One question that pervaded the minds of early European physicians was not whether we should eat human flesh, but rather which part and how much. While cannibalism might conjure up images of wild savages, it turns out medical cannibalism was all the rage back in the day... and continues to be (say what?!).
The “healthy” consumption of humans goes a long way back, like in the 11th century when people started eating bits of Egyptian mummies. Nothing like a bit of powdered mummy to upgrade your muesli. They were a sought-after medicinal ingredient, rising from the dead to cure the living. By the 17th century, mummies were seen as a panacea - an entire apothecary cabinet wrapped in dry brown flesh. Delicious!
The problem was there weren’t enough mummies to go around.
So of course, the cunning European entrepreneurs decided to mummify executed criminals, slaves and poor people to create more magical healing goo. Think of it like a quick pickle you might do at home versus the proper jar you might buy at the store. Jamie’s 15-minute mummy.
They even had special recipes. Apparently, it’s as simple as salting a corpse, cooking it in your corpse-compatible oven and grinding it into a powder.
German physician, Johann Schroeder had a very precise recipe. The main ingredient was a “24-year-old unspotted redhead who had been executed and died a violent death”. After cutting the flesh, a lovely sprinkle of myrrh and aloe and soaking in spirits to keep the smell away.
But medical cannibalism wasn’t just about consuming mummies. 15th-century Italian scholar, priest and philosopher, Marsilio Ficino, taught that elderly people hoping to regain the spring in their step should “suck the blood of a clean and happy adolescent”. And when fresh blood was hard to come by, a Franciscan apothecary even had a lovely blood marmalade recipe from 1679.
Human fat was also a go-to healing ingredient. The executioner would deliver it by the pound to the apothecary, known to jubilantly cry out, “More cushion for the potion!” Okay, we made that tagline up, but who could resist such a morbid pun?
Bones, what with all their desiccated denseness, were surely not a target for this cannibalistic quackery… WRONG! The human skull was wildly popular. 17th-century English physician, John French, offered at least two recipes for distilling skulls into spirits capable of curing stomach troubles, epilepsy and getting rid of the passion of the heart. Obviously.
There was also coffin water to cure warts, and yes, even dried poo applied to the eyes via a powder was said to heal cataracts. Those crazy Euros had really tapped into the magical power of gross things.
So when did all this madness end? You might be surprised to hear that it continues TO THIS VERY DAY!
previous episodes mentioned:
SOURCES:
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine, Maria Dolan, May 6, 2012
The gory history of Europe’s mummy-eating fad, Erin Blakemore May 2, 2023
A Brief History of Medical Cannibalism: Curing what ails us with mummy, blood jam, and human fat, Bess Lovejoy November 7, 2016
European ‘Corpse Medicine’ Promised Better Health Through Cannibalism, Natalie Zarrelli, October 31, 2017
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[00:00:00] Rod: Take the fresh unspotted cadaver of a redheaded man
[00:00:05] Will: Unspotted. So you want a redhead but no freckles.
[00:00:07] Rod: How do you get a redhead without freckles?
[00:00:09] Will: Well, that's the thing.
[00:00:10] Rod: I'm half gigger and I'm uncovered. I mean, imagine what a real one looks like.
[00:00:12] Will: I gotta say, I wasn't expecting it to be take a redhead.
[00:00:15] Rod: Well, because, huh? In them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent. They should be about 24 and have been executed and died A violent death. Let the corpse lie one day and night in the sun and moon, but the weather must be good. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it with merh and just a little aloe.
[00:00:32] Then you soak it in spirits of wine for several days. Hang it up for six to 10 hours. Don't tell the neighbors
[00:00:38] Will: like pegs through the shoulders.
[00:00:40] Rod: Then let the pieces dry in dry air.
[00:00:42] Will: You're hanging it by the butt.
[00:00:43] Rod: Nature's hook.
[00:00:44] Will: That's what they call it.
[00:00:46] Rod: Make your own. Make your own mummy.
[00:00:48] Will: I would've included the cutup.
[00:00:49] Rod: Yeah.
[00:00:49] Will: 'cause it's a radically different recipe. Cook a whole cow versus cook a sausage.
[00:00:53] Rod: When you've done all this, that'll be similar. The bits to smoked meat and will not stink.
[00:00:57] Will: I was hoping they won't stink.
[00:01:05] Rod: I spent a lot of time thinking about cannibalism this week. You?
[00:01:07] Will: No.
[00:01:09] Rod: So, you know, it's been years since we've, you know, I mean, really dug into cannibalism. We haven't talked about it. Like I had a look back over the catalog. And I was thinking there's one we did on fecal microbiota transplants. And I dunno if that's cannibalism though.
[00:01:21] Will: It is not cannibalism
[00:01:22] Rod: eating poo.
[00:01:23] Will: It's not cannibalism.
[00:01:24] Rod: You sure?
[00:01:24] Will: Like under no definition is medical feces or non-medical feces eating like that it's not cannibalism, feces. Yeah, it's not cannibalism.
[00:01:34] Rod: What about fingernails?
[00:01:36] Will: It's weird, but it's not cannibalism.
[00:01:37] Rod: Why not?
[00:01:38] Will: Because 'cause they're going off anyway like eating hair
[00:01:40] Rod: but if it's on your body like if you, yeah. Okay. If I grabbed your hair and started eating it while it was on your head, am I being cannibal? I mean, other than all the other problems.
[00:01:48] Will: No, you gotta get to the meat. Like that's gotta get to the meat. That's when it's cannibalism.
[00:01:51] Rod: Well, we did, I mean, recently we talked about whether oral sex was vegan.
[00:01:55] Will: That's not even a joke.
[00:01:56] Rod: But is cannibalism?
[00:01:58] Will: No.
[00:01:58] Rod: Okay. No. So the only episode I could find that really, you know, Fair to say meaty, you're welcome, episode, we did one back in May, 2019. Anthropogy cannibalism. So we talked about heaps of stuff there, like it covered a whole bunch of things. The history of it, nutritional value of human flesh, you know, the obvious stuff.
