A certain amount of restriction, to which secular courts were not liable, was placed upon the Inquisitors in their use of torture. No torture could be used by them which would imperil the life or limb of the victim, and this stipulation did amount to something, for the secular judge was free to invent and use any refinement of cruelty he could think of, and as often as he cared to. But it did not amount to much. The Inquisition was free to tear the joints of its victims from their sockets by means of the rack, or by the strappado. This last was a rope-and-pulley arrangement which was attached to the wrists of the victim. His wrists were bound behind his back, so as to dislocate the shoulder joints by raising him to the ceiling, letting him drop and then bringing him up with a jerk in mid-air. Fire and water were also permitted; the feet might be scorched after smearing them with fat; or the “water-cure” might be used until the stomach was horribly distended and the prisoner almost strangled. At first there was reluctance about allowing the Inquisitors themselves to be present during torture. Priests, and the inquisitors were all priests, incurred “irregularity” by looking on at such scenes. But since this prohibition delayed business, it was virtually removed by the leave granted by Pope Alexander IV in 1260, and reaffirmed in 1262 by Pope Urban IV, for the Inquisitors to dispense one another from irregularity incurred by witnessing torture. Thenceforward it was the custom for the Inquisitor himself to be present during the torture. Another check on the use of torture, the prescription that no prisoner should be twice tortured, was gotten around by equivocation. A second torturing was merely called a “continuation” instead of a “repetition” of the first. Furthermore, witnesses might be tortured indefinitely, and it was one of the chief objects of the inquisitors to get prisoners to denounce heretics still at large. Often mercy would be promised, on condition of giving evidence against others. In any case a heretic who denounced other heretics became at once a witness to their guilt and might be tortured as many times as was desired.