Guillotine

Guillotine (pronounced gil-uh-teen)

(1) An apparatus designed efficiently to carry out executions by decapitation.

(2) In medicine, an instrument used surgically to remove the tonsils.

(3) Any of various machines in which a vertical blade between two parallel uprights descends to cut or trim metal, stacks of paper etc.

(4) To truncate or cut.

(5) A technical procedure permitted in some parliaments which provides for an early termination of the time usually allocated to debate a bill, forcing an immediate vote.

(6) In philosophy, as “Hume's guillotine”, a synonym of “Hume's law”, the idea that what ought to be the case cannot be deduced from what is already the case; named after the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–1776).

(7) In law, as “guillotine clause”, a contractual stipulation that the adoption of the overall contractual package requires adoption of all of the individual treaties or contracts within it; the clause often appears in international treaties or agreements between sub-national entities.

(8) In historic French slang, as “dry guillotine”, the deportation to a penal colony.

Circa 1791: The guillotine was named after Joseph Guillotin (1738-1814), the French physician who advocated its adoption.  The surname Guillotin was of French origin and was from the Old French personal name Guillot, a diminutive of "Guillaume" (the French form of William, meaning “will” or “desire” + “helmet” or “protection” which, macabrely, is amusing given the later association with the guillotine). The “-in” suffix is a common diminutive in French surnames, meaning “little” (in the sense of “younger”) or “son of”.  Still today, the surname Guillotin is found primarily in western France, particularly in regions like Brittany (Bretagne), Normandy, and the Loire Valley and probably began as a patronymic, identifying the bearer as “the son of Guillot”.  Guillotine & guillotining are nouns & verbs and guillotined is a verb; the noun plural is guillotines.  Although use of the verb is attested only from 1794, etymologists seem to agree it would have come into oral use simultaneously with the noun.

The classic guillotine consists of a tall, upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended.  The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly to fall, forcefully decapitating the victim in a single pass, the head falling into a basket below.  In 1789, having witnessed the sometimes prolonged suffering caused by other methods of execution, Dr Joseph Guillotin (1738-1814), then a deputy in the National Assembly, had commended the guillotine to the authorities, his notes at the time indicating he was concerned with (1) efficiency of process, (2) a humanitarian concern for the victim and (3), the effect less expeditious methods had on executioners (and of the three, it was only the first and third which would later induce the Nazis to abandon mass-shootings of the Jews and instead create an industrialized process).  The French administration agreed and several guillotines were built in 1791, the first execution the following year.  Approvingly reporting the efficiency of the machine, the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure in January 1793 noted "The name of the machine in which the axe descends in grooves from a considerable height so that the stroke is certain and the head instantly severed from the body."  The device also affected Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) who, in his seminal French Revolution (1837), was moved to observe "This is the product of Guillotin's endeavors, ... which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! ... Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar's."  For better or worse, historians no longer write like that.

Sterling silver cigar cutter (1994) by Theo Fennell (b 1951).

A finely crafted piece, the upright frame contained a sprung, angled blade with retaining chain, the cigar tip tumbling into a gilded silver basket after the blade descends to the stocks.  The base was of honed, black slate with a sterling silver cartouche ready for engraving, the unit supplied in a bespoke, two-door presentation case.  At auction, it sold for Stg£2,000 (cigar not included).

Born in Saintes, Dr Guillotin emerged as a prominent member of the Constituent Assembly in Paris and although philosophically opposed to capital punishment, he was a realist and wished executions done in a more humane manner and, very much in the spirit of the times, for the one method to be used for all social classes.  He recommended a machine known at the time as the “Louison” or “Louisette”, the nickname derived from the French surgeon and physiologist Dr Antoine Louis (1723-1792) who designed the prototype although it was built by German engineer and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt, the process typical of the division of labor in Europe at the time.  It was Herr Schmidt who suggested using a diagonal blade rather than the round shape borrowed from the executioner’s axe and, with his knowledge of anatomy, Dr Louis calculated what came to be known as the “angle of Louis”, an alternative term for the "sternal angle" (the point of junction between the manubrium and the body of the sternum).  The advocacy of Dr Guillotin however received more publicity and, much to his regret, “Guillotine” captured the public imagination, his family so embarrassed by the connection they later changed the family name.  A confessed Freemason, Dr Guillotin died of natural causes in his Paris home, aged 75 and was buried in the city’s Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

One of the kitten-heel shoes worn by Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) on the day of her execution, 16 October 1793.  

While ascending the stairs to the guillotine, she tripped, stepped on the executioner's foot and lost her shoe, something of a harbinger to what she’d lose a few moments later.  The shoe was later recovered and is now on display at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen.

Although Dr Guillotin regretted his name being associated with the contraption, the true origin wasn't even French.  While the date such a thing was first used is unknown it seems almost certainly a medieval creation, an early English record indicating a mechanical beheading device was in use in Halifax in West Yorkshire; then called the Halifax Gibbet, the decapitation of an unfortunate Mr John Dalton recorded in 1286.  A sixteenth century engraving named The Execution of Murcod Ballagh Near to Merton in Ireland 1307 shows a similar machine suggesting use also in medieval Ireland and Scotland, from the mid-sixteenth century until the abolition of use circa 1710; it was called the Maiden which seems to have been functionally identical to the Halifax Gibbet.  In Italy, most un-euphemistically, it was called the Mannaia (cleaver).  Over the years, it attracted many nicknames, some sardonically deployed as the equivalent of gallows humour including La Monte-à-regret (The Regretful Climb), Le Rasoir National (The National Razor), La Veuve (The Widow), Le Moulin à Silence (The Silence Mill), La Bécane (The Machine), Le Massicot (The Cutter), La Cravate à Capet (Capet's Necktie (Capet being Louis XVI (1754–1793; King of France 1774-1792)) & La Raccourcisseuse Patriotique (The Patriotic Shortener).

