Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine From the Renaissance to the Victorians
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What interests us here is not Morland’s subsequent assertion that ‘the Almighty God, and maker of heaven and earth, is able to recall every particle, dust or atom of a human body, in any of the aforesaid instances to its original and proper mass’ (although we may briefly note both that Morland had been an amateur scientist in earlier life, and was now expecting fairly imminent death).82 What matters is just how precisely, relentlessly familiarising this passage is. All the familiar detail works, of course, to Morland’s general aim – like a good scientist, he seeks the hardest level of falsifiability for his spiritual hypothesis. But from our point of view what stands out is not so much divine omnipotence, as the sad mutability of the most honoured dead. Someone raised in a culture of habitual embalming dies imagining that they will join their kin in a state of material suspension, with their soul protected accordingly. Fifteen hundred years later they are reduced to more fragments than an anatomy specimen. These pieces pass through the hands of hundreds of apothecaries and are presently defecated, flung into dung heaps and mingled with 10,000 other pieces of shit, being finally recycled into an ingredient for gunpowder, and thus blasted up into a sky which is yet very far from that imagined heaven of past millennia. Here the fence of professional mystification is not only vaulted but obliterated. Morland takes Browne’s bare four words of lament and rewrites them into a mini-essay upon the vagaries of the human corpse, pursuing its picaresque meanderings through a labyrinth of details and a myriad lowly orifices. Over eighty years after Webster’s Gasparo was vomited out by greedy followers, we find the effectual processing of Time undone with cruelly scientific skill. The end of all that natural alchemy is, again, the basest, most entropic state of human matter. Mummy has become, not just merchandise, but faeces. Where once Arnold of Villanova had promised to distil excrement into medicine, medicine has here been reprocessed into the raw filth and stench of the London muckheaps – food for flies, until carted away by the capital’s scavengers.
8
The Eighteenth Century
On the surface, the period from the mid-eighteenth century onwards shows some of the plainest shifts of attitude towards corpse medicines. Yet further probing in this era indicates that these hostile attitudes are far from being unanimous. In order to set them in context, I will look first at the impressive persistence of corpse medicine through this century, before turning to some suggestive uses of mummy in Georgian literature and drama. A third section examines overt and mainstream attacks on mummy, human skull, and skull-moss. Finally ‘The Great Whitewash’ relates those distinctively Enlightenment responses to some of the more misleading references found in twentieth-century medical history, showing how, for a long period, the history of corpse medicine remained either unwritten, or effectively rewritten.
The Persistence of Corpse Medicine in the Eighteenth Century
Smuggling William III (d.1702) over the centurial border, we find Leo Kanner noting that ‘a preparation of earthworms and human skull was prescribed as a remedy’ by the physician of this epileptic monarch sometime before the latter’s death.1 A little further down the social scale there was the art connoisseur Lord Leominster, who was not only sick, but dangerously close to death on 30 August 1711. Leominster rallied in following days, and on 13 September the Northamptonshire physician James Keill treated him with spirit of skull (here referred to as ‘Goddard’s drops’). Leominster survived some weeks longer, finally dying on 7 December that year.2 In 1712 one Henry Curzon advised that spirits of human skull or human blood be inhaled by those afflicted with ‘swoonings and faintings’, and in 1721 an English Pharmacopeia recommended ‘three drams’ of human skull in a recipe against epilepsy, and two ounces of mummy in a ‘plaster against ruptures’.3 Human skull is listed in a 1738 reprint of a late seventeenth-century work, and again (without comment) in an apparently standard catalogue of medicines published by the physician and theologian Robert Poole in 1741.4
