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Death penalty [History and types of capital punishment from the beginning of time to the present day] Monestier Martin

Decapitation

Decapitation

Nikolai Mirlikisky relieves three innocent convicts from the death penalty. Painting by Ilya Repin. 1888 D.R.

Decapitation consists in severing the neck, that is, in separating the head from the torso. Cutting off a part of the body is, in fact, just self-mutilation, but the significance of the cut off organ is such that this mutilation leads to immediate death.

In terms of the variety and brutality of the methods of punishment, beheading has always been considered "a simple execution." It existed in Asia and the East long before the Christian era. It can even be argued that this method originated in the Bronze Age at the same time as the emergence of edged weapons. Ancient courts sentenced people to beheading when a crime was not punishable by burning, suffocation, or stoning. One of the bas-reliefs that have come down to us testifies that decapitation was already known in Egypt under Ramses II.

The headless child. China. 1943 Photo by Keyston.

According to Jewish Deuteronomy (the fifth book of the Pentateuch, a summary of the Law of God), certain types of crimes were punished by beheading.

When the ruler of Judea, Herod Antipas, promised his niece Salome, daughter of the tetrarch of Galilee Herod Philip, any reward for the dance and she demanded from him the head of St. John the Baptist, he was beheaded according to the regulations in force in the kingdom.

In Rome, "death by iron" almost immediately became the prerogative of the aristocracy. Christians were usually given to be torn to pieces by predators or crucified, with the exception of Roman citizens who were beheaded.

So, Cecilia, later canonized, and her husband Valera were from noble patrician families, and their heads were cut off. The inept lictor was unable to chop off Cecilia's head three times. By law, it was forbidden to strike more than three blows, and the executioner left her to bleed. The young woman died for three days.

The Roman patrician Saint Felicia raised seven sons in the Christian faith. They reported on her, she refused to renounce and was sentenced to death along with all her children: three, like herself, were beheaded.

Another well-known example is the story of the holy martyrs, the brothers John and Paul, who served as guards at the court of Constance, daughter of the emperor Constantine. When Julian the Apostate ascended the throne, they retired. They were sentenced to death for their Christian faith, but they were Roman citizens and demanded that the trial be held in Rome. Both were beheaded at night: the emperor was afraid that a public execution would cause riots in Rome.

The Romans cut off the heads of captured soldiers of enemy armies. Engraving. XVIII century Private count

Saint Placid, Saint Lucius, Saint Christophe and dozens of other Christian martyrs were beheaded.

Daniel-Rops, in his History of the Christian Church, citing an ancient author, tells how one day the number of the "righteous", that is, Christians who had to cut their throats, horrified the executioner, who feared that his hand and sword might not stand. The executioner lined up the martyrs in a row, “in order to cut off the heads of the victims in a furious impulse, one after another. He invented this system so as not to pause in his bloody work, because if he struck without leaving the place, the pile of corpses would become a hindrance to him. "

During the reign of the Christian emperors, decapitation began to be used more often, replacing the crucifixion, left in memory of the torment of Christ.

Some "cutters" have gone down in history for their commitment to this type of execution. So, Charlemagne, "converting" the Saxons, beheaded more than four thousand people in Verdun.

Richard the Lionheart in the Holy Land stripped the heads of two and a half thousand Muslims on the pretext that the ransom for them was not paid quickly enough.

In 1698, Peter I ordered the beheading of several hundred rebellious archers. He and his entourage executed dozens of people with their own hands.

In France, the Duke de Guise, who had captured almost all supporters of Godefroy de La Renaudie, ordered the beheading of several dozen Protestants in Amboise.

But the “palm”, so to speak, belongs to the Chinese emperor Qin Shi-huangdi, the builder of the Great Wall, who in 234 BC ordered the chopping off of a hundred thousand heads in order to strengthen his power.

The practice of beheading also existed in Africa. In the 19th century, a certain Eshar, quoted by Roland Villeneuve, was invited to the coronation of King Beganzin in Dahomey and left a detailed description of the action: “I was seated on a high platform, opposite which were laid out rows of human heads. All the ground in the square was soaked in blood. These were the heads of the captives, over which the masters of the shoulder did their best ... This was not the end of the matter! Twenty-four large baskets were brought in, each containing a living person. The baskets were placed in front of the king, and then, one by one, they were thrown from the platform down onto the square, where the crowd thirsting for blood danced, sang and screamed ... Any Dahomean who was lucky to grab a victim and cut off its head could immediately exchange it for a bunch of shells ... In the end Three more groups of prisoners were brought to the ceremonies: their heads were cut off with serrated knives to prolong the torment. "

Seven hundred executions a year

Let us recall that edged weapons were used not only for the quick and final severing of the neck. In the East and Asia, mainly in India, China and Persia, it was used for death torture.

At first, a person was inflicted rather deep wounds or "cut" his neck, and killed, slowly sawing off his head with a sword. The sharp blade made countless reciprocating movements, gradually sinking into the flesh under the weight of its own weight.

The execution of the Earl of Egmont. Often, one hit was not enough. Berger engraving. Private count

In Europe, beheading has never been torture and was carried out in much the same way. All European chronicles contain numerous descriptions of such executions.

In England, Russia and numerous German principalities, heads were chopped off with an ax, in France, Italy, Spain - with a sword. The Arabs preferred the saber. In general, we can say that the northern countries preferred the ax, the Latin ones preferred the sword.

In England, during the reign of Henry VIII, there were more than seven hundred executions a year, two-thirds were carried out with an ax. The monarch himself did not hesitate to send two of his six wives to the chopping block - Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

In 1554, by order of Mary Tudor, the heads of the seventeen-year-old princess Jane Gray, her husband and father, were chopped off with an ax. In 1587, an ax took the life of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who was beheaded in prison on the orders of her cousin Elizabeth I. And again, with an ax in 1649, Charles I Stuart was executed on the square in front of Whitehall.

