Also called in French poire d'angoisse ("pear of anguish" ) is a metal pear-shaped device that opens in wedges with a screw mechanism to gradually increase its size. It is shown at trout fairs as an instrument of medieval torture used by the Catholic inquisition, which was supposedly introduced folded into the vaginal canal of women accused of witchcraft and then expanded into a tear. This never happened, it is an invention for commercial purposes, and the pears known today were manufactured from the nineteenth century by evil mechanics, to be sold to naive collectors with an even more twisted mind.