The last line of a 17th century poem by John Donne prompted Louise Noble's quest. "Women," the line read, are not only "Sweetness and wit," but "mummy, possessed."
Sweetness and wit, sure. But mummy? In her search for an explanation, Noble, a lecturer of English at the University of New England in Australia, made a surprising discovery: That word recurs throughout the literature of early modern Europe, from Donne's "Love's Alchemy" to Shakespeare's "Othello" and Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," because mummies and other preserved and fresh human remains were a common ingredient in the medicine of that time. In short: Not long ago, Europeans were cannibals.
[...] "The question was not, 'Should you eat human flesh?' but, 'What sort of flesh should you eat?' " says Sugg. The answer, at first, was Egyptian mummy, which was crumbled into tinctures to stanch internal bleeding. But other parts of the body soon followed. Skull was one common ingredient, taken in powdered form to cure head ailments. Thomas Willis, a 17th-century pioneer of brain science, brewed a drink for apoplexy, or bleeding, that mingled powdered human skull and chocolate. And King Charles II of England sipped "The King's Drops," his personal tincture, containing human skull in alcohol. Even the toupee of moss that grew over a buried skull, called Usnea, became a prized additive, its powder believed to cure nosebleeds and possibly epilepsy. Human fat was used to treat the outside of the body. German doctors, for instance, prescribed bandages soaked in it for wounds, and rubbing fat into the skin was considered a remedy for gout.
Related Stories
A small human trial (27 participants) has found no benefits to consuming (dried) placental pills. The control group took pills containing beef or vegetarian mock beef:
In two new studies, researchers conclude that new moms who consume their placentas experience no significant changes in their moods, energy levels, hormone levels, or in bonding with their new infant, when compared with moms ingesting a placebo. "It really does show that most of what's going on, if not all, is a placebo effect," says Mark Kristal, a behavioral neuroscientist at the State University of New York in Buffalo who has studied the practice—known as placentophagy—in other animals for more than 40 years.
Humans aren't the only species that eat their placentas. In fact, nearly all mammals do. In rats, placentophagy spurs moms to start taking care of their pups and relieves birthing pain; both amniotic fluid and placentas contain a factor that acts as a morphine-related analgesic. But whether placentophagy confers such benefits in humans has been unclear. What is clear is that the practice is gaining in popularity. Before the 1970s, it was used occasionally in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a host of ailments in men and women. Now, there are cookbooks that offer guidelines for the storage and preparation of placenta-based smoothies and meals. Most contemporary consumers first steam and dehydrate the placenta before pulverizing it and fashioning it into a vitaminlike pill.
Maybe they need to eat it when it is fresh and raw instead of dried and powdered.
Effects of placentophagy on maternal salivary hormones: A pilot trial, part 1 (DOI: 10.1016/j.wombi.2017.09.023) (DX)
Placentophagy's effects on mood, bonding, and fatigue: A pilot trial, part 2 (DOI: 10.1016/j.wombi.2017.11.004) (DX)
Related: The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine
Prematurely Born Lambs Kept Alive With Artificial External Placenta - Human Babies Could be Next
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @10:36PM
Yep, when someone asks you "If the Egyptians mummified everyone who could afford it, why are there so few mummies around today?". "Because health fad swept Europe that lasted hundreds of years and they ate all the mummies."
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday October 29 2015, @11:38PM
Obligatory Futurama: "My God, this is an outrage. I was going to eat that mummy!"
(and my longtime sig just happens to fit the topic - funny that)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Friday October 30 2015, @03:20PM
> they ate all the mummies.
And their cats.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Thursday October 29 2015, @11:11PM
Soylentils Soylenting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by nyder on Friday October 30 2015, @01:06AM
Eating humans cure hunger.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday October 30 2015, @03:12AM
Vampires in NOLA? Body-eaters in Europe? Could it be, not to speculate wildly, that the news has to be selected to match the season? Next we need a fine article on the re-animation of dead tissue. I'll go check the submission queue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @01:25PM
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/501215-extremely-disturbing-soviet-zombie-experiments-reanimating-dead-animals/ [theepochtimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @11:02AM
http://www.webmd.com/baby/should-i-eat-my-placenta [webmd.com]
(Score: 2) by jcross on Friday October 30 2015, @01:28PM
Usnea actually is still considered by some to be an effective medicine, but I doubt it matters whether it grew on a skull. I used to harvest it from fallen sticks, mostly.