Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1888-09-13
DEATH BY ELECTRICITY.

an ssngliSn pCcIuT tDt NcW
riethod viii Not Work Smoothly.
While executions still continue, there
is nothing in the present and long-es-
tablished plan of carrying them out
which needs be changed. If 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 brutal 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
5trangulation, or by suspension, is
practically 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, ac-
cording to the terms of the judi
cial 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-
cruciating 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 ra-
tional. Making the method of execu-
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
pIcllluul Ol CIllllC luoOns
Since I set up 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 8
prospect of release from life so invit.
ingly pleasant that if such mode o.
death were to be adopted as the ma
tional plan of capital murder they
would not hesitate in some of theil
worst moods to kill, that they might bt
killed, since the severest fate that coul(
happen would be a death brought tt
the painlessness of pleasure. Death by
the electric shock would convey tt
minds of this stamp the same antici
patton, but would not necessarily pro
duce the same certain result. In som,
researches on the application of TIN
electric discharge for the painless ex
tinction of the lives of animals to b.
used as food, the details of which / re
corded in the Medical Times and Ga
zette for the year 1869, this mode o
death was any thing but certain in it
effects.
Sheep stricken apparently into in
slant and irrevocable death by electric
ity, after few minutes showed sign
of life, and if they had not been dis
patched in the ordinary way by tn
knife would have been restored to con
seriousness. The same fact has bee
observed in attempts to kill dogs b
the electric shock, and once publishe
an instance in which large dog, struc
into perfect Inconsistencies by tn
stroke of powerful battery, was sui
mitted to a surgical operation Will
lying, to all appearances, dead, an
was as yet so little affected as to max
an easy and sound recovery. 1t nee
not be inferred from such facts as thes
that the electric shock will not kill {
one discharge-in most cases it wi
, kili-but exceptionally, instead OF xii
ing outright, it viii simply STAN, an
may induce the sembianco of death ii
stead of the real death. DR.. Richart
son, IN ASclepiad.