The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1888-08-31
DEATf. ~ ELECTRICITY.

An English Doctor Thinks the New
Method VIII Not work Smoothly.
While executio ns still continue, there
Is nothing in the present and long-es-
tablished plan of carrying them out
which needs Be changed. Ii the proc
ess be considered brutal, it is not
more brutal than the spirit of the act
itself, all attempts to refine which can
not add to its efficiency as deterrent
OF crime. The process of hanging
looks bruta without being actually SO.
Since the age of Morgagni the ques-
ton 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
Inconsistencies produced by strangu-
lation have testified completely on this
point, and that the old and legal
method of death by suspension, ae-
cording to the terms of the judi
cha! sentence, should, at the
instance of any ignorant or COM
mon officer who may carry out the
sentence, have ever been changed
for the long drop, or death by an ex-
circulating and cruel blow, is incredi-
BILE. Some member of the House of
Commons ought to put to the Secretary
OF State for the Home Department,
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 hang
ing should not be restored While
death is the: National punishment for
murder, this national mode of vindi-
eating the law IS also the most RAJ
tional Making the method of execu-l
ton more scientific, if it be right to
degrade science by so connecting her
civilizing powers with such degrading
and ignorant work, is simply to put a
premium on crime itself.
Since set up a lethal chamber for
the painless extinction Of the lives OF
the lower animals / have more than
once met persons, not strictly insane,
but in morbid states of mind, who have
looked on the lethal easy death as
prospect of release from life SO invit-
ingly pleasant that if such mode of
death We're to be adopted as the ma
tional plan of capital murder they,
would not hesitate in some of their
worst moods to kill, that they might be
killed, since the severest fate that could
happen would be a death brought to
the painlessness of pleasure. Death by
the electric shock would convey to
minds of this stamp the same antici-
patton, but would not necessarily pro-
duce the same certain result. In some
researches on the application of the
electric discharge for the painless ex-
tinction of the lives of animals to be
used as food, the details of which | re-
corded in the Medical Times and Ga
.sette for the year 1869, this mode of
death was any thing but certain in its
effects.
Sheep stricken apparently into in
slant and irrevocable death by electric
ity, after a few minutes showed signs
of life, and if they had not been dis
patched in the ordinary way by the
knife would have been restored to con-
seriousness. The same fact has been
observed in attempts to kill dogs by
the electric shock, and Ionce published
an instance in which a large dog, struck
into perfect Inconsistencies by the
stroke of powerful battery, was SUBJ
mitted to a surgical operation while
lying, to all appearances, dead, and
was as yet SO little affected as to make
an easy and sound recovery. 1t need
not be inferred from such facts as these
that the electric shock will not kill at
one discharge-in most cases it will
kill-but, exceptionally, instead of kill
ing outright, it will simply stun, and
may induce the semblance of death in
stead of the real death. DR.. Richard
SON an AScIo71inI