a certain troublemaker monk, who, with his supposedly godless sermons, embarrassed the law-abiding population. The monk denied his guilt and after his death promised to immediately provide irrefutable evidence. And indeed, after the executioner cut off the preacher's head, his body fell with his chest on a wooden platform and lay there without moving for about three minutes. And then… then the incredible happened: the decapitated body rolled onto its back, put its right foot on its left, crossed its arms over its chest, and only after that it completely froze. Naturally, after such a miracle, the court of the Inquisition pronounced an acquittal and the monk was duly buried in the city cemetery ...

But let's leave the decapitated bodies alone. Let us ask ourselves the question: do any thought processes take place in a severed human head? At the end of the last century, the journalist of the French newspaper Le Figaro, Michel Delin, tried to answer this rather difficult question. Here is how he describes an interesting hypnotic experiment conducted by the famous Belgian artist Wirtz over the head of one guillotined robber. “For a long time the artist has been occupied with the question: how long does the execution procedure last for the criminal himself and what feeling does the defendant experience in the last minutes of his life, what exactly does the head, separated from the body, think and feel, and in general, can it think and feel. Wirtz was well acquainted with the Brussels prison doctor, whose friend, Dr. D., had been practicing hypnotism for thirty years. The artist told him his desire get the suggestion that he is a criminal sentenced to the guillotine. On the day of the execution, ten minutes before the criminal was brought in, Wirtz, Dr. D. and two witnesses placed themselves at the bottom of the scaffold so that they were not visible to the public and in sight of the basket into which the head of the executed was to fall. Dr. D. put his medium to sleep by instilling in him to identify with the criminal, to follow all his thoughts and feelings, and to speak loudly the thoughts of the condemned man at the moment when the ax touched his neck. Finally, he ordered him to penetrate the brain of the executed as soon as the head was separated from the body, and analyze final thoughts deceased. Wirtz immediately fell asleep. A minute later steps were heard: it was the executioner leading the criminal. He was placed on the scaffold under the ax of the guillotine. Here Wirtz, shuddering, began to beg to be awakened, since the horror he was experiencing was unbearable. But it's' too late. The ax falls. “What do you feel, what do you see?” asks the doctor. Wirtz convulses and answers with a groan: “Lightning strike! Oh, terrible! She thinks, she sees…” - “Who thinks, who sees?” - “Head ... She suffers terribly ... She feels, thinks, she does not understand what happened ... She is looking for her body ... It seems to her that the body will come for her ... She is waiting for the last blow - death, but death does not come ... "While Wirtz was saying these terrible words, the witnesses of the described scene looked at the head of the executed, with drooping hair, clenched eyes and mouth. The arteries still pulsed where the ax had cut them. Blood flooded his face.

The doctor kept asking, "What do you see, where are you?" - “I'm flying into an immeasurable space ... Am I really dead? Is it all over? Oh, if only I could connect with my body! People, take pity on my body! People, have pity on me, give me my body! Then I will live... I still think, I feel, I remember everything... Here are my judges in red robes... My unfortunate wife, my poor child! No, no, you don't love me anymore, you're leaving me... If you wanted to unite me with the body, I could still live among you... No, you don't want to... When will it all end? Is the sinner condemned to eternal torment? At these words of Wirtz, it seemed to those present that the eyes of the executed man opened wide and looked at them with an expression of inexpressible torment and prayer. The artist continued: “No, no! Suffering cannot go on forever. The Lord is merciful… Everything earthly leaves my eyes… In the distance I see a star shining like a diamond… Oh, how good it must be up there! Some kind of wave covers my whole being. How soundly I will fall asleep now ... Oh, what bliss! ... "They were last words hypnosis. Now he was fast asleep and no longer answered the doctor's questions. Dr. D. went up to the head of the executed man and felt his forehead, temples, teeth ... Everything was cold as ice, his head died.

In 1902, the famous Russian physiologist Professor A. A. Kulyabko, after successfully reviving the child's heart, tried to revive ... the head. True, for starters, just fish. A special liquid was passed through the blood vessels into the neatly cut off head of the fish - a substitute for blood. The result exceeded the wildest expectations: the fish head moved its eyes and fins, opened and closed its mouth, thus showing all the signs that life continues in it.

