by Richard Sugg
The continental picture which emerges here seems to be notably slanted toward Italy, Germany, France and Switzerland.92 In the first case, this may be in part because of the rise of anatomical dissections (in Italy the first recorded public dissection took place in Rome in 1512), which made corpse material a little more readily available for certain surgeons and physicians.93 As we will see, however, this factor should not be over-emphasised, given that executioners could and did sell any parts of a felon’s body to various practitioners or patients. In Switzerland, France and Germany the influence of Paracelsus was probably important.94 In Italy, there was evidently some demand for mummy from the early sixteenth century; da Carpi, for example, had seen the ‘“nearly intact bodies”’ of Ancient Egyptians in Venice some time before 1518.95
Elizabethan England
In terms of medical authority and published prescriptions, corpse medicines seem to have had a relatively marginal status in England until the seventeenth century. In his 1565 edition of Lanfranc, the surgeon John Hall noted, under ‘Mumia’, the mineral pitch of Serapion, along with ‘Mumia sepulchorum’ (‘that which the most of the Arabians do mention … [the] result of the embalming or spicery of dead bodies at their burials, as aloe, myrrha and balsamo, being coagulated and grown together (with the fat and moisture of the corpse) into a body’); and the sand mummy of the deserts. He was uncertain as to whether bodies could be preserved in this latter way, but stated quite explicitly that the mummy ‘which is now among our apothecaries extant’ was neither mineral pitch nor ‘mumia sepulchorum’, but rather ‘the very flesh of man’s body, as it were burned to a coal; for both whole arms and whole legs, have been here not rarely seen, being dried as black as a coal. Wherefore it must needs be thought, that either the merchants bring from thence whole buried bodies, or very parts of the same; or else that it becometh so, by that means that divers merchants make report of (if it be worthy credit)’. These reports are those of supposedly mummified sandstorm victims (which must mean that ‘buried bodies’ refers to those normally interred, whether embalmed or not). Having wondered if such a kind of mummification is possible, Hall presently shifts from speculation to certainty, concluding, ‘but certainly it is man’s flesh, either thus or otherwise dried into a coal’.96
The phrase ‘man’s flesh’ arguably tilts nearer to the question of cannibalism than (say) ‘dead bodies’ (which might be better suited to the transfigured flesh of ancient Egyptians). So too does Hall’s unambiguous assertion that the mummy used by London apothecaries at this time was that of the recent dead (‘the very flesh … ’). We will see in chapter three that his brief glance at alternative methods of mummification (‘either thus or otherwise dried … ’) leads in a direction very different from the revered necropoles of the pharaohs. What concerns us here is that Hall not only confirms the general use of recently dead mummies by apothecaries, but also very precisely supports this by reference to ‘whole arms and whole legs … not rarely seen’ in early Elizabethan London, ‘dried as black as a coal’. Those dealing in or handling Egyptian mummy for medicine were often quite exact about its correct texture and appearance, and it seems unlikely that a working surgeon such as Hall would have confused the limbs of ancient Egyptians with those of contemporary desert travellers.97
In 1562 the physician William Bullein published Bullein’s Bulwark of Defence Against all Sickness – a work which may have been composed as early as 1560.98 This deliberately popularising book recommended mummy as one of several ingredients in ‘Theriaca Galeni’. This Galenic treacle featured mummy, along with wild fennel, juice of black poppy, gentian, honey and wild yellow carrots, to treat ‘the falling sickness … and convulsions’, as well as headache, stomach pain, migraine, ‘spitting of blood’ and ‘yellow jaundice’.99 Elsewhere in this work we are told that mummy comes ‘from Arabia, and is made of dead bodies, of some of the noble people: because the said dead are richly embalmed with precious ointments and spices, chiefly myrrh, saffron, and aloes’. It ‘hath virtue to staunch blood, to incarnate wounds’, and, when ‘tempered with cassiafistula and drunk with plantain water, it is very good against bruises’.100 Human blood was also included in plasters against ruptures and dysentery.101
The brief words on the derivation of mummy suggest that the substance still needed explaining in England at this time. They show too that Bullein appeared to be comfortable with an agent which he explicitly described as coming ‘from dead bodies’; and that much of its virtue was attributed to the embalming materials and process (‘because the said dead…’). Bullein also quite precisely notes that, ‘to help the falling sickness’, mummy should be ‘beaten into powder and squirted … with mariarum water into the nostrils’.102 In Bullein, then, we find both some of the earliest English medical references to mummy and blood-medicines, and (tellingly) ‘some of the earliest printed references to Paracelsus … in English medical writing’. Given what we will hear later about blood medicines, it is also interesting to find Bullein noting, in a marginal aside, that the ‘blood of man is to be had at [the] barber’s or blood-letter’s’ – after which it must be ‘dried in the oven’.
