European cannibalism

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Most of the current ethical norms of European civilization are only about 200 years old. Things that are extremely taboo today, for example cannibalism, were common in the 18th century. The priests drank children's blood, the fat of the executed was treated for epilepsy, and the production of mummies, which were eaten as medicine, was put on stream.

This part of the history of Europe should be remembered by both obscurantists and liberals. The former assure that their actions - whether they are laws on blasphemy or religious education - are a return to tradition, spirituality and holiness. Second, liberals should be aware of how easy it is to fall into degradation, advocating pedophilia or the use of hard drugs. Everything that both of these camps are calling for and striving for, Europe has already passed over 2500 years of its existence (or even several times in a circle) - female priesthood, pedophilia, slavery, anarchist and communist communities, etc. You just need to look into the past, extrapolate that experience into the present, in order to understand how this thing will work now.

Also, the European experience shows that there are no unshakable ethical standards. What was considered pathology yesterday is becoming the norm today. And vice versa, and so several times in a circle. Take one of the most important taboos of our civilization - cannibalism … It is unequivocally condemned by all strata of society - religious, political, legislative, social, etc. In the twentieth century, force majeure situations, such as hunger (as was the case during the famine in the Volga region and during the blockade of Leningrad), are not enough to justify cannibalism - for society this cannot serve as an excuse.

(Cannibals in Lithuania and Muscovy, engraving in 1571)

But a few centuries ago - when universities were already open and the greatest humanists lived - cannibalism was commonplace.

Human flesh was considered one of the best medicines. Everything went into business - from the top of the head to the toes.

For example, the English king Charles II regularly drank a tincture of human skulls. For some reason, skulls from Ireland were considered especially healing, and they were brought to the king from there.

In places of public execution, epileptics were always crowded. It was believed that the blood spattered during decapitation cured them of this disease.

Many diseases were then treated with blood. Thus, Pope Innocent VIII regularly drank blood expressed from three boys.

From the dead until the end of the 18th century, it was allowed to take fat - it was rubbed in for various skin diseases.

(German map of cannibalistic tribes, late 19th century)

But the consumption of the flesh of the mummies was especially widespread. Whole corporations operated in this market in the late Middle Ages.

One "medieval product" has survived to this day, which still continues to be valued almost worth its weight in gold - this is mumiyo. Wholesale price 1 gr. this substance is now 250-300 rubles. ($ 10-12, or $ 10.000-12.000 per 1 kg). Millions of people around the world continue to sacredly believe in the miraculous power of the mumiyo, not even suspecting that they are eating corpses.

As a medicine, mumiyo has been used since about the 10th century. Mumiyo is a thick black composition, which the Egyptians from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. embalmed the bodies of the dead. Since the demand for this remedy was very high, the hardened mass in later times began to be cleaned from the skulls and remnants of bones, scraped out of the body cavities and processed.

This mumiyo trade began the monstrous robbery of Egyptian tombs. However, the game was worth the candle - according to the report of the physician Abd-el-Latif, dating from about 1200, the mumiyo obtained from three human skulls was sold for 50 dirhams (dirhem is a silver coin weighing 1.5 grams).

The demand sparked a tremendous revival in the trade of this "highly medicinal drug." The enterprising merchants of Cairo and Alexandria made sure that the mumiyo became an important export item to Europe. They hired whole crowds of Egyptian peasants to excavate the necropolises. Traders' corporations exported crushed human bones to all parts of the world. In the XIV-XV centuries. mumiyo has become a common remedy sold in pharmacies and herbal shops. When raw materials again became scarce, they began to use the corpses of executed criminals, the bodies of those who died in almshouses or dead Christians, drying them in the sun. This is how "real mummies" were made.

Cannibalism as part of the European tradition

But since this method of supplying the market did not cover the demand, the methods of making mummy took other forms. The robbers stole newly buried bodies from the graves, dismembered them and boiled them in cauldrons until the muscles were separated from the bones; oily liquid dripped from the cauldron and, poured into flasks, was sold for great money to Italian merchants. For example, in 1564, the French physician Guy de la Fontaine from Navarre, in a warehouse of one of the merchants in Alexandria, discovered piles of bodies of several hundred slaves, which were intended to be processed into mumiyos.

Soon Europeans also joined the trade in processed corpses

In particular, John Sanderson, the Alexandrian agent of the Turkish trading company, in 1585 received an order from the board to join the mumiyo trade. About 600 pounds of mummified and dried carrion he sent by sea to England.

