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. |
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