Marie Antoinette's execution on October 16, 1793 (Unknown artist).

The carts famously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (the period in the mid-1790s after the declaration of the First Republic, marked by massacres, public executions, anti-clericalism and internecine political struggle) were called tumbrels although many illustrations depict the use of four-wheeled carts rather than tumbrels.  Presumably both types were used but historians generally believe it was usually the tumbrel because the revolutionaries preferred the symbolism of something used usually for moving dung or rubbish and suggest artists preferred the four-wheelers simply for compositional reasons.  The noun tumbrel (two-wheeled cart for hauling dung, stones etc) was from mid-fifteenth century French, a name, curiously perhaps, used in the early thirteenth century to describe what some eighteenth century dictionaries described as a mysterious “instrument of punishment of uncertain type” but which turned out to be (1) a name for the cucking stool used, inter alia, to conduct the dunking in water of women suspected of this and that and (2) was a type of medieval balancing scale used to weigh coins.  It was from the Old French tomberel (dump cart) (which exists in Modern French as tombereau), from tomber ((let) fall or tumble), possibly from a Germanic source, perhaps the Old Norse tumba (to tumble), the Old High German tumon (to turn, reel).

Public guillotining of Eugen Weidmann, Versailles, 1939.

The records from the early days of the revolution are understandably sketchy but the first guillotine was likely that crafted by German harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt which first was used on 25 April 1792, the term “guillotine” appearing first in print in a report by the journalist Louis René Quentin de Richebourg de Champcenetz (1759-1794) who, in another journalistic scoop, was later guillotined.  Although synonymous with the French Revolution, during which some seventeen thousand were beheaded, the guillotine remained the nation's official method of capital punishment until the death penalty was abolished in 1981.  The highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier (circa 1756–1792) was the first victim while the last public guillotining was of Eugen Weidmann (1908-1939) who, convicted of six murders, was beheaded in Versailles on 17 June 1939.  The final drop of the blade came when murderer Hamida Djandoubi’s (1949-1977) sentence was carried out in Marseille on 10 September 1977.

Boucles d'oreilles pendantes guillotine en laiton (guillotine drop earrings in brass), cut and engraved, Paris, circa 1880.

In France, until the onset of modernity with the coming of the twentieth century, artistic and decorative representations of the guillotine proliferated because the bloody events of the 1790s had made the instrument a symbol of republican patriotism.  Methods of execution now appear less as fashion items although there was a revival associated when the punk movement went mainstream in the mid-1970s (anarchists, revolutionaries and such less inclined to trivialize what they intended soon to be a serious business). In recent years, models in nooses have however strutted the catwalks generating outrage which, measured in column inches, photographs and clicks, was of course the point of them donning the macabre accessory.  For those nostalgic for the days of la révolution, made with a variety of materials, guillotine drop earrings are available on-line.

Paper trimming guillotine.

The device was used in many European countries until well after the Second World War but, perhaps predictability, none were as enthusiastic as the Nazis.  Having been used in various German states since the seventeenth century and being the preferred method of execution in Napoleonic times (circa 1799-1815), guillotine and firing squad were the legal methods of execution during both the Second Reich (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933).  For the Nazis however, it was just another way to industrialize mass-murder and under the Third Reich (1933-1945), 16,500 were guillotined including 10,000 in 1944–1945 alone although, after the attempt on his life in July 1944, Hitler wasn’t at all attracted to an efficient or humanitarian dispatch of the surviving plotters and for them specified a more gruesome method.  The guillotine was used for the last time in the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990) in 1949 though use in the GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic; the old East Germany) 1949-1990) persisted until 1966, mostly by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi) for secret executions.

Brandenburg prison fallbeil now on display at the Deutsche Historisches Museum.  Unlike most of the Tegel machines, it's un-painted and not fitted with a blade shield although the rather crude construction (using unfinished wood planks and four hefty, unadorned wooden legs) is characteristic of the Tegel design.  Some other Tegel fallbeils have had some of the timber members replaced with square metal tubing.

The German for guillotine is fallbeil (literally "axe-method" which is pleasingly informative).  The Nazis increased the number of capital offences in the criminal code and consequently, there was a drastic increase in the number of executions in the Reich.  To meet the demand, many prisons were designated as execution sites, sixteen gazetted by 1942, all equipped with metal (Mannhardt) fallbeils, the standardized procedure for execution as typically exact and bureaucratic as anything in the German civil service.  The first fallbeils were made from wood and built by the inmates of the Tegel prison in Berlin (hence the name) while the later Mannhardt design (fabricated from steel) was more sophisticated, including an external pulley frame and, thoughtfully, a hinged sheet-metal cover to protect the executioner from "blood spray".

The help admiring a SWB 600.

