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CLASSIC: Back When the Rich Ate Corpses · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Oh, we're doing some uh, we're doing some cool stuff
0:02
Speaker 1: with our classic episode this week, Noel, we're exploring mummies.
0:07
Speaker 2: Mmm, we are indeed that not mummies and Daddy's No.
0:12
Speaker 2: Mummy's the embalman kind, the kind that potentially arise from
0:16
Speaker 2: the dead and spoop people out on Halloween. It's also
0:19
Speaker 2: a fun lo fi costume. Just involve some toilet paper. Yeah.
0:23
Speaker 1: This is the story of a city called Guanayato, and
0:27
Speaker 1: back in the day they instituted a grave tax, which
0:31
Speaker 1: just feels terrible, like that's so petty and penny pinching.
0:36
Speaker 1: You're going to tax people on the way out as well.
0:39
Speaker 1: If you couldn't pay the grave tax, you would run
0:43
Speaker 1: into some harsh penalties. Three, if you fall three years
0:46
Speaker 1: behind on your loved ones resting place, they will dig
0:51
Speaker 1: the body up and they will take it out.
0:53
Speaker 2: Of the grave. Yeah. And these bodies were not just
0:56
Speaker 2: non into Egypt. They weren't like wrapped in linens and
0:59
Speaker 2: mama in that classic fashion. They were somehow found to
1:04
Speaker 2: have been naturally mummified, and words spread and it became
1:08
Speaker 2: something of a sideshow attraction, which is pretty gross. Grave
1:13
Speaker 2: diggers are trying to make a quick buck charging folks
1:15
Speaker 2: to take a peek at these naturally mummified remain So
1:19
Speaker 2: why don't we jump into the story and hear all
1:22
Speaker 2: about the mummies of Guana Yatu.
1:27
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
1:55
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Our Halloween streak continues. We want to start
2:00
Speaker 1: today's episode by saying this might not be your favorite
2:05
Speaker 1: show to listen to while you're reading. You think that's fair, EnL.
2:08
Speaker 2: I mean, I say, do what you want, you know,
2:11
Speaker 2: I find this to be strangely appetizing. I don't know why. Yeah,
2:17
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of trying new things. Have you ever
2:20
Speaker 2: eaten human meat?
2:22
Speaker 1: Not knowingly? But there's some interesting things we will discover
2:26
Speaker 1: about cannibalism along the way today. My name is Ben.
2:30
Speaker 1: Let's hear a shout out for our guest super producer.
2:33
Speaker 1: Returning guest super producer Paul Deckett.
2:39
Speaker 2: Well that's great as a delayed reaction. So, Paul, have
2:43
Speaker 2: you ever read human meat? Paul is shaking his head vehemently.
2:48
Speaker 2: Well this is.
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Speaker 1: Interesting too, because does it count as autocounibalism? If you
2:54
Speaker 1: ever choose your fingernails?
2:57
Speaker 2: Oh? Come, now, that seems like a semantic rabbit hole.
2:59
Speaker 2: There it is.
3:01
Speaker 1: It is a bit of one. But we are I
3:04
Speaker 1: don't know, like we've both eaten some pretty weird, interesting,
3:08
Speaker 1: unique things. But you have never knowingly consumed man flesh.
3:13
Speaker 2: No, I have not.
3:16
Speaker 1: But as as we learn, for hundreds of years, it
3:21
Speaker 1: was not just a thing that people occasionally did. It
3:25
Speaker 1: was considered something healthy.
3:27
Speaker 2: Right, it was. And I think this conversation today is twofold.
3:31
Speaker 2: It's about it's about the power of belief, the placebo effect.
3:35
Speaker 2: You know. I was having a really interesting conversation with
3:37
Speaker 2: my dear friend Frank yesterday about how so many things
3:41
Speaker 2: boiled down to the placebo effect. If we can convince
3:44
Speaker 2: ourselves that something is efficacious, whether spiritually, whether mentally, you know,
3:49
Speaker 2: mentally psychologically, then it's a way of kind of like
3:53
Speaker 2: actively tricking your mind into making you feel a certain way.
3:57
Speaker 2: And so many of these things we're gonna talk about
3:58
Speaker 2: today were like blood, If you drink the blood of
4:02
Speaker 2: a healthy person, it will make your blood better.
4:06
Speaker 1: Right, this kind of sympathetic magic almost they're this magical thinking.
4:09
Speaker 1: The thing that's fascinating about the placebo effect is it
4:13
Speaker 1: does have measurable quantifiable results. People can physically improve certain
4:20
Speaker 1: medical conditions based on the power of belief alone. And
4:26
Speaker 1: at the time when this was in vogue, and the
4:29
Speaker 1: period that we will be discussing today is.
4:31
Speaker 2: The seventeenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were that kind of peaked.