The soul does not lie to work

The execution of James of Scotland, Duke of Montmaus, in 1685 at Towerhill was gruesome. “With the first blow, the executioner only wounded the legitimate son of Charles II. Monmaus raised his head and glanced reproachfully at the executioner John Kech. He struck three blows in a row, but the convulsively beating head was never separated from the body. Shouts were heard in the crowd. The executioner swore and threw down the ax with the words: "The heart does not lie." The sheriff ordered him to continue. The crowd threatened to climb the scaffold and deal with Kech. He raised the ax, struck two more blows, but that was not enough. He had to use a knife to cut off the duke's head at last. "

By the early 18th century, decapitation in Great Britain had gradually given way to hanging. In Russia, cutting off the head was abolished by Catherine the Great, and in Germany, in the Rhine lands, the ax was used at the beginning of the 19th century. It was returned to it during the Third Reich - the Nazis used it along with the guillotine and hanging. It was with an ax that, for example, Van Der Lubbe, accused of setting fire to the Reichstag, was executed. Until 1945, hundreds of convicts were executed in this ancient way.

In Malines (the territory of modern Belgium), according to archival documents, in the period between 1370 and 1390, out of six hundred and seventy-five executions, two hundred and seventy-seven were carried out with an ax.

In France, the ax was also used, but, as in Italy, there they quickly drew a line between the ax and the sword. The convicts of the nobility were gradually freed from the ax used to execute commoners, giving them the right to die by the sword, a noble weapon. Over time, beheading, to which people from all walks of life were originally sentenced, became the privilege of the nobility, the ax finally became a thing of the past, and the commoners began to be sent to the gallows or to the wheel.

As a result, decapitation was used less and less, and at the beginning of the 18th century, a custom designed to inspire terror disappeared, when the executioner cut the decapitated body into four parts, which were hung at the main gate, while the head was placed on a pillar at the place of execution.

Accepting death not by the blade, but in any other way was considered humiliating in Europe. Brantom writes that Francis I, dissatisfied with the behavior of some courtiers, promised to "mercilessly" hang those who dishonor the ladies.

Horn's case also testifies to the "nobility" of beheading. Count Henri de Horn, grandson of the Prince de Ligne and cousin of the regent, lured a stock player into the trap under the pretext of buying shares for one hundred thousand crowns. Horn and an accomplice killed and robbed the man. They were arrested. When the murder was proven, the embarrassed judges decided to consult with the regent, but he announced: "Let justice be done." The fact that the murdered man was a Jew, in the Count's opinion, justified him. The judges were convinced that the regent would have mercy on the relative, and sentenced both to the wheel: so then they were executed for similar crimes. The families of the convicts quickly realized that pardon was not worth counting on, and demanded, at least, a sentence of beheading, since the wheel was considered the most shameful execution and dishonor would be a stain on the families and even on the regent himself, because he was also associated with Count Horn. The Regent objected with a quote from Corneille: "Shameful is the crime, not the scaffold."

Declaiming with a saber. Painting by Regno. D.R.

Two priceless heads

Love made two noble ladies - the Duchess of Nevers and Marguerite of Valois - do a very strange thing.

The lover of the first was a native of Piedmont, Count Annibal Coconas, the second - Ser de Lamol.

Both distinguished themselves by their deplorable zeal on St. Bartholomew's Night and entered the service of the Duke of Alencon, the younger brother of Charles IX. They entered into a conspiracy to kill the king - he was very sick and soon died - so that the crown went to the duke, and not to his brother Henry III, who had recently become king of Poland.

The conspiracy was uncovered, Kokonas and Lamol were brought to the scaffold in April 1574. After the execution, the Duchess of Neversky and Marguerite Valois received the heads of their lovers and ordered them to be embalmed in order to preserve them. Alexander Dumas, the father, made these women the heroines of Queen Margot, and Stendhal remembered the episode of the embalming of heads in the novel Red and Black.

The success of the decapitation procedure depended only on the performer. Everything was decided by skill: the head could fly off the first time, but, if required, they inflicted several blows. The executioner's sword was heavy, with a long, wide, pointed blade. This sword was held with both hands. To handle such a weapon, a remarkable strength was required from the executioner.

The executioner spun the sword over his head to give the blow more force, and brought it down on the convict's neck. It is not so easy to decapitate a person, because the neck is much stronger than it seems at first glance. Numerous reports of executions indicate that the executioner's sword often suffered during the procedure. So, in a document dated 1476, it is reported that the Parisian executioner was allocated sixty sous for "the restoration of the old sword, which was serrated during the administration of justice over Messire Louis of Luxembourg", beheaded by order of Louis XI. In 1792, the Parisian executioner reminds the minister that “after the execution, the sword becomes unsuitable for the next procedure, because it is serrated. It is absolutely necessary to rework it and sharpen it when several convicts have to be executed at once. It should also be noted that swords are often broken during such executions. "

The decapitation of Marshal Biron. Engraving. Private count

As for decapitation with an ax, the procedure is carried out as follows: the convicted person puts his head on the block, and the executioner strikes a strong blow on the neck. When executed with a sword, the task remains the same - the separation of the head from the body, but there are several different techniques.

Method one: as in the case of decapitation with an ax, the convict kneels down with his hands tied behind his back and puts his head on a wooden block. In some cases, the convict was allowed to remain with his hands free. This was the case, for example, with Messrs. De Tu and Saint-Mar.

Method two: the convict kneels or sits on his haunches, bowing his head on his chest so as to open the executioner's neck. In this case, the hands of the convict were usually tied in front.

The third method is full-length execution. The rarest and most difficult method of decapitation, risky both for the executioner, who is more difficult to strike in such a position, and for the convict: if the executioner struck unsuccessfully, he could hit not on the neck, but on the head or shoulder.

Decapitation "while standing" required considerable skill from the executioner. This method was used mainly in China: those who had the good fortune to meet with the emperor were executed in this way, while ordinary convicts were put on their knees during beheading.

