Corpse Medicine

Medicine has come a very long way since the early days of bloodletting and leeches. Now everything feels so high tech, so clean and rational, but once upon a time human beings trusted a very different kind of cure. The kind of cure that doesn't come from a fancy laboratory or any big chain drugstore. Some of our ancestors opened wide and swallowed the stuff of nightmares.

Blood, bone, flesh, human flesh. Hey, ask your doctor if medical cannibalism is right for you. True. Weird. Stuff. If it feels like most of the commercials you see on television are for prescription drugs, you're right. In 2020 alone, Big Pharma spent nearly half a trillion dollars on TV commercials, pushing everything from medications for diabetes and cancer to psoriasis and erectile dysfunction.

That's a lot of money. It's so much money. It's a figure that represents 75% of all the money spent on television advertising. Thank God for Phil Swift and the Flex Seal family of products or we'd never get a break from all those pastel-hued drug spots with their fairy tales. Small town Main Street knitting stores and ice cream shops and blandly attractive people out and about living better lives through chemistry.

That said, when you realize how people used to treat afflictions and ailments and injuries and pain, you're just so thankful to be living in our ever so slightly more civilized age because medicine used to be a pretty grubby business. Some of those used to be made not from unpronounceable chemicals, but from people. People? Medicine made from human beings?

Wouldn't taking that be like cannibalism? Yep, for sure. That's what cannibalism is. It's the ingesting of human flesh. And when you hear the word cannibalism, your first thought probably isn't a prescription from your doctor. It's more like Jeffrey Dahmer. And no wonder. It may seem like the practice of cannibalism should be something relegated to very ancient history, but it's actually in the news quite a bit.

The man convicted of murder and cannibalism. Learning today he will... The disturbing story coming from Zanfara where the police have arrested a man who specializes in killing and eating human flesh. In one of the most horrific murders that we've ever reported, a couple in Kerala who allegedly mutilated and killed two women may have even eaten the flesh of their victims is what the police say.

A gruesome scene in Miami. This is a naked man. He was shot dead on Saturday by police because he was gnawing off another man's face. Four men suspected of cannibalism appeared briefly in the Escort Magistrates Court in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands today. One of them handed himself over to police on Friday claiming to be tired of eating human flesh.

As deputies took Harrop into custody, he stated, help me, I ate something bad. When the investigator asked what he ate, Harrop replied, human. Tonight we are getting to see the face of the North Idaho man charged with murder and cannibalism. Kenua pleaded guilty admitting he attacked Cotier with an axe while the victim was sleeping, dismembered the body, and ate Cotier's heart.

People, people eating people are the luckiest people in the world. I don't know about the luckiest, but once upon a time, people eating people sure thought they were the healthiest. Medical cannibalism. Two words that seem like very unlikely neighbors. How in the world did human beings and all our half-baked, death-fearing, primitive superstition put our faith in the awesome curative powers of eating each other?

It goes back, as so many human things do, to our utter fascination and near worship of the ancient Egyptians. Seriously, those ancient astronaut theorists on the History Channel endlessly banging on about spaceships and pyramids and gateways to the stars, they're just the latest version of modern people crushing on the pharaohs.

Humanity's obsession with ancient Egypt has been documented for centuries. And why not? Humans, as we know and understand our species, have been roaming Earth for only a couple hundred thousand years. Our ancestors left their mark in lots of ways, like cave paintings, stone circles, aqueducts, metal coins, shields and swords.

Lots of cool stuff. Then you get to Egypt and you're like, Oh, oh my. The pyramids? The Sphanx? These folks were following a whole different set of plans. So before you go, Aha! The crazy-haired dude on the History Channel is right. It was the aliens giving advanced knowledge and construction help and also possibly gene editing to the ancient Egyptians, thus creating modern humanity.

Maybe, sure. But you should know that on the other side of the world, in Peru, humans were also building pyramids and creating vast and complex city-states. Radiocarbon dating at the site of Pyramid Mejor in Coral, Peru, revealed its age to be between 4,000 and 5,000 years old, making it at least as old and possibly older than the very oldest pyramid in Egypt.