4:34
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's when it peaked in Europe. At least
4:37
Speaker 1: back then, they didn't understand the placebo effect. You only
4:42
Speaker 1: measured things by their perceived results. And I believe this,
4:47
Speaker 1: this practice of consuming human flesh and blood for medicinal purposes,
4:53
Speaker 1: really peaked in Germany, England, Italy and France right toward
4:58
Speaker 1: the end of the Renaissance.
5:00
Speaker 2: That's right. And some of the information that we're talking
5:01
Speaker 2: about today come from a fascinating book by a guy
5:05
Speaker 2: named doctor Richard Sugg who teaches over at England's University
5:09
Speaker 2: of Durham. And he wrote a book called Mummies, Cannibals
5:12
Speaker 2: and Vampires. The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance
5:16
Speaker 2: to the Victorians. And this stuff was not just for
5:19
Speaker 2: the well to do, you know, the elite. It was
5:22
Speaker 2: something that trickled down, sometimes quite literally, in the form
5:26
Speaker 2: of spurting gushes of blood coming from the necks of
5:29
Speaker 2: execution victims in the square to the lower class, who
5:34
Speaker 2: believed in this stuff just as much and would go
5:37
Speaker 2: to great pains to get access to whatever they could.
5:40
Speaker 2: Of course, the upper class had a lot more access
5:43
Speaker 2: to the freshest of the fresh, the best of the best,
5:46
Speaker 2: in terms of their parts that they were using to
5:49
Speaker 2: make some of these remedies.
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Speaker 1: And as sug mentions in an interview with the Smithsonian,
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Speaker 1: the question was not so much should we eat herehuman flesh,
6:00
Speaker 1: but it was more a question of what sort of
6:03
Speaker 1: flesh is best to eat? What sort of human flesh
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Speaker 1: is best to eat? And at first Egyptian mummies were
6:12
Speaker 1: tremendously popular.
6:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they I mean, I don't know, it seems
6:18
Speaker 2: like that would be a lot to go through to
6:20
Speaker 2: get yourself get your hands on a legit Egyptian mummy.
6:24
Speaker 1: Over in Europe, I don't know, there were quite a few.
6:28
Speaker 1: There was a mummy glut for some time.
6:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Mummies were a big part of this trend.
6:34
Speaker 2: Here's here's the thing. They would do things like grind
6:37
Speaker 2: up human skulls and then distell them down to alcohol
6:41
Speaker 2: to make something that later became popularized by King Charles
6:46
Speaker 2: the Second of England in the form of a tincture
6:49
Speaker 2: that he referred to as the King's Drops, which again
6:52
Speaker 2: was human skull powdered and dissolved in alcohol, and it
6:57
Speaker 2: supposedly cured everything from epileps to you know, various seizures, headaches,
7:03
Speaker 2: you know, whatever you got, The King's drops can can
7:07
Speaker 2: cure what ails you. And that's where things get get
7:09
Speaker 2: interesting here, because I don't think there's obviously no way
7:12
Speaker 2: to no scientific data that we have to measure how
7:16
Speaker 2: effective this stuff would have been. It was that power
7:18
Speaker 2: of belief. It seems like to me, right.
7:20
Speaker 1: This is a panacea. Anytime that a medicine has proclaimed
7:24
Speaker 1: to be essentially a cure all it may have some
7:28
Speaker 1: sort of beneficial effect on certain conditions, but it's almost
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Speaker 1: completely unlikely that it would treat all of the conditions listed.
7:38
Speaker 1: They also, in addition to the kings Drops, they used
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Speaker 1: human fat. Human fat was an external treatment. German doctors
7:46
Speaker 1: wanted to soak bandages in human fat or rub fat
7:52
Speaker 1: onto the skin as a remedy for gout. This kind
7:57
Speaker 1: of stuff may sound sort of gruesome and scary to
8:02
Speaker 1: us now, but back then this was seen as something
8:06
Speaker 1: that was the well it feels unfair to say it,
8:08
Speaker 1: but the bleeding edge of science. You know, these were
8:11
Speaker 1: scientists and doctors and priests who were recommending this treatment
8:15
Speaker 1: and taking it themselves, oh totally.
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Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, it's really easy to write
8:18
Speaker 2: this off as some sort of dark ages kind of
8:20
Speaker 2: like blood letting or leeching or whatever. But you know,
8:23
Speaker 2: this had the backing of at least the some of
8:26
Speaker 2: the greatest minds of the time, one of which was
8:29
Speaker 2: a German doctor, a German Swiss doctor for the sixteenth
8:33
Speaker 2: century named Paracelsus, and he was all about drinking blood
8:40
Speaker 2: and thought that it could, you know, help keep you
8:42
Speaker 2: from aging. Some of these ideas that we have of
8:45
Speaker 2: vamporism even right, like that being forever young or whatever,
8:48
Speaker 2: or that it could like we said, this notion of
8:51
Speaker 2: like cures, like meaning that if you have a blood
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Speaker 2: condition or you know, you're a neemic or something, that
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Speaker 2: drinking someone else's blood, preferably of a young person, possibly
9:03
Speaker 2: a virgin. And a big thing they really liked was
9:06
Speaker 2: people that were killed under violent circumstances because supposedly that
9:10
Speaker 2: made it more potent in some way, right, the.
