This was a form of torture the Inquisition would
have been sorry to have overlooked, and one no doubt that the
Bolsheviks have practised with great glee. The patient was strapped
to a chair or couch or had his--usually her--limbs held down by
warders (wardresses) and nurses. A steel or a wooden gag was then
inserted, often with such roughness as to chip or break the teeth,
and through the forced-open mouth a tube was pushed down the throat,
sometimes far enough to hurt the stomach. This produced an
apoplectic condition of choking and nausea, and as the stomach
filled up with liquid food the retching nearly killed the patient.
The windpipe became involved. Food entered the lungs--the tongue was
cut and bruised (Think what a mere pimple on the tongue means to
some of us: it keeps _me_ awake half the night)--the lips were torn.
Worse still--requiring really a pathological essay to which I am not
equal--was feeding by slender pipes through the nose. The far
simpler and painless process _per rectum_ was debarred because it
might have constituted an indecent assault.
Was ever Ministry in a greater dilemma? It was too old-fashioned,
too antiquely educated to realize the spirit of its age, the pass at
which we had arrived of conceding to Women the same rights as to
men. Women were ready to die for these rights (not to kill others in
order to attain them).
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