[00:02:16] Cultural comparisons. And my favor though, I don't remember this, the German dude who put an ad in the paper 'cause he wanted to eat a dude and then, and he got a positive response and they went through with it. But there was an aspect that stood out and a little bit underdone. Yeah, from that episode. So, today I'm gonna fix that.
[00:02:31] Will: What was underdone?
[00:02:33] Rod: It takes on a journey through the informative world of medical cannibalism, what is it? Where was it? And when, if ever did it stop?
[00:02:48] Will: Welcome to the wholesome show, the podcast that will eat absolutely anything to get into the whole of science. I'm Will Grant.
[00:02:56] Rod: I'm Roderick Lamberton. Okay. Medical cannibalism or corpse medicine, if you prefer. I don't mind. Call it what you will. Okay. Which do you prefer?
[00:03:08] Will: Oh, well, you tell me what it is and then I'll know when I, how much I prefer.
[00:03:11] Rod: I refuse to answer. Oh, so the historical stories of your non-medical, your common or garden cannibalism like from all over the world. We know this.
[00:03:20] Will: Yeah. People get hungry. There's no food.
[00:03:22] Rod: There's snack on Jim.
[00:03:23] Will: Yeah. There's your friend. Or you know, or people celebrate a victory. Yeah. And they're like, what would be the best way to celebrate this victory? Let's internalize our enemies so we get their powers.
[00:03:32] Rod: Yeah. Yes. So there's lot of that. There's a lot of, and it's, but it's always, you know, savages scoffing enemies and stuff like that pretty much all the time. But there're also accounts of like, from around the globe and over time, like in ancient Mesopotamia, in India, for example. Many healing professionals we into useful human body parts as health giving.
[00:03:50] Will: Oh, okay.
[00:03:51] Rod: Not just we wanna eat peeps, but like you don't seem well, you've got a sore elbow, have this elbow flesh.
[00:03:56] Will: You go to the doctor. This is ancient world doctor. And sore elbow. I've got some elbows lying around on my shelf of elbows.
[00:04:03] Rod: It's fair to say that might not be exactly accurate, but it's not far off.
[00:04:05] Will: Oh, okay. You've got a saw liver And I've got some other human livers from dead folk around. Have a little bit of that and that'll pep you up.
[00:04:11] Rod: Could be from dead folk. I dunno, are you a doctor? Can you, are you qualified?
[00:04:17] Will: I mean, I understand the logic. Yes.
[00:04:21] Rod: It's very easy to characterize these people as, you know, like the people who did this, they're mesopotamian and ancient, they're Indian, they're other, they're savages, et cetera. But I'm not gonna so much dive into the past of the mysterious other. We're gonna dive into probably the pinnacle of human social and cultural advancement and evolution. Earlier europeans from way, way back were pretty much, they're quite into health promoting properties of human bits. But apparently really took off in the Renaissance and forward. Okay. Really took off. How popular? So there's a good way to set the scene here. There's a lot of the sources quote this book by Richard Sugg, "mummies, cannibals and vampires, the history of corpse medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians."
[00:04:59] Will: Okay, cool.
[00:05:00] Rod: I know, right? The question in this period was not should you eat human flesh, but what sort of flesh would you eat? Let's start with Egyptian mummies. So the practice of consuming bits of Egyptian mummies began arguably about the 11th century.
[00:05:13] Will: So okay. We're getting a mummy from from your pyramid. From your Egypts. From your Egypts. Yep. And we're chopping up a little bit for your medicine.
[00:05:20] Rod: Yeah, it varies. Bits here and bits there, but yeah I think ground was the most popular after a time ground. Ground mummy.
[00:05:26] Will: Ground mummy.
[00:05:28] Rod: Yeah, I know.
[00:05:29] Will: Well, I guess ground mummy. You could sprinkle it on things like you, your muslie or something like that. Yeah. Oh sure.
[00:05:33] Rod: A bit of a treat. Yeah. You've eaten your veggies.
[00:05:36] Will: Powdered mummy. I would love to have a vial of powdered mummy right now.
[00:05:40] Rod: And it's funny, the reason they reckon people started doing this was a a quote, a series of mistranslations and misunderstandings hinging around the word mumia. Mumia is a substance found apparently on a single Persian mountain site. It seeps through black rock asphalt. So it's kind of like the local word for wax. It's this goo that comes out. Okay. Alright. And it was prized for healing quality. So you know, a tincture for bleeding, you put it in plasters against venomous bites and joint pain.
[00:06:05] Will: Okay. Was it any good?
[00:06:06] Rod: Apparently. Apparently it had a great reputation, so it became precious, valuable, scarce, et cetera, around the Arabic world. And it turns out a lot of Egyptian mummies were embalmed using Mumia. Okay.
[00:06:15] Will: Is that where the word comes from?
[00:06:16] Rod: It might be. So early Western European translators went, Mumia is the stuff that came from these bodies. They just kind of got confused, and decided, yeah, the goo comes out of the Mummy, so you need to get Mumia. You get it from the Mummy. And basically, Mumia or Mummy Bits was prescribed ultimately for fucking anything. Anything. So euros, at least in the sort of Victorian period forward, I think were really horny for Egypt anyway, you know? Like we've seen The Mummy. And people began collecting and selling mummies anyway, but then once they heard about this health bit, it went off. They were getting them, they were selling them, they were getting, they were selling them. And of course that meant.
[00:06:52] Will: How many mummies were on the market?
[00:06:53] Rod: Like more, I think than you'd think.
[00:06:55] Will: I thought, you know, in total we found like 30 mummies.
[00:06:58] Rod: Like I feel like maybe there were a fuck load more. Like a fuck load more, but not enough to keep up with demand.
[00:07:04] Will: Yeah, I get it. I get it. I get it.
[00:07:07] Rod: Smart folk. Cunning entrepreneurs. They went, okay, I'm gonna grab the body of executed criminals, slaves, poor people, whatever.
[00:07:13] Will: Sure. I see where we're going here. Do they mummify them or just
[00:07:16] Rod: Yeah. Make your own. They mummified them.
