EXECUTED

Shannon News, 29 November 1927, Page 2

EXECUTED

But Not Dead y • DANGERS OF ELECTRIC CHAIR The different systems of execu-tion-—tile electric chair, hanging and the guillotine—are compared by a famous pathological expert, writing m the “Sunday News.’* The elrctric chair is a barbarofls method of execution. Men who are supposed to be done to death by electrocution are, as a matter of fact, killed by the doctors who perform an autopsy on them after their supposed execution. This is the core of a sensational indictment of execution methods in the United Mutes which has been made by Dr. Claudius, a famous Danish physiologist, who goes cm to make the statement, startling to the great majority of people, that most persons, when taken from the electric chair, could be restored to life. When'a doctor examines the body of a man who has died by electric shock, provided that no part of the body lias came into contact with the fuse point of the circuit, he will And no external marks, nor will the internal organs reveal any changes or lesions visible either to the naked eye?

or the microscope. If he did not know how the death came about he would not be able to offer any opinion as to its cause. ~ It is when this fact—the complete absence of organic injury or disturbance—is remembered, that one is driven to agree with Dr. Claudius that the electric chair may lead to a state of unconsciousness in which breathing has ceased and the . heart beat cannot be felt but that the actual death is only brought about by, the doctors performing the post-

mortem. . Medical science believes that the effect of an. electric shock on the body is to induce a paralysis of the brain centres. These centres ar.e said to 'be “inhibited” by the current, and when they cease to act the heart and lungs stop. A. When an executed ‘man is taken from the electric chair )le exhibits no sign of life. Yet how do we know he does not feel pain ? There is at least one great advantage which the British method of vxecution possesses over the American method: death is certain and un-

consciousness is instantaneous. The jerk which the release of the trap-door gives him causes instant unconsciousness. To all intents the man is dead at once. Final death follows from a combination of coma ind asphyxia in from - two to three minutes.

But we can ,be absolutely certain [hat all .sensibility, all power to feel, s instantly lost. ~ Nor is it the case, as some people,

think, that the success of a British execution depends on the skill of the executioner. The amount of drop> which is required to cause instant unconsciousness without ‘ causing mutilation can be ascertained to a

traction of an inch by calculations based on the man’s weight.

The length of drop is not fixed by [he executioner but by the prison doctor and the governor.

The French method of execution by Ihe guillotine is, like our own, instantaneous and painless. But is has no advantage over the British system, and it has the grave disadvantage that the body is mutilated. Compared with the- American method, ours is superior on tKie' grounds of painlessness, sureness and swiftness.

The only reason I can think of for the Americans adopting electrocution is that it appealed to them as something new' and novel. They had seen men apparently killed without pain by this strange, deadly force, electricity, and they thought it would be an improvement on the old method. But all - new things are not nec.es> sarily improvements.