9:12
Speaker 1: Blood was more vital. And not only not only was
9:16
Speaker 1: the blood more vital if someone was killed under violent circumstances,
9:19
Speaker 1: but it was more vital if it was given to
9:22
Speaker 1: you directly from the executioners, who were these social outcasts
9:26
Speaker 1: thought to have profound magical abilities. Executioners were seen there
9:33
Speaker 1: were still social lepers, but they were they were seen
9:36
Speaker 1: as great healers too. And we should mention that this
9:40
Speaker 1: kind of practice, while it had it had a heyday
9:44
Speaker 1: in Western Europe toward the end of the Renaissance. This
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Speaker 1: belief in like cures like cannibalism as medicine dates way
9:53
Speaker 1: back into antiquity. In ancient Rome, people who suffered from
9:58
Speaker 1: epilepsy drank the blood those slain gladiator.
10:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, or even like ate their livers, I believe. I mean,
10:05
Speaker 2: you know, that's about as fresh as it gets, but yeah,
10:07
Speaker 2: it's true. Ben. It was a very popular practice that
10:11
Speaker 2: as soon as the event was over, epileptics would run
10:16
Speaker 2: down and try to drink the blood directly from the body,
10:19
Speaker 2: something they would refer to as the living blood. And
10:22
Speaker 2: there was even a Roman doctor named Scribonius Largas who
10:27
Speaker 2: tried to justify some of these things through all kinds
10:30
Speaker 2: of pseudoscientific suggestions, and and and indicated that if you
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Speaker 2: ate the liver of a stag that was killed by
10:38
Speaker 2: a weapon that was used to kill a gladiator, then
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Speaker 2: that also would be imbued with the magical powers of
10:46
Speaker 2: the fallen gladiator. The the what's the word the vitality
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Speaker 2: kind of.
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Speaker 1: Right, And don't worry. This wasn't all just running up
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Speaker 1: and trying to immediately get fresh blood from a corpse
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Speaker 1: before coagulated. There were also recipes where you you would
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Speaker 1: cook stuff and prepare it, and in mummies, cannibals, and
11:07
Speaker 1: vampires you can find some depictions of these recipes. So
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Speaker 1: the first step was to take blood from quote persons
11:17
Speaker 1: of warm, moist temperament, such as those of a blotchy
11:20
Speaker 1: red complexion and rather plump of build, and then you
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Speaker 1: would let it dry or coagulate into a sticky mass.
11:26
Speaker 1: And then you would place it on a flat, smooth
11:29
Speaker 1: table of soft wood cut into thin little slices, let
11:33
Speaker 1: the watery parts drip away, then put it on a
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Speaker 1: stove on the same table, stir it into a batter.
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Speaker 1: Wait until it's absolutely dry. Put it on a warm
11:41
Speaker 1: bronze mortar pound it through a sieve of finest silk,
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Speaker 1: and when it has all been seved, seal it in
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Speaker 1: a glass jar renew it in the spring of every year.
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Speaker 1: So this was also associated with the passage of seasons,
11:54
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the sort of the macro version
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Speaker 1: of individual life, death and reus.
12:05
Speaker 2: I've got a favorite quote from an article on Atlas
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Speaker 2: Obscura about this subject called European corpse medicine promised better
12:12
Speaker 2: health through cannibalism. And this comes from a tone called
12:16
Speaker 2: the Pharmacopeia medico keemica kimica, I believe kimica. And this
12:21
Speaker 2: was by a German doctor named Johann Schroeder, and this
12:25
Speaker 2: was written in the seventeenth century. And this is kind
12:27
Speaker 2: of the end all be all. This sort of sums
12:29
Speaker 2: up sort of like what the creme de la creme
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Speaker 2: of the specimen that you might be after to get
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Speaker 2: you some of these sweet, sweet human meat bits. Quote,
12:39
Speaker 2: take the fresh, unspotted cadaver of a redheaded man, because
12:43
Speaker 2: in them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence
12:45
Speaker 2: more excellent. Aged about twenty four. The body the guy
12:49
Speaker 2: a person twenty four years old who has been executed
12:52
Speaker 2: and died a violent death. Let the corpse lie one
12:55
Speaker 2: day and night in the sun and moon, but the
12:58
Speaker 2: weather must be good. Flesh and pieces, and sprinkle it
13:01
Speaker 2: with mer and just a little aloe. Then soak it
13:04
Speaker 2: in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up
13:07
Speaker 2: for six or ten hours, soak it again in spirits
13:10
Speaker 2: of wine. Then let the pieces dry and dry air
13:14
Speaker 2: in a shady spot no less. Thus they will be
13:17
Speaker 2: similar to smoked meat and will not stink.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, stink is important, and you don't want too much
13:23
Speaker 1: alo like that's just basic cannibalism. One oh one, right there,
13:26
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, nothing ruins and otherwise fantastic
13:29
Speaker 1: cadaver more than too much aloe. You have to be
13:32
Speaker 1: moderate with that. And as we said, this was again
13:38
Speaker 1: this was not a bad thing. These people who were
13:41
Speaker 1: being consumed, although they were almost certainly being consumed without
13:45
Speaker 1: their consent, in most cases, they were not being punished.