Standing decapitation was also practiced in several Gulf states and was traditional in Yemen. In 1962, in the main square of Taiz, two prisoners were publicly beheaded for the attempt on the life of Imam Mansur.

Miraculously survived on the chopping block

One of the archival documents of the Côte d'Or department, published in Dijon in 1889 signed by Clement Jeanin, describes an incident - perhaps the only one in history - when the awkwardness of an executioner led to the pardon of a convict, a noblewoman named Helene Gillet, who was sentenced to beheading for infanticide. In the midst of a huge crowd, the executioner Simon Granjean, much more accustomed to wheeling and hanging than to beheading, could not kill the unfortunate woman. “Amid the crowd's whistle, which grew in strength, he struck several blows in a row, seriously wounding a twenty-two-year-old girl. The crowd became more and more inflamed, the executioner threw down his sword and fled, hiding in a small chapel at the foot of the scaffold. His wife and assistant wanted to finish the execution. She tried to strangle the convict with a rope under a hail of stones that flew from the raging crowd. Unable to kill the victim, the female executioner took the scissors she brought to cut off the condemned hair, and tried to cut her throat with them. She did not succeed, and then she poked them into the victim's body several times. " Outraged spectators rushed to the scaffold, grabbed the couple of executioners and tore them to pieces. Hélène Gillet, as incredible as it may seem, the surgeons managed to save. Louis XIII pardoned the woman who miraculously survived, and she ended her days at the Bourg-en-Bresse monastery.

In France, forensic history knows of isolated cases of standing beheadings. The most famous of these is the execution of the Chevalier de la Barra. According to some sources, he allegedly did not bow before the church procession, according to others, he outraged the crucifixion, be that as it may, a nineteen-year-old nobleman was sentenced to be burned for "godlessness, blasphemy, disgusting and terrible sacrilege."

He wanted to die standing ...

Taking into account the age and aristocracy, the bonfire was replaced by decapitation. The sentence was carried out at Abbeville in 1766. After five hours of torture, the convict was taken to the scaffold, a plaque was hung around his neck, which indicated his crime. As the procession passed the church, de la Barre refused to kneel and publicly repent. On the scaffold, he ran his finger along the blade of the sword and asked the executioner "to show his art, since suffering frightened him more than death itself." He was blindfolded. Usually, a beheading condemned man was allowed to choose whether to blindfold him or not. However, in cases of “shameful aggravation of punishment,” this was specially stipulated by the verdict. So it was this time.

When the executioner ordered him to kneel, he rebelled: “Oh no! I am not a criminal and will die standing. "

The young, inexperienced executioner realized that the dispute would only take away his strength. He struck with such force and precision that the head, as stated in the chronicle, "held out on its shoulders for a few more seconds and fell only when the body collapsed."

Wits composed several couplets and pamphlets about the executioner's skill, which have reached Paris. They were about an impatient sacrifice, to which the executioner replied: "Done, monsieur, shake yourself!"

The success of the execution depended not only on the skill of the executioner, but also on the goodwill of the condemned. Consider the fears expressed by the executioner Sanson when, in 1792, the National Assembly issued a decree applying beheading to all convicts. Sanson responded with a famous letter, expressing unequivocally his concern:

“In order for the execution to be carried out, as the law prescribes, not only the submissiveness and firmness of the convicted person are required, but also the executioner's skill, otherwise dangerous complications cannot be avoided. It is also important to take into account the fact that in the case of the simultaneous execution of several convicts there will be too much blood, which can instill fear and awe in the souls of even the most courageous of those who will wait for their hour of death ... If the convicts lose their fortitude, then the execution can turn into a battle and mass slaughter ... How to cope with a person who does not want or cannot control himself? "

In fact, it is almost impossible to decapitate a convict who does not obey the executioner with an ax or a sword. Marshal Biron, executed as a conspirator, refused to believe until the scaffold that the king wanted him dead. To behead Biron, the executioner struck unexpectedly while he was praying.

Tipping the executioners

The executioners almost always managed to separate the head from the body from the first blow. The audience highly appreciated this skill.

An example of an exemplary beheading is the execution of Beaulieu de Montigny, carried out in July 1737 by the executioner Prudhomme. With one blow, the executioner cut off the condemned head and showed it to the people from all sides, after which he laid it on the ground and began to bow to the public, like an actor. “The crowd applauded for a long time his dexterity,” the chronicle testifies.

Chinese executioners were often praised for their incredibly dexterous saber wielding. This reputation is also confirmed by the French military attaché, who worked in China during the interwar period and left a description of the public beheading of fifteen convicts.

Turkish soldiers cut off the heads of Macedonian nationalists. 1903 Photography. Private count

“The convicts are on their knees, in two rows, with their hands tied behind their backs. Before each condemned, the executioner brandishes a saber and strikes. The head freezes as if in indecision, and then rolls on the ground. Blood gushes from the severed arteries, and the body suddenly goes limp and slowly sinks into a pool of blood. Only one convict was not immediately beheaded. His head rolled off his shoulders only after the fifth blow, the victim screamed terribly. According to the military attaché, this happened because the convict did not pay the "tip" to the executioner.

Usually the executioners showed the proper skill, and yet the court chronicles are full of descriptions of unthinkable horrors caused not by the professional dishonesty of the performers, but by their monstrous ineptitude. Thus, Henri de Talleyrand, Count of Chalet, accused of conspiracy and executed in Nantes in 1626, received thirty-two blows from the sword. At the twentieth beat, the audience, frozen with horror, heard the condemned man shouting "Jesus Mary".

Decapitation in China. 1938 The head, blown away by one blow, will now roll on the ground. Qty. Monestier.

Let's be fair to the executioners' workshop: that time the executor was a soldier sentenced to the gallows, who saved his life by agreeing to take the sword of justice in his hands - in fact, such swords were in service with the Swiss guard. With the first blow, this would-be executioner broke the young man's shoulder, with the next he barely wounded him. Until the twentieth blow, the brave condemned man each time took up his starting position in the hope of finally receiving a saving blow. He received the last twelve blows while lying down.

