There were many other methods of torment, each more cruel than the others, among them the gradual pouring of water drop by drop on a particular part of the head or body, or the pouring of water onto a piece of gauze in the back of the throat, thus gradually forcing the gauze into the stomach. Boiling hot oil, burning sulphur and pitch, or molten lead were poured on the naked body, or the poor creatures were incessantly pricked and prodded in their dungeons so that they could not rest a second for weeks at a time, until they were finally driven to despair and madness. No periods in human history are more terrible, revolting and depressing to contemplate than these times of the Inquisition and of persecution for witchcraft. The student, who has courage enough, to go through the blood-stained documents of these dreadful times, must feel as Ingersoll felt when he said: [Illustration: A SUPPOSED WITCH BEFORE THE TRIBUNAL OF THE INQUISITION. After a painting by H. Steinheil. ] “Sometimes, when I read and think about these frightful things, it seems to me that I have suffered all these horrors myself. It seems sometimes, as though I had stood upon the shore of exile and gazed with tearful eyes toward home and native land; as though my nails had been torn from my hands, and into the bleeding quick needles had been thrust; as though my feet had been crushed in iron boots; as though I had been chained in the cell of the Inquisition and listened with dying ears for the coming footsteps of release; as though I had stood upon the scaffold and had seen the glittering axe fall upon me; as though I had been upon the rack and had seen, bending above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been taken from my fireside, from my wife and children, taken to the public square, chained, as though fagots had been piled about me; as though the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to blindness, and as though my ashes had been scattered to the four winds, by all the countless hands of hate.” From the records of trials for witchcraft still preserved in the archives of many European cities, it appears that the majority of victims were aged women; very frequently they had reared families and spent their youth and beauty in this self-denying work. But there are also many cases of the torturing of mere children; in several such cases little girls of seven and nine years gave affirmative answers to questions, as to whether they had held sexual intercourse with the devil. They even admitted to have given birth to children in consequence of such intercourse. A record covering the years 1627, 1628 and January, 1629, states that during this period in Wurzburg, Bavaria, one hundred and sixty-three persons were tortured, and burnt at the stake. Among them were seventy-two women, and twenty-six children under fourteen years. Among the latter were little girls of nine years or less, and one was a little blind girl.