More Yum!

Hey, it's the Stupor Bowl! Time for some special treats! What's better than some nice maggot cheese?

How about a little "blood marmalade"? Yum! It'll cure what ails you:

The Healing Power of Death

Were Europeans once cannibals? Research shows that up until the end of the 18th century, medicine routinely included stomach-churning ingredients like human flesh and blood.

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In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, recipes for remedies like this, which provided instructions on how to process human bodies, were almost as common as the use of herbs, roots and bark. Medical historian Richard Sugg of Britain's Durham University, who is currently writing a book on the subject says that cadaver parts and blood were standard fare, available in every pharmacy. He even describes supply bottlenecks from the glory days of "medicinal cannibalism." Sugg is convinced that avid cannibalism was not only found within the New World, but also in Europe.

In fact, there are countless sources that describe the morbid practices of early European healers. The Romans drank the blood of gladiators as a remedy against epilepsy. But it was not until the Renaissance that the use of cadaver parts in medicine became more commonplace. At first, powders made from shredded Egyptian mummies were sold as an "elixir of life," says Sugg. In the early 17th century, healers turned their attention to the mortal remains of people who had been executed or even the corpses of beggars and lepers.

Welcome to the Enlightenment!

*sigh*

OK, why this walk into the grotesque? Because it is good for us to see exactly what magical thinking can lead to. See, the idea was that by consuming these bits and pieces of other humans, you could gain some of their "vital essence". One more excerpt from the article:

Sugg even attributes religious significance to human flesh. For some Protestants, he writes, it served as a sort of substitute for the Eucharist, or the tasting of the body of Christ in Holy Communion. Some monks even cooked "a marmalade of sorts" from the blood of the dead.

"It was about the intrinsic vitality of the human organism," says the historian. The assumption was that all organisms have a predetermined life span. If a body died in an unnatural way, the remainder of that person's life could be harvested, as it were -- hence the preference for the executed.

That's some strong ju-ju there, man.

Jim Downey

(Via MeFi. Cross posted to my blog.)