In 1575 the queen’s surgeon John Banister describes a water of rhubarb and mummy drunk for ulcers of the breast, and a mummy plaster for a tumorous ulcer.103 Come Banister’s 1589 Antidotary Chyrurgical, these two references have flourished into numerous balms, plasters, drinks, powders and oils – chiefly aimed at wounds, fractures, ruptures and surgical haemorrhaging, but also for ulcers and inflammations.104 This change may have resulted partly from Banister’s friendship with fellow royal surgeon William Clowes, whose surgical textbook of 1588 cited mummy in recipes against the bleeding from amputation and against wounds.105 But chief credit is probably due to Banister himself. He has been noted, for example, for his efforts to promote a closer union between surgeons and the then more narrowly theoretical physicians.106 Hence in 1578 he published an important anatomical textbook, The History of Man, with Vesalian illustrations and text from the influential Italian anatomy professor Realdo Columbo. This in turn may have helped to coax (or shame) the physicians into establishing the new Lumleian anatomy lectures, founded in 1582.107
Banister’s interest in recent medical developments on the continent is a fairly accurate reflection of the profile of mummy in England up to 1600. At this stage continental influence was particularly important. A search for ‘mumia’, ‘mummia’, ‘mummy’ and ‘mummiae’ on the Early English Books Online database (inclusive of 1600) yields only those English authors already cited, with two additions.108 One – aptly enough – is the travel writer Richard Hakluyt, and the second is the poet and translator George Turberville.109 Other citations come from English translations of Duchesne, Ruscelli, Cornelius Shilander, Paracelsus, and the German surgeon Johann Jacob Wecker (translated by Banister).110 In addition to its early mentions of Paracelsus, Bullein’s work relies to some extent on Leonhard Fuchs and Gesner. He may also have studied for some time in Germany in the 1550s.111 Hall cites continental sources such as Brasavola and Matthiolus, and Banister’s 1589 work includes Paracelsian recipes and ingredients.112
As well as relying on continental authors at this time, English corpse medicine is also notable for being promoted by surgeons, rather than physicians. (Whilst Bullein is described as a physician by his biographer, Patrick Wallis, his educational background is obscure; he is not known to have gained an MD, and he was never a member of the Royal College of Physicians (although his ability to escape their censure is no small achievement).) As well as the influence of Hall, Banister and Clowes, we should also note that the 1576 translation of Gesner was partly the work of the London surgeon George Baker.113 Gustav Ungerer in the DNB notes that ‘Baker considered himself a Galenist who thought it opportune to warn against the harm done by empirics and Paracelsians, but he none the less kept an open mind about chemical medicine’. It was another surgeon, George Barrough, who in his highly popular medical work of 1583 recommended various powders
for epileptics, including one from ‘the skull of a man burned’.114 In Scotland, the influential surgeon Peter Lowe (b. c. 1550) broadly echoed (and surpassed) Banister’s efforts to unite surgery and élite physic, and spent perhaps thirty years of his early career in France. In 1597 Lowe notes ‘sanguis humanus ustus’ (human skull burned) amongst various ‘medicaments which stay the flux of blood’.115
At one level, this bias tells us something about the relatively open-minded qualities of surgeons as opposed to physicians. It is also possible that it tells us something particular about the nature of earlier English interest in corpse medicine. The surgeons were clearly less heavily burdened than their condescending medical ‘superiors’ by antiquated Galenic theories. Paracelsus himself was hardly short of theories, but was also in many ways an empiricist. And, by their very nature, surgeons were typically dealing with the most practically physical (as opposed to psychological or partly psychosomatic) class of medical problems. Some of these were not only very real, but highly urgent. We must therefore take seriously the possibility that at this early stage corpse medicines were used because they were seen or thought to work, and that this belief was held by some of the more carefully empirical practitioners of the day.