However, it became more cost-effective to receive mumiyo right on the spot, in Europe

Already in the XIV century, the corpses of recently deceased people and executed criminals began to be used to prepare mumiyo. It happened that the executioners sold fresh blood and "human fat" directly from the scaffold. How this was done is described in the book by O. Kroll, published in 1609 in Germany:

“Take the intact, clean corpse of a red-haired 24-year-old man, executed no earlier than one day ago, preferably by hanging, wheeling or impaling … Hold it one day and one night under the sun and moon, then cut into large pieces and sprinkle with myrrh powder and aloe, so that it is not too bitter …"

There was another way:

“The flesh should be kept in wine alcohol for several days, then hung in the shade and dried in the breeze. After that, you will need wine alcohol again to restore the red hue of the flesh. Since the appearance of a corpse inevitably causes nausea, it would be good to soak this mummy in olive oil for a month. The oil absorbs the mummy's trace elements, and it can also be used as a medicine, especially as an antidote for snake bites."

Another recipe was offered by the famous pharmacist Nicolae Lefebvre in his "Complete book on chemistry", published in London in 1664. First of all, he wrote, you need to cut off the muscles from the body of a healthy and young man, soak them in alcohol, and then hang them in a cool dry place. If the air is very humid or it is raining, then "these muscles should be hung in a pipe and every day they should be dried over a low fire from juniper, with needles and bumps, to the state of corned beef, which sailors take on long voyages."

Gradually, the technology of making drugs from human bodies has become even more sophisticated. The healers proclaimed that its healing power would increase if the corpse of a person who sacrificed itself was used.

For example, in the Arabian Peninsula, men between the ages of 70 and 80 gave up their bodies to save others. They ate nothing, only drank honey and took baths from it. After a month, they themselves began to exude this honey in the form of urine and feces. After the "sweet old men" died, their bodies were placed in a stone sarcophagus filled with the same honey. After 100 years, the remains were removed. So they got a medicinal substance - "confection", which, as it was believed, could instantly cure a person from all diseases.

And in Persia, in order to prepare such a drug, a young man under 30 was needed. As compensation for his death, he was well fed for some time and pleased in every possible way. He lived like a prince, and then he was drowned in a mixture of honey, hashish and medicinal herbs, the body was sealed in a coffin and opened only after 150 years.

This passion for eating mummies first led to the fact that in Egypt by about 1600, 95% of the tombs were looted, and in Europe by the end of the 17th century, the cemeteries had to be guarded by armed detachments.

Only in the middle of the 18th century in Europe, one state after another began to adopt laws either significantly restricting the eating of the flesh of corpses, or completely forbidding it to do so. Finally, mass cannibalism on the continent ceased only by the end of the first third of the 19th century, although in some distant corners of Europe it was practiced until the end of this century - in Ireland and Sicily it was not forbidden to eat a deceased child before his baptism.

(Work of the sculptor Leonhard Kern (1588-1662))

But even in the twentieth century, echoes of that practice persisted - the manufacture of drugs using human flesh. For example:

“The external use for burns of a drug obtained from human corpses - cadaverol (kada - means corpse) - is the subject of AM Khudaz's dissertation, made in 1951 at the Azerbaijan Medical Institute. The drug was prepared from internal fat by melting it in a water bath. Using it for burns allowed, according to the author, to reduce the treatment period by almost half. For the first time, human fat called "humanol" was used for therapeutic purposes in surgical practice by the doctor Godlander in 1909. In the USSR, it was also used by LD Kortavov in 1938."

Or here's another:

“The substance obtained after prolonged boiling of dead bodies may well be curative. Of course, this is only a hypothesis so far. But at one of the scientific and practical seminars, specialists from N. Makarov's research laboratory showed the mumiyo they had artificially obtained (scientists call this substance MOS - mineral organic substrate). Research protocols testified: MOS is able to increase people's working capacity, shorten the rehabilitation period after radiation injury, and increase male potency."

The German practice of processing concentration camp prisoners during the Second World War for soap, leather, fertilizers, etc., thus, was not some kind of innovation for Europe - 150-200 years before the Nazis, all this was still the norm (this practice, in number confirms that German Nazism was a sharp rollback back to the archaic).

But even today, in the 21st century, Western civilization still legally consumes human flesh - this is the placenta. Moreover, the fashion for eating the placenta is growing from year to year, and in many Western maternity hospitals there is even a procedure for using it - either to give it to a woman in labor, or to hand it over to laboratories that produce hormonal drugs on its basis. You can read more about this here. Is it possible to recognize the fashion for eating the human placenta as one of the signs of the rollback of Western civilization to the archaic? Probably yes.