Sunday, September 17, 2006
Thirty long seconds.
This letter to the editor in today's New York Times Book Review left me twitching for several minutes after I read it, not just thirty seconds:
To the Editor:I always assumed that decapitation was a pretty immediate way to go.
A problem with Robert Olin Butler's brilliant conceit in "Severance" (Sept. 3): After decapitation, consciousness remains in the severed head not for a minute and a half, as your reviewer explains Butler's premise, but for about 30 seconds. In 1905, a French physician timed how long the eyes responded when he called the decapitated man's name. (See my book "Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture.") . . . .
Regina Janes
Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
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Wow. Me too. I guess consciousness must persist some time, but 30 seconds sounds incredible. This eye-watching doesn't sound so dispositive either. It's notoriously easy to mistake even the gaze of a painting as directed toward you. And just the exhalation of the name caller could trigger an eye-blink reflex, which doesn't imply consciousness. Blood pressure would drop instantly, and I can't imagine it taking 30 seconds for the blood vasculature to constrict in whatever regions our brains do without when we go into shock. Maybe one second? I dunno. I'm gonna ask a neurologist. This sounds far fetched, not to mention too delicious a fact to remain obscure so long since the invention of the broad sword and so soon after the guillotine.
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