The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1888-07-03
LEGAL DEATH BY ELECTRICITY.
An English Doctor Fears 1t May Not Kill
The Condemned Only Stunned.

An En- glish Doctor Years 1t May Rot Kill
The Condemned Only Stunned.
Dr. Richardson, in the "Asclep:ad."
The state of New York has, it is said, re-
solved to put prisoners, sentenced to death,
through the last penalty by means OF the cleo
trio shock. The idea, humanitarian in its
character, is founded on misconception. In
disgust at the foolish barbarism of the time
which keeps up the crime of capital murder,
the humanitarian fraternity, afraid TO support
the sound and logical policy OF abolition of
the extreme otfense, tries to daily with reason
and conscience by the attempt to divest execu-
tons of all pain and all terrors. Euthanasia
for the worst OF criminals, by the side of So
called natural, but often most cruel, death for
the rest of mankind, is practically the propcsi-
ton; proposition which carries with it its
own condemnation.
While executions still continue there is moth
ing in the present ard long-estahlished plan of
carrying them out which needs to be changed.
If the process be considered brutal, it is mot
more brutal than the spirit of the act itself, all
attempts to refine which cannot add to its et1l-
cacy as a deterrent of crime. The process of
hanging looks brutal without actually being so.
Sincethe age of Morgagni the question now
under discussion has been considered and the
opinion Of the best informed psychologists,
then and since then, has always been that
death by strangulation, Or by SUSPENSION is
practically a painless mode of death. Persons
who have recovered from the unconsciousnesS
produced by strangulation have testified COM
method of death by suspension, according to
the terms of the judicial sentence, should, at
the instance of any Ignorant and common Off
Gel who may carry out the sentence, have ever
been changed for the long drop, Or death by an
excruciating and cruel blow, is incredible.
Some member of the house of commons ought
to put the secretary of state for the home de-
partment, who is charged with the duty of di-
recting that the law, be it good or bad shall be
carried out, the question why the gentle,
though it may seem prolonged, extinction of
life by hanging should not be restored. While
death is the national punishment Tor murder,
this national mode Of indicating the law is
also the most rational Making the method of
execution more scientific, if it be right to de-
grade science by SO connecting her clyilizing
powers with such degrading and ignorant
work, is simply to put q premium on crime
itself.
Since I set up lethal chamber for the pain
less extinction of the lives of the lower ami
mails have more than once met persons, not
strictly insane, but in morbid states of mind,
who have looked on the lethal easy death as a
prospect of release from life SO inyitingly
pleasant that il such mode OF death were to
be adopted as the national plan Of capital muir
der, they would not hesitate in some of their
worst moods TO kill that they might be killed,
since the seyerest fate that could happen
would be death brought to the painessness
of pleasure Death by the electric shock
would convey to minds Of this stamp the same
anticipation, but would not necessarily pro-
duce The same certain result. In some re-
searches on tho application Of the electric dis
charge for the painless extinction OF the lives
Of animals to be used as food, the details of
which I recorded in the Medical Times and
Gazette for the year 1869, this mode of death
was anything but certain in its effects.
Sheep stricken apparently into instant and
irrevocabe death by electricity, after few
minutes showed signs OF life, and if they had
not been dispatched in the ordinary way by the
knife would have been restored to conscious
ness. The same fact has been observed in at
tempts to kill dogs by the electric shock and
once published an instance in which a large
dog; struck into perfect uneonsciousnessb by the
stroke from powerful battery. was submitted
to a surgical operation while lying, to all ap-
pearances, dead, and was yet SO little affected
as to make easy and sound recovery. It
need not be inferred from such facts as these
that the electric shock will not kin at one dis
charge; in most cases it will but, exception
ally, instead OF killing outright it will simply
stun, and may induce the semblance OF death
instead of the real death.
1t will be only common humanity therefore,
for the authorities in New York, when they be-
gin to give the coup de grace by the electric
shock, to supplement the process by post
the act may not be crowned by burying the
victims alive. Let us hope, after ell, that these
new experimental trials for tho extinction of
life by the same part of the community, as ex-
ample to the insane of the sanctity of life, will
be the beginning of the end toward the aboli-
ton of the capital penalty.