'Mumia': The strange history of human remains ... as medicine

One of these is ingesting mumia, mummy powder, or other human remains for the sake of health.In this Curiosities of Medical History feature, we look at when, how, and why healers thought that prescribing mummy powder would be a good idea.The practice of prescribing human remains or their byproducts for healing goes back hundreds of years.In a chapter of Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, Louise Noble, a senior lecturer at the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, points out that some of medicine’s most important forebears, Galen and Paracelsus, advocated the medicinal use of human remains.Galen, a Roman physician and philosopher who lived in the second century, “admits the curative effect on epilepsy and arthritis of an elixir of burned human bones,” Noble writes.And Paracelsus, a Swiss alchemist and physician who lived from 1493–1541, “observes that the noblest medicine for man is man’s body and promotes the medicinal power of mummy, human blood, fat, marrow, dung, and cranium in the treatment of many ailments,” she adds.Between at least the 12th and the 17th centuries — and well into the 18th century, according to Noble — mumia was widely used as a drug in European countries.But what was mumia, or “mummy,” in medical parlance of the time?