It’s at least arguable the Mercedes-Benz 600 (M100, 1963-1981) was the last car which, upon its introduction, could be called “the best car in the world”.  Some publications used exactly that phrase when their road-test reports appeared and about all the review in US magazine Road & Track found to complain about was (1) the choice of where to place the driver’s ashtray was obviously the decision of a non-smoker and (2) the air-conditioning (AC) was primitive compare with what was installed in Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials (or for that matter, Chevrolets, Fords and Plymouths).  The factory did improve ashtray placement (before social change drove them extinct) but it took decades for it to produce AC systems as good as those from Detroit although, impressionistically, probably nothing has ever matched the icy blasts possible in 1960s Cadillacs and such.

A 600 Pullman on location, 2011.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) & Grant Bowler (b 1968) during the filming of Liz & Dick (2012), a “biopic” of the famously tempestuous relationship between the actors Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) & Richard Burton (1925–1984).  The car is a Mercedes-Benz 600  four-door Pullman with the vis-a-vis seating.  The flagstaffs (installed in this instance above the front wheel arches) were usually fitted to cars used by governments or the corps diplomatique.

An extraordinary technical achievement, despite its run of 18-odd years, the 600 was a commercial failure with only 2677 built, the 408 (345 sedans & 63 Pullmans) which left the line in the first year of full production (1965) an encouraging start but that proved the high point, the decline precipitous after 1972 when the 600 was withdrawn from the US market, the costs of complying with the new regulations (as well as uncertainty about what was to come) just too onerous to be justified for such a low-volume model.  Although there were examples of special coachwork (armour plating, higher roof versions and even a couple of coupés)  the 600 appeared in three basic forms, the SWB ("short" wheelbase) four-door sedan, the LWB (long wheelbase) Pullmans (in four & six door form) and the Pullman Landaulets (with two lengths of retractable roof); the breakdown was 2,190 sedans, 428 Pullmans and 59 Landaulets.

The car of kings, dictators and real estate developers.

The 1970 Pullman Landaulet (one of twelve known informally as the "presidential" because the folding portion of the roof extended to the driver's compartment, the other 58 Landaulets having a convertible top only over the rear seat) was purchased by the Romanian government and used by comrade president Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989; general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party 1965-1989) until he and his wife were executed (by Kalashnikov assault rifle) after a “people's tribunal” held a brief trial, the swiftness of which was aided by the court-appointed defense counsel who declared them both guilty of the genocide of which, among other crimes, they were charged.  Considering the fate of other fallen dictators, their end was less gruesome than might have been expected.  Comrade Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; prime-minister or president of Yugoslavia 1944-1980) had a similar car (among other 600s) but he died undisturbed in his bed.  The blue SWB (short wheelbase) car to the rear is one of the few SWB models fitted with a divider between the front & rear compartments including hand-crafted timber writing tables and a refrigerated bar in the centre console.  It was delivered in 1977 to the Iranian diplomatic service and maintained for the Shah’s use.  The 1969 sedan to the right (identified as a US market car by the disfiguring headlight treatment) had a less eventful past, purchased by a California real estate developer, who took advantage of the Mercedes-Benz European Delivery Program (discontinued in 2020 after some sixty years), collecting the 600 from the Stuttgart factory.

KCNA (Korean Central News Agency) footage of the DPRK Youth Parade, Pyongyang, DPRK, 2012.  The KCNA (its headquarters at 1 Potonggang-dong in Pyongyang's Potonggang District) may be the world's most productive state news agency and is the best source for new Kim Jong-Un content. 

At the 2012 Youth Parade, all in the full stadium were happy and enthusiastic, delighted no doubt to be the only audience on the planet able to see two long-roof Mercedes-Benz 600 Landaulets together.  The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) should not be confused with the "puppet state" RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)).  Kim Il-Sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994) purchased a brace of presidential Landaulets which he passed down the line (along with the rest of North Korea) to his descendants Kim Jong-Il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK1994-2011) & Kim Jong-Un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK since 2011).    Evil dictators and real estate developers are one thing but the television personality Jeremy Clarkson (b 1960) also owned a (SWB) 600 and from that the car's reputation may never have recovered.  

Staged publicity shot of 1966 Mercedes-Benz 600s.

A four-door Pullman (left) and SWB (right) parked outside the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten, Munich, Bavaria, FRG.  This shot illustrates the difference between the two platforms, the Pullman's additional length all in the wheelbase (the Pullman's was 3,900 mm (153½ inches) against the sedan's 3,200 mm (126 inch).  The factory initially called the sedans “limousines” because that was the traditional German term for a four door sedan (or saloon) but they’re commonly referred to also as the SWB (short wheelbase), the Pullmans very definitely a LWB (long wheelbase).

