LXXXIII. Sudden violent deaths, which are so much dreaded, are the least painful of all; and indeed I was about to say, that people in such cases, hardly feel any pain at all, or at most but an instantaneous one; because the operation of the cause which induces them, takes away in a moment, all sense of feeling. It is well known, that those who have fallen from a great height, and have lain a considerable time afterwards as if they were dead, have, when they came to themselves, affirmed, they did not feel the blow they received upon coming to the ground. The great Chancellor Bacon, tells a story of a gentleman who was very desirous of knowing what people felt who were hanged, and in order to be satisfied about it, determined to make an experiment of the thing on himself. For this purpose, he fastened a rope to the cieling of a room, in which rope he made a noose, and after adjusting it to a proper length, he stood upon a stool, and fixed the nooze round his neck, in the expectation, that after suffering himself to be suspended, he should be able to recover the stool again; but the good gentleman was a little out in his calculation; for if it had not been for a friend who was present, to whom he had communicated what he intended to do, and who cut the rope in time, the experimental philosopher had been as dead as if he had been executed by the hands of the hangman. The account he gave of this matter was, that from the moment his body became suspended by the rope, he lost all sense and recollection; that he had not the least remembrance of the stool, or apprehension of the danger he was in, nor even any sensation of pain, arising from the suffocation that was brought on. LXXXIV. This, I firmly believe, is what happens to all those who are executed by the hands of justice, whether they are hanged, strangled by the bow-string, or beheaded; and in general, to all those who suffer violent deaths that are as sudden as these are; for they can only feel a momentary or instantaneous pain, and the instant they receive the fatal blow, they are from that time, to the separation of the soul from the body, mere effigies of men, and have no more sensation of pain, than stocks or stones; and notwithstanding, that between the intermediate space of their receiving the blow, or in case they are hanged, of being turned off, they are seen to make some convulsive motions, these motions are merely mechanical, and are by no means governed by the will, or directed by reason.