THE QUESTION OF PAIN IN HANGING. 353 



while in the second trial a half-minute had barely passed when the noise 

 in the ears and a peculiar sensation in the brain, difficult to describe, 

 warned me to stop the experiment." 



In the first experiment Fleischmann was on the very border of un- 

 consciousness, and, as he himself says, did not stop a moment too soon. 

 In the second, when the effects of asphyxia and cerebral congestion 

 were combined, the result was reached much more rapidly. 



Devergie states plainly, after considering all the facts, that hanging 

 is a pleasant way of dying. His words are : " In suicide, at the mo- 

 ment of the application of the cord, or a few moments after, a feeling 

 of pleasure manifests itself ; then supervenes disordered vision ; bluish 

 flames appear before the eyes, and the loss of consciousness soon fol- 

 lows." 



All the evidence goes to show that death by hanging is painless, 

 and there is positively no fact or well-founded opinion to the contrary. 

 If this be the case, then, what is the explanation of it ? Simply this : 

 That in every form of strangulation the blood-vessels of the neck are 

 compressed, as well as the air-passages. A large part of the blood 

 is returned from the head by the external jugular veins, which are 

 very near the surface, and in which the current can be checked by 

 slight pressure. Most of the blood from the brain itself comes back 

 through the internal jugulars, which lie near, but a little outside of, the 

 carotid arteries. The walls of veins are lax and yielding, so as to be 

 easily compressed, while those of the arteries are firm and elastic, and 

 it requires considerable force to approximate them. Pressure, then, 

 which is sufficient to close the jugular veins only crowds the carotids a 

 little farther inward, and the blood is still poured through them into 

 the brain, whence it cannot escape. When this pumping process is 

 going on at the rate of seventy strokes a minute, it is easy to under- 

 stand how the engorgement of the vessels of the brain, in a very brief 

 time, reaches a degree which causes insensibility. To explain why this 

 congestion causes unconsciousness would involve a technical discussion 

 which would here be out of place. It must suffice to say that it does; 

 so that, as the cerebral congestion in a hanged person brings on insen- 

 sibility within a minute, while the physical agony of suffocation does 

 not begin until later, it follows that the victim does not feel any of the 

 pangs of asphyxia. He first becomes insensible, with accompanying 

 pleasurable feelings, from cerebral congestion, and then is choked to 

 death while unconscious. 



Drowning and hanging, then, are painless modes of dying, because 

 the asphyxia which causes death is complicated by other circumstances 

 which render the dying man so soon unconscious that the pangs of suffo- 

 cation are unfelt. And the insensibility which results from hanging is 

 so insidious and painless in its approach, that experiments on the sub- 

 ject are very dangerous for any one to make alone. It is probable that 

 many persons, who are supposed to have committed suicide in this way, 



VOL. XIII. 23 



