I recently read an account of the Gunpowder Treason plot, a dozen or so of which plotters were exectuted for their part in the episode. The book describes one execution, the usual hanging, drawing and quartering, wherein the dying man is supposed to have spoken - AFTER having his heart ripped out of his chest. Specifically, when the executioner held up his heart and declared it to the crowd as the heart of a traitor, the man is reported to have replied: Thou liest. Is this anotomically possible?
Nope.
No heart, no blood pressure. No blood pressure, no consciousness or motor activity. No consciousness or motor activity, no speech.
Ever stood up too quickly and greyed out? That’s how quickly a blood pressure drop impairs your consciousness. Processing the executioners statement and responding? Color me skeptical.
Likely a symbolic story.
There might not be consciousness, but surely there could still be non-conscious motor activity when someone gets their heart suddenly ripped out - twitching, gurgling, etc - that could be optimistically (and incorrectly) interpreted as speech? “ghg-thou gghg-liest!”
Oh, come now, skeptics. This was in the 16th century, after all. Wouldn’t it be possible that the executioner carved the stomach or a lung out instead of the heart ? 
Not likely. Ripping out the heart was done as part of the disembowelment, where the intestines were slowly ripped out of the torso and burned on site. By the time the executioner got to the chest cavity the victim would already have been long dead, for obvious reasons.
That’s probably what the man was objecting to. “Don’t get me wrong, I hate my country. But that’s not my heart! Would be nice to get someone who isn’t too lazy to saw through the ribcage around here, you lying scumbag.”
People in the 16th century were far more likely to be able to recognize a heart compared to a liver or stomach. After all, their butchering wasn’t done behind closed doors hundreds or thousands of miles away from where the meat was purchased. Half the time, they did their own butchering.
Look, I’ve witnessed more than one monitored cardiac arrest. Once they flatline (or go into V fib), they are not very talkative.
[quote=“Telperion, post:7, topic:508191”]
Not likely. Ripping out the heart was done as part of the disembowelment, where the intestines were slowly ripped out of the torso and burned on site. By the time the executioner got to the chest cavity the victim would already have been long dead, for obvious reasons.[/QUOTE
It was the 17th century to be accurate. Also, the procedure was: 1) hang the man; 2) cut him down before death (the more reviled were cut down sooner so as to prolong their suffering, which is why the convict’s loved ones very often pulled on his feet as he was hanging to expedite death); 3) drawing - cutting out the heart first followed by all other organs; 4) quartering - literally dividing him from the neck down into four pieces, often reserving the head which was to be impaled on a post as a final humiliation.
The Gunpowder Treason did not happen in the 16th century.
No, when drawing somebody, first you castrate him, then you spool out (“Draw out”) his intestines. You don’t take the heart out first, because then he’s dead, and what’s the point. You castrate and disembowel him first, so he can appreciate it.
And always remember: pillage first, THEN burn.
Damnit! I knew I was doing something wrong. Thanks, man.
Yes. Whatever brief window of consciousness is remotely possible under any kind of hypothetical ideal circumstances would surely be negated by the treatment of this particular victim prior to removal of the heart.
So even if the T-1000 can rip out a man’s heart and quickly show it to his fading consciousness, that’s not what happened here.