Guillotine Deaths Were Way Creepier Than We Thought

Decapitation by guillotine was popular during the French Revolution, and was thought to be a merciful method of execution. Believed for centuries to be instantaneous and thereby humane, even the most gentle option of the day,  for some time the guillotine was used exclusively on nobility for offenses like treason.

But over time, observations of victims’ faces by medical personnel and witnesses to the moment of decapitation led to doubts about the interpretation of instantaneous death. The eyes of severed heads appeared to follow or seek out those of the living, respond to spoken names, even form emotional expressions. Often, physical indications appeared identical to those of life.

Was the belief about immediate loss of consciousness mistaken? Could it be possible that victims of beheading experience decapitation before the mercy of death? And if so, how long could such horror be perceived?

True awareness is unlikely

Observations of physical responses resembling consciousness sometimes continued for up to fifteen seconds — an eternity, if you think about it, for anyone going through the experience. But recent studies of consciousness show that generating the conscious a state we associate with perceptions of reality and the world around us is too demanding metabolically to persist without blood flow for more than, well, a heartbeat or two.

So intensive are the brain’s processing requirements to establish of this state of alert awareness that the cessation of blood flow that occurs in decapitation — total and instantaneous — probably stops processing cold. Along with the brutal shock to the neurological system, such brutal decapitation probably does render meaningful interpretation in the moment impossible, as well as painless… a mercy indeed.

The moments preceding the descent of the blade would also likely have been flooded by stress hormones and chemicals (like adrenaline and cortisol), causing extreme physical responses by an amplified flight-or-fight response with nowhere to go. Experience of vision, time, and details would be distorted, complicating the consciousness cocktail further beforehand.

Expressions and movements of the face and eyes are more likely to be a result of the neuroelectrical chaos wreaking havoc before the blade falls, and certainly at the moment of separation… convulsions of muscles in death, not emotions of a fading life.

History, thankfully

France held its final guillotining in the 20th century making the guillotine a relic of the past.  Decapitation isn’t practiced today as a method of execution (except in a few areas of the Middle East, under dramatically different circumstances), so the question is a moot one. Even so, definitively putting to bed a persistent scientific curiosity with current understanding of neurology sheds welcome light on a truly macabre issue… a mercy for those asking the questions as well as for the unfortunate souls who answered them.

Well-intentioned rules and regulations are put into place by organizations.  Sometimes, however, like America has found out with the disastrous “de-fund the police” movement, the results are not what the organizers intended them to be.

I think it is a little like that with the new dictate that the Veterans Adminsitration has previewed that entails giving an urn and memorial plaque to the family of each deceased veteran that wishes to receive one.  With the fact that only about 3 in 10 cremations are memorialized with an earth burial of the cremated remains, I believe that the VA has offered these urns as places of final rest for the veterans who they believe will be memorialized, at least for the time being, in a home, rather than placed in a cemetery.

However, the National Funeral Directors Association and the Minnesota Department of Veteran’s Affairs have voiced opposition to this new proposal.  It is their contention that there is a “clause” in the wording of the urn/plaque choice that would then limit a veteran’s family of further memorialization choices.

That clause, according to those groups and as mentioned in this article from The Vets Portal is this,  “. . .the veteran’s remains cannot be placed in a national cemetery if a family member chooses to receive an urn or plaque. Furthermore, no additional grave monument will be provided by the VA for any cemetery. “

Those groups then argue that “Veterans should not (be denied) the substantial advantage of burial in a national cemetery, which also offers permanent care, because of the comparatively modest cost of these goods.”

Funeral Director Daily take:  I haven’t been on top of this issue, but offering an urn and plaque as a benefit to families of deceased veterans is a nice gesture. . . especially for those who have no intention of burying the cremated remains in a national or other cemetery.  I think the VA understands that there are people who choose to live with an urn in their living room as their accepted form of memorialization. . . .especially for that period of time when the spouse of a veteran is still alive.

However, I agree with the NFDA and the group from Minnesota when they say that acceptance of this benefit should not preclude the future interment of the cremated remains and memorialization in a national cemetery at a later date. . . quite possibly at the time when the veteran’s spouse dies.

I also agree that there will be surviving spouses who choose the urn/plaque benefit that don’t realize they are signing away the future interment in a national cemetery when they make this choice.  And, I’m guessing that over time, if this is the case, those people will be disappointed at the VA for taking away the privilige of being buried in a national cemetery simply because they chose to take an urn and plaque at the time of death.

The rules of this benefit should be reviewed before it is implemented.

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