13:50
Speaker 1: European practitioners of this believed that they were acquiring vitality,
13:56
Speaker 1: but they didn't think they were, you know, stealing the
13:58
Speaker 1: souls of their enemy or something aggressive of that nature.
14:03
Speaker 1: There's a very interesting point they bring up in Lapham's
14:06
Speaker 1: Quarterly Round table. A brief history of medical cannibalism by
14:09
Speaker 1: Best Love Joy, which is that while people in Europe
14:14
Speaker 1: were consuming blood or livers or human flesh or using
14:18
Speaker 1: human fat as a poultice for wounds, they were also
14:23
Speaker 1: tremendously discriminatory against a couple of other kinds of cannibalism.
14:30
Speaker 1: One would be the alleged practices of indigenous Americans, which
14:35
Speaker 1: were wildly exaggerated spun out into these racist, tall tales
14:41
Speaker 1: of sworn, monstrous man eating people living on the other
14:44
Speaker 1: side of the Atlantic Ocean. And then the second one
14:48
Speaker 1: was discrimination against Catholics because.
14:51
Speaker 2: Because of transubstantiation, right right, the belief.
14:54
Speaker 1: That the wafer wine one consumes a communion does in
14:58
Speaker 1: fact become the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. So
15:01
Speaker 1: they said, these people are cannibals while they are rubbing
15:05
Speaker 1: human body fat on their galp boo areas, yeah, on
15:09
Speaker 1: their booboos. And this this seems again, this seems strange.
15:14
Speaker 1: It seems like some double think.
15:16
Speaker 2: You should the quote from that anthropologist to kind of
15:18
Speaker 2: just refer to this as being very hypocritical, and I'm
15:20
Speaker 2: trying to find it out. You may have it in
15:22
Speaker 2: front of you right now, and it was a good one.
15:24
Speaker 1: Well, there were people who were against this, or at
15:27
Speaker 1: least notice the hypocrisy. Very early on there was a
15:31
Speaker 1: French writer named Michel de Montaigne, Sorry, casey, I hope
15:36
Speaker 1: we're doing you proud here, who in fifteen point eighty
15:39
Speaker 1: attacked the hypocrisy of Europeans who condemned these practices. And
15:43
Speaker 1: he said, you know, essentially, you cannot condemn people for
15:46
Speaker 1: practicing one kind of ritualized or spiritual cannibalism while you
15:50
Speaker 1: are happily grinding up mummies and drinking tinctures and skulls
15:55
Speaker 1: and having the King's drops, and then other people, like
15:59
Speaker 1: in fifteen sixty, even earlier than that, the herbalist Leonhard Futes,
16:05
Speaker 1: that's a tough one had attacked this quote glory matter
16:09
Speaker 1: of cadavas sold for medicine, wondering who, unless he approves
16:13
Speaker 1: of gadibalism, would not loathe this remedy.
16:17
Speaker 2: Here's the one I was talking about. Yeah, that's all
16:18
Speaker 2: fascinating and completely on point. This is interesting, though. This
16:22
Speaker 2: cultural and medical anthropologist from Vanderbilt named Beth Conklin in
16:27
Speaker 2: the Smithsonian article talks about the distinction between non Western
16:32
Speaker 2: cannibalism of like indigenous tribal that the notion of ritual
16:36
Speaker 2: cannibalism and the kind that we're talking about in the
16:39
Speaker 2: former there is such a huge relationship between the eater
16:44
Speaker 2: and the et you know, as though you are specifically
16:49
Speaker 2: soaking up their spirit in some way or like capturing
16:52
Speaker 2: some spiritual essence with your ancestor communing with your ancestors. Right,
16:57
Speaker 2: and in what we're talking about, it is that was gone.
17:01
Speaker 2: That was like totally irrelevant. It's much more about the
17:06
Speaker 2: notion of that like cure like cures like mentality of
17:10
Speaker 2: like I'm going to drink your blood. It's gonna fix
17:12
Speaker 2: my blood. You know, it's a lot less spiritual. It's
17:15
Speaker 2: much more pseudoscientific really, you.
17:17
Speaker 1: Know, right right, because it was seen as technology rather
17:20
Speaker 1: than an article of faith.