1966 Mercedes-Benz 600 SWB, Place de la Concorde, Paris, France.

The 600’s famously smooth ride and remarkably capable handling was achieved with a suspension system using air-bellows but more intricate still was the engine-drive hydraulic system with which could be controlled the raising and lowering of the windows and central divider (installed on all but one of the Pullmans and optional on the SWBs), the setting of the shock absorbers (dampers), the opening and closing of the sun-roofs (it was possible on Pullmans to order two!) and the positions of the seats.  Additionally, the closing of the trunk (boot) lid and doors were hydraulically controlled although the hood (bonnet) needed to be raised manually; the factory was clearly more concerned for the comfort of passengers than mechanics.  To achieve all this, the plumbing’s fittings included 30 hydraulic switches, 12 double-acting hydraulic cylinders, 10 single-acting cylinders, six self-resetting single-acting units, a pump, a reservoir, and an accumulator, all connected by 3.5 mm (⅛ inch) internal-diameter lines coursing with hydraulic oil at a pressure of 2,176 psi (150-bar).  As might be imagined, to even experienced automotive engineers & mechanics, the schematic appeared of Byzantine complexity but to those accustomed to the hydraulics of heavy machinery it seemed simple, the only novelty being components unusually small.  The pressure of the system was high enough (twice that of a typical fire hose), if ruptured, to pierce human flesh although, reassuringly, below what’s needed to cut through bone.  Just to prove safety warnings are not something recent, the high pressure warranted a passage in a notably thick publication: Workshop Manual, Type 600, The Grand Mercedes: “It cannot be too highly stressed that it is mortally dangerous to open the oil-pressure container!”  Although the silently operating hydraulic system did offer the advantage of eliminating the noise which would have been generated had electric motors been used, the real attraction was the elimination of an estimated 800 metres (2600 feet) of wiring and more than a dozen motors (and it would have been a challenge to fit them all in the existing structure).

The Guillotine.

A Mercedes-Benz 600 sedan in the now closed Kemp Auto Museum in Saint Louis, Missouri, is used to demonstrate why the hydraulically activated trunk (boot) lid was known to wary technicians as “the guillotine”.  This is the lid closing with the hydraulics on the most hungry setting.

1966 Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman Landaulet with the shorter of the two folding roofs.

The trunk-lid’s single hydraulic cylinder can bring the steel panel down with alarming force so service personnel decided it deserved to be nicknamed “the guillotine”.  It was however adjustable to reduce the potential to damage fingers (at least there was an attempt to minimize risk; from certain manufacturers, some of the early electric windows didn’t include a clutching mechanism and were capable of crushing the match boxes often used to demonstrate the danger to dawdling digits).  The 600’s hydraulic system was well-built and used high quality components but the factory knew nothing is indestructible and every car included in the trunk a box containing (1) four wedges to force between the glass and the jambs to keep the windows up and (2) a set of pins which could be inserted to keep the squabs of the front seats upright.  Indeed, the door closing apparatus proved troublesome (tales of expensive dresses ruined by a squirt of hydraulic fluid part of the 600 legend) and wasn’t fitted after 1967 but the guillotine remained standard equipment until the end.

Pagophagia

Pagophagia (pronounced pag-off-faghia)

(1) The excessive and constant eating of ice, often as part of extreme dieting.

(2) A craving to eat ice, sometimes associated with iron-deficiency anemia.

Pre 900: A compound word, the construct being págo(s) + -phagia.  Págos is from the Byzantine Greek, the perfective stem of ἔφαγον (éphagon) (I ate; I devoured), singular first-person aorist active indicative form (by suppletion) of ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat; I devour).  Phagia is from the Ancient Greek πάγος- (phag-) (stiff mass; frost; ice) from pēnunai, (to stick, stiffen), from the primitive Indo-European root pag.  It was used also in a derogatory, figurative sense to describe a cold, unfriendly person (in the sense of one metaphorically cold like ice).  The nouns pagophile & pagophily and the adjective pagophilic reference species which prefer (ie are adapted to) ice as a habitat.  Pagophagia is a noun and pagophagic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is pagophagics.

Ice, diet and the DSM

Pagophagia (the excessive consumption of ice or iced drinks), is often regarded as a recent phenomenon and a novel manifestation of pica (a disorder characterized by craving and appetite for non-edible substances, such as ice, clay, chalk, dirt, or sand and named for the jay or magpie (pīca in Latin), based on the idea the birds will eat almost anything) but in texts from Classical Greece are warnings in the writings of both the physician Hippocrates (circa 460–circa 370 BC) and the polymath Aristotle (384–322 BC) concerning the dangers of the excessive intake of cold or iced water.  The cause of the death of Theophilus (Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor 829-842) was officially dysentery but, based on the original texts of Byzantine historians and chroniclers of the era, modern researchers speculate the cause of death may have been related to Theophilus' pagophagia (snow eating), a long-time habit he indulged to relieve the symptoms of gastric inflammation.  In the medical literature, from the sixteenth century on, there are discussions and illustrative case histories about the detrimental effect of immoderate usage of cold water, ice and snow, frequently in the context of eating disorders, another range of conditions with a long history.