Ancient astronaut Verus speculated the aliens were helping them too, which is not a debate we're going to have today. I'm just pointing out that the Egyptians had some company on Team Pyramid. But your medieval Europeans? They knew little to nothing yet about the many wonders and peoples of the New World and instead relied upon their own historic holy trinity of ancients, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome.

And the ancient Egyptians had left a little something-something for the humans of the future to discover and be dazzled by, the mysteriously preserved bodies of their long dead. Wrapped in ribbons, sometimes sealed in elaborate jeweled containers, each and every one representing the utter defiance of death's promise of eternal erasure.

This was not ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This was clearly some sort of holy magic. Humans seemed to come with built-in awe and reverence and fear, and fascination with death. And that fascination laid the foundation for people to view Egyptian mummies as not just interesting artifacts, but as medicine. Not that your ancestors took one look at a wizened old corpse draped in filthy rags and thought, I'll bet a bite of that will fix this headache right up.

It was more complicated than that, and actually might all come down to a doctor in 10th century Persia who had a talent for naming remedies and the totally wild misunderstanding that followed. Do you know what bitumen is? In our modern world, it's basically asphalt, roads, roof shingles, that sort of thing. Bitumen is a petroleum product, something that we can manufacture, but it can also be a naturally occurring substance resulting from the decomposition of plants.

There's archaeological evidence dating back more than 40,000 years of humans using bitumen for tools and construction. Bitumen even gets a mention in the Bible as having been used to build the Tower of Babel. It was a prized substance back in the day. And the Middle East, looking at you ancient Egypt, was rich in natural bitumen.

It was valuable stuff and super useful. You could heat it up until it was gooey, wrap it around a broken bone, and since it hardened as it dried, boom, you had a cast. It could be smeared onto a burn or a rash or a wound. It could be powdered and packed like a poultice, diluted into a treatment for toothache or cataracts.

The ancient Romans enjoyed mixing it with wine as a treatment for diarrhea. And I guess a goblet of diluted asphalt probably was effective for that if you think about it. The ancient Greeks not only prescribed bitumen for a myriad of illnesses, but insisted on getting all bougie about sourcing it. Nothing but the best dead sea bitumen would do for the toga crowd.

And if you're rolling your eyes, let me remind you that many people struggling with failing memory are treating themselves right now with Prevagen, which is made of jellyfish. And I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to explain the science behind that. So, bitumen is lauded throughout the ancient world as a powerful medicine with many, many uses.

A physician called Rhazes in 10th century Persia, he's the one with the talent for naming things, was struck by how sticky natural bitumen was, how very like wax it seemed. He dubbed it mummia, the word mum meaning wax. Within a hundred years, mummia came to mean medicinal bitumen. Because you know how people are, the names of things are important.

Like no matter how challenging those menopause symptoms are, you might decline drinking a shot of urine from a pregnant horse as a treatment. But a prescription for Premarin? Yeah, what's the copay and how quick can you fill it? Yet the drug Premarin is derived from the urine of pregnant mares. Do you see how important branding is?

It matters today and it mattered a thousand years ago. Can you tell where this is going? Mummia, the substance, is how we got the word mummy. Black, waxy bitumen was already an established remedy in ye old Europe going back to the ancients. So when Europeans looked at the preserved cadavers being pulled from the tombs of the pharaohs, all wrapped in rags and coated in a dark waxy substance, they assumed that substance was something they knew, bitumen.

And since they believed bitumen to be good medicine, it only made sense then to scrape the precious substance off the corpses and eat it. Tell that to your kids the next time they refuse a spoonful of Dimetap just because it tastes bad. I'm pretty sure that the first person to call those mysterious rag-bound cadaver relics mummies was an English writer named Richard Hakluyt.

