The name "guillotine" is due to the French surgeon, Joseph Guillotin , deputy in the National Assembly, who recommended it for use in executions to replace traditional methods (decapitation with a sword, hanging, dismemberment, etc). This surgeon was not the inventor, but he was recognized for the "privilege" of bearing his name for adapting and perfecting other similar devices that were already in use. After the French Revolution (1789) its popularity spread throughout Europe, everyone wanted to try it... (author's license). (more humane ).
The confirmation of this humanitarian theory is due to the book «Death by decapitation «, published by the French physiologist Paul Loye , after a study of guillotined bodies and many tests with animals (what fault would they have !), concluded that the guillotine was the most humane death penalty and that complete loss of consciousness, and brain death, occurred immediately after decapitation.
And since in the 19th century the end had to justify the means, let's see what his study consisted of:
- After various interviews with executioners, he confirmed that of every 10 subjects, only one went more or less intact to the ordeal. While the rest were already half dead when they climbed the gallows. They seemed rather, according to these, an inert mass and lacking in strength. This would support my theory that the true pain is not felt when being guillotined, but in the moments before death. It would be a moral pain, nothing more than that.
- In order to debunk the theories that circulated about the possible «life» for seconds, or minutes, of the head once severed, like a limb when it is amputated that continues «feeling», he asked several convicts to the guillotine that winked an eye after being guillotined... obviously nobody did .
To know more:Chill – Death by decapitation