Torture Essay Research Paper Torture is defines

Torture Essay, Research Paper

Torture is defines as the intentional use of physical or physiological pain to gain advantage over an individual. Torture has been around since the times of Ancient Greece and is still around today. Punishments aren?t near as harsh as they used to be back in medieval times. (1) The only punishments we have now are jails, the punishments there were in medieval times were numerous and downright inhuman. Torture would keep criminal from doing something wrong again, assuming he lived through the torture. The punishments we have today are laughable and dumb. Medieval torture was a good way to extract confession, obtain information and intimidate others in to co-operating and or confessing. The methods of torture involved cruel devices that were not only intended to inflict extreme pain, but also permanently disable the victim. (2) Witches and condemned prisoners usually took the fall of the crime to escape any method of torture. During the time of the middle ages, torture was proven the most effective way to extract confession from convicted prisoners. In many ways, the church was also seen as one of the founders of torture in the Spanish inquisition.

Torture has been considered an art form in some countries. Victor Hugo once said, ?The guillotine is the ultimate expression of law, and its name is vengeance.? The executioner, in the theater of the guillotine, has a very special role. He is the first one to walk on stage and the last one to walk off. The executioner is the only permanent member after he and the victim and their short uneasy relationship as he releases the rope. (4) The guillotine was one the most popular spectacles to the people in the middle ages. The decapitation of the enemies of the people was used as celebration. The tools used for torture range from completely pointless and humorous to flat out excruciating. (3) Some tools were used to embarrass while others were to severely punish people and others were to torture a person with classified information to the point of pain where the victim would just lie so the his misery would just end. The iron mask was a mask that was bolted shut. The mask usually displayed the face of something funny, like a pig or a boar. You had to sleep, eat, and walk around with this iron mask stuck to your head. This wasn?t really torture, it was usually used for people that talked too much or complained about society. The nags bridle was a device that was locked over peoples mouths to prevent them from talking, if the person still talked, it was removed and replaced with one with spikes around the mouth area. This really wasn?t a light torture, but it was a lot lighter than others such as the pears, needles, thumbscrews, bamboo, and painful cuts, these tortures were to just hurt you. Pears were pear shaped metal object that were inserted in the victims mouth and or anus. After the device was in place, a screw at the top of the pear could be turned, causing the pear to open up. (4) The needle torture was very, very painful. Huge needles were pierced through certain parts of your boy and left there. The executioner would leave the victim like this. For if the victim tried to remove the needles, muscle and skin tissue would begin the rim, even with the slightest movement. The thumbscrews were a very popular technique that was used to get people to talk. The victim?s thumbs were placed upon the device and tightened like vice. The thumbs would be crushed until a confession as disertained. (3) The painful cuts torture is very crude. The executioner would give small paper type cuts all over the body, and then roll in salt. The shock of pain sometimes killed some of the victims. (1) The ordeal of three is one of the most gruesome and least known of all torture. The victim is cut open, then a Gila monster, a live one, is sewn inside the victim then the carcass of a dead buffalo is opened up and the victim is sewn in, and left to die. (2) The hook is another gruesome torture in which the victim is impaled on a hook and hung for everyone to see. The Spanish horse was one of the nastiest ways to die. A spike pole is pushed into the anus of the victim then put on his feet to stand. The victim dies of being impaled by his or her own body weight. The Columbian necktie is when the victim?s throat is slit open and the tongue of the victim is pulled through the opening. The breast ripper cut into, then tears the flesh and removes the breast of women accused of witchcraft. (4) The cats paw, very painful, had razor sharp hooks usually applies to a small handle that were employed to tear the flesh from the bones. The head crusher, much designed like the thumbscrews, slowly apply pressure to the skull and inflict extreme pain and leave the victim in its grasp for hours. The heretics fork was mainly used upon people suspected of heretics, was pointed on both sides and was driven into the lower jaw and into the sternum of the victim. (3) The iron maiden encased its victim within a rack of spikes. The iron maiden was more a killing implement than of torture. The spiked chair, like the iron maiden, had spikes on it and when the victim sat upon if the natural weight caused the spikes to dig into the flesh. (2) The wheel, a very painful way of torture, used often was when the victim was laid across firm boards upon the ground. These boards were positioned so that the victim?s joints and limbs were not directly supported. The torturer would smash the joints, causing pain. The victim?s crushed limbs were braided through the spokes and covered with honey; bird and animals would eat the victim alive. (4) The Judas cradle had the torturer suspend a stripped person over the top of a jagged and pointed protrusion. The torture would use rope and pulleys to raise and lower victims. The protrusion violated the anus, vagina, or scrotum. (2) The rack the most popular one, had the victim wrists and ankles bound to ropes that were attached to wheels above the head and below the feet. Wheels turned oppositely to stretch joints and muscles of the person being tortured. (1) The turtle was the action of pressing or crushing the prisoner with boards with weights upon them. The garroting chair, like the heretics fork was a restraint of the neck, and then a pointed rod is driven into the back of the neck until death. Skinning or flaying is the act of removing skin in strips. Drawn and quartered is the act of carving a victim into pieces with alive. (1) Blown from the cannon is the act of positioning the body of a victim across the mouth and a cannon is blown at the body. The pendulum is a razor edge pendulum that swings above the body, slowly descending. (4) Disembowelment is the act of splitting the torso open and removing the entrails. Torture, many people say can be put into two categories, ordinary torture and extraordinary torture.