An equally terrible massacre took place in 1642 in Lyon, when Messrs. De Tu and Saint-Mar were beheaded by porters: the city at that time was awaiting the appointment of an official executioner. De Tu's head flew off the twelfth blow. The decapitation of Saint-Mar was recorded by the secretary of the Lyons court: “The first blow to the neck came too high, too close to the head; the neck was cut in half, the body fell on its back to the left of the block, facing the sky, legs twitched, arms moved ... The executioner struck three or four more blows to the throat and finally chopped off his head. "

Execution with an ax in a Prussian prison. Dete engraving. Private count

One of the eyewitnesses testified: “He closed his eyes, compressed his lips and waited for the blow, the executioner inflicted it slowly and smoothly ... Saint-Mar let out a cry, choking on blood. He tried to get up, as if he wanted to get up, but fell again. His head was barely resting on his shoulders. The executioner walked around him on the right, stood behind him and grabbed him by the hair. With his right hand, he cut open the trachea and skin on the neck, which could not be cut. Then he threw his head on the scaffold, she turned slightly and twitched for a long time. Both testimonies say one thing: the executions of Saint-Mar and de Tu were terrible. "Misses" were a common thing even for the most dexterous and experienced executioners.

Execution in Asia: the convict sits with his head bent forward, waiting for the blow. Qty. Monestier.

The execution of the "boxers" in front of the military representatives of the Western powers. Qty. Monestier.

Decapitation with a sword has always been not the most convenient method of execution, for it required not only the skill of the performer, but also the goodwill of the convicted person.

Often people on the chopping block resisted with all the strength of despair, but many humbly accepted their fate. Some even exceeded the executioner's expectations.

So, Mrs. Tike, a very beautiful woman of twenty-eight years old, the wife of the councilor of the Paris parliament, suffering from endless betrayals of her husband, she herself cheated on him, and then decided to exterminate him, entering into a conspiracy with hired killers. But her plan was revealed, she was arrested, sentenced to death and two days later sent to execution. The procession had almost reached Greve Square when the sky suddenly darkened and a downpour gushed out. The condemned woman was sitting on a cart between the executioner Charles Sanson and the priest. In the blink of an eye, the square was empty, people ran to hide under the canopies of shops and arches of houses. The executioner's assistants and soldiers took refuge under the scaffold and the cart, in which the condemned woman, the executioner and the priest were still sitting in the pouring rain. "Forgive me, madam," Charles Sanson said to Madame Tique, "but I cannot proceed to the execution, because of the rampant elements the blow will break." She thanked, and everyone waited for the end of the storm. An hour has passed. Then the rain finally subsided, and the crowd again filled the Place de Grève. Helpers and soldiers emerged from their hiding places. "It's time!" - said the executioner. The condemned woman got off the cart to climb the scaffold.

The execution of the leaders of the "boxers" uprising in China. 1901 Photo "Sigma". "Illustration".

According to some testimonies, as a sign of "gratitude and humility" Madame Tike kissed Sanson's hand when he helped her up the stairs. The latter turned to his son, who served as his assistant, and whispered: "Take my place." For several seconds the young man hesitated, but his thoughts were interrupted by the question of the condemned:

Gentlemen, please, tell me, what position should I take?

Get on your knees, keep your head straight and free the back of your head, removing the hair on your face, '' replied the old executioner. His son lost his cool while the convict took the right position.

So good? she asked.

When the young executioner raised a heavy sword and began to spin it in the air, the condemned exclaimed:

Most importantly, do not disfigure me!

The first blow cut off her ear and cheek. Blood splattered, indignant screams were heard in the crowd. The condemned woman fell to the floor and thrashed her whole body like a wounded horse. The assistant grabbed her by the legs to press her to the ground. Charles Sanson, holding his hair, immobilized his head so that his son could hit again. Only on the third blow did he manage to cut off her head.

One of the most famous "failures" was the execution of Arthur Thom Lally-Tollandahl, the former commander of the French forces in India. He won several victories, but in Pondicherry he was besieged by the British, and after stubborn resistance he surrendered. France lost India. Lally-Tollandal was taken prisoner and taken to London, where he learned that in his homeland public opinion thirsted for his blood. He asked the British to release him on parole and, proud and angry, arrived in Paris to cleanse himself of slander.

The judges, showing gross bias, sentenced him to death for treason. He was beheaded on the Place de Grève by the executioner Sanson.

Separation from the trunk

It is mistakenly used as a synonym for the expression "cutting off the head". Separation from the trunk is a surgical operation, when the head is separated from the trunk of the embryo if insurmountable obstacles prevent its extraction.

Beheading

This action consists in cutting the neck. The term is not medical, but is used to describe the execution of saints who had their heads cut off.

Decapitation

The action of cutting off the head. The term is used when killing by court order.

Guillotting

Decapitation by means of a guillotine.

Head in one blow

1766 year. Thirty years earlier, on a rainy evening, Lally-Tollandal and two of his friends had asked for shelter in the house to wait out the storm.

This house belonged to Jean-Baptiste Sanson - he was then nineteen years old, and that evening he gave a ball on the occasion of his marriage.

Young people were returning from a picnic and found it pleasant to spend an evening with a rich bourgeois, hoping to have fun at his expense. Late at night, when most of the guests were already saying goodbye to the host, Lally-Tollandal said to his friends: "Let's leave, gentlemen, but first we'll find out who we are to thank."

Exposing the heads of the executed.

Jean-Baptiste Sanson was waiting for this moment to take revenge on the intruders for their arrogance and arrogance. "I am the executor of judgments, gentlemen, the master of the Parisian Viscountry." The young people turned pale. Do not forget that in those days the executioners were pariahs.