17:21
Speaker 2: And that is not to say that we don't do
17:23
Speaker 2: things today like get blood transfusions or liver transfusions that
17:28
Speaker 2: one could equate to absorbing someone else's fluids or yes,
17:33
Speaker 2: or h you know, it's always not the same as
17:35
Speaker 2: just like you know, munching it down.
17:37
Speaker 1: Right. Also, since we are in one of the spookiest
17:43
Speaker 1: seasons of the year, I do feel it is appropriate
17:46
Speaker 1: for us to mention that despite the scientific pursuit that
17:51
Speaker 1: was occurried in Europe, there was also a history of
17:54
Speaker 1: using human body parts for magical purposes, like a thieve
17:57
Speaker 1: scandle or a hand of glory.
18:00
Speaker 2: These candle being a candle made out of human fat,
18:03
Speaker 2: right for the tallows, I guess.
18:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, And up until up and into the eighteen eighties,
18:09
Speaker 1: these thieves candles were used to stupefy or paralyze a person.
18:14
Speaker 1: I myself could see it working because if someone lit
18:17
Speaker 1: a human fat candle in front of me, I would
18:20
Speaker 1: be shocked, at least for a short time. I would
18:23
Speaker 1: be very surprised if anyone did that. And Noel, I
18:28
Speaker 1: have a oh man, I've been waiting. I don't know
18:31
Speaker 1: if now is the time, but do you want to
18:33
Speaker 1: learn about something related to this but equally strange. Yeah,
18:37
Speaker 1: it's a little bit sweeter. Have you ever heard of
18:40
Speaker 1: the mellified man?
18:42
Speaker 2: No, sounds tasty.
18:45
Speaker 1: It's a human mummy confection. So this was a legendary
18:51
Speaker 1: medicinal substance created by steeping a willing human corpse in honey.
18:59
Speaker 1: It dates back to the fifteen hundred, so even kind
19:02
Speaker 1: of Around the same time period, a Chinese medical doctor
19:05
Speaker 1: named Lee Schizhen was reporting that in Arabia in the
19:12
Speaker 1: modern day Middle East, some elderly men nearing the end
19:17
Speaker 1: of their lives would mummify themselves in honey, and this
19:22
Speaker 1: process mellification would start before they died. So the men
19:28
Speaker 1: were seventy or eighty years old, and when they made
19:32
Speaker 1: this decision to become a meleified person, they took no
19:36
Speaker 1: more food or drink, only bathing and eating a little
19:40
Speaker 1: honey till a month after his excreta are nothing but honey,
19:44
Speaker 1: and then he dies. They put the body in a
19:47
Speaker 1: stone coffin likewise full of honey, with an inscription giving
19:51
Speaker 1: the year and month of burial. After one hundred years,
19:55
Speaker 1: the seals are removed and the confection is used to
19:58
Speaker 1: treat wounds and fractures and broken limbs. And you only
20:02
Speaker 1: have to do it, kind of like the kings drops.
20:03
Speaker 1: You only consume a few drops orally. And the doctor
20:09
Speaker 1: says he doesn't know whether or not this is a
20:12
Speaker 1: true tale. But for hundreds of years afterwards, the same
20:16
Speaker 1: sort of people who are like, you know, what's going
20:18
Speaker 1: to cure my epilepsy? Mummy dust, were like, we need
20:22
Speaker 1: to find one of these honey corpses. And now even
20:25
Speaker 1: now people are still debating whether or not this actually happens.
20:30
Speaker 2: And the thing too that I've gotten from several sources,
20:34
Speaker 2: just the perspective on this is that it was almost treated.
20:37
Speaker 2: It wasn't really magical thinking exactly, and in this period
20:42
Speaker 2: because it was backed by that I this renaissance kind
20:45
Speaker 2: of ideal of like progress and like you know, medical innovation,
20:50
Speaker 2: but it was almost like almost kind of like a
20:53
Speaker 2: holistic type thing right where it almost was the way
20:56
Speaker 2: you would be. You know, there were a lot of
20:57
Speaker 2: these herbs and different kind of holistic remedies mixed in. Like,
21:01
Speaker 2: for example, even that little quote that I read earlier
21:04
Speaker 2: about what kind of body to prepare and like how
21:06
Speaker 2: to slice it up and make you know, human jerky
21:08
Speaker 2: out of it, it talked about soaking in an aloe.
21:11
Speaker 2: An aloe is known to have some kind of holistic
21:14
Speaker 2: benefits as far as like calming the stomach or different
21:16
Speaker 2: things like that, and in a lot of these recipes
21:19
Speaker 2: you see it mixed with things like mirr and peone
21:22
Speaker 2: and like all of these kind of things that you
21:24
Speaker 2: might see in a little bit more of a holistic
21:27
Speaker 2: remedy type of herbalist kind of book. Right, So, I
21:31
Speaker 2: don't know, it's interesting. There's sort of like a combination there.