A noted feature of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 (2013)), was the more systematic approach taken to eating disorders, variable definitional criteria being defined for the range of behaviours within that general rubric.  What may have appeared strange was including the ice-eaters within the psychological disorder Pica which is characterized by the manifestation of appetite for non-nutritive substances including sharp objects (acuphagia), purified starch (amylophagia), burnt matches (cautopyreiophagia), dust (coniophagia), feces (coprophagia), sick (emetophagia), raw potatoes (geomelophagia), soil, clay or chalk (geophagia), glass (hyalophagia), stones (lithophagia), metal (metallophagia), musus (mucophagia), ice (pagophagia), lead (plumbophagia), hair, wool, and other fibres (trichophagia), urine (urophagia), blood (hematophagia (sometimes called vampirism)) and wood or derivates such as paper & cardboard (xylophagia).  DSM-5 also codified the criteria for behaviour to be classified pica.  They must (1) last beyond one (1) month beyond an age in infancy when eating such objects is not unusual, (2) not be culturally sanctioned practice and (3), in quantity or consequence, be of sufficient severity to demand clinical intervention.  Interestingly, when the text revision of DSM-5 (DSM-5-TR, 2022) was released, the sentence “individuals with atypical anorexia nervosa may experience many of the physiological complications associated with anorexia nervosa” was added to the description of the atypical anorexia nervosa example to clarify that the presence of physiological consequences during presentation does not mean that the diagnosis is the (typical) anorexia.  However, it must be remembered the DSM is a tool for the clinician and, while it can be a useful source document for the lay-reader, there are other publications better suited to those self-diagnosing or informally assessing others.  An individual for whom the only symptom of pica is abnormally high and persistent ice consumption doesn’t of necessity need to be subject to the treatment regime imposed on more undiscriminating consumers.

One of the reasons pagophagia is one of the more-researched and better-documented examples of pica is its strong association with iron deficiency anemia (the word in modern use unrelated to ischemia (local disturbance in blood circulation) which well into the twentieth century was sometimes a synonym), something which manifests especially in women as one of the consequences of the menstrual cycle.  The research has established there’s a high prevalence of pagophagia in patients with iron deficiency which tends to disappear once treated although the mechanism isn’t fully understood.  One theory is chewing ice temporarily increases alertness in those with iron-deficiency–related fatigue, possibly by improving cerebral blood flow or nerve conduction.  Pagophagia is thus unusual among the picas in that it’s a “red-flag symptom” in hematology whereas the others tend to be of interest to nutritionists and the psychiatric community.  The correlation is not absolute because not all pagophagics suffer an iron deficiency; for some it’s the pleasure or the crunch, the oral stimulation or merely a habit but if the craving is strong or compulsive, the usual recommendation is the use of supplements (ferritin, serum iron, transferrin saturation, hemoglobin).

One cube at a time.

The pro-ana community does recommend the eating of ice, not merely as a food substitute but because the body needs to burn energy both to melt the ice and subsequently restore the body to its correcting operating temperature.  With frozen water, this effect is greatest in negative calorie terms but the discount effect applies even to iced confections.  If a frozen confection is listed as containing a calorie content of 100 (25 grams of carbohydrate @ 4 calories per gram), this does not include the energy the body expends to melt the ice and the net consumption is actually around 72 calories.

All things in moderation: Lindsay Lohan enjoying ice-cream and (an allegedly virgin) iced mojito, Monaco 2015.

Pro-ana does NOT however approve of frozen confections, the preferred one litre of frozen water containing zero calories yet demanding of the body a burn of around 160 calories to process, the energy equivalent of running one mile (1.6 km).  The practical upper limit per day appears to be between 3-5 litres (.67 / .8-1.1 / 1.3 (US / Imperial) gallons) depending on the individual and it’s speculated a daily intake much over eight litres may approach toxicity, essentially because the localized symptoms would be similar to hypothermia and some organs fail optimally to work when body temperature drops too much.  Paradoxically, pro-ana also notes, ice shouldn’t be eaten when one is too hot.  After running, the body actually exerts energy through the active effort of dissipating excess heat and if one were to ingest large amounts of ice as one was cooling off, some of the heat generated would be neutralized by the coolness of the ice, minimizing some of the energy burning benefits.  There’s also the need to avoid dental damage; pro-ana recommending it be allowed to melt in the mouth or consumed as shaved ice.

Podophilia

Podophilia (pronounced podd-ah-fil-ee-uh or pod-oh-fil=ee-uh)

A paraphilia describing the sexualized objectification of feet (and sometimes footwear), commonly called foot fetishism although the correct clinical description is now "foot partialism".

1980s: The construct was podo- +‎ -philia.  Podo- (pertaining to a foot or a foot-like part) was from the Ancient Greek πούς (poús), from the primitive Indo-European pṓds.  It was cognate with the Mycenaean Greek po, the Latin pēs, the Sanskrit पद् (pad), the Old Armenian ոտն (otn) & հետ (het), the Gothic fōtus and the Old English fōt (from which Modern English gained foot).  The Greek poús was the ancient Greek and Byzantine unit of length originally based upon the length of a shod foot and the idea in Europe endured for centuries although until the seventeenth century there were little attempts at standardization, even within the one jurisdiction and although things were settled well before the twentieth century, in the legal sense it wasn't until 1959 that the US, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the UK signed the "International Yard and Pound Agreement" which codified avoirdupois weight and length then used in all those nations, a set (although largely supplanted by the metric system (except in the US)) which officially still defines both Imperial and US customary units.  The suffix –philia was from the From Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal love), from φῐλέω (philéō) (to love), from the earlier Ionic Greek (where the meanings diverged somewhat over the years.  It was used to to form nouns meaning a fondness, liking or love of something and in pathology picked up the specific technical sense of abnormal liking or tendency such a paraphilia.  One with specific attraction to feet or footwear is a podophile and their predilections are described as podophilic.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

The English phrase “length of the chancellor's foot” is neither an allusion to lineal measurement nor an early example of political podophilia.  It is a critique of law and most associated with a passage by the English jurist and scholar John Selden (1584–1654) which appeared in his Table Talk (published posthumously in London in 1689), discussing the flexible, adaptable law of equity and how its administration differed from the rigid, precedent-bound courts of common law: “Equity is a roguish thing: for law we have a measure… equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is equity. ’Tis all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a 'foot' a Chancellor’s foot; what an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot.”