Jean-Baptiste Sanson continued: “My invited guests were my assistants, colleagues from the provinces, interrogators and royal bailiffs. Ladies are their spouses and sisters. "

Lally-Tollandahl broke the silence. “What an interesting person, maybe he will let us have a look at his torture arsenal,” he challenged. Jean-Baptiste Sanson did not argue with the young revelers who delayed his wedding night. He showed them ropes, blocks, fetters, clubs and a heavy sword.

China. 1925 Photo "Sigma".

Between dogs and people

Decapitation - killing by cutting the bone marrow in the region of the medulla oblongata or just below. Judging by the observations made during the execution of criminals and experiments on the beheading of dogs at the end of the 19th century, death occurs for various reasons. In dogs, the death was caused not by dissection of the bone marrow or irritation of the nerve centers, but by bleeding and asphyxiation.

Inhibition caused by exposure to the brain leads to death faster than vascular damage. The famous scientist Luayal said that the human brain does not have time to perceive pain after cutting the neck. That is why the death masks of decapitated people and dogs are so different. The face of a decapitated person expresses despondency and dispassion, while pain and horror are read on the face of an animal.

On the other hand, experiments on decapitation of dogs have shown that in animals it is possible to achieve the same calm expression as in humans, if the head is cut off at the level of the medulla oblongata and the respiratory center. Luayal characterized the posthumous movements of decapitated criminals as reflexes with loss of sensitivity.

For or against

In France, as elsewhere, public opinion changes with current events. The number of supporters of the death penalty is always growing after serial crimes.

1962: 34% for the death penalty.

- 1964: 51 %.

- 1972: 63 %.

- 1978: 60 %.

- 1979: 55 %.

- 1981: 62 %.

- 1982: 63 %.

- 1984: 65 %.

- 1988: 72 %.

- 1990: 74 %.

Lally-Tollandal ran his finger along the blade. "With such a weapon," he said, "you can be sure that you will blow your head off with one blow." The executioner boldly replied: "If someday the fate of Monsieur Saint-Mara befalls your mercy, then since I cannot entrust the beheading of a nobleman to my assistants, I give you my word that I will not keep you waiting and I will not need ten attempts."

The joke made a bad impression on Lally-Tollandahl. By the time he reached a high position, Jean-Baptiste Sanson, suffering from paralytic seizures, had already transferred the case to his son Charles and retired to his home in Brie-Comte-Robert.

Learning about the sentence passed on the night visitor, and the refusal of Louis XV to pardon, Jean-Baptiste Sanson returned to Paris, repeating one single phrase: "I do not want him to suffer, I promised him."

"I will be on the scaffold," he told his son, "and I will give you advice so that he does not suffer."

The end of the story is reminiscent of an ancient tragedy. Robert Kristoff described these events in his History of the Sansons:

“A tragic memory, a terrible coincidence, a sad day has arrived. Arriving at the Place de Grève, Lally-Tolandal ascended the scaffold, supported by two Sansons, the young Charles-Henri and his father Jean-Baptiste, who was not yet an old man, his illness made him weak. The muscles lost strength, the legs weakened, the kidneys hurt. On the scaffold, Lally-Tollandal stared at Jean-Baptiste Sanson, as if he wanted to tell him: "Remember your promise." While the servant was bringing a chair to the executioner, the latter, rolling up his sleeves, said to the convict: “At our age, Mister Count, it is no longer possible to kill, you can only die. Here is my son, "he added, pointing to Charles-Henri," he will keep his father's word. "

Public execution in Jeddah by beheading. Photo taken by a European through shutters. Photo "Gamma".

Countries practicing decapitation with a saber

Now there are three countries in the world where they continue to carry out public beheadings of criminals.

These are Saudi Arabia, Qatar and North Yemen, where shooting is also used.

The convict thanked him with a nod of his head. But young Charles-Henri Sanson had never executed a nobleman and did not know how to handle a heavy sword. For two days on the eve of the execution, he trained on dummies. For this case, the father ordered to make a stronger and sharper sword than the previous one.

"Now chop it!" cried the count. Charles-Henri raised his sword and, making three turns in the air, brought it down on the old man's neck. At that moment, his long gray hair untied, and the blade of the sword slid over them, breaking the condemned jaw. Lally-Tolandal fell, but immediately got up and knelt again. The huge crowd exploded, insults and threats rained down. One of the servants grabbed the convict by the ears and ordered the others to saw through the back of the head with a blade serrated from the previous blow.

Charles-Henri Sanson held out his weapon and the inhuman operation began. The sea of ​​people that surrounded the scaffold shook. The archers stood ready.

Then old Jean-Baptiste Sanson, to whom the force returned, which he considered irrevocably gone, jumped up and ran to the henchman who was sawing his neck and snatched the sword from him. In his emaciated hands, the sword whistled, and the bloody head of Count Lally-Tollandahl rolled onto the scaffold. Jean-Baptiste Sanson collapsed beside him without strength. "

In France, decapitation with the sword disappeared after the revolution, when a new way was invented to deprive a person of the head. However, in some German principalities, decapitation with an ax was practiced until the first half of the 19th century, and then again turned to this method during the Third Reich.

Muslim law ...

Nowadays, three countries still use saber decapitation: Qatar, North Yemen (they also shoot here) and Saudi Arabia. In the latter, there is no criminal or procedural code, but Sharia law is in force. When it comes to a crime that is not described in any of the six classical works of the Hanbalis, lawyers turn to the texts of other schools of Islamic law.

The laws are supplemented by decrees and decrees issued by the king. Saudi Arabia carried out three hundred and eleven public executions between 1981 and 1989. They took place in the main cities of the kingdom: Mecca, Riyadh, Medina, Daman, Khayala, Tabuk, most often in the square opposite the provincial governor's palace.

Secret shooting

Sometimes executions are carried out in several cities at the same time. Thus, the sixty-three people who attacked the main mosque of Mecca were divided into eight groups and executed publicly on the same day in eight cities of the kingdom.

