In Nuremberg, as elsewhere, various methods of punishment were employed. Much ingenuity and some humour were displayed in making "the punishment fit the crime." The shrew was tamed, as in England, by the application of the _Brank_ or scold's bridle--an iron framework placed over the head in such a way that a plate covered with spikes, which was attached to it, fitted into the mouth. Thieves, like English authors, had their ears cut off. This operation was performed on the Fleischbrücke. The tongues of blasphemers were torn out, and if the banished returned to the city their eyes were gouged out. The latter treatment was often applied in the East to junior princes not required to be heirs. But there the removal of the eyeball gave way, in later times, to the drawing of a red-hot sword blade across the eyeball. In Italy the use of a heated metal basin (bacinare) was preferred. Whilst, in England, we punished drunkenness, as lately as 1872, with confinement in the stocks, the use of the ordinary Nuremberg punishment--"The Drunkard's Cloak"--a barrel worn after the manner of a cloak--was almost confined to Newcastle. The ancient Moslem punishment for wine-drinkers--the pouring of melted lead down the offender's throat--does not appear to have been in vogue. Other devices shown in the Five-Cornered Tower are the Spanish horse, which suggests the modern American method of "riding on a rail," the finger-cramp for bad musicians, pipes for excessive smokers, faces to be worn by husband-beaters, ducking-stools and the wheel, last used in 1788, and the cradle, last used in 1803. Even the sentence of death was variously performed. Robbers were hanged; murderers beheaded; worse criminals were torn asunder by horses or broken on the wheel. Sinners against the Church were exposed barefooted and bareheaded and hanged before the church doors; sinners against morality were branded. Jews--if it was a question of hanging them--were always hung from the end of the gallows' beam, so that they and the Christians might swing from a different place. Boiling oil does not seem to have been indulged in, though it was used in France for mere counterfeiters, and in England for poisoners. The Bishop of Rochester's cook for instance was treated in this manner in 1630. Terrible as these atrocities were, they are also terribly recent. The last burning at the stake in Germany took place in Berlin, 1786, and in the same year at Vienna occurred the last case of breaking on the wheel. The victim was tortured with red-hot pincers as he walked to the place of execution. And in England the execution of the rebels after the "45" was carried out in exact accordance with the statute of treason of Edward III., 1351, by which the unhappy victim of justice must be drawn to the gallows and not walk; be cut down alive and his entrails be then torn out and burnt before his face.