Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians

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Lastly, there is a dearth of photos and illustrations, an oversight that seems especially egregious when you think about all the intricate engravings and woodcarvings the strangely alchemical subject has no doubt inspired through the ages. There was without doubt a chasm between rich and poor during the entire pre-NHS period (and only slowly diminishing post the foundation of that service). It contains descriptions of everything from men frying penises to a poor woman in a cold dungeon whose only method of insulating herself from the cold was to smear herself with her own dung.

The book’s tone is both ribald and scholarly, an unusual mixture that works for the most part, and somewhat palliates the overall nastiness of the thing. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. One thing we are rarely taught at school is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine.In its quest to understand the strange paradox of routine Christian cannibalism we move from the Catholic blood-drinking of the Eucharist, through the routine filth and discomfort of early modern bodies, and in to the potent, numinous source of corpse medicine’s ultimate power: the human soul itself. Mummies, Cannibals And Vampires The History Of Corpse Medicine From The Renaissance To The Victorians ( Richard Sugg) (z Lib. This rich and authoritative account of beliefs about the medical efficacy of dead bodies is a fascinating, if gruesome, eye-opener. Sugg's interest in corpse medicine reaches well beyond mumia to inspect all those strange concoctions of human tissue and waste favoured by early modern pharmacology" – Michael Neill, London Review of Books.

It is quite clear from his ease with his array of authors that he is competent in his field, and he has produced a wide ranging and at times compelling book.In this extract from his new book, Richard Sugg investigates the strange noises that haunted an entire neighbourhood in Windsor in 1841, as reported by a newspaper of the time. Ranging from the execution scaffolds of Germany and Scandinavia, through the courts and laboratories of Italy, France and Britain, to the battlefields of Holland and Ireland, and on to the tribal man-eating of the Americas, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires argues that the real cannibals were in fact the Europeans.