It was not cleverness on his part so much as it was a fit of irritation at the medical establishment of the time. Like that one uncle we all have who just gets crazy sideways at the mention of certain vaccines, Sir Richard here apparently spent a good part of the year 1599 ranting to anyone who would listen about how physicians and pharmacists were forcing people to take mummia against their wishes in some cases.

He was like, they force us to swallow the dead bodies of the mummy. Catchy, right? We caught on and in a blink, the word mummia for the substance became the word mummy for the embalmed cadavers of ancient Egypt. Max, haven't you always wondered why we called them that? I never knew. Right? Right. Yeah, isn't this amazing?

We called them that because we were scraping them and eating them. Anywho, back we go. If you think that rich people get all the best health care today, let me assure you that that is how rich people have always rolled. While bitumen was considered good medicine for everyone, the haves, your royalty, the nobility, the wealthy, of course they wanted the best possible version for themselves.

That's how we got mummia vera or true mummia. Sure, it was perfectly fine for peasants to treat their afflictions with bitumen scraped from the ground, but only the liquid extracted from the preserved corpses of Egyptian aristocrats could ever be good enough for the king. Like King Francis I of France. His Majesty never left the castle without a bottle of true mummia on hand.

His preferred blend added rhubarb to the viscous corpse juice. Who can say why? Flavor, maybe? What poor King Francis I probably didn't know is that rhubarb isn't the safest stock growing in the garden. Eating it, especially over the long haul, can cause all sorts of mayhem. Watery diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, muscle weakness.

For all we know, the poor man was drinking rhubarb spiked mummy juice in a desperate effort to treat the symptoms caused by drinking rhubarb spiked mummy juice. And now, thanks to the high demand for that mummy juice, we have a new problem. If the best mummia comes from Egyptian mummies, we're going to need a lot of, say it with me, Egyptian mummies.

Cue the grave robbers and the frauds. Here's a fun thing to know. The tombs of the pharaohs were plundered from the very start and often by some of the very people who'd helped lay the deceased rulers to rest. Who better to know where all the treasure was piled up than the scribe who'd made the list in the first place?

Even priests in ancient Egypt got in on the act, and descendants of an entombed pharaoh felt perfectly entitled to help themselves to what they considered their inheritance. And help themselves they did. Heck, they even emptied out the occasional sarcophagus and reused it. Very thrifty of them, don't you know? So, if robbing a tomb was nothing new, eating and drinking the human remains stored in that tomb?

Well, that was a plot twist. It's horrifying now to imagine how many mummies were ground into medicinal powders, or steeped in wine or vinegar to make an elixir of mummia. Horrifying because, um, y'all are eating a person. And also, y'all are eating a priceless historic artifact. All of that and the gout still hanging on?

What a waste. Not surprisingly, the supply of Egyptian mummies was no match for the demand of European apothecaries. When demand outpaces supply, it creates an opening for a black market. And that's exactly what happened here. Loads of local entrepreneurs stepped into the gap, robbing the graves of paupers and criminals to create ersatz mummies that were neither ancient nor Egyptian.

They were just... easier to get hold of. And people bought it. And then they swallowed it. Because that's what people do, then and now. Of course, let's be real. Not everyone was choking down powdered human remains or drinking whatever foul tonic might be produced by steeping ancient embalmed flesh in vinegar. There were plenty of people who thought that vintage Egyptian corpses didn't offer much in the way of healing properties.

They were like, Ew! Ew! No! Don't get all crazy on me, though, and start giving them credit for having some sense. Lots of those folks rejected mummy meds because they wanted fresher human specimens. Which is why, if you had the means, you could pop into your local apothecary and put in an order for a flagon of fresh human blood.

If that sounds like the stuff of vampire legend, what can I tell you? It's true. Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries, when medical cannibalism peaked, believed that human blood was the very essence of vitality. Like the Italian scholar, Marsilio Ficino, who firmly advised 15th century senior citizens to lay hands on the blood of the nearest healthy and cheerful teenager as a sort of gruesome anti-aging potion.

