Episode 113: Word of Mouth (ad-free)

Throughout history, cultures around the world have explored the world of medicine in search of tools that can heal our bodies. We’ve used plants and minerals, of course, but the most powerful tool might also be the most taboo—and it’s been right in front of us the entire time.

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Further Reading

(Note: there's a lot of them, this week, and they're *thick*, so buckle up)

1. Mariel Carr, “Mummies and the Usefulness of Death,” Science History Institute, Fall 2014/Winter 2015, https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/mummies-and-the-usefulness-of-death.
2. Karl H. Dannenfeldt, “Egyptian Mumia: The Sixteenth Century Experience and Debate,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 16, no. 2 (Summer, 1985): 163-80.
3. Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni, “‘A Virtue Beyond All Medicine:’ The Hanged Man’s Hand, Gallows Tradition and Healing in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century England,” Social History of Medicine 28, no 4: 686-705.
4. Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni, Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
5. Maria Dolan, “The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine,” Smithsonian Magazine, 5/6/2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284.
6. “Drinking Blood and Eating Flesh: Corpse Medicine in Early Modern England,” https://www.drlindseyfitzharris.com/2011/02/25/drinking-blood-and-eating-flesh-corpse-medicine-in-early-modern-england.
7. Louise Noble, Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 
8. “Executed Criminals and Folk-Medicine,” Folklore 7, no. 3 (Sept., 1896): 268-83. 
9. John Ross Browne, An American Family in Germany (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1866). 
10. Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Rennaissance to the Victorians (New York: Routledge, 2016). 
11. “A Brief History of Medical Cannibalism: Curing What Ails Us with Mummy, Blood Jam, and Human Fat,” Lapham’s Quarterly, 11/7/2016, https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/brief-history-medical-cannibalism.