Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Abstract

Abstract Just as the real and imagined cannibals of the New World became, for Old World authors, a subject of fascination, condemnation and polemic, medicinal cannibalism and corpse medicine became a widespread and systematic phenomenon in early modern Europe. Matter from Egyptian mummies, along with more recently dead human flesh, fat, blood, skull and the moss of the skull (known as usnea) were in high demand by patients in Britain, France, Germanic countries and Scandinavia. Paracelsian chemists and physicians in particular made rigorously thorough use of virtually the entire human corpse. Those involved in this practice included Thomas Willis, Robert Boyle, Charles II and a host of affluent gentry and aristocrats, along with a more shadowy world of merchants, executioners and graverobbers. This essay explores both the facts of medicinal cannibalism and the peculiar social and political ironies it could produce in the highly unequal societies of the early modern world.

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