Heck, he went so far as to suggest that the elderly suck that teenage blood directly from the arm of the kid. What?! Yes. Yikes! Corpse medicine. That's what they called it. And maybe it's just as well that the preference for fresher bodies became a thing, because God knows they were running low on authentic Egyptian mummies.

It's a wonder we have any left at all, honestly. And it wasn't just bodies these grim apothecaries were after. It was often bodies that had died in very specific ways. The belief at the time held that human blood, that ultimate source of healing and vitality, became supercharged when death was violent and harrowing. But what was a sickly peasant to do if they couldn't afford to pay top dollar at an apothecary for fresh human blood?

Luckily, folks had another, cheaper option. They could attend a public execution. Those were generally festive occasions and fun for the whole family. Catch the executioner in a good mood and you just might persuade him to fill your outstretched cup with the blood of the newly deceased condemned. And hey, try to get you a bone or two while you're there, since those could be dried and ground and were super handy for everything from headaches to hallucination.

This fixation on harvesting the remains from a violent death goes a long way to explain the most curious ingredient and remedy for epileptic seizures that was published in the year 1643. You had to obtain the skulls of three men, dead by violent means, whose bodies had not yet been buried. The unburied part is interesting because, listen, fishing a long-buried skull out of the earth back then was considered a double jackpot.

One, you had the skull, which could be powdered and sold. And two, you had the lichen that was growing on that skull, which was highly prized to treat all sorts of maladies. Skull moss. Yes! If you could get your hands on the lichen-encrusted skull of a dead criminal, that was cash money! That particular kind of lichen is called asnea.

And before you get all uppity about, like, rampant ignorance in the Dark Ages, you should know that skull moss was still being prescribed after the American Revolution. Now, here's the good news. Asnea truly is a really powerful natural healing agent. Here's more good news. It doesn't just grow on human skulls. You can often find it on trees that are dying, and it's been used by indigenous people for eons.

Our medieval medical cannibals were dead right about skull moss being good medicine. They were just confused about the role the skull played. They could have achieved the same outcome just scraping some asnea off a log and sparing themselves the horrors of robbing graves. Oh, well. And here's a fun fact for you. You might find asnea right now in your own bathroom.

It's often used today in cosmetics or deodorant. So if you see it listed on a perfume bottle, it's cool. They probably didn't scrape it off a human skull. Of course, can't promise that for sure. But, you know, probably not. Hopefully not. Human bones, skulls, blood, even human fat was a valuable kind of medicine. Rashes, burns, and wounds might be treated by rubbing them with fat or binding them with human fat-soaked bandages.

Another common use for human fat was toothache. You just make a little paste of corpse fat and herbs and pack it around the inflamed tooth and gum. If that doesn't get you to floss, nothing will. While we're on the subject of human fat, was that ever a good side hustle for an executioner? They literally harvested fat from the executed dead and sold it by the pound to apothecaries and doctors.

Executioners didn't have the human fat market cornered. They just had access to a super convenient supply. The Dutch military was also known to harvest the fat from fallen soldiers, though in that case, battlefield soldiers were using the fat from the fallen to try to save the lives of the wounded. Were as hell as the saying goes, and I bet it was extra hellish for the Dutch on that occasion, which is known as the Siege of Ostend in 1601.

Now I know you're like, oh my god, this is so gross. So gross. But people then didn't know better. There were no x-rays, no MRIs, no antibiotics, no Tylenol, no Neosporin, no Band-Aids. The sick suffered. The injured suffered. People died from the kinds of things that we have the luxury of treating as minor issues now.

And the use of corpse medicine persisted for centuries because it seemed to be effective, at least some of the time. Think about it. Packing powdered bone into a wound often did stop the bleeding. A goblet of wine laced with mummia often did soothe the nerves. A big old slug of alcohol can do that, with or without mummy juice included.

And we already know that asnea is a natural remedy, whether it's grown on a human skull or not. If something works, you keep doing it. Maybe you're fooling yourself. Maybe you're just hopeful. And maybe you get lucky, and there's something in that corpse medicine you just swallowed that turns out to be medicinal. Now for one of the biggest shockers.

