46 SPITZKA— OBSERVATIONS REGARDING INFLICTION [April 23, 



The anatomy of hanging has been frequently discussed. A 

 recent publication^ by Dr. Frederic Wood Jones gives the results of 

 the examination of the bodies of one hundred men executed in Nubia 

 in Roman and Byzantine times. Sixty-two were in one trench, forty 

 in another. They were all adult males, with cords binding the legs 

 and arms trussed to the sides. The hanging rope was still in situ 

 on one. 



Not a single case of damage to the cervical vertebrae was found. 

 The most commonly found lesion was an oblique opening of the sutures 

 of the skull, so that one portion of the skull, represented by the occip- 

 ital and temporal bones becomes pulled aside from the other portion, 

 represented by the facial part of the skull and the other temporal 

 bone. The basilar suture in most cases was also disunited. The 

 skulls all gave evidence of blood staining. 



This remarkable finding of evidence dating about 2,000 years 

 back, prompted me to examine the head and neck bones of five indi- 

 viduals executed by hanging and sent to the Jefferson Medical Col- 

 lege for dissection. In not a single instance could I find a frac- 

 tured cervical vertebra or a separation of any cranial suture. Death 

 had ensued through strangulation. 



The Newgate Calendar and other criminal records are full of 

 instances in which the rope broke and the condemned had to be 

 rehanged and even cases where the head was severed from the body. 

 Furthermore, there are not a few authentic cases of resuscitation and 

 total recovery after hanging. 



Compared with hanging as well as other methods, electrocution 

 is the most humane, decent and scientific method of inflicting the 

 death penalty because of its efficiency, quickness and painlessness, 

 and it should be adopted by Pennsylvania as well as every state in 

 the Union. The executions should take place in a building remote 

 from the penitentiaries where other convicts, more or less susceptible 

 to reformation, are confined. The erection of scafifolds in prison 

 corridors or the knowledge on the part of other convicts that an 

 electrocution is in progress has a bad, even brutalizing, effect upon 

 them. 



^British Medical Journal, March 28, 1908. 



