Disembowelment

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This article is about the act of disembowelment. For the band, see Disembowelment (band).

Disembowelment (evisceration) is the removing of some or all of vital organs, usually from the abdomen. The results are, in virtually all cases, fatal. It has historically been used as a severe form of capital punishment. The last organs to be removed were invariably the heart and lungs so as to preserve the victim's life force for the full procedure.

(In France, the punishment of being "drawn" refers to being conveyed to the place of execution.)

• In England, the punishment of being "hanged, drawn, and quartered" was typically used for men convicted of treason. This referred to the practice of hanging a man from the neck (but not until dead), disemboweling him, and decapitating him and dividing the body into four pieces. The man's head and quarters would often be displayed as a warning to others. As part of the disemboweling, the man was also typically castrated and emasculated and his genitals and entrails would be burned. Women, for modesty's sake, were instead burned alive. (However, on the Isle of Man this 'mercy' was denied and women convicted of treason were hanged, drawn and quartered as well.)

• In the Netherlands the vierendelen (literally "to divide in four"), a practice where the arms and legs were tied to horses and the abdomen was sliced open. This punishment was meant exclusively for the punishing of a person who had committed regicide.

• In Japan, disembowelment also formed part of the method of execution of or graceful suicide by a samurai. In killing themselves by this method, they were deemed to be free from the dishonor resulting from their crimes. The most common form of disembowelment was referred to in Japanese as seppuku (where the term "hara-kiri," literally "stomach cutting," is regarded as vulgar), involving two cuts across the abdomen, sometimes followed by pulling out one's own innards. The act of beheading, in most cases by one's best servant, 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. In the English language, hara-kiri and seppuku are often treated as synonyms.