April 20, 2019 Saturday
Bedtime Story
Hanging and Neck
In the standard and long drop hangings
after consciousness is lost then almost instantaneous death follows or at least
is so desired or at least is claimed so by the governments and its executioners.
The biomechanics of death is not necessary
the same in each case of hanging (or suicide) because considerable force is
required to cause a cervical fracture and it may not be achievable or rather is
not achieved in every instance of hanging or suicide.
Factors such as the height of the drop,
position of the knot, weight of the person and even the type of rope being used
will determine the exact cause of death which will vary from case to case.
And yet, there are some limited four or
five anatomical destructive outcomes that are likely to happen in cases of
hanging which would lead to brain death.
During hanging, especially from a short
drop, it is far more likely that the case of death would be vascular than
direct severe injury to spinal cord that is incompatible to life.
Let me explain this statement in further
detail.
Anatomy is one of those subjects that is
understandably not very appealing to medical students for the sheer scale of
detailed information that need to be digested, memorized and recalled and yet
it is the foundational basis of medicine specially surgery.
The neck region is extremely vital as it
carries critical vessels such as carotid arteries and jugular veins besides larynx
along with trachea.
The neck also contains an important cranial
nerve, namely the tenth cranial nerve or the vagus, that leaves the brain stem
or the medulla oblongata along with the internal carotid artery and internal
jugular vein and wanders away all the way down to the chest and abdomen
innervating most of the viscera including our hearts and down to the colon.
Thereby the vagus nerve not only controls our
heart rate and breathing rate but also our sexual arousal and act of
defecation.
Carotid arteries are paired just like so
many other anatomical objects in our bilateral symmetrical simian bodies.
They start out as a left and a right common
carotid artery both of which showing slight variation regarding their origins.
While the left one as expected starts from
the arch of the aorta the right one starts from a vessel known as
brachiocephalic artery (brachial relates to arm and cephalic relates to
head) which in turn originates from the
aorta.
The common carotid artery of each then
divides into an external and an internal carotid artery.
It is the internal carotid artery which is
vital and critical as it enters the skull through the carotid canal in the
temporal bone and supplies oxygenated blood to the brain including the eyes.
We shall continue with the story in the
nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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