Recall the public execution in Jeddah in 1980 of one of the daughters of King Khaled: she was sentenced to stoning for adultery, while her lover was beheaded with a saber in the same square.

The execution was filmed with a hidden camera and shown on one of the English channels, provoking the wrath of the royal authorities, so that the British Foreign Office had to offer an official apology. As if Saudi Arabia is not proud of its "saber" justice.

Many centuries ago, executions of the most notorious criminals were carried out in public. Usually this action took place in one of the central squares of the city. It was attended not only by prosecutors, victims and relatives of the convict, but also by a whole crowd of onlookers. The execution was a kind of mass entertainment, similar to the gladiatorial battles in ancient Rome.
Long before the start, people gathered around the scaffold and shared their opinions, anticipating a bloody and disturbing "performance". Someone treated the convict with sympathy, someone with gloating and hatred. Everything depended on the nature of the crime and the range of emotions that the offender aroused in the masses.
In view of such publicity, it was important for many convicts not to drop their dignity in the face of hundreds of acquaintances and strangers. First of all, this concerned persons of noble birth. It was extremely important for them to "save face" in front of a crowd of commoners, so that they would not have the opportunity to mock the last suffering of a noble man. Because of this, a division into "noble" and "ignoble" executions has appeared since ancient times.

Die with dignity

The very fact of near and imminent death introduced the vast majority of convicts into a stupor or uncontrollable panic. Sensing the approach of the end, sometimes even the most noble and strong-minded criminals lost their composure: they began to sob and beg for mercy. In such an environment of extreme tension, a person wanted to die at least quickly and without shameful dying convulsions.
And they were common during the time of hanging, which was considered the execution of the poor. The sight of a hanged suicide bomber is not for the faint of heart. The body dangles in a loop, the limbs twitch. The first rows of "spectators" hear the crunch of a breaking spine and the wheezing of a dying man. This picture is completed by the involuntary defecation of an agonizing person.
The aristocrats could not afford such a shameful death. They left hanging to the poor and hardened recidivists, burning - to witches, quartering and other terrible forms of execution - to traitors to their suzerain. Kings and lords in the Middle Ages were executed by beheading with a sword. In extreme cases, an ax. Later, the guillotine appeared, equalizing the rights of kings and the rabble.
The sword for aristocrats was not chosen by chance. Most of them were warriors, so they wanted to fall from the weapon "befitting" their rank. They cut off the heads of not only aristocratic men with a sword, but also women. So in 1536, Anne Boleyn, the queen and beloved wife of the "Bluebeard" monarch Henry VIII Tudor, ended her days.

"Light" death

The second important factor in determining the "privilege" of decapitation was the speed of such death. While hanging, a person could die from a few seconds to 1-2 minutes. If the spine broke under the weight of the body, the sentenced person was cut off almost immediately. Otherwise, he had to painfully suffocate for a couple of minutes, which both the dying man himself and the spectators present at the execution seemed infinitely long.
In contrast to such monstrous agony, beheading was considered a relatively quick and easy death. An experienced executioner cut off his head with one blow. The victim sometimes did not even have time to catch the moment when the sword touched his neck. Death was instant. The sentenced person himself or his relatives paid the executioner in gold so that the work was done with high quality.
However, there were also mistakes, if the executioner was not particularly experienced or, on the eve of the execution, "drank too much." An example is the punishment of Thomas Cromwell, the chancellor and closest adviser of the same Henry VIII, who was known for his love of public reprisals against ideological opponents and annoying wives.
Cromwell was originally sentenced to be burned. Then the king "mercifully" replaced this type of execution with beheading. In 1540, Cromwell ascended the scaffold. His hopes of dying were quickly dashed by the first blow of the ax. The executioner did not cope with the mission entrusted to him and could not kill the criminal immediately.
The number of ax swings is not recorded in historical documents, but it is known for sure that there were several of them. The execution was terribly long and painful. Thomas Cromwell, who devotedly served Henry for many years, survived all the torments of hell while still on earth. Later, the chronicler Edward Hall wrote that the Chancellor bravely endured the execution of the executioner, "who did not do his job in a divine way."
There is a legend that the executioner was deliberately drunk the day before. After drinking, he could not cut off Cromwell's head with one blow with a trembling hand. This is how the chancellor's ideological opponents - or even the king himself - got even with the impudent reformer for his views and influence left in the past.

A medical study in 1983 concluded that no matter how quickly an execution is carried out, a few seconds of pain is inevitable when a person loses their 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 for 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, a horrific experiment was carried out when a French doctor named an executed man by his name a few seconds after he was beheaded. In response, the eyelids lifted on the face of the severed head, 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 did the head not react to his words.

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

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A terrible incident during the execution

For thousands of years, beheading has been used as a form of the death penalty. In medieval Europe, such an execution was considered "honorable", the head was cut off mainly to aristocrats, people were simply waiting for a gallows or a bonfire. At that time, decapitation with a sword, ax or ax was a relatively painless and quick death, especially with the executioner's great experience 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 horror stories about a dull sword and an inept executioner who cut off the head of the unfortunate convict with only a few blows ... For example, it is documented that in 1587, during the execution of the Scottish queen It took Mary Stuart three blows to remove her head, and even then she had to resort to using a knife ...

Even worse were the cases when non-professionals got down to business. In 1682, the French Count de Samoj was terribly unlucky - they could not 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 work and so worried about their future that they chopped off the count's head only on the 34th attempt!

Residents of medieval cities often witnessed beheadings, for them the execution was something like a free show, so many tried to take a place closer to the scaffold in advance in order to see in detail such a tickling process. Then such thrill-seekers, rounding their eyes, whispered in a whisper how the severed head grimaced or how her lips managed to whisper the last sorry.

