What does a severed human head think? What does the head feel after chopping off? What does a person feel when a head is cut off

Severed head bit the executioner

There are many different mystical stories about severed heads and beheaded bodies. 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 with the great experience of the executioner and the sharpness of his weapon.

In order for the executioner to try, the convict or his relatives paid him a lot of money, this was facilitated by the widely circulating terrible stories about a blunt sword and an incompetent 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 of the 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?

The French Revolution put decapitation on stream, using "small-scale mechanization" - the guillotine invented at that time. 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 was capable of living for a very short time and in some cases even thinking. 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, a young doctor, Wendt, who later became a university professor, conducted a rather macabre 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 such a disrespectful young man to hell ...

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 twice reacted in this way to its name, and the third time its life energy was already over.

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 ...

At the beginning of the 19th century, during the colonial war in India, the commander of Company B, 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.

A resident of the city of Tula, I. S. Koblatkin, reported a shocking incident during the Great Patriotic War, which he witnessed, in 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 documentary film by the English cameraman Anthony Thomas called "The Death of a Princess" caused literally international shock. 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, a certain extravagant British suicide gained world fame, who deprived himself of his head with the help of his own guillotine.

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 the beginning of this 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 conduct scientific experiments with her. 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 performed by the famous Belgian artist Wirtz on the head of a 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 strong desire to be convinced that he was 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 the last thoughts of the 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! ... ”These were the last words of the hypnotist. 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.
(continued in comments)

A medical study conducted in 1983 concluded that no matter how quickly an execution is carried out, several seconds of pain are inevitable when a person loses his head. Even when using the guillotine, which is considered one of the most "humane" means of decapitation, severe pain cannot be avoided, which will last at least 2-3 seconds.

There were many cases when, after the blow of the executioner, the head of the executed person still continued to “live”. For example, in 1905 there was a horrific experiment where a French doctor called an executed man by his first name seconds after he was beheaded. In response, the eyelids on the face of the severed head lifted, the pupils focused on the doctor, and after a few seconds the eyes closed again. The doctor said that when he repeated the name of the executed again, the same thing happened again, and only the third time the head did not react to his words.

Of course, how much pain the executed will experience depends on the skill of the executioner. At the execution of the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart in 1587, the executioner struck 3 blows to cut off the head, and even after that he had to complete his work with a knife.

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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 the beginning of this 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 conduct scientific experiments with her. 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 performed by the famous Belgian artist Wirtz on the head of a 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 strong desire to be convinced that he was 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 the last thoughts of the 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! ... ”These were the last words of the hypnotist. 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.
(continued in comments)

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 the beginning of this 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 the head of the executed for conducting scientific experiments with it. 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 at each call, the head opened its eyes and directed them in the direction from which the sound came, and 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 performed by the famous Belgian artist Wirtz on the head of a 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 strong desire to be convinced that he was 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 the last thoughts of the 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 has 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 said 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 am flying into 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! ... ”These were the last words of the hypnotist. 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.

True, as far as is known, he himself did not undertake such attempts. For the first time, this was done only in the mid-80s by two German neurosurgeons, Walter Kreiter and Heinrich Kurij, who kept an amputated human head alive for twenty days.

The announcement of this at one time caused heated debate among medical theorists on the moral aspects of such experiments, but Kreiter and Kuridzh see nothing reprehensible in their experiments.

And it all started with the fact that the orderlies delivered the body of a forty-year-old man who had just been in a car accident to their clinic. His head was almost severed from his body and was held on only by a few veins. Salvation was out of the question, and in this situation, neurosurgeons decided to try to keep life at least in the brain of the victim. They connected a life support system to the head and for almost three weeks after that they kept the brain of a person whose body had long been dead in an active state. In addition, Kreiter and Kuridzh established contact with the head. Due to the lack of a throat, the head could not speak, but by the movement of her lips, scientists "read" a lot of words, from which it followed that she understood what had happened to her ...

It is clear that it is hard to believe in all this, and the fantastic novel by Alexander Belyaev immediately comes to mind. And yet, one would like to hope so much that the human body is not an indivisible whole, and that the same head, if one tries very hard, can be sewn intact to its original place.

In March 1990, the Lipetsk machine operator Valery Vdovits was sewn on his left arm, torn off almost at the shoulder by a machine for liming the soil. And nothing - works as before. So, maybe Alexander Belyaev was right and the “head of Professor Dowell” still has a chance?