an instrument for inflicting capital punishment by decapitation. It consists simply of two upright posts, surmounted by a cross-beam, and grooved for the purpose of guiding an oblique-edged knife, the back of which is heavily weighted to make it fall swiftly and with force, when the cord by which it is held aloft is let go. It takes its name from Joseph Ignace Guillotin, a physician in Paris, who was a member of the French National Assembly at the time of the Revolution, and proposed its adoption by the Assembly. In a decree of March 20, 1792, its adoption was proclaimed. It is a mistake to suppose that Guillotin was the inventor of this instrument, as is often alleged. Centuries before his day it had been in use in many parts of Germany, in England, Scotland, and Italy. By the Italians it was called Mannaia; and an engraving of it, as used in Italy, may be seen in the Questiones Symbo- lices of Achilles Bocchini, printed at Bologna in 1555. It is also minutely described by Father Labat in his Voyage en Italie. In the Chronique de Jean d'Auteuil, first published in 1835, there are some curious details of an execution that took place at Genoa in 1507, with a machine, of which the guillotine is only an ingenious adaptation. In the museum of the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh is preserved to this day the rude guillotine, or Maiden, by which the famous Regent Morton was decapitated. In the Description of Tweeddale, Pennicuik alludes to this event in the following terms:—"This mighty earl, for the pleasure of the place and the salubrity of the air, designed here a noble recess and retirement from worldly business, but was prevented by his unfortunate and inexorable death, three years after, anno 1581, being accused, condemned, and executed by the Maiden at the cross of Edinburgh, as art and part of the murder of King Henry, Earl of Darnley, father to King James VI., which fatal instrument, at least the pattern thereof, the cruel regent had brought from abroad to behead the Laird of Pennicuik, who, notwithstanding, died in his bed, and the unfortunate earl was himself that handselled that merciless maiden who proved so soon after his own executioner."

Though Dr Guillotin gave his name to this engine of death, he had in reality nothing to do with it beyond bringing it under the notice of the National Assembly. The real mover in the affair was the famous surgeon Antoine Louis, but his designs would never have been carried out but for the mechanical ingenuity of a young German by name Schmitt, then residing in Paris, who, after a great many trials and experiments, succeeded in making the guillotine, as it now works. The first execution with the new machine took place at Paris, April 25, 1792. A curious question has been started in connection with the use of the guillotine. The celebrated anatomist Sömmering, denounces it as too rapid in its operation, and maintains that sensation does not cease immediately after the head of the sufferer has been severed from the body. Among other instances he adduces that of Charlotte Corday, whose face seemed to blush with indignation, when the executioner, holding up the head to the public gaze, struck it with his fist. This subject is fully discussed in the Moniteur for November 1795, and in Sédiolot's Réflexions historiques et Physiologiques sur le supplice de la Guillotine, and in the Anecdotes sur les Décapités.

It is sometimes, though erroneously, stated that Dr Guillotin, like Phalaris, was the first to hang the work of his own hands. He survived the Revolution, and died in 1814.