Seventeenth-century Europeans ate mummies (2015)

resobscura.blogspot.com

25 points·benbreen··10 comments

Huh. Just when I thought nothing would surprise me, it turns out that not so long ago, people in one the most advanced civilizations on earth at them were eating freaking mummies... for medicinal purposes.

The screenshot of a medicinal book of the time, recommending "skull of a man ought to be such an one which dieth a violent death and never buried" for grinding down and drinking, is also priceless:

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B0wp2PB7GU0/VmJleJf7SHI/AAAAAAAAC...

Now that you've said it, I'm thinking, so we still have homeopathy and other stuff despite being the most advanced we've ever been.

It's interestingly a holdover from that era, or not long after, when doctors were still trying to figure out how to cure even basic illnesses.

The seventeenth century was not doing great work in medicine. Poisons were still regularly administered, bleeding and emesis were common. By the end of the 18th century homeopathy was taking over, and the first controlled medical studies were yet to be formed.

Aside, there was tons of interesting stuff going on in the rest of the world at that time.

So they were taking Soylent Green for their ailments...

Crushed em up for pigment too, Mummy Brown, until early 20th century when demand dropped off (and they started running out of mummies).

As someone who grew up with a parent that was an artist I had never heard of this color till now. Just the name of it is awesome.

The history section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia is an excellent adjunct to this article.

So the guy on Twitter who wanted to drink the red liquid mummy juice had the right idea...

What a bizarre species we are

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