We should also bear in mind that surviving printed references to corpse medicine do not tell us much about the illicit, but immensely popular medical services offered by numerous unlicensed practitioners in Elizabethan England. Deborah E. Harkness has shown that Baker and Clowes in particular played an important role in mediating between these street mountebanks and the conservative physicians.116 In doing so she not only confirms the surgeons’ relative openness to Paracelsian treatments, but also makes it clear that itinerant healers were making ‘Paracelsian therapies … wildly popular among consumers’.117 We can reasonably assume that, if corpse or blood medicines were being offered by the opportunistic street medics of the day, medical consumers were open-minded about them. Given the greater likelihood of personal violence in this period, it would be surprising if cures for bruising and bleeding were not beginning to circulate amongst Londoners via oral as well as printed sources.118
One particularly successful street doctor was the German Valentine Russwurin. Russwurin – writes Harkness – treated William Cecil himself for gout, and was accordingly made a ‘denizen’ of the country by Elizabeth in winter 1574. By this point Russwurin was already famous among Londoners for ‘his treatment of eye complaints, bladder stones, and skin ailments’. We have seen that human fat was known as a medical agent in Germany from at least the 1520s, and from this time until the eighteenth century its chief use was in cases of rheumatism or gout. If Russwurin was able to obtain it, he may well have been using it on Cecil. Russwurin also stressed, when complaining of the habitually hostile behaviour of the physicians toward him, that he had been ‘esteemed by such highly regarded continental physicians as Pier Andrea Mattioli and Rembert Dodoens’. Lynn Thorndike notes that by 1561 Mattioli had distilled salt from two human skulls, and given Russwurin’s mastery of Paracelsian chemical theories, such practices might also have been of interest to him.119 Come August 1602 the unlicensed practitioner Francis Anthony was defying the strictures of the Royal College of Physicians, insisting that it ‘had no power to examine him’ and openly admitting that he had ‘made use of an extraordinary purging remedy, and was master of another for fevers made out of mummy, communicated to him by [the agricultural writer and inventor] Hugo Plat’.120 Another practitioner who was at once highly successful and not strictly orthodox was the astrologer Simon Forman. As Lauren Kassell points out, a casebook of 1607–10 lists various human ingredients, including ‘urine, hair, blood, menstrual blood, turds’ and semen.121
The apparently partial impact of corpse medicine at this earlier stage is broadly reinforced by the relatively small number of literary references to mummy before 1600. In 1594, the exuberantly witty Thomas Nashe stated that, while ‘mummy is somewhat obscure’ (presumably to the general public), it is ‘to physicians and their confectioners … as familiar as mumchance [a card game] amongst pages’.122 Nashe was answering critics who accused him of using, or coining, highly obscure words in his 1593 book, Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem. Overall, the charge is certainly true. Christ’s Tears – an extravagant and fantastical response to the supposedly heaven-sent plague of that year – is at times almost Joycean, or indeed hallucinatory, in its linguistic invention and excess. Among Nashe’s many coinages is the word ‘mummianized’. At one level, criticism of his term reflects the relative novelty of corpse medicine at this time. And Nashe’s exact word choice supports this impression. He uses ‘mummianized’ to mean ‘mummified’, thereby implying that the word is too novel to have acquired one generally accepted verb form. In 1593 the first version is as good a choice as the second.123
Nashe also implies a split between patients and practitioners. This – as chapter seven will show – persisted to some extent throughout the seventeenth century. Nashe himself may have gained his knowledge of mummy from the 1579 edition of Bullein, whose work he acknowledges as inspiration for the formal structure of Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596). It would also have been typical of Nashe to have seized on whatever was novel and startling, and the same can be said of Donne, whose poem ‘Love’s Alchemy’, featuring an unflattering comparison between women and mummy, probably predates 1600 (and will be considered at some length in a few moments). In around 1596 Shakespeare joins this élite handful, when he has Falstaff lamenting his ducking in the Thames, and observing what a momentous figure he would have cut as a drowned corpse: ‘the water swells a man; and what a thing should I have been, when I had been swell’d? I should have been a mountain of mummy’.124 This seems to be a modishly alliterative way of saying ‘mountain of flesh’. Modish or not, however, it does seem to assume that at least some (if not most) members of the audience in 1596 will know what Falstaff means. Some of them must surely have noted the implication of the phrase, which effectively glosses mummy as ‘flesh’, ancient or otherwise.
