Not much more respect was paid to youth. In 1607, at Valencia, Isabel Madalena, a girl of thirteen, who was vaguely accused of Moorish practices, was tortured, overcame the torture and was penanced with a hundred lashes. In the same year that tribunal showed more consideration for Joan de Heredia, a boy of ten or eleven, whom a lying witness accused of going to a house where Moorish doctrines were taught. On his steadfast denial, he was sentenced to be placed _in conspectu tormentorum_, which was carried out in spite of an appeal by his procurator, but he persisted in asserting his innocence and the case was suspended.[44] Mental incapacity, short of insanity, was not often allowed exemption and it is creditable to the Valencia tribunal that when, about 1710, the Suprema ordered the torture of Joseph Felix, for intention with regard to certain propositions, it remonstrated and represented that he was too ignorant to comprehend the object of the torture.[45] * * * * * [Sidenote: _CONDITION OF PATIENT_] It was a universal law that torture should not endanger life or limb and, although this was often disregarded when the work was under way, it called for a certain amount of preliminary caution to see that the patient was in condition promising endurance--caution admitted in theory but not always observed in practice. When there was doubt, the physician of the Inquisition was sometimes called in, as in the case of Rodrigo Pérez, at Toledo, in 1600, who was sick and weak, and the medical certificate that torture would endanger health and life sufficed to save him, but the Suprema was not so considerate when, in 1636, it ordered the Valencia tribunal to torture Joseph Pujal before transferring him to the hospital, as was done afterwards on account of his illness.[46] Pregnancy has always been deemed a sufficient reason for at least postponing the infliction, but the Madrid tribunal, in instructions of 1690, only makes the concession of placing pregnant women on a seat, in place of binding them on the rack, while applying the exceedingly severe torture of the _garrote_--sharp cords, two on each arm and two on each leg, bound around the limb and twisted with a short lever.[47] Hernia was regarded, at least in the earlier time, as precluding torture, and I have met with several cases in which it served to exempt the patient but, in 1662, the official instructions of the Suprema order that no exceptions be made on that account, save the omission of the _trampazo vigoroso_, which causes downward strain; in the other tortures a good strong truss suffices to avert danger and it should always be kept on hand in readiness for such subjects.[48] In accordance with this the Madrid tribunal in 1690, orders for hernia cases the use of the seat provided for pregnant women. As regards women who were suckling, there seems to have been no established rule. In 1575, when the Valencia