?Torture is defined as the intentional use of physical or physiological pain to gain and advantage over an individual.? Torture was practiced in numerous ancient civilizations. Convicts and war prisoners were put to death by using torture to give them a-slow, humiliating death. To some American Indian tribes, it is a custom to torment and burn prisoners. Crucifixion was a popular torture technique in ancient Rome. (3) Rome also used torture to get slaves, criminals, just about anybody, to get them to talk about secretive information. You see in these ancient Roman times, people were given information and were told that they should never tell this information to no one, well the Romans found out about this and this caused a major up rise in the use of torture. In the 12th century Europe torture became very widespread like in Rome. Before Europe began using torture, they relied on more common judicial type of settlement for crimes, but the 13th century confessions and eyewitness testimonies came about and were used to determine if a person were guilty or innocent. To get the confessions, they needed a scarier method. Torture was used, torture was used a lot, but it could only be used if there was numerous amount of evidence against the defendant. (2) From the 14th to 18th centuries in Europe, torture was a very common thing of the legal process of a majority of the European countries and even the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church used torture as a way to punish heretics at the order of inquisitors. The inquisition played a big part in the world of torture. The inquisition was a church founded in medieval times that was setup up to find and prosecutes heretics. (3) The punishment for being heretics was extreme, things you would cringe at thinking about, such as the vice. (1) The inquisition was greatly defended during the middle ages. ? So the master said to the servant, go out to the country roads and lanes and make people come in, so that my house will be full.? Luke 14:23(bible) As biblical proof of endorsing the punishment of heretics.

Torture methods described before sees to meet that torture was the most effective way to abstract confessions or knowledge of a crime. People who ended up in a torture device would end up being killed. For torture did not kill anybody, but it caused pain the shock would of killed. Torture a very sick form, and it was the only way possible the authority figures could get a confession out of the condemned prisoners. Now these days we have lie detector tests and DNA test to prove our innocent. Also, in some cases people could say that we still use torture in some way. We use the death penalty to executer murders. People feel that the torture of the middle ages has been updated and restricted to condemned prisoners, for being a witch is not a crime anymore in the united states. Though some states feel that this form of torture is wrong, it was there ancestors that caused the first form of torture which lead to hanging, lethal injection, firing squad and the electric chair. The electric chair is basically a form of the garroting chair or spiked chair, modified to kill faster. You can compare the torture of now and then and you can see that in some cases it ?s a form that is derived from the original. Unlike many have thought, the church has had a sound hand in helping the torture methods develop, the people of the public also had a hand at helping things develop. Torture can defiantly be called a sick art form, and a very solid way of getting what was needed.

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