ABSTRACT
Many law enforcement agencies routinely use some techniques to extract information and confessions out of suspects. They have also been used by a large range of states, for example, against political dissidents during periods of repression and against suspected enemy combatants during times of armed internal conflict and war. Aristotle only performed it on animals and human foetuses. Herophilus went further and used dead human beings, but these were mostly condemned criminals. In Europe, resistance to its use continued in the medieval era in spite of the fact that the Christian cult of relics had normalized the practice of dismemberment. However, over time that resistance has been broken down. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was being performed extensively on the poor in Great Britain and parts of its empire. The moral, political and often even legal framework in this as so many other contexts is set by human rights frameworks and instruments.
