ReviewCureus2023
"The Most Gentle of Lethal Methods": The Question of Retained Consciousness Following Decapitation.
Review in Cureus, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Rat Grimace Scale as a Method to Evaluate Animal Welfare, Nociception, and Quality of the Euthanasia Method of Wistar Rats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Since the development of the infamous guillotine in the French Revolution, physicians have debated how long consciousness persists in decapitated heads. Fueled by anecdotes of severed heads that blink, blush, and appear to retain intelligence, numerous experiments have investigated this macabre subject for nearly 250 years. In this paper, we examine the evidence, both historical and modern, and ultimately conclude that, while the truth may never be fully known, all evidence appears to indicate that loss of consciousness appears to occur within seconds of decapitation. The rumors that circulated through the European consciousness during the Terror of the French Revolution appear to be just that - curious urban legends from an awed and terrified public.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.