21:33
Speaker 2: I wonder if it was less the human meat and
21:36
Speaker 2: more the you know, tummy calming herbs.
21:39
Speaker 1: Right, And there's there's another book we should shout out here.
21:42
Speaker 1: Louis Noble, the author of Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern
21:45
Speaker 1: English Literature and Culture, has also pursued a similar research
21:51
Speaker 1: to the book we mentioned earlier, Mummies, cannibals, and vampires.
21:56
Speaker 1: And what they keep confirming is that while there were
22:01
Speaker 1: some opponents, there were very very few opponents, far fewer
22:07
Speaker 1: than you might think. Most people at this time in
22:10
Speaker 1: Europe were generally on board with this and did not
22:15
Speaker 1: think it was a did not think it was an
22:19
Speaker 1: ethical quandary. Yeah, I didn't think it was immoral.
22:21
Speaker 2: Well did we talked about We've talked about resurrection men before,
22:25
Speaker 2: the idea of digging up bodies in order to perform autopsies,
22:29
Speaker 2: because that was very in vogue around this time too,
22:31
Speaker 2: the science of you know, breaking down the human bod
22:34
Speaker 2: and figuring out how what makes a tick. But that
22:36
Speaker 2: was definitely happening as well to get some of these
22:39
Speaker 2: specimens right.
22:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I want to go on record here
22:44
Speaker 1: saying I think it's time we resurrect resurrection men, at
22:47
Speaker 1: least the phrase it's just too cool to let it die.
22:50
Speaker 2: It should be like a superhero crew. Yeah.
22:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm surprised it's not already a wrestling team or something.
22:56
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let us know what you think. What
22:59
Speaker 1: kind of group would be called resurrection men today in
23:02
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen.
23:04
Speaker 2: That is a good question, Ben, And I'd like to know.
23:06
Speaker 2: There were some other, even more messed up places that
23:10
Speaker 2: these bodies were acquired. One in particular was from Ireland,
23:15
Speaker 2: because the Irish were in Europe pretty severely looked down upon,
23:21
Speaker 2: and they, you know, the high falutine European aristocracy probably
23:25
Speaker 2: didn't think much of importing some Irish cadavers. In particular,
23:32
Speaker 2: there was one remedy that I think is fascinating. It
23:35
Speaker 2: was a type of moss that would grow on a skull,
23:38
Speaker 2: and that was a very popular one as well, and
23:41
Speaker 2: it was specifically indigenous to Ireland. The moss their skulls
23:46
Speaker 2: were plucked from battlefields, battlefields and mass graves, and you know,
23:51
Speaker 2: even of course, the people that are going to get
23:54
Speaker 2: the brunt of this are going to be the poor
23:56
Speaker 2: that are in unmarked graves or in like more like
23:58
Speaker 2: mass graves. But I don't think it was beneath some
24:02
Speaker 2: of these folks that were trying to make a buck
24:04
Speaker 2: to maybe even do a little digging up of mark
24:08
Speaker 2: graves right proper cemeteries.
24:10
Speaker 1: And sug makes a great note about this because he
24:14
Speaker 1: explains how the Irish were seen, as he said, Noel,
24:17
Speaker 1: deeply inferior on some level, and according to him, According
24:22
Speaker 1: to the author, corpse medicines were often derived from bodies
24:25
Speaker 1: alienated in various ways from ordinary humanity, distant most of
24:30
Speaker 1: all from you, whether you were a merchant, a thief,
24:33
Speaker 1: and an apothecary, physician, or a patient. And this is
24:38
Speaker 1: an incredibly important point, because we're othering things. These people
24:42
Speaker 1: thought it would be completely uncivil to eat the skull
24:47
Speaker 1: of someone they knew from town. You know what I mean,
24:50
Speaker 1: Your fellow neighbor's skull shouldn't be in your king's drops.
24:55
Speaker 1: It had to be something exotic, something different, something a
24:59
Speaker 1: little a bit less human in the mind of the
25:03
Speaker 1: person taking this sort of treatment. And I guess one
25:12
Speaker 1: of the questions people have is going to be, well,
25:15
Speaker 1: what happened next? How did this fall out of vogue?
25:20
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know it was. There was evidence of
25:23
Speaker 2: it happening as recently as like the eighteen hundreds. Right, Yes,
25:26
Speaker 2: so it didn't just fall right out of vogue.
25:28
Speaker 1: No, maybe people just stopped being as open about it.
25:33
Speaker 1: And for the fans of the X Files and such
25:37
Speaker 1: in the crowd, it evokes this image perhaps of people
25:42
Speaker 1: secretly feeding on feeding on blood or human flesh to
25:47
Speaker 1: extend their own lifespans or treat various medical conditions. And boy,
25:53
Speaker 1: do we have a story for you. On a different show.
