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[309] LING CH'IH , the punishment translated 'cutting into ten thousand pieces'. It was not quite bad as that, but did include the horror of cutting away portions of flesh from the living victim before the coup de grâce was given. No doubt it was at some times more brutally and completely carried out than at others, and these extreme cases have twice, at least, been photographed to adorn and assist the sale of foreign books : in one case the illustration was mercifully perforated to facilitate withdrawal. The punishment, with other barbarous accompaniments of the death-penalty, was abolished by an edict of the Empress-dowager in 1905.
