Water cure

Water cure

Water cure is a form of water torture in which the victim is forced to drink large quantities of water in a short time, resulting in gastric distension, water intoxication, and possibly death.cite book|title=Oxford English Dictionary|quote=In the Philippines, torture by forcing a person to drink large quantities of water in a short time]

Often the victim has the mouth forced or wedged open, the nose closed with pincers and a funnel or strip of cloth forced down the throat. 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 begins again.

Historical uses

France

Water torture was used extensively and legally by the courts of France from the Middle Ages to 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 French poet and criminal François Villon was subjected to this torture in 1457. [ Jannet, Pierre, ed (2004). Preface. [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12246 "Oeuvres complètes de François Villon."] "En 1457, il était dans les prisons du Châtelet, etle Parlement, après lui avoir fait appliquer la question del'eau, le condamnait à mort." ] Jean Calas suffered this torture before being broken on the wheel in 1762. [ Harvey, Simon, ed (2000). Note 8 to Chapter 1. "Voltaire: Treatise on Tolerance." Cambridge University Press, p. 8: "the Question Extraordinary involved suffocation, the victim's nose pinched while great quantities of water were poured through a funnel into his throat. Records show that Jean Calas withstood this torment without once submitting to the torturers' threats, and consistently denied that any crime had taken place." ] The true case of the Marquise of Brinvilliers was reported in fiction by Arthur Conan Doyle in " [http://www.mastertexts.com/index.php?PageName=ChapterDetails&TitleID=613&VolumeNo=0&ChapterNo=2 The Leather Funnel] ", by Alexandre Dumas, père in " [http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1175/__P6.HTM The Marquise de Brinvilliers] " and by Émile Gaboriau in " [http://books.google.com/books?id=_BoCAAAAQAAJ Intrigues of a Poisoner] ". 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.

pain

Water cure was among the forms of torture used by the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition at Málaga 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." [Hadfield, Andrew, ed. (2001). "Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels". Oxford University Press. p. 114. Spellings have been modernized.]
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. [Lea, Henry Charles (1906-7). "A History of the Inquisition of Spain". [http://libro.uca.edu/lea3/6lea7.htm Volume 3, Book 6, Chapter 7] ]

United States

Police

The use of "third degree interrogation" techniques in order to compell confession, ranging from "psychological duress such as prolonged confinement to extreme violence and torture", was widespread in early American policing. Lassiter classified the water cure as "orchestrated physical abuse", and described the police technique as a "modern day variation of the method of water torture that was popular during the Middle Ages." The technique employed by the police involved either holding the head in water until almost drowning, or laying on the back and forcing water into the mouth or nostrils. [cite book|title=Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment
author=G. Daniel Lassiter|isbn=0306484706|publisher=Springer Science+Business Media|year=2004
] rp|47 Such techniques were classified as "'covert' third degree torture" since they left no signs of physical abuse, and became popular after 1910 when the direct application of physical violence in order to force a confession became a media issue and some courts began to deny obviously compelled confessions.cite journal|journal=Crime, Law and Social Change|volume=18|title=From coercion to deception: the changing nature of police interrogation in America|year=1992|publisher=Kluwer Academic Publishers] rp|42 The publication of this information in 1931 as part of the Wickersham Commission's "Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" led to a decline in the use of third degree police interrogation techniques in the 1930s and 1940s.rp|38

In 1983 Texas sheriff James Parker and three of his deputies were convicted for conspiring to force confessions. The complaint said they "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html|title=Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime|author=Evan Wallach|publisher=Washington Post|date=2007-11-02] The sheriff was sentenced to ten years in prison, and the deputies to four years.cite news|title=Waterboarding: A Tortured History|author=Eric Weiner|publisher=National Public Radio|date=2007-11-03|url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834]

panish-American War

Major Edwin Glenn of the United States was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using the water cure. The Army judge advocate said the charges constituted "resort to torture with a view to extort a confession" and recommended disapproval because "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture."

