Throughout French history, there have been a number of various techniques for carrying out capital punishment. The guillotine was considered one of the more efficient and humane machines for administering capital punishment. This device was introduced as a method of capital punishment in France in 1792, during the French Revolution. Prior to the guillotine's introduction, many French criminals had suffered through horrible punishments, in public places, such as burning, strangulation, being broken on a wheel, hanging, …showed first 75 words of 869 total…

…showed last 75 words of 869 total…in the guillotine" (Guillotine "So Many Died During The French Revolution"). One very stirring, rousing, and moving point about the guillotine is that science quickly now discovered a new and surprising fact (confirmed since, by modern neurophysiology): a head cut off by a swift slash of axe or guillotine knows that it is a beheaded head, because consciousness survives long enough for such a perception. The guillotine was truly a cruel form of capital punishment!