[00:07:17] Will: They mummify them for a bit, and then like mini mummified, like not long-term mummified. Just a bit of bandage and then unwrap the bandage, and then you can eat them.
[00:07:24] Rod: Well, actually no, though. Here's one recipe. Take your cadaver. Oh I'm warming you up gently
[00:07:27] Will: take one executed criminal.
[00:07:29] Rod: Yeah. And take, let's not be so specific. Take a body. Embalm with salt and drugs. I dunno what the drugs are. Oh, okay. Dry them in an oven, them in an oven rack. Sorry sweetheart. We can't have dinner yet. I'm still cooking a corpse
[00:07:40] Will: look I think you'd need at least the 90 centimeter wide oven to poke a whole human in.
[00:07:44] Rod: You want your smeg nine burner on that one? And then once they're dry, you grind 'em into a powder, then you sell 'em to Apothecaries, who then put them into home remedies.
[00:07:54] Will: How do you flag this with obviously your significant other at home, your kids or whatever, but also the neighbor,
[00:07:59] Rod: look it's for work.
[00:08:00] Will: This is fine. This is all legit. I got a note from my doctor. I got a note from work. I'm just cooking a body.
[00:08:05] Rod: I got five kids. What else am I gonna do? We gotta eat. So you grind it up, sell it to Apothecaries. These were guys who are being a bit shifty, you know? So this is a real mummy. And of course Apothecaries would go, don't ask, don't tell.
[00:08:17] Will: Not legit. Not legit.
[00:08:19] Rod: Powdered mummy. Thank you.
[00:08:20] Will: Oh, no matter what, they don't even care. So it could have been like powdered possum.
[00:08:23] Rod: There were stories of it, like cat mummies and shit being used instead, passed off as human. I mean, no, that would be gross.
[00:08:30] Will: You're in scam medicine anyway. Yeah. And it's like, well, well it doesn't really make any difference, right? We're talking all placebo here, so we might as well just get anything.
[00:08:37] Rod: No, there's beliefs. So they're also, but there were legit recipes for making your own mummy too. And it sounded like, at least in some cases, they weren't even pretending. It was like, we can't get a real mummy, so we can mimic it like synthetic T H C if you can't grow it, make one.
[00:08:49] Will: Yeah. Speed it up.
[00:08:50] Rod: So, a German physician, Johann Schroeder, 17th century medical time. Well, he says, take the fresh unspotted cadaver of a redheaded man.
[00:09:02] Will: Unspotted. So you want a redhead but no freckles.
[00:09:04] Rod: No's zits. Sorry. Seamless.
[00:09:05] Will: Well, it could be freckles as well.
[00:09:07] Rod: How do you get a redhead without freckles?
[00:09:08] Will: Well, that's the thing.
[00:09:09] Rod: I'm half gigger and I'm uncovered. I mean, imagine what a real one looks like.
[00:09:11] Will: Well, maybe a pristine redhead who lived above the arctic circle never gets any, I don't know.
[00:09:16] Rod: You can keep one in the dark their entire lives and they would freckle
[00:09:19] Will: I gotta say I wasn't rules expecting it to be take a redhead.
[00:09:22] Rod: Well because huh? In them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent. Ah, apparently redheads have thinner blood. They should be about 24 and have been executed and died a violent death. Duh. Let the corpses lie one day and night in the sun and moon. But the weather must be good. So not in the rain. 'cause that's stupid.
[00:09:45] Will: Keep your dogs outta the yard while
[00:09:46] Rod: absolutely. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it with merh and just a little aloe. Do you have any merh in the kitchen?
[00:09:52] Will: Look, I had somewhere I'm, all out.
[00:09:54] Rod: So, yeah. Merh and a little aloe. Then you soak it in spirits of wine for several days. Hang it up for six to 10 hours.
[00:10:01] Will: Again, this is a super creepy procedure.
[00:10:03] Rod: Don't tell the neighbors,
[00:10:04] Will: like, hang it up. Like, are we talking like pegs through the shoulders or
[00:10:09] Rod: Then it says, soak it again in spirits of wine, then let the pieces dry.
[00:10:12] Will: Hanging it by the butt
[00:10:13] Rod: that Nature's Hook. So, yeah, they say you soak it again. This has only got like a 10 kilo breaking strain. I'm gonna need more like, I don't know, 400.
[00:10:19] Will: Well, we got a 24 year old ginga. We got, you know,
[00:10:21] Rod: yeah. With thin blood. Yeah. But then, so you soak it again and then let the pieces dry in dry air in a shady spot. So at some point, which he skipped over that it turns into pieces
[00:10:31] Will: I would've, I would've included the cut up as part of your recipe because it's a radically different recipe. Cook a whole cow versus cook a sausage. Yes. Like they, they are, yes. So yes, I would include
[00:10:42] Rod: I think they've, yeah, they've missed some things.
[00:10:44] Will: Are we mincing the human or are we like leg sized bits?
[00:10:46] Rod: It's more like jerky is what it seems to me because at the end, thus when you've done all this, hung it up in the dry air and stuff, they'll be similar, the bits, the strips to smoked meat and will not stink. So that's pretty good.
[00:10:59] Will: Well, I was hoping they wouldn't stink.
[00:11:01] Rod: And also I like jerky. It might be delicious.
[00:11:03] Will: How many days have we gone? Of course it's delicious. I mean, well, I dunno what Mehr's like, but how many days?
[00:11:09] Rod: Yeah, there's your sticking point. Mehr might be gross. I know it's human, but Mehr you're a fucking monster.
[00:11:16] Will: I would be choosing my spices with care like rosemary, I think human humans would go well with rosemary.
[00:11:22] Rod: Just like, what? What do you put on pork? Because I think, same thing.
[00:11:25] Will: No. I'm thinking more, I'm more like a lamb roast. Yeah I'm Lamby. You can be porky if you want cook and milk or something.
[00:11:30] Rod: And my name has lamb in it, so I've gotta be lamb. That's just the rules. A ging of lamb. So I gotta the point in the 17th century in Europe anyway, mummy was seen as basically a panacea and like an entire apothecary cabinet wrapped in dry brown flesh. But that's only one type. Okay. That's only one bit
[00:11:46] Will: one recipe.
