ABSTRACT
TORTURE: ‘the art or process of inflicting severe pain, especially as a punishment, so as to extort confession, or in revenge’. This is an impersonal dictionary definition of an unpleasantly personal topic, one which Voltaire saw as important enough to include in his Philosophical Dictionary of 1769 to underline its significance for the society of the day:
The Romans inflicted torture only on the slaves, but the slaves were not reckoned to be human. Nor does it appear that a judge… regards as a fellow man the haggard, pale, broken individual who is brought before him dull-eyed, with a long dirty beard, covered with the vermin that have been preying on him in the dungeon. He gives himself the pleasure of putting him to major and minor torture, in the presence of a surgeon who feels his pulse until he is in danger of death, after which they set to again…
