Aldini attempted to revive the body of a murderer, one Thomas Forster, by the application of electrical charges six hours after he had been hanged at Newgate…Text excerpted from The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Richard Holmes. Pantheon Books, New York, 2008. Additional information available online at Executed Today, where I found the illustration.
“On the first application of the [electrical] arcs, the jaw began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the left eye actually opened… the conductors being applied to the ear, and to the rectum, excited muscular contractions much stronger… The arms alternately rose and fell…the fists clenched and beat violently the table on which the body lay, natural respiration was artificially established… A lighted candle placed before the mouth was several times extinguished… Vitality might have been fully restored, if many ulterior circumstances, had not rendered this – inappropriate.”
…The reports eventually caused such a public outcry that the experiments were banned, and Aldini forced to leave the country in 1805… (p. 317)
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