[00:11:47] Rod: No, that's just mummies in terms of medical cannibalism. Blood. Yeah. Well, obviously,
[00:11:52] Will: well, of course.
[00:11:54] Rod: So early times Romans would drink the blood of slain gladiators, you know, vital, strong. It'll transfer.
[00:11:59] Will: So, so do you reckon that, you know, so Gladiator dies, you're in the Colosseum. Someone goes around and gets a cup of it. Yep. Are you waiting for someone else to drink it before you and then you drink? Or are you like, no, I'm first I'm front of the line. I want that guy's powers
[00:12:12] Rod: my approach always. I mean, the only thing I can liken it to is when I was a young man and people were doing the drugs. If it was a new one, I'd be like, I'm waiting till all of you have it first.
[00:12:21] Will: Oh, so you're last
[00:12:22] Rod: always.
[00:12:23] Will: Anyway. I don't wanna drink the slain gladiator. I want the blood of the winner. Yeah.
[00:12:25] Rod: You're not an idiot.
[00:12:26] Will: Yeah. Like that guy's got more power. Like you can kill the winner. Yes. And take his blood
[00:12:30] Rod: because you got standards, you thought it through. Another reason, of course, to drink the blood of slain gladiators is to cure epilepsy. Okay. But that's early times. That's like, I mean, do you call Romans Europeans? Anyway. 15th century, the highly respected Italian scholar, priest and philosopher, Marsilio Ficino he reckons elderly people hoping to regain the spring in their steps should suck the blood of an adolescent.
[00:12:56] Will: How much are we talking?
[00:12:57] Rod: They don't mention volume. The adolescent should be clean, happy, temperate, and their blood excellent, but perhaps a little excessive. So much they've got a bit too much blood.
[00:13:06] Will: Yeah, well in fairness to them, but you know, you know, the thing I love is that, you know, there's always these rumors that you know, popes, rich people drank blood, things like that. But the idea that someone actually wrote it down as a suggestion. And this is a time when writing is harder.
[00:13:18] Like, they're like, it takes more effort for them to publish a book or a thing and to go, yes, seriously, suck the blood of an adolescent. And were they thinking, okay, this is a joke. This is clearly a joke, and everyone will understand it's a joke. Or here's my argument is take an adolescent, suck their blood for a bit.
[00:13:35] Rod: I wanna see how far you go because I am a highly respected scholar, priest and philosopher.
[00:13:39] Will: I kind of get the ground up mummy. Because it's weird and like, okay that's
[00:13:42] Rod: it's very exotic. It's super exotic. So you kind like,
[00:13:45] Will: and it's kind of cool, but the idea of going, okay, adolescents are young and healthy, so let's go and literally sit still for a bit while I suck some blood outta it.
[00:13:54] Rod: You appear to have a bit too much blood. Where are you getting it? Where are you sucking it from? Yeah, I got a few thoughts.
[00:13:58] Will: Where's the least weird place to suck blood out of someone?
[00:14:00] Rod: The vulva?
[00:14:01] Will: No. That is not the least weird. That is close to the most weird,
[00:14:05] Rod: but they're quite blood rich.
[00:14:07] Will: Yeah. Well that's why I was thinking like the butt cheek is like it's
[00:14:09] Rod: hard to get to blood. A lot of meat there. A lot of whistles.
[00:14:15] Will: But you do like an arm because that's dignified and they can sit there.
[00:14:17] Rod: But to be fair, the older. The old John Thomas has got a lot of, you know, exposed and skin level veins
[00:14:22] Will: so, no, but that's getting a bit, that's a bit too sexual
[00:14:24] Rod: but it's also pragmatic. It's a hose. There's access points. I'm the Woodford guy. I mean, you know, you do what you want.
[00:14:32] Will: The place on the body that is the most dignified place to suck the blood out of someone
[00:14:36] Rod: Toe? That's too raunchy.
[00:14:38] Will: No toe is too submissive.
[00:14:40] Rod: Top of the head. How hard could it be?
[00:14:41] Will: See, that's, see that's awkward. I think you want something where they're like
[00:14:44] Rod: so that's one recipe. Another one 1559. A text from the time describes a popular remedy attributed to Saint Albertus Magnus. I know you were gonna say that, but others didn't know. This involved distilling the blood of a healthy man as if it were rosewater. The result was said to cure any disease of the body and a small quality restore them that have lost all their strength.
[00:15:06] Will: I can understand, I totally understand why you would distill blood. Like, like distilling makes things better so you does, everything's better if it's distilled the essence. That's cool.
[00:15:15] Rod: So of course sometimes it was the blood of young men who preferred and surprisingly shockingly virgin or young women. So regardless of where you got it from, the best blood was of course fresh blood. Preferably from the living because it still contained the body's vitality, the essence, the deliciousness of it all. But it wasn't always easy to get, and it could be very expensive. And we know apothecaries could be real gouges, you know?
[00:15:38] So it's hard to get your fresh blood from your apothecary shelf. So people who couldn't afford the potions and unguents from them would stand around executions, pay a bit of money for a cup of the still warm blood of the condemned. And this meant I love the Sugg, the guy I spoke about earlier, whose book is often drawn upon in these things.
[00:15:56] He said that meant executioners came to be seen as big healers in at least some Germanic countries. They were social lepers, but they almost had magical powers because they had access. They, these guys were the source you could also use dried blood, so dried and powdered blood was recommended for nosebleeds.
[00:16:11] Or sprinkle it on a wound to stop bleeding. But there's some suggestion that says, well, yeah, you put the dry blood and like moss or something up your nose for nosebleeds. It's like, yeah. So ram a tissue up there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It will stop the blood.
[00:16:22] Will: Yeah. Get some moss
[00:16:23] Rod: because it gets in the way. Exactly. Put some moss oh and dry blood,
[00:16:26] Will: like it's pretty close to grab some dirt and shove your nose full of dirt. It's gonna work like that's fine.
[00:16:32] Rod: Oh moss is gonna come up again. But look, if you can't get fresh or powdered blood, if that was tricky, here's a recipe. Kinda like a marmalade.
