(The original column is located at http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_028.html)
This unfortunate use of castor oil is portrayed in Federico Fellini’s wonderful film Amarcord (1973). The dose of castor oil in that case is a full drinking glass and the results are agonizing and humiliating, but not fatal.
Since seeing the film I have mentally compared this kind of punishment with the Gestapo’s tactics in another European facist-dominated country, and concluded that the Italians were simply not cut out to be as nasty as their northern neighbors.
