Can A Person Survive Decapitation?

Have you ever heard about guillotine? The guillotine was long considered to be the most humane execution method in Germany. It was banned only 44 years ago. Its mechanism was intended to produce instant death but there were cases in history that make us doubt whether the guillotine was as humane as they say it was. 

In France, in 1905, people gathered to watch the execution of Henri Languille when a severed head fell into the basket. A doctor named Gabriel Beaurieux noticed that the face of the newly severed head had started twitching, he called Henri by his name. That’s when the eyes of the executed man looked right into the eyes of Beaurieux.  

Another strange case involving the guillotine occurred the execution of a noblewoman named Charlotte Corday. After the blade slit the woman’s throat Charlotte’s face took on an angry expression, the girl’s executioner lifted the severed head by the hair and slapped it on both cheeks the cheeks visibly flushed. It may well be that the slaps made the girl regain consciousness for a little while.

But what if a severed head is attached to a body? There’s a surgeon who claims to be  ready to embark on a human head transplant right away. Sergio Canavero says he has already performed a head transplant on a monkey. According to him, the operation was a success. Now the doctors are ready to do the same thing to a human. He has already put his price on performing this procedure. And it costs $100 million. So if you don’t have that amount of money in your bank, be careful and watch your head. Medical communities in the United States and Europe didn’t give the doctor permission to conduct such an experiment with humans. But Sergio found a volunteer.

So what happens to a person during decapitation?

When the blade passes through the neck, it slits the spinal cord and blood arteries.  Due to this, the cardiovascular system stops delivering oxygen and other essential substances to the brain. Within seconds, it stops functioning. But Robert Cornish, an American physiologist invented ways to maintain circulation in a dead body.

To achieve it, he used quite strange methods:

An injection of anticoagulants and adrenaline in combination with rocking the body on a teeterboard to shake the blood. But it worked and even helped Cornish to revive a dead dog.

In 2011, Dutch scientists detected the animal’s brainwave activity after cutting off its head. This moment was captured by an electroencephalograph that connected to the animal’s brain. The brain activity was maintained at frequencies of the conscious level. It lasted for almost 4 seconds after the decapitation and then in about a minute a large electrical wave slowly moved through the rats brains. 

This raises the question: Does the same thing happen to a person?

Michael Sarr, an ex-surgeon of the Minnesota Mayo Clinic and editor of the journal ‘Surgery’ explains the impossibility of a head transplant on the example of how the nerves of the arm knit back together. If you have your wrist amputated and then reattached you will be able to fully recover its working capacity. But if you have your arm amputated it will no longer function after the transplant. in the severed limb, the nerve is already dead and unrecoverable. And a live nerve left in the body can grow only at one foot. It’s not enough for a head to recover all its functions after the transplant. Because in surgery, there's no way to reconnect the severed spinal cord.

Valery Spiridon, despite the high risk of a fatal outcome of the operation, agreed to be the first full head transplant. He suffers from Congenital Spinal Muscular Atrophy - a disorder that makes the muscles weaker but at the last moment Valery refused the operation. Then Canavero decided to put his plan into action with the help of someone who would never refuse.  

Thus, under the guidance of the doctor, Chinese surgeons successfully transplanted the head of one dead person to another. They were the first in the world to perform such an operation. The doctors managed to connect the spine nerves and vessels according to Canavero. It was a “dress rehearsal” before transplanting a head to a living person. 

Let's fantasize a little. What would you do if you found yourself in such an unpleasant situation as decapitation?