[00:16:40] Will: I've been waiting for blood marmalade my whole life.
[00:16:43] Rod: I'm about to tell you how, or rather, a Franciscan apothecary from 1679. First. Take blood from persons of warm, moist temperament, such as those of a blotchy red complexion and rather plump of build. I know. Moist temperament, like imagine described that way. What's he like? Those temperaments, moist.
[00:17:09] Will: To be honest, I can't spot a moist person on the street.
[00:17:11] Rod: Well, you can't tell a head size and you can't spot moistness in a personality.
[00:17:15] Will: No, I can't. I can't work out, which is the moist person for my blood recipe.
[00:17:20] Rod: Then you let it dry into a sticky mass, get the blood, let it dry into a sticky mass. So it's a, there's a feel there's an art to it. Oh yeah. It's not precises sticky. How Sticky?
[00:17:28] Will: Sticky, yeah. It's a cooking's a craft.
[00:17:29] Rod: It is. Place it. The sticky mass upon a flat, smooth table of soft wood, cut it into thin little slices, allowing its watery part to drip away.
[00:17:39] Will: So we're making like a, a fruit rollup of human blood here
[00:17:42] Rod: we're making marmalade, but it's it goes through the rollup part. Yeah. Yeah. It does go through rollup stage. When it's no longer dripping places it on a stove on the same table. I dunno why. Stir it to a batter with a knife. So make your blood batter. When it's absolutely dry, place it immediately in a very warm bronze mortar and pound it. Oh. Force it through a sieve of the finest silk.
[00:18:06] Will: Okay. Getting the bits out. Smooth marmalade. Not your chunky marmal.
[00:18:10] Rod: No. This is the refined one that no chewing required. When it's all been sieved, seal it in a glass jar and renew it in the spring of every year.
[00:18:16] Will: Oh, sure. Is this like an on your toast thing or a
[00:18:18] Rod: I think it should be a little bit of sourdough. Let the bread Cool. Let the toast cool.
[00:18:23] Will: Your granola, I think would be nice.
[00:18:25] Rod: So anyway, blood's gross. So let's move on to something more palatable. Human fat.
[00:18:30] Will: Oh. Oh, whoa.
[00:18:33] Rod: Come on. Delicious. Delicious fat. So there's external internal uses, obviously.
[00:18:37] Will: Yes. Yes. The topical fats
[00:18:40] Rod: Exactly. Versus the imbibed. So external uses Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne physician to a bunch of English and French kings, and also apparently Oliver Cromwell, the famous juggler. He recommended a pain killing plaster made of hemlock, opium, and human fat. And I'm like, once you give me opium, do whatever else you want. German doctors would prescribe bandages soaked in human fat for wounds. You got a wound like, oh, 'cause why wouldn't you? If you've got gout, you rub fat into your skin or you rub it on an ache and it might, you know, take the ache away. Human fucking fat. I hurt, gimme distilled essence of fat human and just my butt doesn't hurt anymore.
[00:19:20] Will: They're really casual use to cutting up corpses for really, you know, purposes, like in the way of, for purposes, all sorts of purposes. It's just like, well, here's a bit of them for this and a bit of them for that. Yeah. It's just, we just, we are wusses these days. We know, we look at a human corpse and we're like, Ooh, I'm squeamish. They had real guts back then. They were like, fuck it.
[00:19:40] Rod: They literally have real guts.
[00:19:41] Will: I'll dive in and then take a big old handful of gladiator blood and fat.
[00:19:45] Rod: Yeah, I'm gonna drink that and it's, I'm not gonna get epilepsy or butt pain. Internally, you could take powdered forms of human fat to help with bleeding or bruising. Oh, for sure. Also, apparently good for hydrophobia, AKA rabies. Ooh, okay. I've got rabies. Gimme some dried human fat and I'll eat it.
[00:20:02] Will: But just go back to the bruising. Yeah, and it's a fairly trivial sort of thing to go, I have a bruise, I've got a bruise, I'll eat some human fat. I'll just dial in with a bit of cannibalism
[00:20:13] Rod: still bruised, but, salty.
[00:20:15] Will: I mean, it feels to me like you were looking for an excuse to eat the human fat at that point.
[00:20:19] Rod: It's true.
[00:20:19] Will: I've got a bruise. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Oh my God.
[00:20:23] Rod: How would you get human fat, particularly back in the day from a human. You're an educated man, so, Late 16 hundreds in Paris, you could buy fat from your local apothecary or you could cut out the middle fella and just go straight to an executioner. And it turns out in Munich, there was evidence, according to Sugg again, the executioner would deliver fat to the city's apothecaries by the pound until the mid 18th century.
[00:20:45] Will: Well, of course it's by the pound. Well, it's not gonna be by the meter
[00:20:49] Rod: so that's fat. Human skulls fucking popular. Like really popular is a health ingredient wildly. So it's just bizarre. Not many versions of using it, but really popular. So, 17th century English physician guy called John French, he had at least two recipes for distill distilling skulls into spirits. Not as in ghosts, but like literally just getting them into the googo.
[00:21:10] Will: I wouldn't have thought that your skull is your juicing sort of no fruit. Like, I think, you know, you go from your apples and pears and you can get the juice outta them. You can get but not rocks. Even celery. You can get your juice out of potatoes
[00:21:22] Rod: distill some bread and a piece of dirt.
[00:21:25] Will: A skull. I'm not getting a lot of juice out of it.
[00:21:27] Rod: Yeah. I want some bone whiskey, just like that's whiskey with a bone in it. But so they, I think they powder it. One of the recipes he came up with one, he said it was good for helping the falling sickness, gout and dropsy. Also, obviously stomach troubles, but also it seems kind of everything. The other recipe was better for epilepsy, convulsions or fevers, putrid or pestilent and passions of the heart
[00:21:51] Will: to get them or to get rid of them.
[00:21:53] Rod: Get rid. No one wants the passions of the heart. Oh, they hurt you. Too much passion in the heart.
