The Simple Sadism of Olden Torture

These devices are not complicated, but you’ll suffer abysmally

Library of Congress; Engraving probably by P. Galle after a drawing by Pieter Bruegel.

On the NBC show, The Good Place, torture — in the Bad Place — is played for laughs, with a running joke about a penis flattener. It made me curious about real torture devices used over the centuries.