Rat torture

Rats may be used to torture a victim by encouraging them to attack and eat him alive. This is supposed to be a traditional form of Chinese punishment. [cite book|title=Merrily I Go to Hell: Reminiscences of a Bishop's Daughter|first=Mary|last=Cameron|year=1931|quote=the Canton Rat torture, in which enormous half starved rats are put into a box with the victim, who is rapidly eaten alive]

The "Rats' Dungeon" or "Dungeon of the Rats" was a feature of the Tower of London alleged by Roman Catholic writers from the Elizabethan era. "A cell below high-water mark and totally dark" would draw in rats from the River Thames as the tide flowed in. Prisoners would have their "alarm excited" and in some instances have "flesh ... torn from the arms and legs". [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=FSosAAAAMAAJ
title=The Pictorial History of England
author=George Lillie Craik and Charles MacFarlane
year=1848
publisher=Harper & Brothers]

During the Dutch Revolt, Diederick Sonoy, an ally of William the Silent, is documented to have used a method where a pottery bowl filled with rats was placed open side down on the naked body of a prisoner. When hot charcoal was piled on the bowl, the rats would attempt to escape by "gnaw [ing] into the very bowels of the victim". [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=mDcOAAAAQAAJ
title=The Rise of the Dutch Republic
author=John Lothrop Motley
year=1883
publisher=Bickers & Son]

Rat torture appears in the famous case study of a patient of Sigmund Freud. The Rat Man obsessed that his father and lady friend would be subjected to this torture. [cite journal|title=More about Rats and Rat People|journal=International Journal of Psycho-Analysis|volume=52|pages=277–288|author=Leonard Shengold|year=1971]

In fiction

An account similar to the Sonoy torture appears in the 1899 Octave Mirbeau novel "The Torture Garden", and psychologist Leonard Shengold has identified this as the possible source of the story that the Rat Man told Freud. Part of the book, an imaginary dialog between a torturer and a beautiful woman who is sexually excited by the accounts, is set in China. [cite news
url=http://www.division39.org/pub_reviews_detail.php?book_id=7
title=Review of "Mental Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and its Pathology"
author=Jorge Ahumada
date=Summer 2005
work=Publications: Book Reviews
publisher=American Psychological Association Division of Psychoanalysis
accessdate=2008-01-27]

The threat of the torture occurs in "Nineteen Eighty-Four". [cite journal|journal=The Journal of Philosophy|volume=85, No. 3|author=Christopher Boorse, Roy A. Sorensen|title=Ducking Harm|pages=115–134|date=March 1988] The central character, Winston Smith, is arrested by the Ministry of Love and undergoes a process of mental reprogramming. When it is clear that this programming has been unsuccessful, the ministry imprison him in Room 101. Here Winston must face his greatest fear: rats. A cage filled with rats is placed over his head, their only source of food or escape being by eating their way through Winston's face. At this point Winston breaks and begs that the method actually be used on his lover Julia, a sign that he has finally been broken.

Rats also feature in the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Pit and the Pendulum". The narrator lies on the rack and can only watch as a scythe swings back and forth, approaching closer each time, and rats swarm over his body. [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=W755ymfap4sC
title=The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe
author=Kevin J. Hayes
year=2002
publisher=Cambridge University Press
isbn=0521797276]

This form of torture was used in the movie "2 Fast 2 Furious". Carter Verone (the main antagonist) tortures a police detective into distracting cops so Brian, Roman Pierce and two thugs can escape with several bags of money. Carter takes a rat and holds it with a bucket on top of the stomach of the detective that is being restrained. He then takes a butane torch and proceeds to heat up the bucket to make the rat claw into the detective's skin.

References

ee also

* List of torture methods and devices