The _Medical Times and Gazette_, 1859, vol. xviii., p. 256, has the following:--
“We find in an account taken from the ‘Boston Medical and Surgical Journal’ some observations on the heart of a hanged criminal, which are remarkable in a moral point of view, as well as in their scientific aspect. The man died, it appears, as the phrase is, without a struggle; and, therefore, probably in the first instance, he fell into a syncope. The lungs and brain were found normal. Seven minutes after suspension, the heart’s sounds were distinctly heard, its pulsations being one hundred a minute; two minutes later they were ninety-eight; and in three minutes sixty, and very feeble. In two minutes more the sounds became inaudible. The man was suspended at ten o’clock, and his body was cut down twenty-five minutes afterwards. There was then neither sound nor impulse. At 10.40 the cord was relaxed, and then the face became gradually pale; the spinal cord was uninjured.... At 11.30 a regular movement of pulsation was observed in the right subclavian vein; and on applying the ear to the chest, there was heard a regular, distinct, and single beat, accompanied with a slight impulse. Hereupon Drs.. Clark, Ellis, and Shaw open the thorax, and expose the heart, which still continues to beat! The right auricle contracted and dilated with energy and regularity. At twelve o’clock the pulsations were forty in a minute; at 1.45 five per minute. They ceased at 2.45; but irritability did not entirely disappear until 3.18, more than five hours after suspension. ‘This fact,’ says M. Séquard, ‘demonstrates that in a man, unfortunately, even when syncope exists for some minutes at the commencement of strangulation, the ventricles of the heart cease to beat almost as quickly as they do in strangulation without syncope.’ With regard to the moral aspects of this case, the same gentleman remarks:--‘People will probably be surprised that the body of this man should have been opened while the beating of the heart was still audible. We will not ask here if the doctors committed or not a blamable action; we will only say that we know them personally, and that, if they have in part merited the violent reproaches addressed to them, they are, nevertheless, _hommes de cœur_, who, in an excess of scientific zeal, did not notice that the body upon which they experimented was not, perhaps, at the time a dead body.’”