Kulyabko's experiments allowed his followers to advance even further in the field of head revival. In 1928, in Moscow, physiologists S. S. Bryukhonenko and S. I. Chechulin demonstrated an already living dog's head. Connected to a heart-lung machine, she did not look like a dead stuffed animal. When a cotton wool moistened with acid was placed on the tongue of this head, all signs of a negative reaction were found: grimaces, champing, there was an attempt to throw the cotton wool away. When putting sausage in the mouth, the head licked. If a stream of air was directed to the eye, a blinking reaction could be observed.

In 1959, the Soviet surgeon V.P. Demikhov repeatedly conducted successful experiments with severed dog heads, while arguing that it is quite possible to maintain life in the human head.
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Severed head bit the executioner

About severed heads and decapitated bodies, there are many different mystical stories. What is true and what is fiction is hard to figure out. At all times, these stories attracted great attention of the public, because everyone understood with their minds that their head without a body (and vice versa) would not live long, but they wanted to believe otherwise ... A terrible incident during an execution. For thousands of years, decapitation was used as a form of the death penalty. IN medieval Europe such an execution was considered "honorable", the head was chopped off mainly to aristocrats. The gallows or the fire were waiting for people simpler. In those days, beheading with a sword, ax or ax was a relatively painless and quick death, especially when great experience executioner and the sharpness of his tools.

In order for the executioner to try, the convict or his relatives paid him a lot of money, this was facilitated by widely circulating horror stories about a blunt sword and a clumsy executioner who cut off the head of an unfortunate convict with only a few blows ... For example, it is documented that in 1587, during the execution Scottish Queen It took the executioner Mary Stuart three blows to deprive her of her head, and even then, after that, she had to resort to the help of a knife ...

Even worse were the cases when non-professionals got down to business. In 1682, the French Count de Samozhes was terribly unlucky - they failed to get a real executioner for his execution. Two criminals agreed to perform his work for a pardon. They were so frightened by such a responsible job and so worried about their future that they cut off the count's head only on the 34th attempt!

Residents of medieval cities often became eyewitnesses of beheadings, for them the execution was something like a free performance, so many tried to take a seat closer to the scaffold in advance in order to see such a nerve-wracking process in detail. Then such thrill-seekers, rounding their eyes, whispered how the severed head grimaced or how its lips “managed to whisper the last forgiveness.”

It was widely believed that a severed head still lives and sees for about ten seconds. That is why the executioner raised his severed head and showed it to those gathered in the city square, it was believed that the executed in his last seconds sees the crowd jubilant, hooting and laughing at him.

I don’t know whether to believe it or not, but somehow in a book I read about a rather terrible incident that happened during one of the executions. Usually the executioner raised his head to show the crowd by the hair, but in this case the executed was bald or shaved, in general, the vegetation near his receptacle of the brain was completely absent, so the executioner decided to raise his head by the upper jaw and, without thinking twice, put his fingers into his open mouth. Immediately, the executioner screamed and his face distorted with a grimace of pain, and no wonder, because the jaws of the severed head clenched ... The already executed man managed to bite his executioner!

What does a severed head feel like?

French revolution put decapitation on stream, using "small-scale mechanization" - the guillotine invented in those days. Heads flew in such quantities that some inquisitive surgeon for his experiments easily begged a whole basket of male and female "mind vessels" from the executioner. He tried to sew human heads to the bodies of dogs, but failed in this "revolutionary" undertaking a complete fiasco.

At the same time, scientists began to be more and more tormented by the question - what does the severed head feel and how long does it live after the fatal blow of the guillotine blade? Only in 1983, after a special medical study, scientists were able to answer the first half of the question. Their conclusion was this: despite the sharpness of the instrument of execution, the skill of the executioner or the lightning speed of the guillotine, a person’s head (and body, probably!) Experiences several seconds of severe pain.

Many naturalists of the 18th-19th centuries had no doubt that a severed head is capable of some very a short time live and in some cases even think. Now there is an opinion that the final death of the head occurs a maximum of 60 seconds after the execution.

In 1803, in Breslau, the young doctor Wendt, who later became a university professor, held a rather creepy experiment. On February 25, Wendt begged for scientific purposes the head of the executed murderer Troer. He received his head from the hands of the executioner immediately after the execution. First of all, Wendt conducted experiments with then popular electricity: when he applied a plate of a galvanic apparatus to a cut spinal cord, the face of the executed man was distorted by a grimace of suffering.

