The Origins of Corpse Medicine in Early Modern Europe

The practice of using human remains as medicine—known today as medicinal cannibalism—flourished in Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries, rooted in ancient sympathetic magic and the doctrine of signatures (“like cures like”). German physicians in the early 1600s prescribed recipes specifying red-haired male corpses (preferably 24 years old, hanged or stabbed) to be macerated in wine with myrrh and aloe, then dried into jerky-like strips. The resulting product, described as odorless and comparable to smoked meat, yielded a red extract believed to heal wounds and cure diseases.

This reflected broader Renaissance medical theories where vitality was thought to linger in bodily substances. Ancient Roman gladiators’ blood and livers were consumed fresh to treat epilepsy, as the liver was considered the seat of courage. Harvard-educated Puritan Edward Taylor’s 1729 medical manual promoted marrow for convulsions, dried hearts for epilepsy, and gallbladders to improve hearing—demonstrating how thoroughly corpse pharmacology permeated educated circles.

The Bizarre World of “Mummy Medicine” and Honey-Preserved Cadavers

Among the most extraordinary practices was the legendary “honey mummy” recorded by 16th-century Chinese pharmacologist Li Shizhen. According to apocryphal Arabic traditions, volunteers allegedly subsisted solely on honey until their bodily fluids turned to honey (a physiological impossibility), then were entombed in honey for a century. The resulting “human confection” was sliced for medicinal use—a grotesque extension of honey’s well-documented antibacterial properties.

Meanwhile, European apothecaries prized mumia—a substance initially confused with Persian mineral pitch (mumiya) but later harvested from Egyptian mummies. Paracelsus’s followers promoted it as a panacea for ailments ranging from plague to migraines. By the 1700s, counterfeit mummies made from plague victims stuffed with aloe and bitumen flooded markets, while “Arabian mummies” (naturally desiccated travelers) became premium commodities. London’s pharmacies sold skulls with moss (used as a nasal styptic) and “King’s Drops”—a distilled skull tincture Charles II drank with chocolate as a cure-all before his death.

The Executioner’s Pharmacy: Fat, Skin, and Brains as Commodities

Executioners operated a grim cottage industry supplying:
– Human fat ointment (Arzney-Schmalz): Marketed for wounds, rabies, and even cosmetics to smooth smallpox scars. German rhymes claimed it made “the lame walk.”
– Tanned human skin: Worn by pregnant women to ease childbirth or wrapped around necks to shrink goiters.
– Brain distillates: John French’s 1651 recipe required fermenting a young man’s brain in alcohol within horse manure for six months to treat epilepsy—a literal “brain tonic.”

Royal physicians like Ambroise Paré endorsed these treatments, while skull moss and powdered cranial bones remained pharmacy staples into the Victorian era. Christian IV of Denmark allegedly took epilepsy medication made from ground skulls, following the ancient Greek tradition of brain-derived pills.

The Decline and Legacy of Corpse Pharmacology

By 1845, Britain banned the “touch of the dead” at gallows—where executioners once rubbed corpses on patients’ tumors. The demise of medicinal cannibalism coincided with:
1. Scientific advances: Understanding of anatomy disproved Paracelsian “vital essences.”
2. Ethical shifts: Enlightenment values rejected desecration, though organ transplants later revived debates.
3. Market forces: Mummy supplies dwindled as Egyptian authorities restricted tomb raiding.

Yet echoes persist in modern placenta encapsulation and black-market organ trafficking. As historian Richard Sugg notes, humanity’s drive to heal continually tests the boundaries of bodily autonomy—from skull tinctures to stem cells. The line between medicine and macabre ritual, it seems, has always been thinner than we imagine.

Why This History Matters Today

Studying medicinal cannibalism reveals:
– Cultural relativism in medicine: Practices now deemed barbaric were once mainstream science.
– Capitalism’s role in healthcare: Executioners profited from public desperation, much like modern pharmaceutical controversies.
– Ethical frameworks: Contemporary debates about organ donation or synthetic human tissue grow from these historical precedents.

The next time you see honey in a pharmacy, remember: the journey from “mummy confections” to evidence-based medicine is shorter—and stranger—than it appears.