From Around the 12th Century, Mummies were Ground into a Powder as a Cure for Various Illnesses

Nothing like a bit of medicinal cannibalism t wake you up in the morning eh? Unbelievable as it may seem, this practice continued right up until the 18th Century when public opinion turned against it’s use.

What the Fact?

Mummy Medicine

‘Powered Mummy’ was prescribed by medical professionals across the world for a whole plethora of ailments.  It was, in the opinion of Ambroise Paré, royal surgeon to 16th-century French kings, “the very first and last medicine of almost all our practitioners” against bruising.  It was used primarily as a substitute for bitumen. According to Christine El Mahdy, a medieval doctor in Cairo wrote that bitumen could be taken internally or applied to the outside of the body. But, he noted, if getting bitumen is a problem, ”corpses may be substituted.”

Though by the 17th Century, mummy dealers were notoriously involved in counterfeit corpses (nice!), the best dealers kept very high standards. One method, confessed by Johann Schroeder, prescribed..

“the cadaver of a reddish man (because in such a man the blood is believed lighter and so the flesh is better), whole, fresh without blemish, of around 24 years of age, dead of a violent death (not of illness), exposed to the moon’s rays for one day and night, but with a clear sky. Cut the muscular flesh of this man and sprinkle it with powder of myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe, then soak it.”

Medical Mummy Classification

Because of the prolific sales of mummies at the time, Egyptian doctors had four classifications for them…

• Egyptian mummies preserved in bitumen
• Artificial Egyptian mummies (made from bitumen and herbs but containing no body)
• Arabic mummies (preserved in oils and spices but containing no bitumen)
• Bodies buried and dried in the sand.

Clearly the bodies that were just left to dry in sand weren’t much good. Those ones were usually just prescribed for upset stomachs and the like. Imagine that! You go to the doctor with a fierce case of the shits and he tells you to eat human remains. Awesome! That last classification of mummy does give rise to one important point though; by the 1500’s most of the real mummies had been ground up and sold so if you did get a bottle of powered mummy, what you were likely getting was the powdered remains of an executed criminal or hospital corpse.  Serves you right in my books!