[00:21:57] Will: So have a little bit of ground up head and you can get rid of the passion of the heart
[00:22:01] Rod: gimme a little noggin. King Charles ii apparently, or allegedly paid 6,000 pounds.
[00:22:07] Will: Yeah, but he was wild.
[00:22:08] Rod: Yeah. In his day though. What? 6,000 pounds is probably like a bajillion dollars. He paid it to a professor at a local college for a recipe for distilled powdered skull, human mixed with wine and or a bit of chocolate.
[00:22:20] Will: Hang on. He's paying for the recipe. But not the actual thing.
[00:22:23] Rod: Seems pretty easy. Grind up this, add some wine and maybe a little chocky.
[00:22:27] Will: Someone is making some good cash on the side selling recipe. I could sell a recipe for ground up skull for anything. 6,000 pounds. Yeah. King Charles III maybe he'll buy some skull recipes from us.
[00:22:37] Rod: He should, because it became known as the king's drops. The King's drops. It was popular for shitloads of everything. And I love this. At one point it became my, kind of, this the source calls it mother's little helper. What Valium and other such things became later. A woman named Anne Dormer wrote in 1686 to her sister, I apply myself to tend my crazy health and keep up my weak shattered carcass. Broken with restless nights and unquiet days. I take the king's drops and drink chocolate, and when my soul is sad to death, I run and play with the children.
[00:23:11] Will: Drink some skull juice. Bit of chocolate, goes for a run. Plays with the kids. Doesn't sound terrible.
[00:23:15] Rod: Well, except for the skull. I don't need the skull part. I think I'd feel better anyway. Like I'm gonna drink some booze and chocolate.
[00:23:20] Will: When do we shift into being so differently minded about eating the blood and drinking the skull?
[00:23:27] Rod: We're kind of gonna get to that. There's also a skull derivative called Usnea , which is basically when skulls I think are in the grave or whatever, they grow this toupee of moss. And that became really prized, A powdered form. Good for nosebleeds and maybe also epilepsy. No, that's cool. Cool. You see the photos literally like a, kind of a, it is a toupee of moss on the skull.
[00:23:49] Will: Did you get like a hair style, like it's a
[00:23:51] Rod: If you left it long enough, you could get quite a quiff like this perhaps. Yeah. Okay. We're getting to the end of the example meat, the whole corpse. Yeah. Well, you could sell it and dry it as one piece, so you make sure you weren't getting cheated. You know, you wanna buy the whole corpse.
[00:24:04] Will: I want the whole lot. I want the whole, I want the fat, I want the toenails,
[00:24:07] Rod: I want the blood. I asked for like, like forearm meat.
[00:24:09] Will: Yeah. Yeah. But you got a whole family. You, if you get a feed and medicine, a family of 28, you need a
[00:24:14] Rod: You need a body. Yeah. Or you split it with your neighbors like you do, you know, you buy a cow and you split up the bits. No different. This one. Coffin water. Oh my God. You don't, you just hear it go. Would you like some coffin water? It's like under no circumstances
[00:24:32] Will: we are so squeamish, whereas, so tell me what coffin water is.
[00:24:35] Rod: So late 18 hundreds, 1893, there is a collection of folk cures and it said for of coffin water it says it's considered good for warts
[00:24:43] Will: hang on. Just to clarify, what is coffin water?
[00:24:46] Rod: Oh, it's the water. I'm glad you asked with which a corpse has been washed. Oh, okay. And recently then,
[00:24:52] Will: oh, so it's wash water. It's not like, it's not like you, the not corpse, your corpse sort of dissolving and it's the puddled.
[00:24:57] Rod: This is what I thought. Do you take literally the coffin in the body and throw it in a vat and then siphon off the water?
[00:25:02] Will: No. I thought, like, like you, you know, coffin and body's been in there for a while. Six months been rotten and it's nice sealed up coffin. And so there's your water's down the bottom.
[00:25:10] Rod: No, it's actually, yeah, corpse wash water.
[00:25:12] Will: Oh, that's right. It's just like drinking.
[00:25:14] Rod: I don't wanna drink anyone's shower water.
[00:25:15] Will: It's just drinking someone's shower water.
[00:25:16] Rod: And how often do you do that? Other than your own?
[00:25:18] Will: Oh, well, no, from the bottom. Like once it's been over me, then I drink it.
[00:25:22] Rod: You call it gray water, I call it delicious. And the last example, which of course it's a wholesome show episode, so we need something to do with human poo.
[00:25:32] Will: You know, we don't
[00:25:33] Rod: we do. Because if you had cataracts yes. You dry it. The poo. Yeah. You dry it, you grind it into a powder and you blow it into the eyes and apparently like, ah, you made me forget my cataracts.
[00:25:46] Will: It really is how, you know these apothecaries sitting around and thinking how we convince someone, yeah. How can I blow some poo into their eyes?
[00:25:55] Rod: Oh, it's that, it's good for your cataracts. Is it? Sure. It smells and it stings. So it's definitely had an effect. Ugh. But you know, you can do that with sawdust or, you know, lint anything
[00:26:07] Will: it really is the magical power of gross things.
[00:26:10] Rod: Well, speaking of magical power, so like these examples are great, right? They're fun, they're awesome. It's good to giggle at, but I mean, 'cause we're serious and we're scholarly.
[00:26:17] So let's have a little thing about what the actual fuck people were thinking when they did this. Yeah. So the theory is, and a lot of it's just, you know, it's sort of like homeopathy or it's the Yeah, sure. The sympathetic magic like cure cures, like, yeah, your elbow hurts, eat an elbow.
[00:26:29] But also there's the other one that comes from classical anthropology is the law of contagion. So like once you touch a thing and then take the thing away from it. It maintains some kind of connection with what has touched. And so, you know, you eat the heart of a valiant enemy, you somehow get their bravery, et cetera as you mentioned up front,
[00:26:44] Will: I thought eating the heart of a valiant enemy in part is just to teach them a lesson properly. And they're like,
[00:26:50] Rod: yeah, I don't think you're around for the lesson though.
[00:26:52] Will: It's like, no, but they're descendants and everyone know. It's like, this is how seriously I'm taking it. I am like, I will destroy you so utterly. I will turn you into meat and I will eat you and consume you
[00:27:00] Rod: and I'll poo you out and cure my cataracts.
