Water cure is a form of torture in which the victim is forced to drink large quantities of water in a short time, resulting in gastric distension, water intoxication, and possibly death. Often the victim has the mouth forced or wedged open, the nose closed with pincers and a funnel or strip of cloth forced down the throat. The victim has to drink all the water (or other liquids) poured into the funnel to avoid drowning. The stomach fills until near bursting, swelling up in the process and is sometimes beaten until the victim vomits and the torture begins again. While this use of water as a form of torture is documented to at least the 15th century, the first use of the phrase water cure in this sense is indirectly dated to around 1898, by U.S. soldiers in the Spanish–American War, after the phrase had been introduced to America in the mid-19th century in the therapeutic sense, which was in widespread use. Indeed, while the sense of the phrase water cure as a method of torture was by 1900–1902 established in the U.S. Army, with a conscious sense of irony, this sense was not in widespread use. Webster's 1913 dictionary cited only the therapeutic sense. Torture that makes use of water still exists under the name of waterboarding. In this variation, emphasis is placed on inducing the sensation of drowning rather than forcing the individual to consume, and subsequently regurgitate, large quantities of water.
Historical uses
East Indies The use of the water cure by the Dutch in the East-Indies is documented by the English merchants of the East India Company after the Amboyna massacre in February 1623 (O. S.). The procedure is described in great detail by the survivors of the incident:
The manner of his torture was as follows: First they hoisted him up by the hands with a cord on a large door, where they made him fast upon two staples of iron, fixed on both sides, at the top of the door posts, having his hands one from the other as wide as they could stretch. Being thus made fast, his feet hung some two foot from the ground; which also they stretched asunder as far as they would stretch, and so made them fast beneath unto the door trees on each side. Then they bound a cloth about his neck and face so close, that little or no water could go by. That done, they poured the water softly upon his head until the cloth was full, up to the mouth and nostrils, and somewhat higher; so that he could not draw breath, but he must with all suck in the water: which being still continued to be poured in softly, forced all his inward parts, come out of his nose, ears, eyes, and often as it were stifling and choking him, at length took away his breath, and brought him to a swoon or fainting. Then they took him quickly down, and made him vomit up the water. Being a little recovered, they trussed him up again, and poured water as before, taking him down as soon as he seemed to be stifled. In this manner they handled him three or four several times with water, until his body was swollen twice or thrice as big as before, his cheeks like great bladders, and his eyes staring and strutting out beyond his forehead.
France
Water torture was used extensively and legally by the courts of France from the Middle Ages to the 17th and 18th centuries. It was known as being put to "the question", with the ordinary question involving the forcing of one gallon (eight pints or approximately 3.8 litres) of water into the stomach and the extraordinary question involving the forcing of two gallons (sixteen pints or approximately 7.6 litres). The French poet and criminal François Villon was subjected to this torture in 1461. Jean Calas suffered this torture before being broken on the wheel in 1762. The true case of the Marquise of Brinvilliers was reported in fiction by Arthur Conan Doyle in "The Leather Funnel", by Alexandre Dumas, père, in The Marquise de Brinvilliers and by Émile Gaboriau in Intrigues of a Poisoner.
Germany A form of water cure known as the Swedish drink was used by various international troops against the German population during the Thirty Years' War.
Spain Water cure was among the forms of torture used by the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition at Málaga subjected the Scottish traveller William Lithgow to this torture, among other methods, in 1620. He described his ordeal in Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations (1632):
The first and second [measures of water] I gladly received, such was the scorching drought of my tormenting pain, and likewise I had drunk none for three days before. But afterward, at the third charge, perceiving these measures of water to be inflicted upon me as tortures, O strangling tortures! I closed my lips, gainstanding that eager crudelity. Whereat the alcalde enraging, set my teeth asunder with a pair of iron cadges, detaining them there, at every several turn, both mainly and manually; whereupon my hunger-clunged belly waxing great, grew drum-like imbolstered: for it being a suffocating pain, in regard of my head hanging downward, and the water reingorging itself in my throat with a struggling force; it strangled and swallowed up my breath from yowling and groaning. Before pouring the water, torturers often inserted an iron prong (known as the bostezo) into a victim's mouth to keep it open, as well as a strip of linen (known as the toca) on which the victim would choke and suffocate while swallowing the water.
United States
The water cure was brought to the Philippines during Spanish colonial rule, and passed on to Americans by Filipinos in 1899.
Philippine–American War
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