Electric stimulation of frog legs by Luigi Galvani in the 1880s shocked the world. The dead body suddenly came to life, muscles contracting to move. Galvani believed that his device could bring a dead body back to life for several seconds. Experiments were carried out on larger and larger animals to find out how to revive a dead person by electroshocking.
At the beginning of the next century, Giovanni Aldini (Galvani's nephew) traveled across Europe with his device consisting of enormous copper batteries and zinc shields. He put on shows that stunned the audience. The bodies of sheep, cows, dogs and other animals, when energized, acted as if they suddenly came to life The limbs moved in every direction, the lids lifted to reveal the turning eyeballs, and the teeth were chattering. It was called " animal electricity ”.
Bringing heads
Eventually, experiments began on human bodies. In the early 19th century in Great Britain, Aldini received the body of the murderer Georg Foster (sentenced to hanging), which he used for a show at the Royal College of Surgeons. Placing the device on the face of the deceased caused muscle spasms and the eyes to open. Legs and hands began to move and fists clenched. Observers wondered if the deceased had actually come to life for the time being ... During the following shows, the faces of the dead showed grimaces and even smiles.
A person reacts subconsciously to the facial expressions of a human face. A smile causes us relaxation, sadness, compassion, etc. But what if such a face belongs to a deceased person? Our brain cannot cope with information confusion because we instinctively realize that the person is dead and should not show any emotions. Not surprisingly, viewers of such experiments fainted and vomited. A severed hand that jumps freely on the table top does not stun you as stunned as a dead face that shows emotions reserved for the living .
As early as 1803 in Wrocław, a certain doctor Wendt used the head of a criminal sentenced to death by beheading for research. Immediately after cutting, he applied a galvanic probe to the deceased's spinal cord. According to the descriptions, a grimace appeared on his face, his eyes reacted to the light, as well as to the sound (Wendt reportedly shouted the name of the convict into his ear, and he directed his pupils towards him). The mouth also moved as if the condemned man wanted to say something. People were convinced that the decapitated man was still alive . In the 19th century, galvanization was banned in Germany because it achieved unimaginable popularity.
The guillotine problem
The guillotine appeared in Europe as early as the 13th century. It was perfected during the French Revolution and, as we know, became its symbol. The population had to prepare mentally for such a sudden method of killing. The blade was killing life with incredible speed, so quickly that observers of the execution wondered:is death so fast? This mysterious moment of death was too short then. What if the man was still alive and realized he had been beheaded?
Charlotte Corday d'Armont's head was supposed to turn red with anger after being shot.
During the French Revolution, rumors of living heads immediately after beheading were popular, such as the head of Charlotte Corday d'Armont (killer of Marat, a French politician) who, after being guillotined, was to be slapped by the executioner and then reddened with anger . There were more such stories - about heads trying to scream, in which the lips, eyes, etc. moved. Can these stories really be considered true?
After being beheaded, the human head did not have to be deprived of movement, after all, the reason could be complex physiological processes. Most of their time, however, wondered about the smoldering life in a decapitated head. They believed that the brain was still functioning and the beheaded person felt pain, hence the guillotine was considered a very painful death penalty. Researchers reported that the human head retains more heat than other parts of the body and is able to "survive" a quarter of an hour after decapitation . There were also scholars who believed that the guillotine was a humanitarian (for those times) death machine, as the death of the convict took place immediately. Thus, two parties were formed which exchanged arguments.
As it happens in science - death by the guillotine was considered the most painful on the one hand and the most humane on the other.
Research
Efforts were made to prove that the life processes were still going on in the mind of the beheaded person in all sorts of ways. The severed heads were pricked with spikes, hit, torn hair, etc. They wondered if the movement on the face was a sign of life, or if it could be a movement devoid of it.
It even happened that the French doctor Jean Baptiste Vincent Laborde connected the arteries of the human neck with the circulatory system of a living dog, and then pumped blood. According to his observations, shock and disbelief appeared on the dead face for two seconds . But the same doctor wrote that the decapitated head hears the cheers of the crowd of onlookers, and also suggested that the torturers should try to shake the decapitated head in order to get rid of the blood that would allow the unfortunate to live faster.
In the twentieth century, research continued, but not with that frequency. Animals were used more frequently to try to understand the issues of transplantation. In 1908, in St. Louis Charles Guthrie transplanted the dog's head into the body of the other. After a few hours, however, complications followed. In the 1930s, a pregnant sheep was beheaded in a study by the Hebrew University. The sheep, hooked up to life support apparatus, gave birth to a lamb less than an hour later . In the USSR, Vladimir Demikov carried out transplantation experiments on dogs by implanting another head in one dog. These two-headed dogs survived for up to a week . From here it was close to trying to prove that a head transplant is also possible in humans.
Frozen heads
Nowadays, some people decide to undergo cryopreservation, that is, cutting off the head after death and freezing it. There are special cryonics institutes in the world that enable this practice. The clients of these institutes believe that perhaps in the future it will be possible to transplant a human head, which will enable them to come back to life .
Medicine enables multiple organ transplants, which once seemed impossible. After all, it is now possible to transplant a whole face, and therefore it is possible that in the future it will be possible to do the same with a human head. We penetrate the marshy ground, because the face and head are quite unusual parts of the human body - unlike the kidneys, lungs, heart, they visually define us who we are. There are ethical problems and controversy here.
Humanity has a very strong fascination with the human head. This fascination is due to various reasons - biological and philosophical as well as practical.
Bibliography:
- Jordanowa L., Medical Mediations:Mind, Body and the Guilltine , [In:] History Workshop Journal, vol. 28, No. 1, 1989.
- Kershaw A., A History of the Guillotine , New York 1993.
- Larson F, The history of the world described by the decapitated heads, Warsaw 2014.
- Smith P., Narrating thr Guillotine:Punishment Technology as Myth and Symbol , [In:] Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 20, No. 5, 2003.