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When discussing the era from 1492 to 1800 in Europe, common highlights include Columbus’ exploration of the Americas, the Protestant Reformation, Shakespeare’s literary contributions, Charles II’s reign, the Scientific Revolution led by figures like Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, and the times of Dr. Johnson and King George III. However, what often goes unnoticed is that during this same period, Europeans, while condemning alleged cannibals in the Americas, were consuming nearly every part of the human body for medicinal purposes.
10. Delicious Mummies Used in Medicine
During the Middle Ages, ancient Egyptian mummies became a source of medicinal ingredients. For instance, in 1424, authorities in Cairo uncovered individuals who, under torture, admitted to exhuming bodies, boiling them, and collecting the resulting oil, which was sold to Europeans for 25 gold pieces per hundredweight. These individuals were subsequently imprisoned.
By Shakespeare’s time in the 1580s, an Elizabethan traveler recounted seeing ‘the intact bodies of ancient men’ regularly excavated from a Cairo pyramid. Additionally, John Sanderson, a British merchant apprentice, secretly acquired a shipment of mummies weighing over six hundred pounds.
By the late 17th century, smuggling mummies into Europe for medicinal purposes became increasingly difficult. To meet European demand, Egyptian merchants began creating ‘counterfeit mummy’ by baking the flesh of deceased lepers, beggars, or camels. Eventually, the trade extended to plundering ‘Guanche mummies’ from the Canary Islands.
The Guanche people, believed to have migrated from North Africa, were consumed by Europeans, who also ingested ancient Egyptians—founders of one of the world’s greatest civilizations. This raises the question: were the Europeans the true savages?
9. Consume the Red Elixir
To create this concoction, one needed ‘the corpse of a reddish-haired man, around twenty-four years old, free of blemishes, who died a violent death (not from illness), and was exposed to moonlight for a full day and night under clear skies.’ The process involved ‘cutting the muscular flesh, sprinkling it with myrrh powder and a touch of aloe, tenderizing it through soaking, and then drying the pieces in a dry, shaded area.’ From this meticulously prepared flesh, ‘a vibrant red tincture’ could be extracted.
This recipe gained popularity among followers of Paracelsus (d.1541), a controversial medical reformer. Many of his adherents held significant influence, including Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573-1655), often called ‘Europe’s physician.’ Over his lengthy career, he treated notable figures such as Henri IV, Robert Cecil, James I, John Donne, Charles I, Charles II, and Oliver Cromwell.
8. The Vampire Pope and the Aristocratic Blood Drinkers
In July 1492, Pope Innocent VIII was on his deathbed. One of the more shocking remedies attempted involved bribing three healthy young men with a ducat each. These youths were cut and bled to death, and the pope consumed their fresh, warm blood in a desperate bid to restore his vitality. Unfortunately, the attempt failed, and Innocent VIII passed away shortly after on July 25.
This account comes from Stefano Infessura, a lawyer and vocal critic of Innocent VIII. While Infessura’s reliability is debated, evidence suggests that the pope’s ‘vampire cure’ was an extreme version of a therapy endorsed by others. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), a highly respected Renaissance figure, also believed that the elderly could rejuvenate themselves by ‘sucking the blood of a healthy, cheerful, and temperate adolescent’ with excellent blood.
In 1777, Thomas Mortimer noted that ‘toward the end of the 15th century, a misguided belief emerged that the elderly could regain strength by transfusing young people’s blood.’ He added that some even drank warm blood directly, a practice later banned in France after several nobles ‘went mad’ from the procedure.
7. Royal Cannibals
Here’s a historical tidbit your school likely skipped: James I rejected corpse medicine, Charles II crafted his own, and Charles I became corpse medicine. James’ refusal was unusual, especially given his notorious lack of hygiene—he avoided bathing and changing clothes, even urinating in the saddle during hunts to avoid dismounting.
As for Charles I, after his 1649 execution, spectators soaked up his blood with handkerchiefs. An eyewitness, John Weesop, captured this scene in a painting. Interestingly, some handkerchiefs belonged to Parliamentarians, who still believed the king’s blood could cure ‘the king’s evil.’
Charles II was the most prominent figure in the grim practice of corpse medicine. He reportedly spent £6,000 on the recipe for ‘spirit of skull,’ created by chemist Robert Goddard in the 1650s. Known as ‘the King’s Drops,’ this remedy became highly sought after by the elite. Lady Anne Dormer consumed it with chocolate to combat depression, and it was administered to Queen Mary on her deathbed in 1694. Charles himself used it as his first remedy days before his death in February 1685.
Decades earlier in France, Emperor Francis I (d.1547) ‘always carried mummy in his purse, confident it would protect him from harm.’ In Britain, William III was treated with powdered skull for his epilepsy.
6. Aristocratic and Gentry Cannibals
Robert Boyle, the aristocrat hailed as the Father of Chemistry, distilled human blood into medicinal treatments during this era. He occasionally administered these remedies to noble or genteel patients under a pseudonym to avoid their discomfort about consuming blood. Boyle once reported a nearly miraculous recovery from one such treatment.