The inquisitive doctor did not stop there, he made a quick false movement, as if about to pierce Troer's eyes with his fingers, they quickly closed, as if noticing the danger that threatened them. Further, Wendt shouted loudly into his ears a couple of times: “Troer!” With each of his screams, the head opened its eyes, clearly reacting to its name. Moreover, an attempt of the head to say something was recorded, it opened its mouth and moved its lips a little. I wouldn't be surprised if Troer tried to send someone so disrespectful to death to hell young man…

In the final part of the experiment, a finger was put into the head's mouth, while it clenched its teeth quite hard, causing sensitive pain. For a full two minutes and 40 seconds, the head served the purposes of science, after which its eyes finally closed and all signs of life died out.

In 1905, Wendt's experiment was partially repeated by a French doctor. He also shouted his name to the head of the executed man, while the eyes of the severed head opened, and the pupils focused on the doctor. The head reacted in this way twice to its name, and on the third Vital energy already ended.

The body lives without a head!

If the head can live for a short time without a body, then the body can also function for a short time without its “control center”! A unique case is known from history with Dietz von Schaunburg, who was executed in 1336. When King Ludwig of Bavaria sentenced von Schaunburg and four of his landsknechts to death for rebellion, the monarch, according to knightly tradition, asked the convict about his last wish. To the great astonishment of the king, Schaunburg asked him to pardon those of his comrades whom he could run past without a head after the execution.

Considering this request as sheer nonsense, the king nevertheless promised to do it. Schaunburg himself arranged his friends in a row at a distance of eight paces from each other, after which he obediently knelt down and lowered his head to the chopping block, standing on the edge. The executioner's sword whistled through the air, the head literally bounced off the body, and then a miracle happened: Dietz's decapitated body jumped to its feet and ... ran. It was able to run past all four landsknechts, taking more than 32 steps, and only after that it stopped and fell.

Both the condemned and those close to the king froze in horror for a short moment, and then the eyes of everyone turned to the monarch with a dumb question, everyone was waiting for his decision. Although the stunned Ludwig of Bavaria was sure that the devil himself helped Dietz to escape, he nevertheless kept his word and pardoned the friends of the executed.

Another striking incident occurred in 1528 in the city of Rodstadt. The unjustly condemned monk said that after the execution he would be able to prove his innocence, and asked for a few minutes not to touch his body. The executioner's ax blew off the head of the convict, and three minutes later the decapitated body turned over, lay on its back, neatly crossing its arms over its chest. After that, the monk was already posthumously found not guilty ...

IN early XIX century during the colonial war in India, the commander of company "B" of the 1st Yorkshire line regiment, Captain T. Malven, was killed under extremely unusual circumstances. During the assault on Fort Amara, during hand-to-hand combat, Malven cut off the head of an enemy soldier with a saber. However, after that, the decapitated enemy managed to raise his rifle and shoot directly into the captain's heart. Documentary evidence of this incident in the form of a report by Corporal R. Crickshaw has been preserved in the archives of the British War Office.

About a shocking incident during the Great Patriotic War, of which he was an eyewitness, I. S. Koblatkin, a resident of the city of Tula, told one of the newspapers: “We were raised to attack under shelling. The soldier ahead of me had his neck broken by a large fragment, so much so that his head literally hung behind his back, like a terrible hood ... Nevertheless, he continued to run before falling.

The phenomenon of the missing brain

If there is no brain, what then coordinates the movements of the body, left without a head? Numerous cases have been described in medical practice that make it possible to raise the question of some kind of revision of the role of the brain in human life. For example, the well-known German brain specialist Houfland had to fundamentally change his previous views when he opened the skull of a paralyzed patient. Instead of a brain, it contained a little more than 300 grams of water, but his patient had previously retained all his mental abilities and was no different from a person with a brain!

In 1935, a child was born at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, in behavior he was no different from ordinary babies, he also ate, cried, reacted to his mother. When he died 27 days later, the autopsy revealed that the baby had no brain at all...

In 1940, a 14-year-old boy was admitted to the clinic of the Bolivian doctor Nicola Ortiz, who complained of terrible headaches. Doctors suspected a brain tumor. He was unable to be helped and died two weeks later. An autopsy showed that his entire skull was occupied by a giant tumor that almost completely destroyed his brain. It turned out that the boy actually lived without a brain, but until his death he was not only conscious, but also retained sound thinking.

An equally sensational fact was presented in a report by doctors Jan Bruel and George Albee in 1957 before the American Psychological Association. They talked about their operation, during which the 39-year-old patient was completely removed the entire right hemisphere of the brain. Their patient not only survived, but also fully retained his mental abilities, and they were above average.

The list of such cases could be continued. Many people after operations, head injuries, terrible injuries continued to live, move and think without a significant part of the brain. What helps them to maintain a sound mind and, in some cases, even efficiency?

