Brief notes on Steintrager's Cruel Delight

Lots and lots of vivisection. Steintrager's book focuses on the issues of cruelty as written about in the eighteenth-century. His work acknowledges Hogarth, Sade and several others. Chapters in the book discuss the spectacle of public execution, Sade's more sadistic fantasies, and other instances of human vivisection from the late 17th-early 19th century. Steintrager relates claims of a pregnant woman whose emotions were so aroused by witnessing torture and execution that her unborn fetus suffered broken limbs and did not survive. He also discussed the various charges brought against Sade and discusses in more depth the violent fantasies Sade writes rather than focusing on his sexual fantasies - this may seem an unnecessary distinction but Steintrager discusses what Sade writes happens to the women after being sexually used.