While some nobles unknowingly became vampires, others openly embraced cannibalistic practices. A 1653 epilepsy remedy included ‘a pennyweight of gold powder, six pennyweights each of pearl, amber, and coral, and eight grains of bezoar,’ with the addition of ‘powder from a dead man’s skull.’ This recipe came from Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent. Historian Elaine Leong reveals that many noblewomen and gentlewomen of the time crafted their own cannibal medicines using mummy, skull, blood, or fat. Tenants of these women likely lacked the courage to refuse such macabre offerings.
5. The Hidden Legacy of Human Skulls
In the era of Charles II, stumbling upon a human skull would likely evoke joy rather than fear. Skulls were highly valued medical commodities, with a single skull fetching up to eleven shillings—a fortune compared to an unskilled laborer’s daily wage of ten pence. Skull shavings or powder treated epilepsy and hemorrhoids, while the King’s Drops were hailed as a cure-all, from depression to last-ditch efforts on deathbeds.
The most sought-after skulls were those with moss, as depicted on the cover of *Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires*. This moss, when powdered, was used to stop bleeding, whether applied to wounds or inhaled to halt nosebleeds. Robert Boyle himself attested to its efficacy, claiming it stopped a severe nosebleed simply by holding it in his hand.
Boyle’s family hailed from Ireland, as did the moss he used. After the atrocities committed by English invaders, countless skeletons and skulls were left unburied in Irish fields, sometimes for decades, allowing moss to grow on them. By 1750, during Dr. Johnson’s time, these moss-covered skulls could be found in London’s chemists’ shops. Even in the 1770s, under Mad King George III’s reign, import and export duties were still levied on skulls transported from Ireland to Germany.
4. The Hidden Tale of Human Fat
In October 1601, during the longest siege in history in the Dutch city of Ostend, the Dutch ambushed and killed a group of Spanish besiegers. After looting the bodies for valuables and weapons, some Dutch soldiers were seen hauling sacks filled with human fat, hastily harvested by surgeons from the fresh corpses.
Human fat was a prized remedy for wounds and sores, often sourced from executioners. In France, Italy, and northern Europe, executioners either sold the fat to apothecaries or used it themselves to treat ailments. Executioners were surprisingly skilled healers during this period, with one in Germany reportedly saving a limb destined for amputation, likely using bandages soaked in human fat. In Britain, even as other forms of corpse medicine faced criticism, fat remained in use for treating rabies, gout, cancer, and arthritis.
The value of human fat is illustrated by an incident in Norfolk in 1736. After a heated argument, a man hanged himself. Declared a suicide, he was to be buried at a crossroads. Instead, his wife sold his body to a surgeon for half a guinea. As the surgeon examined the corpse, the wife assured him, ‘he’s perfect for your needs—he’s as fat as butter.’
3. The Decline of Corpse Medicine: When and Why?
Around 1750, the educated elite began rejecting corpse medicine. Dr. Johnson and his influential Dictionary played a pivotal role in this change, as Johnson mocked the ‘horrid medicines’ of a superstitious past. He and others championed a new culture of Reason, distancing themselves from outdated beliefs. The concept of the soul residing in the body also faded, making the idea of consuming human remains for medicine less appealing. As the medical profession sought to improve its public image, corpse medicine became harder to market to refined patients, who were now more easily repulsed than their Restoration-era counterparts.
However, corpse medicine persisted among the general populace for over a century. Alongside tales of continental vampires, there are accounts of Britons acquiring skulls to treat their children during the Victorian era. In Scotland, epileptics were advised to drink from a suicide’s skull as late as 1900.
A truth no less bizarre for being real.
2. The Hidden Story of the Soul
Many forms of corpse medicine were rooted in a remarkable belief: that consuming blood or distillations of skull or flesh allowed one to absorb the powers of the human soul. In this way, Europe’s sanitized cannibalism was deeply Christian. Those who drank fresh blood at executions seemed most likely to gain such power, as the condemned were often still alive when consumed. Epilepsy, considered a disease of the soul, created a unique connection between the ailment and its cure.
In other instances, the bodies of criminals used by apothecaries might have hung on gallows for days. Paracelsus, a medical reformer and advocate of such practices, claimed these corpses remained useful for up to three days. This belief stemmed from a widespread notion in northern Europe that the soul’s power lingered in the body after legal death. The soul was thought to reside in the blood and in fine, hot spirits permeating flesh and bone. Since the soul and spirits were seen as physical forces, a young, red-haired man who died violently was considered the richest source of vitality and the ideal type of flesh and blood.
1. Medical Vampires at Public Executions
During his travels in Vienna in the winter of 1668-9, English explorer Edward Browne witnessed a public execution where a man was beheaded while seated in a chair. ‘As soon as his head hit the ground, a man rushed forward with a pot, filled it with blood still spurting from the neck, drank it, and fled.’ Browne noted this was done ‘as a cure for the falling-sickness.’
By then, countless individuals suffering from ‘the falling-sickness’ (epilepsy) had consumed fresh blood at executions across Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia. This practice continued until at least 1866, with thousands more partaking in the ritual.
In 1823 Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen observed ‘a pitiful individual forced by his superstitious parents to drink a cup of blood from an executed person, hoping to cure his epilepsy.’ In Sweden, authorities banned blood-drinking at executions. During a beheading in 1866, soldiers were deployed to stop the crowd from collecting blood, allowing it to seep into the ground. Once the guards departed, people rushed forward, kneeling to scoop the blood-soaked soil into their mouths.