Relatively recently, American scientists announced the discovery of a “third brain” in humans. In addition to the brain and spinal cord, they also found the so-called "abdominal brain", represented by an accumulation of nervous tissue on the inside of the esophagus and stomach. According to New York City Research Center professor Michael Gershon, this "belly brain" has more than 100 million neurons, more than even the spinal cord.

American researchers believe that it is the “abdominal brain” that gives the command to release hormones in case of danger, pushes a person either to fight or flee. According to scientists, this third "administrative center" remembers information, is able to accumulate life experience affects our mood and well-being. Maybe it is in the “abdominal brain” that the key to the rational behavior of decapitated bodies lies?

Still chopping heads

Alas, no abdominal brain will still allow them to live without a head, and they are still cut down, even for princesses ... It would seem that beheading, as a kind of execution, has long sunk into oblivion, but back in the first half of the 60s. In the 20th century, it was used in the GDR, then, in 1966, the only guillotine broke and the criminals began to be shot.

But in the Middle East, you can still quite officially lose your head.

In 1980, a literal international shock caused documentary English cinematographer Anthony Thomas, which was called "Death of a Princess". It showed the public beheading of a Saudi princess and her lover. In 1995, a record 192 people were beheaded in Saudi Arabia. After that, the number of such executions began to decrease. In 1996, 29 men and one woman were beheaded in the kingdom.

In 1997, approximately 125 people were beheaded around the world. At least as far back as 2005, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Qatar had laws allowing beheadings. It is authentically known that in Saudi Arabia a special executioner used his skills already in the new millennium.

As for criminal actions, Islamic extremists sometimes deprive people of their heads. There have been cases when the same was done in the criminal gangs of Colombian drug lords. In 2003 acquired world fame some extravagant suicidal Briton who decapitated himself with a self-built guillotine.

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Famous fantasy novel Alexander Belyaev's "Head of Professor Dowell" is undoubtedly just a figment of the imagination of a talented writer. However, many scientists argued that the head separated from the body for some time is able not only to feel, but also to think.

living heads

One of the first documented evidence of the life of a severed head, perhaps, can be considered a case that occurred in 1793 in France, where at that time the guillotine began to be widely used for executions. After the head of the murderer of the Jacobin Jean Paul Marat Charlotte Corday fell into the basket, the executioner took her by the hair and, mockingly, gave her several slaps in the face. According to eyewitnesses, a clear indignation at what was happening was reflected on the face of the executed. And similar testimonies of witnesses are described in historical literature a lot. However, in addition to the allegations of eyewitnesses, there are many experiments done by real scientists.
So in February 1803, the young Polish doctor Wendt, having received the head of one of the convicts for experiments, discovered that in the process of irritating the exposed area of ​​​​the spinal cord, a suffering expression appeared on the face of the executed. In addition, the head closed its eyelids if Wendt pretended to poke his fingers in the eyes. The head looked towards the one who called her by name, and moved her lips, as if trying to say something. The scientist recorded that the head responded to all manipulations within 2 minutes and 40 seconds after clipping.
After 100 years in 1905, the French doctor Borier did a similar experiment with a convict named Langui. Immediately after the execution, Langia's face convulsed for 5-6 seconds. Then the head settled down and the eyelids closed. But after the scientist called the criminal by name, he opened his eyes. According to Borier, Langia's view was clear and meaningful. However, after 25-30 seconds, the head stopped responding to the scientist's voice.

Thoughts and feelings of a severed head

Due to the fact that when the head is cut off from the body, the main thinking organ of a person - the brain - remains intact, scientists have long been interested in the question of whether the murdered person is able to think after the execution. French journalist Michel Delin was also puzzled by the search for an answer to it. During the execution of one convict, a professional doctor introduced a volunteer named Wirtz into a hypnotic trance, thanks to which he had to feel everything that happened to the convict. When the criminal's head was cut off, Wirtz told the doctor and two witnesses that the head sees and feels everything. She sees her wife, child and judges in red robes. She does not understand where her torso is, and is very much in pain.

From the point of view of modern physiology

Modern physiologists argue that the head, cut off from the body, hardly has time to feel anything, and even more so to comprehend. The fact is that blood flow is necessary for the normal functioning of the brain. And when executed by guillotine, for example, all veins and arteries are cut in the blink of an eye. The blood supply to the brain is cut off and the brain dies. Scientists have only a couple of seconds to circulate the blood remaining in the brain.