WATER CURE

:''This is an article about a form of torture. For the "water cure" therapy used in the 18th and 19th century, see water cure (therapy).''

'Water cure' (also known as water torture) is a form of torture which is intended to make the subject feel the sensation of drowning. In the most common variation, the torturer pours water down the throat of the subject to inflict the terror of drowning, without causing the subject to drown. The victim also experiences the pain of stomach distention, and water intoxication. In another variation, the subject is tied or held down in a chair, his face is covered with a cloth or plastic sheet, and water is poured slowly or quickly over his face to encourage him to talk (see "waterboarding" for more detail).
Often the victim has his nose closed with pincers and a funnel forced into his mouth. The victim has to drink all the water (or other liquids such as bile or urine) poured into the funnel to avoid drowning. The stomach fills until near bursting, and is sometimes beaten until the victim vomits and the torture starts over.

Contents

Historical uses

France

Germany

Spain

United States

Eyewitness testimony of the water cure

Japan

See also

Notes

Historical uses

France

This form of torture was used extensively and legally by the courts of France during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was known as being put to "the question", with the 'ordinary question' consisting of eight pints (4.5 litres) of water forced into the stomach, and the 'extraordinary question' consisting of sixteen pints (9 litres). The true case of the Marquise of Brinvilliers was reported in fiction by Arthur Conan Doyle in "The Leather Funnel" and by Alexandre Dumas, père in "The Marquise de Brinvilliers".
More recently, water cure was used by the French military on Algerian prisoners during the Algerian war of independence.

Germany

A form of water cure known as the Swedish drink was used by various international troops in the German states during the Thirty Years' War.

Spain

Water cure was among the forms of torture used by the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition at M%C3%A1laga subjected the Scottish traveller William Lithgow to this torture, among other methods, in 1620. He described his ordeal in ''Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations'' (1632):

"The first and second [measures of water] I gladly received, such was the scorching drought of my tormenting pain, and likewise I had drunk none for three days before. But afterward, at the third charge, perceiving these measures of water to be inflicted upon me as tortures, O strangling tortures! I closed my lips, gainstanding that eager crudelity. Whereat the alcalde enraging, set my teeth asunder with a pair of iron cadges, detaining them there, at every several turn, both mainly and manually; whereupon my hunger-clunged belly waxing great, grew drum-like imbolstered: for it being a suffocating pain, in regard of my head hanging downward, and the water reingorging itself in my throat with a struggling force; it strangled and swallowed up my breath from yowling and groaning." ^[1]

Before pouring the water, torturers often inserted an iron prong (known as the ''bostezo'') into a victim's mouth to keep it open, as well as a strip of linen (known as the ''toca'') on which the victim would choke and suffocate while swallowing the water. ^[2]

United States

Water cure was among the forms of torture used by American soldiers on Filipinos during the Philippine-American War.^[3]

Eyewitness testimony of the water cure

Lieutenant Grover Flint during the Philippine-American War:

"A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit or stand on his arms and legs and hold him down; and either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin, -- that is, with an inch circumference, -- is simply thrust into his jaws and his jaws are thrust back, and, if possible, a wooden log or stone is put under his head or neck, so he can be held more firmly. In the case of very old men I have seen their teeth fall out, -- I mean when it was done a little roughly. He is simply held down and then water is poured onto his face down his throat and nose from a jar; and that is kept up until the man gives some sign or becomes unconscious. And, when he becomes unconscious, he is simply rolled aside and he is allowed to come to. In almost every case the men have been a little roughly handled. They were rolled aside rudely, so that water was expelled. A man suffers tremendously, there is no doubt about it. His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown. ..."^[4]

Japan

During World War II, water cure was among the forms of torture used by Japanese troops (especially the Kempeitai) in occupied territory. A report from the postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East summarized it as follows:

"The so-called 'water treatment' was commonly used. The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost consciousness. Pressure was then applied, sometimes by jumping upon his abdomen to force the water out. The usual practice was to revive the victim and successively repeat the process." ^[5]

See also

★ Waterboarding

★ Water torture

Notes

1. Hadfield, Andrew, ed. (2001). Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Oxford University Press. p. 114. Spellings have been modernized.
2. Lea, Henry Charles (1906-7). ''A History of the Inquisition of Spain''. Volume 3, Book 6, Chapter 7
3. Future President William Howard Taft conceded under questioning at the Lodge Committee that the "so called water cure" had been used on some occasions to extract information. "Benevolent Assimilation" The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, Miller, Stuart Creighton, , , Yale University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-300-02697-8 p. 213. Quoted from S. Doc. 331, 57 Congressional 1 Session (1903), page 1767-1768. President Theodore Roosevelt privately assured a friend that the [water cure] was "an old Filipino method of mild torture. Nobody was seriously damaged whereas the Filipinos had inflicted incredible tortures on our people." (Private letter from Roosevelt to Speck von Sternberg, July 19, 1902, in Elting Morison, editor, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 3, page 297-98.); See the Lodge Committee for detailed testimony of the use of the water cure. Also see Philippine-American War, Water Torture on wikiquote
4. "Benevolent Assimilation" The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, Miller, Stuart Creighton, , , Yale University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-300-02697-8 p. 218; Told of "Water Cure" Given to Filipinos. Witness Went Into Details Before Senate Committee on the Philippines. New York Times, Feb. 25, 1902, p. 3
5. Judgement of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1948). Part B, Chapter VIII, p. 1059.