25:56
Speaker 1: We talked about this in an episode on Modern Empires.
26:01
Speaker 1: Here in the US as we record this episode, there
26:05
Speaker 1: are two different companies that, for a significant amount of money,
26:08
Speaker 1: will transfer the blood or the plasma specifically of a
26:12
Speaker 1: young person into the body of an older person in
26:16
Speaker 1: the hopes of extending their lifespan and the quality of
26:20
Speaker 1: their life. Do you remember that one?
26:21
Speaker 2: Yeah? Man, it makes me think of that Radiohead song
26:23
Speaker 2: on Hail to the Thief, We Suck Young Blood. Yes,
26:26
Speaker 2: you know, so that's a creepy one, but yeah, that's
26:28
Speaker 2: always what I think of it's intense, and you think
26:31
Speaker 2: of it as being this thing that like only the elite,
26:36
Speaker 2: you know, mega evil, like the elitist of the elite,
26:39
Speaker 2: most evil, megalomaniacal humans whatever, consider doing. But then when
26:43
Speaker 2: you see the way it happened throughout history, you know,
26:47
Speaker 2: drinking blood from the neck of the body on the
26:50
Speaker 2: chopping block. They literally would pay a couple bucks or
26:54
Speaker 2: whatever to the execution and get a little cup of
26:56
Speaker 2: the blood, you know, warm and fresh, you start to
26:59
Speaker 2: realize that, like you know, this is not exclusively in
27:01
Speaker 2: the realms of the elite.
27:03
Speaker 1: Yet, it's not exclusively confined to the past. In fact,
27:08
Speaker 1: in recent years there's been a cannibalism crisis in certain
27:13
Speaker 1: African countries wherein people who have people who are albinos,
27:18
Speaker 1: who have albinism right where their skin is very very light,
27:21
Speaker 1: are being hunted because their body parts are used in
27:26
Speaker 1: magical rituals. So this continues, but this is a little
27:31
Speaker 1: different because it's not seen as a science. Again, the
27:36
Speaker 1: folks who were doing this during the Renaissance period that
27:39
Speaker 1: we're talking about, we can't emphasize this enough, but we
27:44
Speaker 1: will try. They did not think they were doing anything bad.
27:49
Speaker 1: They did not think they were villains. They thought they
27:52
Speaker 1: were early adopters or people who were illuminated to ancient
27:58
Speaker 1: medicinal lore.
28:00
Speaker 2: Interesting.
28:01
Speaker 1: You have to wonder, you know, what was it like
28:04
Speaker 1: back then, especially when so many, so many conditions were
28:09
Speaker 1: fatal or a death sentence. You can't blame people for
28:12
Speaker 1: looking for hope wherever they can find it.
28:14
Speaker 2: Dude. I saw an amazing image of the day of
28:16
Speaker 2: some Egyptian dental work, and it was like holes were
28:20
Speaker 2: drilled in the center of the teeth and they were like,
28:22
Speaker 2: you know, strung together with bits of like gold wire
28:25
Speaker 2: or copper or whatever. Really really painful looking. But I
28:29
Speaker 2: guess a better alternative than I don't know. It seems
28:32
Speaker 2: like you just let the teeth fall out.
28:35
Speaker 1: I think I've seen similar photos and it made me
28:39
Speaker 1: feel like my mouth hurt just looking at it, you
28:41
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I experienced vicarious pain. And we
28:45
Speaker 1: have to ask, you know, well, it's easy for us
28:47
Speaker 1: to distance ourselves from this today. What would you do
28:51
Speaker 1: if consuming some sort of tincture or potion or wearing
28:55
Speaker 1: some sort of poultice of human flesh could help treat
28:59
Speaker 1: a wound faster or more efficiently than modern medical techniques.
29:04
Speaker 2: Would you do it?
29:06
Speaker 1: Would you want to know the provenance of the I guess,
29:10
Speaker 1: the human medicine that you were consuming, or would you
29:14
Speaker 1: rather be anonymous? I don't know, Because people do a
29:17
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to stay alive.
29:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really do. They do do this day, and
29:21
Speaker 2: I think the placebo effect largely is still in play,
29:25
Speaker 2: you know. And despite doctor's sort of quickness to prescribe
29:30
Speaker 2: something that will cure a particular you know, illness, I
29:34
Speaker 2: think a lot of times people get more psychologically dependent
29:38
Speaker 2: on stuff, especially in the realm of like mental health,
29:40
Speaker 2: you know, the idea of antidepressants and anxiety medications. I
29:44
Speaker 2: think it's easy to discount how powerful the mind is
29:49
Speaker 2: in these situations. You just think that a medicine can
29:51
Speaker 2: just flip a switch and like make you better. But
29:54
Speaker 2: there's still that psychological component that I think is just
29:56
Speaker 2: as important as it was when people were you know,
29:59
Speaker 2: eating corpse juice, corpse dust, corpse paste. Absolutely, oh, corpse bills. Ah,
30:06
Speaker 2: there's still there's probably something like that's still around. And
30:11
Speaker 2: we don't want to end on a down note. We
30:15
Speaker 2: hope that you found this as darkly fascinating as we
30:19
Speaker 2: both did. But let's let's end on something a little
30:22
Speaker 2: more conversational and fun and less grim. Noel, what do
30:26
Speaker 2: you say to some listener mail?
