The historical past of medication is full of therapies that, seen thru a contemporary lens, appear perplexing, faulty or downright macabre. Amongst those is “mumia” — a medicinal substance derived from mummified human stays.
From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, physicians throughout Europe prescribed powdered mummy as a cure-all for diseases starting from interior bleeding and damaged bones to epilepsy and melancholia.
As soon as thought to be a potent elixir infused with the lifestyles drive of the ancients, mumia used to be a staple in apothecaries, wanted via the rich and really useful via the discovered. But, as scientific wisdom developed, so too did attitudes towards this peculiar treatment, and via the 18th century, it had in large part pale into obscurity.
The conclusion in mumia’s therapeutic energy used to be deeply rooted in prevailing scientific theories of the time. One such principle used to be the doctrine of signatures, which held that herbal elements resembled the diseases they have been intended to remedy.
Mummified flesh, preserved for hundreds of years, appeared an obtrusive candidate for treating decay, wounds and interior deterioration. Every other influential concept used to be vitalism, the perception that lifestyles drive might be transferred from one frame to some other, in particular from a preserved human to a residing affected person.
Including to this used to be the Eu fascination with the scientific traditions of the Islamic global. Arabic physicians equivalent to Avicenna had described the healing use of bitumen – a naturally going on tar-like substance also referred to as mūmiyā – that had medicinal packages in wound therapeutic.
When those texts have been translated into Latin, Eu students mistakenly conflated mūmiyā with Egyptian mummies, assuming that the embalmed lifeless have been imbued with identical restorative houses. The outcome used to be a booming business in ground-up human stays, with mummies sourced from Egyptian tombs, grave robbers or even native execution websites.
Grave robbers were given in at the racket.
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Mumia used to be prescribed for an astonishing array of stipulations. Physicians believed it might accelerate therapeutic, save you an infection or even remedy epilepsy. Ingested in powdered shape or blended into tinctures, it used to be really useful for interior bleeding, strokes and tuberculosis. Some prompt it might thrust back depression or repair younger energy, making it a well-liked treatment a few of the Eu elite.
Apothecaries stocked mummy powder along different human-derived medications equivalent to powdered cranium (skull humanum) and distilled human fats (axungia hominis).
The extra historical the stays, the stronger they have been regarded as. On the other hand, because the call for for mumia outstripped the provision of authentic Egyptian mummies, opportunistic buyers grew to become to newer corpses – some even resorting to robbing the gallows to fulfill the marketplace’s wishes.
Eventual decline
In spite of its standard use, mumia used to be no longer with out its detractors. By means of the sixteenth century, some physicians started to query each its efficacy and its moral implications. The Swiss doctor Paracelsus (1493–1541) argued that best recent human stays – no longer historical, embalmed flesh – had medicinal worth, whilst others brushed aside the observe as not anything greater than superstition.
The rising emphasis on empirical science within the seventeenth and 18th centuries additional eroded religion in mumia. As anatomy and pathology complex, the concept that centuries-old preserved tissue may heal the residing appeared an increasing number of incredible. On the similar time, public attitudes towards human stays started to shift.
The upward push of Egyptology and archaeological hobby in mummies reframed them as ancient artefacts reasonably than scientific commodities, making their intake distasteful even to people who had as soon as sworn via their therapeutic houses.
By means of the early 18th century, mumia had in large part disappeared from scientific observe, relegated to the annals of historical past for instance of medication’s infrequently ugly previous.
Mumia’s decline serves as a reminder of ways scientific wisdom evolves, losing once-revered remedies in favour of evidence-based approaches. But, whilst medicinal cannibalism might appear stunning nowadays, the pursuit of miraculous remedies continues. From stem mobile treatments to longevity dietary supplements, the will to harness the essence of lifestyles itself persists – albeit with extra clinical rigour.
Having a look again at the usage of mummified medication, we’re reminded that the boundary between science and superstition isn’t at all times as transparent as we would possibly love to imagine.