[00:27:02] Will: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, so, Not necessarily a thing about giving me magical powers or anything like that, just showing how dominant I am over you.
[00:27:10] Rod: Well, and it could be both. It's like that whole argument about, was it Greek style? And they used to say, oh no, it's not about wanting to bang the dude. It's about showing that I'm dominant. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And I'm like, well, for some it might've been, but for others it's like you just wanna bone the dude. Like some of them want to eat the heart. Some of 'em think it's gonna give them, yeah.
[00:27:24] Will: Okay. So a little bit of both. Yeah. And maybe, you know, when you're doing it, you might sell it to some people as I'm doing this for dominance. And other people are like, don't be such an asshole. But if it's got magic powers, sure.
[00:27:35] Rod: Even Leonardo Mr. Of the davincis. We preserve our life with the death of others in a dead thing in sensate life remains, which when it's reunited with the stomachs of the living, regain sensitive and intellectual life. Indeed. So for many it was basically, spirit was essentially a physiological reality, and it was combined or somehow joined with blood.
[00:27:55] Will: But see that's the weird thing. Like if you are of the, you know, you're like the soul is located somewhere in the body. Whether it's the liver or the blood or the brain or the kneecaps to then go, okay, I'm gonna eat it 'cause I wanna have that soul. Like I think that's a little .
[00:28:10] Rod: How many souls can you have?
[00:28:11] Will: I just want my own.
[00:28:12] Rod: Yeah, that's enough, isn't it?
[00:28:13] Will: I don't, but the idea of, you know, being serious and going, all right, now I've got a few more souls, and so shouldn't we let those souls go to where they want to go?
[00:28:20] Rod: I have no argument with that. I'm a spiritual man. I don't mean blood, but this is part of the thing. You know, people would say like, blood they thought actually carried the soul and it was kind of vaporous. Yeah. It was a spirit. And so you eat the blood, you get spirit juice. And we see magical thinking today, like particularly with contagion. This idea that you touch something, it links to something else.
[00:28:40] We've all heard these stories. You know, people in, in I think they're apocryphal now. I've got this cardigan. Einstein used to wear it. Who wants to try it on? And people go, fuck yeah.
[00:28:47] Will: Yeah. Like licking Einstein's bits of brain.
[00:28:49] Rod: Exactly. Then you say, okay, here are Hitler's underpants. Who wants to wear them?
[00:28:53] Will: No, but you become Nazi.
[00:28:54] Rod: Yeah, exactly. Well, but I think that the actual stories that I heard were either his hat or his pen. Like who wants to sign their name with Hitler's pen? And people are like, fuck no. 'cause it'll make me Hitler ish.
[00:29:03] Will: Oh, yeah, exactly. And it's the flip side as well. It's both the, I get, you know, step away from the glorification of that. So, yeah, fair enough. But if you touched it, like if someone put Hitler's pen in your hand, you'd get infected with Hitler-ness.
[00:29:14] Rod: This is quite similar thing. It's the law of contagion and my favorite, the example of that in modern days I talk about this a lot, is people who go I'm gonna enter the lotto. And I do the same numbers every week because it increases my chances.
[00:29:25] Will: No, see, no, see, that is not increasing your chances. What they're thinking is, if I've locked into these numbers, then if I don't choose them and they win, it would be so much worse.
[00:29:33] Rod: But when you explain to 'em like what do you realize? What you are thinking is if you actually believe it increases your chances. I've had these arguments with friends. They go, yeah, but surely it increases your chances. Like, but that implies that the balls know from last week what they do, what they're gonna do this week. They don't
[00:29:47] Will: I feel like having arguments about probability is just like, what are we doing here? What are we doing here?
[00:29:51] Rod: So hypocrisy of cannibalism. This is, I think this is cool. I hadn't really thought about it. So the classic thing was, you know, savages are bad and actually cannibals. This is particularly the time when people were eating bodies to help themselves.
[00:30:01] Will: Oh, so at the same time,
[00:30:03] Rod: same, same time as people were eating bits.
[00:30:05] Will: Yeah. So they're doing it themselves and they said, no,
[00:30:08] Rod: these others, they're savages. It's not medical, they're just fucking eating people.
[00:30:12] Will: Yeah. No peer reviewed studies behind that.
[00:30:14] Rod: So the classic thing, even apparently when corpse medicine was peaking, there were two groups that were heavily demonized because of them doing cannibals.
[00:30:21] Will: What sort of era are we talking?
[00:30:22] Rod: 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds, et cetera. So the big group that you'd expect, like particularly at the time of, you know, America being taken, native Americans north and South, they were savages 'cause they were cannibals therefore, we can do what we want. That was the bottom line argument, and we've heard that a lot. Yeah. But also apparently Protestants said Catholics were terrible because they actually believed when they ate the wine and ate the, drank the wine and ate the, that's bit of Jesus wafer. Yeah.
[00:30:46] They were saying transubstantiation is literally means it turns to the body of Christ. And so they're like, you guys are cannibals too. So cannibals and those people like Catholics and those people over there. Terrible people.
[00:30:55] Will: So, so you're all cannibals. I'm cannibal too but my cannibalism.
[00:30:59] Rod: So you're all cannibals. I'm taking medicine. I'm doing something for my health. Yeah. And what I love about it is the classic is when you look at the reasons for eating bits of humans, the others, it was part of mourning rituals. It was part of, you know, respecting the dead, whatever it was. And there was, you know, urial rights that were kind of reabsorbing the person into the group.
[00:31:20] And they'd look at the idea of burying a body in the ground and walking away is kind of gross and weird. Sure. From the other side of it though, I mean, they'll love the summary basically. The Europeans who were doing it, they'd kind of go, well, we'll eat anything that we don't know anyone. We don't know them.
[00:31:34] We dunno who they are. They're completely remote. They're not our buddies, they're not our family. It's just some bit of body that's remote and disentangled,
[00:31:40] Will: not even our beloved enemy.
