Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012 An instrument of execution invented by Joseph Ignace Guillotin, professor of anatomy of the faculty of medicine of Paris, as a more humane way to end life than the often too slow death by asphyxia of hangings and all-too-common misses of beheadings by axe—which left victims bleeding and battered, but alive.
Any of various machines in which a vertical blade between two parallel uprights descends to cut or trim metal, stacks of paper, etc.
Use diagonal, not circular turns.