This stripping is performed without any regard to humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women and virgins, though the most virtuous and chaste, of whom they have sometimes many in their prisons. For they cause them to be stripped, even to their very shifts; which they afterwards take off, and then put on them straight linen drawers, and then make their arms naked quite up to their shoulders. As to squassation, it is thus performed: the prisoner hath his hands bound behind his back, and weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on high, till his head reaches the very pully. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched; and on a sudden he is let down with a jirk, by the slacking the rope, but kept from coming quite to the ground; by which terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of his fall, and the weight at his feet, stretching his whole body more intensely and cruelly. The author of the History of the Inquisition at Goa tells us,[263] that the torture now practised in the Portuguese inquisition is exceeding cruel. “In the months of November and December, I heard every day in the morning the cries and groans of those who were put to the question, which is so very cruel, that I have seen several of both sexes who have been ever after lame. In this tribunal they regard neither age nor sex, nor condition of persons, but all without distinction are tortured, when it is for the interest of this tribunal.” ----- Footnote 263: C. 23. -----