A little more than two hundred years ago - until the end of the 18th century - European physicians used human meat and preparations made from corpses with might and main. The latest issue of the German weekly Der Spiegel introduces such a dark page in the history of the Western enlightened society
Here is just one of the recipes of the German pharmacologist Johann Schroeder. It is not clear why, but in the 17th century he prescribed: "Human meat should be cut into small pieces, add a little myrrh and aloe, soak for several days in wine alcohol, and then dry in a dry room."
According to the medical historian Richard Sugg from the University of Durham (Great Britain), in the 16th-18th centuries European doctors used such "medicines" as often as herbs, roots and bark.
“Parts of the corpse and blood were the essentials that were available in every pharmacy,” says the scientist. - The most diligent cannibals were not the inhabitants of the New World, but the Europeans.
Healing cannibalism is a long tradition. Even the ancient Romans used the blood of gladiators as a remedy for epilepsy. During the Renaissance, the infirm were actively using powder from Egyptian mummies. In ground form, they - mummies - were considered almost the "elixir of life."
Specifically, the skulls served to stop bleeding. Fat - allegedly helped with rheumatism and arthritis. And if a person did not die a natural death, it was believed that, having tasted his flesh, one could get for oneself what he did not live to see.
In Europe, three centuries ago, the remains of executed criminals and the corpses of beggars were used for medicines. And even lepers. The most famous promoter of such treatment was the famous Paracelsus.
By the way, today in Tibet they drink tea with milk, adding the fat of a deceased relative to the mug. But they are not treated. And as a sign of respect. Such is the custom in Nepal. When Pope Innocent VIII was dying in 1492, his doctors pumped out the blood of three boys and gave him to drink, Richard Sugg tells the magazine. According to him, the boys died. Daddy too. This is cannibalism, the scientist does not doubt.
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Healing cannibalism left the medical practice of Europe only at the end of the 18th century. But one of the last recipes, which was left by the British preacher John Keof, who died in 1754, has survived. For dizziness, he recommended a pounded human heart "a pinch in the morning on an empty stomach."