In other words, in the Court of Chancellery, equity was administered by the Lord Chancellor at his discretion, the attraction being when the application of common law precedents were seen to create an obvious injustice, equity could intervene to provide a just result: justice based on fairness rather than strict legal rules.  However, implicit in that flexibility was the estimation of equity could vary from one Chancellor to next and thus the Court of Chancellery soon created its own contradictions, attracting critics who noted an outcome depended on the personal judgment of the Lord Chancellor who reached his decision on a “case-by-case” basis.

The Lord Chancellor with feet in flippers: Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone (Quintin Hogg, 1907-2001; Lord Chancellor 1970-1974 & 1979-1987).  Hailsham was a Tory (Conservative) but the photograph was taken by the Labour Party politician Lord Healey (Dennis Healey, 1917–2015).

The rationale was both clear and commendable but lawyers trained in the courts of common law liked the certainty and predictability of adherence to precedence; their fees were dependent on them winning their clients’ cases, not seeking an abstraction like “justice”.  Thus the phrase became legal shorthand for judicial arbitrariness in which outcomes depended on personal discretion rather than objective standards.  The equity lawyers were of course sensitive to the criticism and what evolved in the Court of Chancellery was its own set of “rules” although these came to be called “equitable maxims” and were principles & concepts which can be thought of as a kind of “proto-fuzzy law” in that they existed to ensure justice and fairness would be delivered but in a consistent manner.  The phrase however survives as a critique of subjective decision-making by authorities or inconsistencies in governance or law.

Often focused on toe cleavage, many self-described foot fetishists provide curated content.

Although the psychiatric community has since the mid-twentieth century devoted some time to discussing, re-defining and pondering what is apparently the 1800-odd year history of foot fetishism, a glance at the literature does suggest it’s been thought usually an interesting quirk in the human condition rather than a condition, much less a mental disorder.  Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1987 published the revised third edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), fetishism was usually described as a persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects or an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexualized) body parts (most famously feet) and body secretions.  With the DSM-III-R, the concept of partialism (an exclusive focus on part of the body) was separated from the historic category of fetishism and appended to the “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified” category.  Although one of the dustier corners of psychiatry, the field had always fascinated some and in the years since the DSM-III-R was published, a literature did emerge, most critics maintaining partialism and fetishism are related, can be co-associated, and are non-exclusive domains of sexual behavior.  There was a technical basis for this position because introduced in DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one the implications of which was that it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary.  The recommendation was that the prime diagnostic criterion for fetishism be modified to reflect the reintegration of partialism and that a fetishistic focus on non-sexual body parts be a specifier of Fetishism.

Lohanic footage: Lindsay Lohan’s feet, the right plantar flexing (left), the left dorsiflexing (right).  Wikifeet's expert critics rate Ms Lohan's feet at 4½ stars (beautiful feet); her page has 3653 images.

Fetish was from the Latin facere (to make) which begat factitious (made by art), from which the Portuguese feitico was derived (fetiche in the French), from which English gained fetish.  A fetish in this context was defined as "a thing irrationally revered; an object in which power or force was concentrated".  In English, use of fetish to indicate an object of desire in the sense of “someone who is aroused due to a body part, or an object belonging to a person who is the object of desire” dates from 1897 (although the condition is mentioned in thirteenth century medical documents), an era during which the language of modern psychiatry was being assembled.  However, the earliest known literary evidence of podophilia lies in dozens of brooding, obsessive love letters from the second century AD of uncertain authorship and addressed to both male and female youths.  That there are those to whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthral has presumably been part of the human condition from the start.

Suspected podophiles, parked outside shoe shop.

From the beginnings of modern psychiatry, such a focus was not in itself considered a disorder, unless accompanied by distress or impairment although it was noted by many that if even a nominally “harmless” fetish became an obsession, it certainly could impair healthy sexuality.  In DSM-5 (2013), the diagnosis was assigned to individuals who experience sexual arousal from objects or a specific part of the body which is not typically regarded as erotic and presumably any body part or object can be a fetish, the most frequently mentioned including underwear, shoes, stockings, gloves, hair and latex.   Fetishists may use the desired article for sexual gratification in the absence of a partner although it’s recorded this may involve nothing more than touching smelling the item and the condition appears to manifest almost exclusively in men, the literature suggesting a quarter of fetishistic men are homosexual but caution needs always to be attached to these numbers.  Because fetishism is something which many happily enjoy their whole adult lives, it never comes to the attention of doctors and a high proportion of the statistical material about fetishism is from patients self-reporting.  The statistics in a sense reflect thus not the whole cohort of the population with the condition but rather those who either want to talk about it or are responding to surveys.  That is of course true of other mental illnesses but is exaggerated with fetishism because so much lies with the spectrum of normal human behavior and the definitional limitations in the DSM-5 reflect this, including three criteria for Fetishistic Disorder and three specifiers:

Criterion 1: Over a six month period, the individual has experienced sexual urges focused on a non-genital body part, or inanimate object, or other stimulus, and has acted out urges, fantasies, or behaviors.