Whether described as ‘Goddard’s drops’ or ‘the King’s drops’, spirit of skull was recommended fairly frequently for much of the century. In 1709 the recipe was associated with the eminent physician and surgeon Sir Edmund King. Although King himself died in this year, Londoners could still have King’s formulae ‘faithfully prepared by Nath. Rokeby, apothecary, at the Unicorn at Holborn Bride’, including ‘King’s Drops, famous against apoplectic fits, and all nervous complaints, being the medicine King Charles the Second received so much benefit from’. Come 1743 the ‘gentlemen and ladies’ of the capital were advised of a similar transfer: ‘the famous Imperial honey-water and King’s Drops, formerly prepared by Mrs Prothers’ could now be had at various London shops (none apparently druggists), the recipe having been left to a Mrs Malcolm.5
As late as 1792 the physician Benjamin Moseley continued to recommend powdered human skull against dysentery – ‘particularly if it be from the skull of one who has been hanged, or broken on the wheel, or any other way received a sudden death’.6 As Deborah Brunton notes, Moseley had a good practice among the London upper classes, and from the late 1780s was physician to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. Moreover, Moseley cites powdered skull on the authority of ‘the great Boyle’ – thus reminding us of the chemist’s continued influence well into the late eighteenth century.7 Eighteenth-century editions of Boyle’s own works were still recommending moss of the skull through to 1772.8
Indeed, usnea was being used around 1719 not just against wounds and nosebleeds, but against excessive menstrual flux.9 As we saw in chapter three, circa 1758 someone was even attempting to artificially cultivate this medical staple, for around this time ‘there are now laid, in a mossy corner, in the physic garden at Chelsea, pieces of human skulls, that the moss from the ground may creep over’ them. Although John Hill (the author who states this) openly attacks mummy, and appears to distance skull-moss from his own time with the words ‘it was believed that it had thence great virtue’ we might wonder, on one hand, if these skull fragments had been placed there recently, and – on the other – why no one had removed them if such a therapy was by then considered wholly illegitimate.10 Indeed, Hill elsewhere admits that skulls are sometimes ‘laid on purpose’ in places where common ground moss might grow over them.11 In 1771, John Cruso’s A Treasure of Easy Medicines was still advising that ‘moss of the human skull, held in the hands, or hung from the neck of infants, stops bleeding’.12 The historian Karen Gordon-Grube states, moreover, that English Pharmacopeias were recommending usnea until the nineteenth century.13
Mummy is prescribed in 1714 for rheumatism, and in 1733 for bruising and ruptures.14 Although the physician and surgeon Daniel Turner argues against giving it internally for syphilis come 1737, he clearly implies that the practice was common enough to need opposing – perhaps not surprisingly, given the desperation which that disease must have prompted in some sufferers.15 Turner’s objection, moreover, was presumably a particular, technical one, given that he did advise the use of mummy against bruising and congealed blood.16 Before his death in 1748, Noel Broxholme (or Bloxam) was topically applying a balsam of mummy, hog’s lard, olive oil and yellow wax to those suffering wounds and ulcers, pains, gout, or cramps – possibly to the patients he served as physician at St George’s hospital, among others.17 The Dispensatory of the Royal College of Physicians was still listing, under ‘man and woman’, ‘the blood, urine, fat, milk, skull and mummy’ in 1747, and in this same year human blood, drunk ‘“recent and hot”’ was being prescribed for epilepsy in England.18 Women suffering prolapse of the womb around 1760 could have sprinkled on the offending organ a powder containing mummy, frankincense, and pomegranate flowers.19
Occasionally, negative or ambiguous references to corpse medicine also give us hints as to its continuing popularity with some. Commenting on remedies for difficult labour in 1728, the physician Peter Shaw reluctantly admitted that ‘those who have credulous women to deal with, advise the wearing of a lodestone, eaglestone, the cranium humanum, or the like; and this sometimes to the
great consolation of the patient’. Where ‘such assistances are not highly prized’, he adds, ‘the following may be substituted to advantage’ – going on to cite myrrh and various other alternatives.20 Shaw clearly implies a new version of the older, occasionally glimpsed split between patients and practitioners. Where previously various clients had refused or been disturbed by corpse medicines, some patients are now clinging onto them, even as outright opposition rises amongst certain physicians.
