Abstract
“I will pin your ears back, Johnny, unless you eat your soup”, the angry nanny kept saying. This humorous threat in the nursery might be the relic of some very unpleasant form of torture. A relic of barbarous ages our civilized world has no direct experience of—we hope. Because torturing meant the disfiguring of the body by disturbing its natural order, compelling it into some shape which was very different from the one it usually takes at rest or in unmolested motion. The aim, however, was neither killing nor maiming. The disfigured body was kept intact, and when torturing was over, it could regain its original shape, at least to a certain extent. Let the technical details be skipped now; the interested reader can find ample material together with the most modern achievements of the field.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsBibliography
Ball P. Chemistry World 2008 Jun; 36.
Hoffmann R, Hopf H. Learning from molecules in distress. Angew Chem Int Ed. 2008;47:4474–81.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schiller, R. (2019). Cruel Organic Chemistry. In: Between One Culture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20538-6_37
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20538-6_37
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20537-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20538-6
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)