Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Rack

Torture wascommon in the middle ages, as we all know. Numerous devices were invented, reworked, and used solely for the purpose of inflicting as much pain on the human body as was possible. Of all these devices, few became as infamous as The Rack. An elegant and simple device, The Rack was one of the most feared tortures one could endure. For those of you who can't figure out how it works from the picture, let me break it down for you. The prisoner is laid, generally on his back, on an uncomfortable wooden table. Their arms and legs are strapped into cuffs and stretched as far as they can go. Or so you think. But The Rack is tricky. Cranks either only on the top or on the top and bottom are slowly turned, stretching your muscles and tendons far beyond their capacity. The first to be dislocated is normally your arms, but even after that, they'll still pull making for an excruciating sensation that makes you wish they'd just cut your arms off. With a special mechanism, the adjustments on The Rack can't be turned backwards allowing for whoever is doing the torturing to make the pain last for days, or weeks, or however long they might want to enjoy your company. The Rack depicted above isn't the only way the decive was used, either. It was tweeked and modified to be more and more horrible as the human imagination grew darker.

2 comments:

  1. WOW Loki!!! Very intresting on the rack. You described the rack so well that, this tourture device is my second favorite out of all the tourture devices. I enjoyed how you stated that the rack could only be turned forward instead of backward. Makes prisoners feel they wish theier arms or legs were dismembered right from the beginning. I also liked how you described how it was used only solely for purposes of inficting as much pain as possible on the human body. In my case if I had a really bad enemy, I would use this device on my enemy to show whose boss and to say, "Now you know what happens when you mess with me." Once again great job.

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  2. wow! this form of torture is very interesting i did this one to so i wanted to see how yours was put and it was very well done i love the way you explained it. This one helped me know even more about the rack torture great job. And wow might i say what a way to be tortured ouchhh. i know i wouldn’t want to be strapped down on that. oh and knowing them they probably did this really slow i could just imagine this ouchhh. great great job though. When they cranked it does it only break one limb at a time or multiple limbs?

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