It was widely believed that the severed head was still alive and could see for about ten seconds. That is why the executioner raised the severed head and showed it to those gathered in the city square, it was believed that the executed in his last seconds sees the jubilant, hooting and laughing crowd 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 at his brain receptacle was completely absent, so the executioner decided to raise his head by the upper jaw and, without thinking twice, thrust his fingers into his open mouth. Immediately the executioner screamed and his face was distorted by 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?

The French Revolution put decapitation on stream, using "small mechanization" - the guillotine invented at that time. Heads flew in such quantities that some curious surgeon for his experiments easily begged from the executioner a whole basket of male and female "vessels of the mind." He tried to sew human heads to the bodies of dogs, but failed in this "revolutionary" endeavor.

At the same time, scientists began to torment the question more and more - 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 as follows: despite the sharpness of the execution instrument, the skill of the executioner or the lightning speed of the guillotine, the human head (and the body, probably!) Experiences several seconds of severe pain.

Many naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had no doubt that a severed head is 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 within a maximum of 60 seconds after the execution.

In 1803, in Breslau, a rather terrible experiment was carried out by a young doctor Wendt, who later became a university professor. On February 25, Wendt begged for scientific purposes the head of the executed murderer Troer. He received the head from the hands of the executioner immediately after the execution. First of all, Wendt experimented with the then popular electricity: when he applied a plate of the galvanic apparatus to the severed 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. Then Wendt shouted loudly in his ears a couple of times: "Troer!" Each time he screamed, the head opened its eyes, clearly reacting to its name. Moreover, an attempt was recorded by the head to say something, she opened her mouth and slightly moved her lips. I wouldn't be surprised if Troyer tried to send a young man so disrespectful to death to hell ...

In the final part of the experiment, the head was stuck in its mouth with a finger, while it clenched its teeth quite strongly, causing sensitive pain. For two whole minutes and 40 seconds, the head served the purposes of science, after which her eyes finally closed and all signs of life faded away.

In 1905, Wendt's experiment was partially repeated by a French physician. 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 the third time its life energy had already ended.

The torso lives without a head!

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

Considering this request as sheer nonsense, the king still promised to do it. Schaunburg himself placed his friends in a row at a distance of eight steps from each other, after which he obediently knelt down and lowered his head on the block standing on the edge. The executioner's sword cut through the air with a whistle, the head literally bounced off the body, and then a miracle happened: the decapitated body of Dits 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 the king's entourage froze for a short moment in horror, and then the eyes of all with a silent question turned to the monarch, everyone was waiting for his decision. Although the stunned Ludwig of Bavaria was sure that the devil himself helped Dieu 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 convicted monk said that after the execution he would be able to prove his innocence, and asked not to touch his body for a few minutes. The executioner's ax blew off the convict's head, 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 innocent ...

At the beginning of the 19th century, during the colonial war in India, the commander of company "B" of the 1st Yorkshire line regiment, Captain T. Mulven, was killed under extremely unusual circumstances. During the assault on Fort Amara in hand-to-hand combat, Mulven blew off the head of an enemy soldier with his saber. However, after that, the decapitated enemy managed to raise the rifle and shoot the captain right in the heart. A documentary confirmation of this incident in the form of a report by Corporal R. Crikshaw is preserved in the archives of the British War Office.

A resident of the city of Tula, IS Koblatkin, reported to one of the newspapers about a shocking incident during the Great Patriotic War, of which he was an eyewitness: “We were roused into an attack under shelling. The soldier ahead of me was cut off by a large splinter's neck, so much so that his head literally hung behind his back, like a terrible hood ... Nevertheless, before falling, he continued to run. "

The missing brain phenomenon

If the brain is missing, what then coordinates the movements of the headless body? In medical practice, numerous cases are described 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 famous German brain specialist Hoofland had to fundamentally change his previous views when he opened the cranium of a patient with paralysis. Instead of a brain, it contained just over 300 grams of water, but his patient had retained all his mental abilities before that and was no different from a person with a brain!

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

In 1940, a 14-year-old boy was admitted to the clinic of Bolivian doctor Nicola Ortiz, who complained of terrible headaches. Doctors suspected a brain tumor. He could not be helped, and two weeks later he died. An autopsy revealed that his entire cranium 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 1957 report by physicians Jan Bruel and George Alby to the American Psychological Association. They talked about their operation, during which a 39-year-old patient had the entire right hemisphere of the brain removed. Their patient not only survived, but also fully retained his mental abilities, and they were above average.

The listing of such cases could be continued. Many people, after operations, head injuries, terrible wounds, 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 work capacity?

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 nerve tissue on the inside of the esophagus and stomach. According to Michael Gershon, a professor at the New York research center, this "abdominal brain" has more than 100 million neurons, and this is even more than in 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 to either fight or flee. According to scientists, this third "management center" remembers information, is able to accumulate life experience, and affects our mood and well-being. Perhaps, it is in the "abdominal brain" that the clue to the intelligent behavior of decapitated bodies lies?

Heads are still being chopped off

Alas, no abdominal brain will still allow to live without a head, and they are still hacked, and even princesses ... It would seem that decapitation, as a kind of execution, has long sunk into oblivion, but in the first half of the 60s. XX 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 cinematographer Anthony Thomas, entitled Death of a Princess, caused literally an international shock. It featured the public beheading of a Saudi princess and her lover. In 1995, a record 192 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, around 125 people were beheaded around the world. At least as far back as 2005, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Qatar had laws allowing decapitation. It is reliably known that in Saudi Arabia a special executioner applied his skills already in the new millennium.

As for the criminal actions, sometimes Islamic extremists are depriving 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 became world famous, who deprived himself of his head with the help of his own guillotine.

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

In the well-known collection of the beginning of this century "From the Mysterious Region", compiled by Grigory Dyachenko, there is a small chapter: "Life after the beheading." 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 his muscles move until, finally, blood circulation completely stops and he does not will die completely ... ”Indeed, the head cut off from the body is able to live for some time. The muscles in her face twitch and she grimaces in response to being pricked with sharp objects or electrified wires connected to her.

