Disembowelment (evisceration) is the removing of some or all of vital organ, usually from the abdomen. 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 drawing a man by a hurdle (similar to a fence) through the streets, removing him from the hurdle and hanging him from the neck (but removing him before death), disemboweling him slowly on a wooden block by slitting open his stomach, removing his entrails and his other organs, and then decapitating him and dividing the body into four pieces.

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