In 1730 a course of lectures, apparently read to Cambridge medical students by the botanist and fellow of the Royal Society, Richard Bradley, noted that mummy was ‘brought to us from Egypt’, being ‘the flesh of bodies that have been embalmed’. Adding that ‘we have it every year brought over in large quantities, though at present it is not so much in use as it has been formerly’, Bradley registers no unease or opposition about the drug.21 He also tells us that as a commodity (genuine or otherwise) it was still profitable in the time of George II. He may further imply that medical interest is now outweighed by the financial motives of merchants, given that ‘large quantities’ are being shipped at a time of slackened usage.22 For all that, when the ‘man-midwife’ and surgeon William Rowley attacked the continuing business of counterfeit mummy in 1794, he necessarily suggested that there was still sufficient demand to make such fraud worthwhile.23
Just three years before that, indeed, the physician George Motherby had a surprising amount to say about legitimate versions of mummy. Motherby discriminated between Egyptian and sand mummies (or, as he termed the latter, ‘white mummies … of the consistence of horn, and light’); referred to ‘mumia medullae’ (the marrow of the bones); cited Paracelsus on mummy as balsam; and also described as ‘mumia’ that ‘water … which is collected in a phial from the breath of a man received therein after washing his mouth with water’. This last category strongly recalls the role played by soul and spirits for some adherents of corpse medicine, and Motherby cements that association by still subscribing, at this late stage, to the notion of the animate corpse: mumia is also, he writes, ‘a subtle, spirituous, ethereal substance, innate in every body, and remaining therein in some measure after death’.24
In France, Jean-Louis Petit, master surgeon and member of the Academy of Sciences, commended the volatile salts of human skull against infant tapeworms (stating that they could be given both to the child and its nurse); whilst Noel Chomel advised a decoction made from cucumber seeds, white poppies and mummy for ‘phthisicky persons and consumptives’.25 In Germany Matthias Gottfried Purmann cited mummy in a wound powder and a plaster for fractures, and the 1768 edition of Lorenz Heister’s popular work on surgery repeated the well-worn advice about its powers against internal bruising.26 (These references, it should be added, all derive from English translations, whose advice presumably found favour with some in the Georgian era.)
In 1795, in his play Poverty and Nobleness of Mind, August von Kotzebue introduced corpse medicine in a dialogue between a housekeeper and her daughter, Louisa. The latter, concerned about the wounded naval Lieutenant, von Cederstrùm, begs her mother, ‘O dear mother! go up and ask him how he does, and if he wants any thing?’ With her mother concerned about the impropriety of such contact, Louisa insists, ‘Why not? I know you have many fine receipts, balsams for wounds, and such like. Carry them to him’. The mother now relents, admitting: ‘it is very true, I have many very fine medicines, vegetables, and roots, to which our good God has given many virtues. I possess also among others, an arcanum: it is prepared from men’s skulls and Egyptian mummy’.27 This use of ‘arcanum’ seems to fall under the OED’s second definition, ‘one of the supposed great secrets of nature which the alchemists aimed at discovering; hence, a marvellous remedy, an elixir’. There is, then, probably something a little recondite about such a treatment. Yet, as the pious allusion to God- given virtues attests, this is a positive sense of strangeness. Louisa’s response – ‘make haste then’ – has no touch of surprise or horror; and, most importantly, she requires no explanation of the nature or value of these substances. In such a context it is evidently rare to possess such recipes, but by no means incomprehensible. Throughout this scene there is clearly more concern about potential ‘impropriety’ and scandal than there is about the possible associations of corpse medicine.
Recalling what was said in chapter one about the doubtful ethics of using mummy as fish bait, or to physic hawks, we find that in 1790 one Charles Bowlker was telling his readers that they ‘cannot set too high a value on’ a fish baiting ointment made from cat’s fat, heron’s fat, cumin seed, and mummy finely powdered (and this despite the fact that ‘fresh horse dung thrown into the water has the same effect’).28 In summer 1761 Londoners were much diverted with a member of the cat family which General Clive had brought back to the capital from India. This creature was exotic enough to lack a name, but sounds something like a lynx, and was sufficiently tame to let one Thomas Birch examine its teeth.29 Walter Charleton, writing on the keeping of these creatures in India, remarked that, when the beasts were sick from overeating ‘their keepers steep a piece of tender meat in human urine, and feed them with it, and being bruised or tired by over-hunting, they give them some mummy, wrapped up in their meat, and a warm place to rest in til they recover’.30 Such medicine would evidently have been available to this new London citizen had he or she required it.