[00:31:41] Rod: Not even. So basically, I love the summary. The Europeans ate strangers while the indigenous people ate friends, and I think that's kind of interesting.
[00:31:50] Will: Oh, which one is better?
[00:31:52] Rod: It's a very good question.
[00:31:54] Will: Depends on your friend. It really does. You always gotta eat The people that get hungry, like, like, you know how there's some people that get hungry really early. You gotta eat them first. They're gonna cause trouble. No matter what they, no, they're gonna cause trouble. You gotta get out in front of the cannibalistic people in your group.
[00:32:08] Rod: It's good call. So when did medical cannibalism stop?
[00:32:10] Will: So my brain is thinking, okay, it's gonna be like long time ago, 1792. But you're gonna tell me it's actually like
[00:32:19] Rod: tomorrow. In general, it looks like 18th century it started to dwindle. Yep. Generally, there are some later examples. 1847, there was an Englishman apparently who advised was advised to mix the skull of a young woman with molasses and feed it to his daughter to kill her epilepsy. What the fuck?
[00:32:39] Will: Mix the skull of a young woman with molasses. That's not a mix of ingredient. Like, like there's a few more steps in there. I'm gonna drop all up in this honey. I don't care how much you're stirring. Like that's not getting mixed.
[00:32:50] Rod: No. If you go fast enough and for long enough, everything's gonna dissolve
[00:32:53] Will: Every time you stir up pops This young woman's face, is that mixed? I'm not stirring enough.
[00:33:00] Rod: Mummy was sold or mumia Mummy as medicine in a German medical catalog at the beginning of the 20th century. 1908.
[00:33:09] Will: Yeah, but they just had their ad paid for a long time. Like that was, yeah
[00:33:12] Rod: just, it's pragmatic. Yeah. Like we paid for it. Fucking sunk costs.
[00:33:16] Will: 1908.
[00:33:16] Rod: 1908. The last known attempt was made in Germany to swallow blood at the scaffold. So a hung victim or hanged,
[00:33:24] Will: See, when everyone else is doing it, it's okay but I reckon being the last person to be swallowing the blood.
[00:33:29] Rod: No, Fritz. No, you're a weirdo. Woo. We're a bunch of Germans watching an execution and you are the crazy guy.
[00:33:39] And look, there's argument you're talking about depends on your definition. There's some argument that modern use of bits of one human body to fix another is a little bit similar. Oh, okay. It's not, but you know, like blood transfusions, organ transplant, skin graft organ, transplant, skin. Yeah, sure. Ligaments and graphs from bodies. Engineered fat cells for making medicines, blood products.
[00:33:57] Will: When there is a logical scientific reason like skin graft or an organ transplant, it's like we are literally, you know, we are, we're choosing what is the best possible replacement for this liver, kidney, whatever.
[00:34:07] Yeah, it's gonna be another human right now and it's gonna be one of your blood type and stuff like that. That is not cannibalism.
[00:34:12] Rod: I get no argument with that. So basically we seem to be okay with getting bits from dead bodies if we are just inserting them or whatever. Yeah. We seem to be okay with that.
[00:34:19] That's fine. So what about actual cannibalism today, like Europe, America, or wherever, and I thought, I gotta find something. I went rummaging, I did it for you. I did it for the people out there in the dark or the lighter on the bus. And I'm thinking I gotta find something, but I'm not gonna find anything. Like, it's just not gonna happen. I found something. Oh God. placentophagy
[00:34:38] Will: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
[00:34:39] Rod: Yeah. So a woman needs her placenta after giving birth, and the reasoning is raising energy levels or reducing the risk of depression by stabilizing hormones. The science is out, but basically people like Kim Kardashian, Alicia Silverstone and stuff has said they've done it. They've eaten the place placenta.
[00:34:55] Will: Did they? Yeah, Kim did it?
[00:34:56] Rod: Many US companies, they say they'll grind your placenta in a powder, so you can take it as a vitamin supplement. So it's easier. I wanna, is it cannibalism if you eat a bit of yourself?
[00:35:04] Will: No. You own it. It's human body. It's yours to dispose of everywhere.
[00:35:07] Rod: So it is cannibalism. Only if you eat other. Do you think?
[00:35:10] Will: Yeah, definitely. Like you, you get a cut on your finger and you suck your blood. That's not cannibalism.
[00:35:14] Rod: Why not? It's still eating human.
[00:35:16] Will: No other human. Other human is the thing.
[00:35:18] Rod: I looked up definitions. None of 'em say other. Just human flesh. Just human. Just human.
[00:35:22] Will: So if I cut my finger off and I eat it
[00:35:24] Rod: arguably you're accountable.
[00:35:25] Will: All right. That's.
[00:35:27] Rod: But like eating your own placenta.
[00:35:29] Will: I wanna someone propose the randomized control trial on the placenta. And it's like you and what study, like, like half of you are gonna get,
[00:35:39] Rod: do you feel more vital? So when you say we finish the study, you're 140. Okay. You win, but you're in the control group.
[00:35:48] Will: Yeah. Well what is your definition?
[00:35:50] Rod: Like I think technically if it's human meat, It's cannibal
[00:35:54] Will: but if it's your own
[00:35:55] Rod: still human meat. I'm not saying it's bad, like, don't get me wrong. If you are eating a piece of a human, I think it's cannibalistic. 'cause it's eating human. Is it bad? Fucking yeah. Eat your own home. I don't care. But I think it's still cannibalistic. So what about that? If I chopped off my finger and then ate it, am I a cannibal or is it okay 'cause it's my finger.
[00:36:14] Will: That's a weird thing to do.
[00:36:15] Rod: It really is. I'm not gonna do it now. I think, I mean, I'm committed to the show, but there is a limit.
[00:36:20] Will: I think that's it.
[00:36:22] Rod: But why is the placenta, because you've expelled it, chopped it up and eaten it okay. But if I cut off my finger and ate it, John Wick style, he didn't need it. Why is that worse or different?
[00:36:35] Will: You ponder that listener. I don't have the answer. If you've survived this long, ponder that.
[00:36:40] Rod: And if you haven't, go back and listen though. You dunno that now.
