Note 8 — Chapter VII · TORTURE

Vida de Don Diego Duque de Estrada (Mem. hist. español, XIII. 55-60.)

Estrada relates that, after the torture, he paid the executioner two hundred ducats to preserve him from being crippled. The process was very painful, consisting of stretching the limbs and rubbing with an ointment composed of equal parts of fat of man, snake, bear, lion, viper and frog, melted over a slow fire with oil of sweet almonds, of pericon, camomile, rosado and balsam of the East. The treatment was successful.

For a frightful case of torture in Antwerp, as late as 1792, extending at intervals over more than a year, see Eugène Hubert, La Torture dans les Pays-Bas Autrichiens, pp. 124-9 (Bruxelles, 1897).