Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians
1 January 2012, Pages 1-374
University of Durham, United Kingdom
Abstract
Mummies, Cannibals
and Vampires charts in vivid detail the largely forgotten history of
European corpse medicine, when kings, ladies, gentlemen, priests and
scientists prescribed, swallowed or wore human blood, flesh, bone, fat,
brains and skin against epilepsy, bruising, wounds, sores, plague,
cancer, gout and depression.
One thing we are
rarely taught at school is this: James I refused corpse medicine;
Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into
corpse medicine. Ranging from the execution scaffolds of Germany and
Scandinavia, through the courts and laboratories of Italy, France and
Britain, to the battlefields of Holland and Ireland, and on to the
tribal man-eating of the Americas, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires
argues that the real cannibals were in fact the Europeans. Medicinal
cannibalism utilised the formidable weight of European science,
publishing, trade networks and educated theory. For many, it was also an
emphatically Christian phenomenon. And, whilst corpse medicine has
sometimes been presented as a medieval therapy, it was at its height
during the social and scientific revolutions of early-modern Britain. It
survived well into the eighteenth century, and amongst the poor it
lingered stubbornly on into the time of Queen Victoria. This innovative
book brings to life a little known and often disturbing part of human
history. © 2011 Richard Sugg.