According to legend, On July 17, 1793, a woman named Charlotte Corday was executed by guillotine for the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, after she was guillotined one of the executioner's assistants picked it up and slapped its cheek. According to witnesses, Corday's eyes turned to look at the man.PsychoticForesight said:Well I assume severing the spine,neck and head rendered you dead quickly and Severing the carotid and jugular would lead to an instant drop of blood pressure to zero. This should cause an equally instant faint, followed by complete unconsciousness, followed by coma.Pimppeter2 said:The guillotine painless? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
How about being alive for 6 something seconds after your head is severed from your body?
Seems to me that subjectively you'd feel a blow on the neck, too swift to be interpreted as pain, and you'd lose awareness a second later.
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/dyk10.htmThe current medical consensus is that life does survive, for a period of roughly thirteen seconds, varying slightly depending on the victim's build, health and the immediate circumstances of the decapitation. The simple act of removing a head from a body is not what kills the brain, rather, it is the lack of oxygen and other important chemicals provided in the bloodstream. To quote Dr. Ron Wright "The 13 seconds is the amount of high energy phosphates that the cytochromes in the brain have to keep going without new oxygen and glucose" (Cited from urbanlegends.com, no longer extant). The precise post-execution lifespan will depend on how much oxygen, and other chemicals, were in the brain at the point of decapitation; however, eyes could certainly move and blink.
The guillotine was a lot of things but painless wasn't one of them, the movies don't show the real deal. They were very unreliable and often poorly maintained, e.g. unsharpened blades, poor construction mismeasured pulleys, not weighted right to produce the force needed to severe a head. Routinely they would need more than one attempt due to these factors which could mean you get a bad hack but not a killing blow so you just kinda are there dying a pretty agonising death with your head half on. You got hanged if you were bad, you got guillotined if you were a real bastard.PsychoticForesight said:If you don't support the Death penalty well more power to you,but if you do what would you say is the most painless way?I'm rather fond of The guillotine,a tad messy...but painless.