Phantom limb pain

A phantom limb is one of the more strangely horrifying side-effects of surgery.  A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated (or otherwise missing) limb/other appendage is still attached to one's body.  But often the phantom limb feels tense or painful.  What can you do about pain in a limb that isn't there?  What else can go wrong in that limb?

A woman who was born with only three fingers on her right hand, which was later amputated, found out in a strange way.  Well, something didn't go wrong, exactly.  It's more like something went freakishly right.  Her two missing fingers "grew back" on her phantom limb after the real one was amputated, which shows something about how our brain recognizes what we "should" have in/on our body.  Her new fingers came back shorter, but a mirror box was used to lengthen them.

The article did not mention any pain in her phantom hand.

Religion makes people do horrible things, pt. 2

Did you hear about the Islamic cult living underground in Kazan, Tatarstan (part of the Russian Federation)?  Some of the children had apparently never seen sunlight.  It makes you think of that Ray Bradbury story.  You know the one.  I'd like to add that Kazan is not some podunk little bizarre Russian village.  It's got over a million people, so likely it's bigger than where you are living now.  And it's a pretty normal city.  I know people from there, and people who have been there.  They are all normal, sunlight-loving people.  (Well, most of them are, anyway.)

Well, I guess some of the story was quite exaggerated, particularly the state of the cells.  However, they were without any sort of power, water, or central heat.  The follow-up articles do not address whether some children never saw sunlight, only that some rooms indeed had windows.  I consider the jury still out on this one-- I think the headline calling it a lie was a bit exaggerated itself.

Torture Week: Death by a Thousand Cuts

Today we travel to ancient (and not-so-ancient, up to the early 1900s in fact) China to learn about Língchí, also known as Slow Slicing or the Death by a Thousand Cuts.  This method was used as punishment for only the most heinous of crimes, like treason or patricide (both of which violated the traditional order of filial piety).  In this method of torture, the victim was restrained in public, then multiple small (and not so small-- fingers, limbs, and... other appendages were often cut off, and eyes were often put out first thing, to amp up the psychological terror) cuts were made, until finally the victim either was beheaded or got a knife to the heart and died.

From The Big Book of Pain

 

 

There is some controversy over just how horrible this method was, however.  According to my Big Book of Pain, there were symbols on the knives used indicating which body part was to be cut.  Either the victim's family bribed the executioner to choose the "heart" knife very quickly, or else the victim just hoped for it really hard.  But Wikipedia states that usually the victim was already dead before the slicing started.  The real punishment here was that being all cut up violated the aforementioned filial piety thing-- you didn't want to show up to the afterlife in pieces.  In addition, it states that opium was often given to the victim-- but there is no consensus over whether this was an act of mercy (I've heard things don't hurt as much on opium) or further torture (you would be less likely to pass out from shock).

Torture Week: Scavenger's Daughter

Today's torture device is the Scavenger's Daughter (also known as the Skevington's Daughter, or the Spanish A-frame), invented during the reign of Henry VIII (of course) by Sir Leonard Skeffington ("Scavenger" is thought to be a corruption of "Skeffington," as is "Skevington," because apparently people couldn't remember his actual name).  It is the opposite of the rack, in a way, as it compresses the body rather than stretching it.

Wikipedia

They were configured either as in the photo above, or in a more A-frame or triangular fashion.  The head went through the circular portion at the top, the hands went through the semi-circles where the A would be crossed, and the ankles went through at the bottom.  This caused the body to be crunched in a position where the knees would be forced against the chest and the thighs against the stomach.  It also kept the head bent downward.  This position caused the unfortunate person locked in one to bleed from the ears and nose (I'm guessing not right away, as I myself am able to press my knees to my chest without bleeding from my face).

If you consider yourself a torture aficionado (why the hell would you?), yet have not heard of this instrument, don't, well, torture yourself about it.  Documentation from the time suggests that it was rarely used.  You can see one for yourself on display at the Tower of London museum or the torture museum in Freiburg im Breisgau (where the above photo is from), if you happen to be in Europe.