Remember in "Braveheart" where they would cut open your gut and slowly pull out your intentines? What about putting your head in a vise and tightening it till your eyes popped out.

Im not sure about the worst but Im just reading a Steven King book where a woman has some nutter taking a can opener to her nipples...Ouch I felt her pain!

Oh there is a couple in the inquisition chamber that just make me uncomfortable: there is the Vaginal Pear, where they have a pear shaped tool that they place in the vagina and slowly open it. Or for the males out there, the pyramid shaped stump that they place males on top of with weights on each foot while pulling.

The Scavenger's Daughter rates at the top of my list. It was invented as an instrument of torture in the reign of Henry VIII by Leonard Skevington (also known as Leonard Skeffington), Lieutenant of the Tower of London. It was an A-frame shaped metal rack to which the head was strapped to the top point of the A, the hands at the mid-point and the legs at the lower spread ends; swinging the head down and forcing the knees up in a sitting position so compressed the body as to force the blood from the nose and ears. The Scavenger's Daughter was conceived as the perfect complement to the Duke of Exeter's Daughter (the rack) because it worked the opposite principle to the rack by compressing the body rather than stretching it. The Scavenger's Daughter is rarely mentioned in the documents and the device itself was probably not much used. The best-documented use is that on the Irishman Thomas Miagh, charged with being in contact with rebels in Ireland. It may be in connection with Scavenger's Daughter that Miagh carved on the wall of the Beauchamp Tower in the Tower of London, "By torture straynge my truth was tried, yet of my libertie denied. 1581. Thomas Miagh." It is also known as Skevington's gyves, as iron shackle, as the Stork (as in Italian cicogna) or as Spanish A-frame. Further it is known as Skevington's daughter, from which the more commonly known folk etymology using "Scavenger" is derived. There is a Scavenger's daughter on display in the Tower of London museum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scavengers_daughter

The death penalty is pretty final.

Chinese Water Torture

Your parents would rather break every bone in THEIR body than to lose you.

really difficult question to answer - us humans have proved so good at thinking up hideous ways to inflict unbelievable agony and suffering on each other through the years. sawing was one of the worst i think, certainly it makes my flesh creep more than most things I've read about - a person would be tied upside down and spreadeagled and then slowly sawn in half from the crotch downwards. because they were upside down and all the blood was going to their head (and hence their brain) they would not die from blood loss and would be conscious until they were almost or even completely sawn in half. ouch.

The Iron Maiden and The Rack look pretty bloody