Hawk Medicines and Fish Bait
In the midst of this period there appears an interest in mummy which is at once non-cannibalistic, yet arguably more disturbing than routine human consumption. 1575 saw the appearance of George Turberville’s The Book of Falconry or Hawking. This work shows that the serious falconer should treat mummy rather as did Francis I: ‘he must always be assured to have mummy in powder in his bag in a readiness … for that it may so fall out, as his hawk may receive a bruise at the encounter of a fowl’.125 If mummy really was healing wounded hawks (and it was certainly thought to do so) then any opponents of corpse medicine who suggested its efficacy to be the result of psychological suggestion would be conveniently stumped.126 Whilst citing various bird medicines, Turberville also makes it clear that mummy was the primary treatment for injured hawks, singling it out as intimately associated with hawking in his opening poetical outline of the sport:
When hawks are hurt and bruised, by rash encounter in the skies,
What better skill, than for their harms a powder to devise,
To dry the blood within the bulk, and make his mummy so,
As no physician greater art, on patients can bestow?127
The book goes on to offer precise guidelines for monitoring a hawk’s physical condition. Of vital importance is inspection of the bird’s excrement (possibly because hawk’s urine was hard to find or collect). Attention to this substance rivals that of the most obsessive Parent to a sickly infant’s nappies: ‘if so it be black, and stinking … the more the hawk is in evil case and state’, and has probably been ‘foul fed, and with corrupt flesh’. There again, when ‘the casting happeneth to be yellowish black, and very moist and slimy, it argueth your hawk to be stuffed with evil humours, proceeding of too great heat, or of immoderate and overgreat flights, or too much baiting’. You should therefore restore good feeding, cool the bird by washing its meat in good fresh water, and ‘allow … her besides, one or two, or more
castings of cotton: into which you must convey very excellent good mummy beaten into powder’.128 This kind of advice is repeated with variations, dependent on the state of the excrement, and implied health problems.129
Whilst the tenant families of great estates often languished in squalor and hunger in damp cottages, the aristocrats of early modern Europe were rigorously scrutinising the excrement of their sporting pets, feeding them beef and veal, and dosing them with medicines or appetite stimulants, with the most vital active ingredient having been carefully matured for perhaps twenty centuries, before being shipped from Egypt to the pharmacies of Rome, Paris and London.130 In 1575, such habits may have been far more common in Italy and France than in England. Turberville’s title page openly advertises his book as ‘collected out of the best authors, as well Italians as Frenchmen, and some English practises’. This seems at once designed to sell the work to those keen to keep abreast of continental innovations, and to notably marginalise the status of ‘some English practises’.131 One mummy recipe is credited to the Marburg professor Jerome Cornarus (1500–558), and another to a ‘Messer Manoli … the falconer to the renowned Signor Bartholomew Alviano’. Another remedy seems (phrasing is ambiguous) to be attributed to a Master Amé Cassian.132
If we assume for the moment that such habits were, circa 1575, far more common in France or Italy, we can already note two interesting points. One is that these practices were fairly well established there (rather than being purely theoretical novelties); for, when advising that a bird with a suspect liver should be given ‘meat all powdered with mummy prepared’, the book adds, ‘if she will take it with her flesh, as divers hawks will do of themselves’. This last phrase shows that this medicine was widely used – sufficiently so that one could give a generalised picture of how birds would respond to it. Elsewhere, the reader is given a detailed guide to the preparation of hawk mummy, involving cloves, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and saffron. And he is told that he should ‘take mummy three ounces, or four, or so much as shall content you, beating it to powder, and putting it into a linen cloth’.133 Whether the recipe was mixed by a leisured aristocrat or his servant, it is clear that the mummy is supposed to be processed (i.e., powdered) on one’s estate. This implies a desire to be sure of getting authentic mummy, as well as a familiarity with the appearance of the genuine article.