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'Disembowelment' ('evisceration') is the removing of some or all of vital organs, usually from the abdomen.

Contents

Disembowelment as torture

Animal slaughter

Embalming

Mummification

Disembowelment as torture

If performed on a living creature, 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 keep the condemned alive (and in pain) as long as possible.

★ 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 removing him before death), 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 and Belgium 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 played a part as a method of execution or of the ritualized 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.

Animal slaughter

Evisceration is often a term used in relation of the slaughter of animals for food. The term actually refers to the removal of the internal organs of a slaughtered animal before it is butchered (separated into different cuts of meat by a butcher) for sale. While in most documented procedures the animal being eviscerated is already dead, there are also many cases that the animal is still alive when the evisceration is carried out.

Embalming

At various points in time and in some cultures, removal of the internal organs was performed as part of the embalming process.

Mummification

The process of mummification, especially as practised by the ancient Egyptians, entailed the removal of the internal organs prior to the preservation of the remainder of the body. The organs removed were then stored in canopic jars and placed in the tomb with the body.