Criterion 2: The fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause distress, or impairment in functioning.

Criterion 3: The fetishized object is not an article of clothing employed in cross dressing, or a sexual stimulation device, such as a vibrator.

Specifiers for the diagnosis include the type of stimulus which is the focus of attention (1) the non-genital or erogenous areas of the body (famously feet) and this condition is known also as Partialism (a preoccupation with a part of the body rather than the whole person), (2) Non-living object(s) (such as shoes), (3) specific activities (such as smoking during sex).

Not AOC’s feet.

The foot particularists also do PSAs (public service announcements).  When an image of feet was posted to Instagram with a caption claiming they belonged to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, b 1989, US Representative (Democrat-New York) since 2019 and one of "the squad"), the alleged foot-selfie was lent a whiff of scandal by their owner being in the bath, holding a vape with a bottle of pumpkin-scented shampoo nearby.  Quickly the story was debunked by the online foot fetishists at WikiFeet, the internet’s most comprehensive collection of pictures of women's feet.  In this case, Ms Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Wikifeet page was used to C&C (compare and contrast) against the images in their library and it wasn’t a difficult task for the Wikifeet experts because the toes in the image were mildly brachydactyly (an inherited trait whereby the bones of the digits are relatively short) whereas AOC’s are not so afflicted.  Wikifeet’s users rate AOC’s feet at “3.92 stars” (nice feet), based on the 83 images in her page (many in sandals but some daringly bare).  Further research by the Wikifeet particularists revealed the feet surfacing provocatively from the pink bath-water really belonged to Sydney Leathers (b 1991) who became even better known by parlaying the publicity she attracted for being the sexting partner of disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner (b 1964) into an apparently brief career as an aspiring porn star.  Why that didn’t flourish isn’t clear because rarely has there been a better porn star name than "Sydney Leathers" and Australian fellmongers and fetishists alike missed a marketing opportunity there.

Gianvito Rossi 85 suede pumps, US$1,210 at net-a-porter.

Noting the definitional model in the DSM-IV-TR (2000), despite the history in psychiatry’s world of paraphilias and a notable presence in popular culture, there were those who claimed the very notion of a foot fetish was false because of that critical phrase “non-living” which would seem to disqualify a foot (unless of course it was no longer alive but such an interest would be seriously weird and a different condition; although in this context there are deconstructionists who would make a distinction between a depiction of a live foot and the foot itself, clinicians probably regard them as interchangeable tools of the fetishist although the techniques of consumption would vary).  The critic noted many fetishes are extensions of the human body, such as articles of clothing or footwear but that did not extend to feet and that diagnostically, a sexual fascination with feet did correctly belong in the category of “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified,” and thus be regarded as partialism: Foot partialism.

Design by Davina-India.  Although the extreme examples won’t be possible to render as practical products without (unanticipated) advances in materials, 3D printing offers possibilities for the shoe-oriented faction of the foot partialists.

It was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who admitted that, lawfulness aside, as animals, the only truly aberrant sexual behavior in humans could be said to be its absence (something which the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves).  It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat podophila and many other “harmless” behaviors as “normal” and thus within the purview of the manual only to the extent of being described, clinical intervention no longer required.  Whether all psychiatrists agree with the new permissiveness isn’t known but early reports suggest there’s nothing in the DSM-5-TR (2022) to suggest podophiles will soon again be labeled as deviants.

Most Beautiful Ankle competition, Hounslow, England, 1936. What such competitions did was “level the playing field” to ensure a woman was judged only on the body-part being assessed, the rest of her concealed behind a screen so a judge wouldn't be influenced by “extraneous aspects”.

The matter of podophilia is not exactly a neglected field but beyond the particularists it’s a niche topic for study, probably because despite being often curated as collections of images of objectified, un-clothed body parts, the stuff inherently is SFW (suitable for work) so is not as controversial as some fetishes.  Indeed, even were someone found to be in possession of many images of the feet of minors, unless the circumstances were unusual and disclosed suspicion of other behaviours, it’s likely no offence has been committed.  There have though been some academic studies including Sexualization of the Female Foot as a Response to Sexually Transmitted Epidemics: A Preliminary Study (1998) by A. James Giannini, Andrew E. Slaby, Gale Colapietro, Steven M. Melemis & Rachel K. Bowman.  A review of historic literature, the authors hypothesized a relationship between epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases and foot fetishism, the research prompted by an exponential increase in the behaviour seen in the 1980s, before AIDS had been listed as a pandemic.

Most Beautiful Legs competition, Palisades Amusement Park, New York, 1951.  Note the judge crouching to achieve the perfect angle, presumably a podophile with a well-trained eye.

The paper noted that during the second millennium there have been four major epidemics of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases, then the preferred term for what are now classed as STIs (sexually transmitted infections)): (1) what’s believed to have been an outbreak of gonorrhoea in the thirteenth century, syphilis in (2) the sixteenth and (3) nineteenth and (4) AIDS in the late twentieth and during each “there seemed to emerge a sexual focus on the female foot” which “disappeared with the epidemic's subsidence, usually after 30-60 years.”  What was intriguing was “the focus on feet was unique to each of these epidemic periods” whereas in all other eras studied, “eroticism was attached to breasts, buttocks and thighs.”  It was not suggested feet (bare or otherwise) didn’t appear in Biblical, Egyptian or Classical art and literature but they were not depicted as “sexual foci”.

