"The mechanism falls like thunder; the head flies off, blood spurts, the man is no more."
Joseph-lgnace Guillotin, 1789
In 1789, at the start of the French Revolution, Joseph- Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), a medical doctor of progressive views, proposed a thorough-going reform of the French penal system. Inspired by the humane and rational principles of the Enlightenment, Guillotin's proposals included a single method of execution to replace the messy horrors of breaking on the wheel and hanging by the neck. Guillotin's mechanism would prevent suffering, while making capital punishment more democratic; beheading was traditionally the punishment reserved for aristocrats— an efficient decapitation machine would spread that privilege to all classes.
In 1791 the French National Assembly appointed a committee to push the project through. Although Guillotin was involved, the prime mover was Dr. Antoine Louis, Royal Physician and Secretary of the Academy of Surgery. The basic design adopted, with a blade hauled to the top of a high frame and then released, was not novel—such machines had been in use since the Middle Ages. Its advance upon earlier models lay in the beveled-edged triangular blade.
Originally dubbed the "louison" or "louisette," after Dr. Louis, the machine was soon being called the "guillotine." It became the symbol of revolutionary extremism, as the Terror was unleashed upon alleged "enemies of the people." King Louis XVI was an early victim, executed on January 21, 1793. Despite its bloodthirsty revolutionary associations, the guillotine remained in use in France until 1981.
