Mention of Orwell reminds me that in "Such, Such Were the Joys" he recalls being cured of bedwetting by being beaten in his boarding school (St Cyprian's in England). He also says: "There was a boy named Beacham, with no brains to speak of, but evidently in acute need of a scholarship. Sambo was flogging him towards the goal as one might do with a foundered horse. He went up for a scholarship at Uppingham, came back with a consciousness of having done badly, and a day or two later received a severe beating for idleness. 'I wish I'd had that caning before I went up for the exam,' he said sadly -- a remark which I felt to be contemptible, but which I perfectly well understood."

That would have been about 1916.