It was in the thirteenth century things began to change as romantic writings came to include paeans to women's feet and the details were often not metaphorical but anatomical, describing in loving admiration the “aesthetically idealized woman's foot” which was to be “narrow with high arches.  The toes were to be somewhat long with no ‘webbing’ or folds of skin in between.  The great toe was longer than the second toe. The nails were to be elongated with large white moons and pale-pink nail-beds.”  The perfect foot was expected to be “white on both plantar and ventral aspects” so clearly, like thighs, buttocks and breasts, women’s feet were expected to conform to what men had decided was “beautiful” and those with body parts outside the “standardized image” could not be beautiful. Plus ça change…

Most Beautiful Ankle competition, Cliftonville open air swimming pool, Margate, England, 1936.

The Church looked askance at this “new” fetish, damning it as a “further form of degeneracy as Europe” and though the paper finds the trend faded to oblivion with the end of what is now believed to have been an epidemic of gonorrhoea, with the outbreak of syphilis in the sixteenth century, there appears again a “near-simultaneous reappearance of the foot fetish” which began in southern Europe before spreading north and the art of the time suggests it was then “toe-cleavage” was first identified as a motif, as a “voyeuristic mark of this time period as decolletage for other generations”.  Interestingly, 300-odd years on, the ideal structure was re-imagined and an “elongated second toe” became suddenly fashionable.  When syphilis re-appeared in the 1800s, so did the focus on women’s feet and because photography was available to the Victorians, there’s a record also of the reaction of polite society with the female foot “removed from photographic tintypes”: While men’s boots commonly remained exposed, women's boots or shoes were either covered with fabric or “mechanically cropped from the plate”.  Ballerinas would perform bare-footed (critics writing of her feet as they “flexed and extended”) ice-cream confections (called the “Trilby”) were sold in the shape of a woman’s foot and the “Cinderella fairy tale was revived with foot fetishistic overtones not now reflected in twentieth century versions”.  

Sometimes, statistical methods are purely lineal: Technicians recording (in metrics) the metrics of a contestant in Miss Italia, Rome, 1949.

“Body part” contests offered scope for those who wouldn’t be “competitive” in mainstream beauty contests.  As a footnote, the perfection (in the sense of digital depiction) of generative AI (artificial intelligence) may see the end of the industry’s “body part model” niche in which those with exceptional hands, feet, eyes etc were contracted for photo-shoots involving just that one part.

In the nineteenth century, some did offer explanations (sometimes fanciful) for the phenomenon and although in the medical literature there were observations of the use of the foot “as a safe-sex alternative”, no systematic studies seem to have been undertaken.  The AIDS pandemic revived the interest and the proliferation of foot-fetish publications in the 1980s (before the internet was a mainstream product) was a marker of the trend and interestingly, the titles of what were usually glossy magazines avoided the words “feet” & “foot”, instead using “neutral” terms such as “Leg Action, Thigh High, Leg Show, Leg-Scene, High-heeled Women, Silk Stockings or Leg Tease”.  Despite that, the content seems overwhelmingly foot-centric and the conclusion was the publishers wished to “avoid embarrassment for the purchaser”.  That was interesting in that publications devoted to other body parts seemed to tend to use unambiguous titles and the paradox was that although feet were SWF, the perception was there was shame attached to the predilection, something not suffered by consumers of the definitely NSFW (not suitable for work) breast-related material.  Editorially, there were photographs mostly including feet and tips & techniques for “foot sex” which could be “a pleasurable sexual alternative without risk of sexually transmitted diseases”, the foot described as a safe “erotic alternative to the anus and genitals”.  It was at this point even the mainstream magazines began to advocate “toe sucking” and “foot biting” between couples, not to avoid infections but because for even the most sexually jaded it would be a “genuinely new” experience, novelty in this field much valued.  Diligent washing prior to sucking and biting was recommended.

First heat of Miss Slender Legs Competition, Miami, Florida, 1952.  Many good things happen in Florida; everybody knows that.

The pop band The Monks in 1979 released the single Nice Legs Shame About Her Face so the contest in Miami was really an early example of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).  It's a bit of a stretch but as a Lord Chancellor might have put it, "beauty contests" are a thing of the common law while the "most beautiful body part" competitions belong to equity. 

The AIDS pandemic of course remains afoot although advances in treatment have made it manageable for most, at least in developed economies though there are concerns how cuts to foreign aid will affect outcomes in poorer regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific islands.  Despite the the condition fading from public consciousness, foot particularism appears still to be flourishing, the absence of foot-focused print titles an indication of the general industry shift to digital content rather than any decline in interest and the count of related internet pages is said to be in the millions.  To explain the phenomenon which has for centuries re-occurred, the neurology community has also become involved.  In Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998), neurologist V.S. Ramachandran (b 1991) and science journalist Sandra Blakeslee (b 1943) offered the theory of a link with brain areas for the feet and the genitals being physically close, their speculation being there may be some “neural crosstalk between the two”, the idea a concern about STIs induces the brain to be stimulated to think about feet, purely because of the effect of directly adjacent electrical activity.