Philippine-American War

Water cure was among the forms of torture used by American soldiers on Filipinos during the Philippine-American War. [cite book | author=Miller, Stuart Creighton | title="Benevolent Assimilation" The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 | publisher=Yale University Press | year=1982 | id=ISBN 0-300-02697-8 | quote=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. Quoted from S. Doc. 331, 57 Congressional 1 Session (1903), page 1767-1768rp|213] [cite journal |volume=43|number=2 |year=1973|pages=233–253 | author= Welch, Richard E. |title="American Autocracies in the Philippines: The Indictment and the Response" |journal=title=Pacific Historical Review] [cite book|author=Paul A. Kramer|title="The Blood of Government" Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines|year=2006|publisher=University of North Caroline Press|id=ISBN 978-0-8078-5653-6 On page 142 there is a picture from the Jonathan Best Collection depicting American soldiers and their Macabebe allies performing water cure during the American-Philippine War.] 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." [cite journal|journal=The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt|title=Private letter from Roosevelt to Speck von Sternberg|date=1902-07-19|editor=Elting Morison|volume=3|pages=297–98] However, a report at the time noted its lethality; "a soldier who was with General Funston had stated that he helped to administer the water cure to one hundred and sixty natives, all but twenty-six of whom died". [cite wikisource|Secretary Root's Record:"Marked Severities" in Philippine Warfare] See the Lodge Committee for detailed testimony of the use 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. ..." [cite book|author=Miller, Stuart Creighton | title="Benevolent Assimilation" The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 | publisher=Yale University Press | year=1982 | id=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 ]

In his book "The Forging of the American Empire" Sidney Lens recounted:

A reporter for the New York Evening Post (April 8, 1902) gave some harrowing details. The native, he said, is thrown on the ground, his arms and legs pinned down, and head partially raised "so as to make pouring in the water an easier matter". If the prisoner tries to keep his mouth closed, his nose is pinched to cut off the air and force him to open his mouth, or a bamboo stick is put in the opening. In this way water is steadily poured in, one, two, three, four, five gallons, until the body becomes "an object frighful to contemplate". In this condition, of course, speech is impossibly, so the water is squeezed out of the victim, sometimes naturally, and sometimes - as a young soldier with a smile told the correspondent - "we jump on them to get it out quick." One or two such treatments and the prisoner either talks or dies.cite book|title=The Forging of the American Empire: From the Revolution to Vietnam: A History of U.S. Imperialism|author=Sidney Lens|isbn=0745321003|publisher=Pluto Press|year=2003]

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." [Judgement of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1948). [http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/IMTFE/IMTFE-8.html Part B, Chapter VIII] , p. 1059. ]

The tribunal also reported the case of a prisoner being tortured in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:

"A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.

Chase J. Nielson, who was captured in the Doolittle raid testified at the trial of his captors, "I was given several types of torture... I was given what they call the water cure." and it felt "more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."

In other settings

The hazing or abusive testing of military recruits, fraternity pledges, or other would-be group members has sometimes included forced ingestion of water or other liquids. This can result in death by water intoxication. Chico State University of California student Matthew Carrington died in 2005 trying to become a member of the Chi Tau fraternity.cite news|url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5012154|title=A Fraternity Hazing Gone Wrong|author=Elaine Korry|publisher=National Public Radio|date=2005-11-14] 28-year-old Jennifer Strange of Rancho Cordova, California died of water intoxication after competing in KDND radio's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest.cite web|title=Too High a Price for a Wii|date=2007-01-15|author=Tom Zeller Jr.|publisher=New York Times|url=http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/too-high-a-price-for-a-wii/]

ee also

* Waterboarding
* Water torture

References

External links

* [http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/data/13030/jd/ft8k4008jd/figures/ft8k4008jd_00055.jpg"Louis of Germany tortures men."] - A 14th-century illustration from the "Grandes Chroniques de France", reproduced in Chapter 4 of Anne D. Hedeman's [http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8k4008jd/ "The Royal Image"] (1991).
* [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F07E3D61130E132A25757C0A9639C946397D6CF Article on Water Cure from New York times Archive]
* [http://filipiniana.net/read_content.jsp?filename=MCH000000005&page=1&epage=1 The Water Cure from the Missionary Point of View] Newspaper article describing the pros and cons on the usage of the water cure method during the Filipino-American War
* [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_kramer The Water Cure] - article by Paul Kramer in The New Yorker


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