Human Fat
In summer 1788 the London Morning Chronicle reported with some indignation on medical treatments recently used in the Vatican. For once, the Pope (then Pius VI) was not swallowing human blood. The patient was in fact his infant grand-nephew, and initial therapy involved ‘the image called Bambino (superstitiously imagined to have the power of curing all maladies by its presence)’. This was accordingly ‘brought in great processional pomp to the sick chamber’. The infant may have been a closet Protestant, as this holiest of pharmaceuticals had no effect upon him. Next, ‘upon the advice of some ignorant enthusiasts in quackery’, the Pope had, we learn, ‘ordered a piece of human fat, cut from the body of a deceased person, before the corpse was cold, to be given the sick child to suck’. While the infant (perhaps also an early vegetarian) was taking this cure, it sickened further and died. ‘Would any man imagine’ wondered the Chronicle’s reporter, ‘that such monstrous credulity and folly could exist in the eighteenth century?’31
If this hypothetical man had been a doctor, or someone suffering from sciatica, gout, rheumatism, rickets, or tumours, then he would not merely have responded ‘yes’ to this indignant question.32 Rather, he would have found it distinctly puzzling, if not incomprehensible. From beginning to end of the eighteenth century, human fat remained one of the most enduring corpse medicines in England, Germany and France. It was advocated by physicians, as well as in the kind of general medical works which probably formed a staple of any self-reliant household. Enlightenment chemists analysed it and experimented on it, quantifying its behaviour and its yields of different substances.
In the very same year in which this popish hocus-pocus was afoot, the popular Ladies’ Friend and Family Physical Library cited the general opinion ‘of most practitioners at present, that there is no possibility of dispersing a schirrous’ tumour, save by ‘cutting it out: but that I religiously deny!’. The author went on to describe various external applications, such as ‘Venice soap dissolved in milk, fresh cow’s dung boiled in milk, warm sea sand’, and human fat.33 Had he known it, this writer might also have appealed to Richard Guy’s 1759 work on tumours, which itself cited the influential surgeon Richard Wiseman (d.1676).34 Wiseman, Guy records, ‘imputes the cure of a lady, whose legs were swelled and become schirrous … chiefly to the parts being embrocated twice a day with clarified human fat’.35 Nor did ailments have to be that severe to warrant similar treatments. In 1780 Thomas Goulard wrote of a Lady who had suffered pains in the arm after being bled. These persisted for some time, finally clearing up twelve days after the application of a plaster made of wax, human fat, a lit
tle camphor and vegeto-mineral water.36
Human fat was also frequently cited as a specially potent agent against rabies. In this area, the opinion of the successful London physician Robert James is particularly interesting. In 1747 James attacked the use of both human skull and skull-moss.37 Yet James was still ready to publish the virtues of human fat for a number of purposes. In his Medicinal Dictionary of 1743 he noted its powers as a painkiller, an emollient, an anti-paralytic, and against gout and contracted nerves. As T.A.B. Corley points out, this book was a derivative work – a status confirmed by the way that James quotes verbatim from Pomet on human fat without acknowledging his predecessor.38 Even so, James was in that case prepared to associate his name with the medical benefits of human fat; whilst in two other works he more actively asserted its powers to combat rabies. It was also in 1743 that he published a book on rabies which described itself as having been ‘laid before the Royal Society in February 1741’. Here James has the grace to acknowledge the influence of a London surgeon, John Douglas, who brought to his attention the methods and writings of the French surgeon J.P. Desault. James goes on to quote Desault at length, including the remedy which the Frenchman had ‘“tried with constant success, and which I propose to prevent and cure the hydrophobia … the ointment made of one third part of mercury revived from cinnabar, one third part of human fat, and as much of hog’s lard”’.39