Remember when I told you earlier that medical cannibalism peaked in the 15th and 16th centuries? That was true. But I said peaked. That's not at all the same thing as ended. Because it didn't end back then, as you may have hoped. Not in the 1700s, and not in the 1800s either, although the craze for it was definitely on the wane.

In fact, human fat was still being used in Germany in the 1900s to treat infected wounds and to help minimize surgical scars. You could buy powdered Egyptian mummy there too. And before you breathe a sigh of relief, because no one you know was even alive back then, so there's no chance that your people were eating each other, you might want to ask your parents and grandparents about their beauty routines.

That's because you could buy night creams and wrinkle potions made from the fat of human placentas right here in the U.S. right through the 1960s. And speaking of placenta, that wondrous and temporary organ that provides nutrients and oxygen to a growing baby in utero, many women today preserve their placenta after childbirth and then eat it.

Why? It's thought to help with postpartum bleeding and depression and to even boost the supply of breast milk. The Mayo Clinic, though, is like, gosh, we sure wish y'all wouldn't do that, though, because A, there's no evidence of any real benefit to eating your placenta, and B, since part of its job is to filter waste products via the umbilical cord, chances are pretty good that the placenta might contain viruses or infectious bacteria.

Even cooking it or pureeing it into a smoothie or dehydrating it and turning the powder into a capsule might not be enough to kill any lurking nastiness. Thank you, Mayo Clinic, but it's still a thing today. I know a handful of women who've done it. I didn't, but not because I'm too fancy for a little medical cannibalism.

I was just too busy puking all over myself during a catastrophic emergency C-section to even think about enjoying my own placenta afterward with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. And there you go. Medical cannibalism is something we've never fully left behind. Sure, we no longer make elixirs from mummies or powders from human bones.

We smear cortisone cream on rashes instead of the fat of dead criminals. We're very into drinking apple cider vinegar and kombucha, but not so much the freshly drained blood of our neighbors. And when a headache hits hard, we reach for Excedrin, not a lichen-covered human skull. Still, Big Pharma is ever on the lookout for the next big thing in medicine.

And when it comes to tapping a market and raking in the profits, you can count on the pharmaceutical industry to get there first no matter what. Today, they're grinding up powdered jellyfish and selling it to us as a memory booster. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe they start grinding up grandma. And if that happens, it'll probably sound something like this.

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Our ancestors didn't rely on chemicals they couldn't even pronounce. They trusted medical cannibalism, and you can too. With Fleshios, your body benefits from the highest quality blood, bones, organs, and skin from real human bodies. Bodies like yours, only better. Fleshios has given me back my energy and vitality. Best of all, it's delicious.

Fleshios, made from humans for humans. Come on, kids, you're not going to beat me at this race, are you? Talk to your doctor about Fleshios. Do not take Fleshios if you're allergic to Fleshios or any of its ingredients. Side effects may include aggression, restlessness, prolonged gagging, projectile vomiting, and diarrhea.

Some people have changed in mood and appetite, along with excessive production of saliva, especially when exposed to the sight of bare human flesh and particularly chunky babies. If you develop a strong preference for gnawing on human bones and nibbling on your neighbors, stop taking Fleshios immediately and contact your health care provider.

Some people taking Fleshios have broken into blood banks and have menaced toddlers with phrases like, I could eat you right up. And look at those delicious little cheeks. Until you know how Fleshios will affect you, use caution in crowded places. And always carry a granola bar in your pocket or bag to prevent you from accidentally snacking on a co-worker or family member.

Fleshios, say I can to medical cannibalism. Ask your doctor about Fleshios and give your body what it craves. Next time on True Weird Stuff, Prohibition was wild, wasn't it? It actually happened. We tried to outlaw booze, and even wilder are the people we send in to enforce it, including one bad, bad girl whose name you've never heard.

They called her the Lady Hooch Hunter, and she's what we're going to do on the next True Weird Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, hit the plus button in the top right corner, and now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate, and review True Weird Stuff.

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