Foot roasting

Foot roasting is a method of torture used since ancient times. The torture takes advantage of the simple medical fact that the sole of the foot is covered by the most heat-sensitive skin in the human body. The Romans immobilized the prisoner and pressed red-hot iron plates to the soles of his feet. The Spanish Inquisition frequently employed an enhanced technique, binding the prisoner face-upward to the rack with his bare feet secured in stocks. The soles of the feet were basted with lard or oil and slowly barbecued over a brazier of burning coals. A screen could be interposed between the feet and the coals to modulate the exposure, while a bellows controlled the intensity of the flame. Variants included suspending the prisoner head-downward and placing hot coals directly on his naked soles. Foot roasting remains a popular technique of torture to this day, though the modern variant (a favorite technique of the KGB ) typically makes use of a clothes iron applied to the soles, optionally complemented by the use of a soldering iron or electric wood-burning pencil to explore the delicate webbing between the toes. (To that end, such tortures as the rack were commonly enhanced by positioning thin slivers of red-hot coal between pairs of adjacent toes.) In one of his science fiction stories, the noted author Poul Anderson introduced the concept of computer-controlled foot roasting, where nervous response is measured and fed back to modulate the temperature distribution with sufficient precision that the prisoner is kept continually screaming at the top of his lungs. Maintaining this precise level of agony is critical, since inflicting any more pain could cause the victim to lose consciousness, while inflicting any less pain is less effective.

Knights Templar

Foot roasting was one of the principal tortures used to extract supposed confessions of heresy and other accusations made against the Knights Templar after their arrest in October 1307. It is recorded that one Templar's feet was so savagely tortured that—as he was being carried back to his cell—various pieces of charred bone fell from his feet to the floor, here and there. Prisoners could also be suspended head-downwards from stocks, with hot coals placed directly on the soles of the feet—held in place by gravity—while thin slivers of burning embers were slid between pairs of adjacent toes. Templars were also tortured by having their limbs disjointed by a system of pulleys and weights (the strappado, or squassation) or by having sharp, thin wedges of wood or metal hammered beneath the nails of their toes and fingers (after which the nails were torn out at their roots with an iron forceps), or had their teeth extracted with pliers and the empty sockets stimulated with sharp iron tools.

Brittany

In Brittany, an enhanced interrogation chair was used that immobilized the feet and provided a movable tray of coals that could be cranked up and down, eventually making physical contact with the soles of the feet.

Star kicking

A form of torture called "star kicking" supposedly began with Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who would place oiled bits of paper or string between the prisoner's toes and light the material on fire.