tribunal proposed to torture María Gilo, the physician who was called in reported that it would expose the child to imminent risk and the purpose was abandoned. In 1608, however, at Toledo, when the same question arose in the case of Luisa de Narvaez, the consulta voted in discordia and the Suprema ordered her to be tortured.[49] Besides these generalities, there were occasional special cases in which torture was abandoned in consequence of the condition of the patient--heart disease, excessive debility, repeated faintings during the administration and other causes. The physician and the surgeon were always called in, when the prisoner was stripped, to examine him and they were kept at hand to be summoned in case of accident. The tribunals seem to have been more tender-hearted than the Suprema which, in its instructions of 1662, reproved inquisitors who avoid sentencing to torture on account of weakness or of a broken arm. This, it says, is not proper, because it forfeits the opportunity of obtaining confession in the various preliminaries of reading the sentence, carrying to the torture-chamber, stripping him and tying him to the trestle; besides, after commencing, the torture is always to be stopped when the physician so orders.[50] There was another salutary precaution--that there should be a proper interval between the last meal and the torture. About 1560, Inquisitor Cervantes says that the patient is not to have food or drink on the evening before or on the morning of the infliction and, in 1722, a writer specifies eight hours for the preliminary fasting.[51] * * * * * [Sidenote: _THE EXECUTIONER_]