TONGUE NAILING
Nailing a person's tongue to a stake was used as a kind of torture in Europe in the Middle Ages and in Ancient Rus for spreading lies and gossips, slander, joking about government officials and religion.
A person who was punished that way sometimes was left nailed to the stake for several hours or even for the whole day.
Besides losing a lot of blood and risking to get the wound infected, the condemned felt pain in all the muscles because he was unable to move without tearing his own tongue apart.
Perhaps, those people who invented this torture were inspired by a fairly harmless tradition of aborigines from Ancient Oceania to pierce their tongue with the purpose of relieving it from evil spirits.
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