Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
Then a few turns of the thumb-screw bring the spring to bear upon the box, its walls expand until the pressure of the spring equals the pressure of the atmosphere, the reading is taken, and the instrument thrown out of operation again a most ingenious arrangement by which it was hoped to overcome some of the persistent faults of elastic-chamber barometers.
The fourth division consisted of the thumb-screw, speculum oris, and chains and shackles of different kinds, collected at Liverpool. To these were added, iron neck-collars, and other instruments of punishment and confinement, used in the West Indies, and collected at other places.
It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease.
Now, when some man had said some trifling thing like that, they put this thumb-screw on him, and in the name of universal benevolence and for the love of God man has never persecuted man for the love of man; man has never persecuted another for the love of charity it is always for the love of something he calls God, and every man's idea of God is his own idea.
But neglect of children is a natural thing; like neglect of any other duty, it is a mere difference of degree that divides extending arms and legs in calisthenics and extending them on the rack. It is a mere difference of degree that separates any operation from any torture. The thumb-screw can easily be called Manicure. Being pulled about by wild horses can easily be called Massage.
No Smithfield fire, then, no Jesuitical rack, no cup of hemlock, no thumb-screw, no torture of any kind for David. Still, here was a duty to be done, an awful responsibility to be discharged in sorrow and with prayer; and grave good men they were. Blameless was this lad in all their eyes save in his doubt. But to doubt was not that the greatest of sins? The lad soon grew composed.
Erelong a new opportunity for applying the thumb-screw presented itself, and it was taken advantage of to the fullest practicable extent. During the recess following the close of the first session of the Eighth Provincial Parliament, which was prorogued on the 14th of April, 1821, a vacancy occurred in the representation of the constituency of the United Counties of Lennox and Addington.
"Good God! say at once that you are going to marry her," she burst out, passionately, her knees shaking and her hands tightly clasped. "Of course, this kind of thing must happen some time or other, Lydia," said he; really, now the thumb-screw was on, not wishing to make the pain worse. "You didn't always see the necessity." "Perhaps not. I see it now."
Hereupon the thumb-screw was put on her, and she was once more asked whether she would confess freely, but she only shook her poor blinded head and sighed with her dying Saviour, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" and then in Greek, "Thee mou, Thee mou, iuati me egkatelipes"; Whereat Dom.
Starvation, the bloody whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the cat-o'-nine-tails, the dungeon, the blood-hound, are all in requisition to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States. If any man has a doubt upon it, I have here the "testimony of a thousand witnesses," which I can give at any length, all going to prove the truth of my statement.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking