Joseph Ignace Guillotin

Joseph Ignace Guillotin (May 28th 1738 with Holy - March 26th 1814 with Paris) was a Médecin.

With the support of Mirabeau the deputy, secretary of the constituent National Assembly , Guillotin proposes the October 10th 1789 the use of a mechanical apparatus for the execution of the Capital punishment.

The apparatus will be developed in 1792 by its fellow-member Antoine Louis, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Surgery (from where its first name of Louison ), and will be seen quickly affublé of the name of Guillotine, against the will of Doctor Guillotin who will express of it the regret until his death in 1814.

Guillotin hoped to found a more human and less painful execution. But, during the Terror, that which from now on is affublée many names (like the national razor , the mill with silence , the widow , then the tie with Capet after its employment on Louis XVI) largely contributed to multiply the capital executions.

After a imprisonment, Guillotin is activated to propagate the practice of vaccination against the Variole and, under the Consulat, it is in responsibility of install the first coherent program of Public health in France on the scale of the nation.

The politician

Guillotin is famous to have published several political works and to have proposed a certain number of reforms. In its book Petition of the six bodies, he asks that the number of the deputies of the third state be at least equal to that of the deputies of the two other orders. So at the beginning this proposal is worth to him to pass in judgment (he will be discharged), it will be accepted in 1788 by the Council of the king.

It is also him which was at the origin of the meeting to the Jeu of palm, when the deputies found their room closed the June 19th.

Guillotin and the guillotine

Doctor and professor of anatomy to the Faculty of Paris, appointed elected official of the Third-State of the city and the suburbs of Paris to the State-Generals of 1789, Guillotin present in 1789 a reform project of the criminal law whose 1st article stipulates that “ the of the same offenses kind will be punished by the same kinds of sorrows, whatever the row and the state of the culprit ”. He asked in the meeting of December 1st, 1789 that “ decapitation was the only adopted torment and that one sought a machine which could be substituted for the hand of the torturer ”

This idea aimed at establishing an equality for all condemned. Indeed, until now, the execution of the capital punishment differed according to the fixed price and the social status from condemned: the noble ones were decapitated, the quartered regicides , the heretics flarings, the coiled or hung robbers. The proposal of Guillotin also aims at removing torture. Its idea is adopted in 1791 by the law of October 6th and, in spite of his protests, one allots his name to this machine, which however existed since XVIe century. After several tests on corpses with the Old people's home of Bicêtre, the first nobody guillotinée in France was a robber, name of Nicolas Pelletier, on April 25th, 1792.

A doctor until the end of his days

Imprisoned during Terror, Guillotin was given in freedom after the death of Maximilien de Robespierre. It passed the remainder of its days far from the political life and did not devote itself any more but to medicine. It was named chief consultant of the Saint-Vaast hospital of Arras and in particular worked to develop vaccination. Guillotin is also the founder of the Company of the first doctors of Paris, ancestor of current Académie of medicine.
La belief that Guillotin died itself guillotine does not have a historical base, although it is a widespread generally accepted idea.

External bonds

Portrait of the doctor Guillotin
1738-1814 - Joseph-Ignace Guillotin: its genealogy and its guillotine

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