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

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

In 1336, King Louis of Bavaria sentenced the nobleman Dean von Schaunburg and four of his landsknechts to death for daring to rebel against him and thus, as the chronicle says, "disturbed the peace of the country." The troublemakers, according to the custom of that time, were to have their heads cut off.

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 it was "practiced", neither wine nor a woman, but asked the king to pardon the sentenced landsknechts in case he ran past them after ... his own execution. Moreover, in order for the king to suspect some kind of trick, von Schaunburg clarified that the condemned, including himself, would stand in a row at a distance of eight steps from each other, and only those past whom he, having lost his head, were subject to pardon. will be able to run. The monarch laughed loudly after hearing this nonsense, but promised to fulfill the wish of the doomed.

The executioner's sword fell. The head of von Schaunburg rolled off his shoulders, and the body ... jumped to its feet in front of the king and the courtiers, who were numb with horror, who were present at the execution, irrigating the ground with a stream of blood furiously gushing from the stump of the neck, rushing swiftly past the Landsknechts. Having passed the latter, that is, having made more than forty (!) Steps, it stopped, jerked convulsively and fell to the ground.

The dumbfounded 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 sentenced to beheading and burning the body at the stake of a certain troublemaker monk, who, with his supposedly godless sermons, confused the law-abiding population. The monk denied his guilt and after his death promised to immediately provide irrefutable evidence of this. And indeed, after the executioner chopped off the preacher's head, his body fell on a wooden platform with his chest and lay there motionless for about three minutes. And then ... then the incredible happened: the decapitated body turned over on its back, put its right leg on its left, crossed its arms over its chest and only after that it froze completely. Naturally, after such a miracle, the court of the Inquisition passed an acquittal and the monk was properly buried in the city cemetery ...

However, let's leave the decapitated bodies alone. Let us ask ourselves a question: are there any thought processes taking 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. This is how he describes an interesting hypnotic experiment conducted by the famous Belgian artist Wirtz over the head of a guillotined robber. “For a long time the artist has been interested in the question: how long does the execution procedure last for the criminal himself and what feeling the defendant experiences in the last minutes of his life, what exactly the head, separated from the body, thinks and feels, and in general, can it think and feel. Wirtz was well acquainted with the doctor of the Brussels prison, whose friend, Dr. D., had been practicing hypnotism for thirty years. The artist informed him of his strong desire to receive the suggestion that he was a guillotine criminal. On the day of the execution, ten minutes before the criminal was brought in, Wirtz, Doctor D. and two witnesses were placed at the bottom of the scaffold so that they would not be visible to the public and in view of the basket into which the head of the executed was to fall. Dr. D. put his medium to sleep, instilling in him to identify with the criminal, to follow all his thoughts and feelings and to loudly express the thoughts of the convict the minute the ax touches his neck. Finally, he ordered him to penetrate the brain of the executed, as soon as the head is separated from the body, and to analyze the last thoughts of the deceased. Wirtz immediately fell asleep. A minute later, footsteps were heard: it was the executioner who was leading the criminal. They laid him on the scaffold under the ax of the guillotine. Then Wirtz, shuddering, began to beg to be woken up, 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, awful! 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 torso ... it seems to her that the torso 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 hanging hair, clenched eyes and mouth. The arteries were still throbbing where the ax had cut them. Blood flooded my face.

The doctor kept asking, "What do you see, where are you?" - “I am flying into an immeasurable space ... Am I really dead? Is it all over? Oh, if I could connect with my body! People, have mercy on my body! People, have mercy on me, give me my body! Then I will live ... I still think, 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 are leaving me ... If you wanted to unite me with your 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 executioner's eyes opened wide and looked at them with an expression of inexpressible anguish and supplication. The artist continued: “No, no! Suffering cannot last 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 deeply I will now fall asleep ... Oh, what bliss! ... ”These were the last words of the hypnotist. Now he was fast asleep and did not answer the doctor's questions anymore. Doctor D. went up to the executed man's head and felt his forehead, temples, teeth ... Everything was cold as ice, the head died. "

In 1902, the famous Russian physiologist Professor AA Kulyabko, after the successful revitalization of the child's heart, tried to revitalize ... the head. True, to begin with, just fish. A special liquid, a blood substitute, was passed through the blood vessels into the neatly cut off head of the fish. The result surpassed the wildest expectations: the fish head moved its eyes and fins, opened and closed its mouth, thereby showing all the signs that life continues in it.

Kulyabko's experiments allowed his followers to move even further in the field of head revitalization. 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, it did not in any way resemble a dead scarecrow. When a cotton wool soaked in acid was placed on the tongue of this head, all the signs of a negative reaction were found: grimaces, chomping, there was an attempt to throw the cotton away. When putting sausages in the mouth, the head licked. If a stream of air was directed to the eye, the blinking reaction could be observed.

In 1959, the Soviet surgeon V.P.Demikhov repeatedly conducted successful experiments with severed dog heads, 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, it was possible to do this only in the mid-80s, two German neurosurgeons Walter Kraiter and Heinrich Courage, who supported life in an amputated human head for twenty days.

The message about this caused at one time a heated debate among theorists of medicine on the moral aspects of such experiments, but Kreiter and Courage do not see anything reprehensible in their experiments.

And it all started when the orderlies delivered the body of a forty-year-old man who had just got into a car accident to their clinic. His head was almost cut off from his body and held 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 victim's brain. They connected a life support system to the head and for almost three weeks after that they kept the brain of a person in an active state, whose body had long been dead. In addition, Kreiter and Courage made 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" many 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 I really want to hope that the human body is not an indivisible whole, and the same head, if you try very hard, you can sew it intact in its original place.

In March 1990, they sewed the Lipetsk machine operator Valery Vdovitsa's left arm, which had been torn off almost at the shoulder by a machine for liming the soil. And nothing - acts as before. So, maybe Alexander Belyaev was right and there is still a chance for the "head of Professor Dowell"?