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Disembowelment, disemboweling, evisceration, eviscerating or gutting is the removal of organs from the gastrointestinal tract (bowels or viscera), usually through an incision made across the Abdomen area. Disembowelment is a standard routine operation during animal slaughter. Disembowelment of humans may result from an accident, but has also been used as a method of torture or execution. In such practices, disembowelment may be accompanied by various forms of torture or the removal of other vital organs.
James Cook, on his second voyage, noted an embalming custom on some of the Pacific islands his crew visited, a custom utilizing transanal evisceration:*
Cases of transanal evisceration of children whilst sitting over uncovered swimming pool drains have been reported; notable cases include Valerie Lakey (1993) and Abigail Taylor (2007). In Taylor's case, the suction dislodged and damaged her liver and pancreas; several meters of her small intestine were forcefully pulled through her anus. In both these cases, the victims were left with short bowel syndrome and required feeding by total parenteral nutrition. After multiple operations, Taylor later died from transplant-related cancer.
A person, usually a child, can suffer a similar injury if a heavy weight is applied directly over the abdomen. Large intestine (rectosigmoid) rupture with transanal evisceration has been reported from blunt abdominal trauma and suction injuries. A direct blow or impingement of intestine between the vertebrae and anterior abdominal wall results in sudden increase in the intra-abdominal or intraluminal pressure of the intestine and rupture. The downward pressure forces a portion of the intestine to burst from the anus.
William Harrington, Hugh le Despenser the Younger and William Parry are examples of men who were hanged, drawn and quartered – tortured on the rack, Hanging until not quite dead, subjected to emasculation, disembowelment and then chopped into quarters.
Jacob Grimm observes that no case of the punishment being carried out has been found in records from that period (15th century), but 300 to 500 years earlier, the West Slavs tribes like the Wends are said to have revenged themselves upon Christians by binding the guts to an erect pole and driving them around until the person was fully eviscerated. i) General comment, with connotations of this being a type of human sacrifice , ii) 8th century description from 772-73, , iii) Danish 1096 retaliation on Wends, by like execution method, , iv) 1131 pagan attacks on Christians by Wends, In the 13th century, members of the now extinct Baltic ethnic group of Old Prussians in one of the battles against the Teutonic Knights, are said to have captured one such knight in 1248 and made him undergo this punishment.
The act of decapitation by a second ( kaishaku-nin) was added to this ritual suicide in later times in order to shorten the suffering of the samurai or leader, an attempt at rendering the ritual more humane. Even later the knife was just a simple formality and the swordsman would decapitate before the subject could reach for it. The commission of a crime or dishonorable act was only one of many reasons for the performance of seppuku; others included the atonement of cowardice, as a means of apology, or following the loss of a battle or the surrender of a Japanese castle.
The Japanese tradition of seppuku is a well known example of highly ritualized suicide, within a wider cultural world of norms and symbolism. However, reported examples of suicides exist, in which a person performed disembowelment on himself or herself, without any ambient culture of approved, or expected, suicide.
The Spartan king Cleomenes I is reported, in a fit of madness, to have slit his stomach open, and ripped his own bowels out.
Roman statesman Cato the Younger committed suicide in Utica, after his side lost to Julius Caesar, by plunging a knife in his own gut, in the dead of night. According to Parallel Lives, Cato's son heard the commotion from a nearby room, and called a doctor who stitched the wound closed; after his son and the doctor left, Cato tore the stitching open with his hand and died. On account of his tragic, highly symbolic suicide, Cato is often termed Uticensis ("of Utica"), in order to differentiate him from his homonymous ancestor, Cato "the Elder" or "the Censor".
In 1593, a suicide occurred in Bad Wimpfen. A young, pregnant woman, who had become a widow a few weeks before, was lying in her bed. She took a large knife, opened her belly in a cross, and threw out the fetus, her own intestines, and dug out her spleen and flung it out as well. She lived for 10 hours after the act, and when the priests sought to bring her a final consolation and blessing, she said it would all be in vain, because she was a daughter of the devil, and was beyond any sort of redemption. Then, she died, was put in a sack, and was thrown in the river. She was affluent, so it was clear that poverty had not driven her to this act.Forty years earlier, in 1555 Seidenberg (nowadays Zawidow), a woman who had become pregnant by another man than her (absent) husband sought to preserve her honour by cutting out the fetus. Having pulled it out, along with much else, she began screaming of pain, but no one could help her, and she died three days later.
In 1617, a merchant in the municipality GrossglockauFor status as municipality, see: slit his abdomen so that the intestines fell out; he then pulled out his stomach and threw it on the bed. The chronicler notes he lived long enough to regret his action.
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