30:27
Speaker 1: I love it, Noel, this is this is a short
30:34
Speaker 1: one and it's someone pinging us on something that.
30:38
Speaker 3: We dinging, pinging, piking pinging with a pe Okay, it's
30:43
Speaker 3: giving us a little poke like potential yeah or coke
30:46
Speaker 3: Ryan m. He wrote in and said, Dear Ben Nolan Casey,
30:50
Speaker 3: I think it would be monumentously ridiculous and possibly quite
30:54
Speaker 3: educational to feature an entire episode exclusively in Richard Nixon impersonations.
31:00
Speaker 3: I just listened to your episode about Richard Nixon and
31:02
Speaker 3: Louis Armstrong, and I would like to challenge you to
31:05
Speaker 3: do the aforementioned Nixon episode, so long as it has
31:09
Speaker 3: nothing to do with Nixon. Thanks guys, keep it ridiculous.
31:13
Speaker 2: That is just a tall order, man, You know, I was.
31:15
Speaker 2: I was on board with that when we throw it
31:17
Speaker 2: out there as kind of a joke. But we have
31:18
Speaker 2: gotten a lot of feedback that people would like to
31:20
Speaker 2: hear us doing all Nixon episode, but I don't think
31:23
Speaker 2: I'd be able to keep character.
31:24
Speaker 1: I think we can do this is my pitch and
31:27
Speaker 1: let me know what you think. Ridiculous historians. I think
31:30
Speaker 1: we could do a segment, how about that, like ten
31:32
Speaker 1: to fifteen minutes. I think we could do that.
31:34
Speaker 2: We could be a recurring segment.
31:36
Speaker 1: It could be a recurring segment. It could even be Okay,
31:39
Speaker 1: this is why we love doing this show with each
31:41
Speaker 1: other because now we are actively brainstorming live. It could
31:44
Speaker 1: just be different impersonations.
31:47
Speaker 2: That's true. Or it could be Nixon's commenting on the news,
31:51
Speaker 2: Nixon's on the Nixon on the news, Nixon's on the news,
31:54
Speaker 2: Nixon's on the news, because all of our segments have
31:57
Speaker 2: to have a literation, and it is Casey on the
31:59
Speaker 2: k Nixon's on the news. We're kind of a one trick.
32:02
Speaker 1: We got to work with fact Genie, we'rest the work shopping.
32:05
Speaker 2: Well, we that's that. We've kind of killed that segment.
32:08
Speaker 1: We I think we do we do it more than once.
32:10
Speaker 2: I think we maybe did it twice. I think we should.
32:13
Speaker 2: I think we should go back to the drawing board
32:14
Speaker 2: on that, that whole concept.
32:15
Speaker 1: So the vision board, you mean, so what uh do
32:18
Speaker 1: you have a listener? May Yeah, I definitely call your
32:20
Speaker 1: interest to.
32:21
Speaker 2: Shorty the subject is spam, but it is not spam,
32:24
Speaker 2: but it's about spam and it comes from Benjamin s
32:26
Speaker 2: And it says, I listened to your spam episode when
32:28
Speaker 2: I heard you say that Russian food is gross. All
32:32
Speaker 2: that you have to do is try chibori k or chiborik.
32:36
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure c h e b u r
32:38
Speaker 2: e k I. I've heard it a couple of different ways,
32:41
Speaker 2: but he says, this opinion will disappear. Just look it
32:43
Speaker 2: up if you want to make it yourself. I would
32:45
Speaker 2: recommend the YouTube channel Life of Boris. Anyway, you guys
32:48
Speaker 2: have a great show and I'm always excited for the
32:50
Speaker 2: next episode. Well, thank you, Benjamin, and I did look
32:53
Speaker 2: it up and it looks delicious. Great.
32:55
Speaker 1: It's almost like an impanada.
32:56
Speaker 2: Almost like like a combination of like exactly ben It's like,
32:59
Speaker 2: I'm pie meat pie kind of thing. Let's see what
33:03
Speaker 2: some of the filling options.
33:04
Speaker 1: Are, oh, ground or minced meat, but they also have
33:07
Speaker 1: onions added in there. It's a national dish of the
33:12
Speaker 1: Tatar people.
33:13
Speaker 2: Interesting.
33:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's be for lamb. Oh.
33:17
Speaker 2: I love lamb. Yeah, I would go for lamb. But yeah,
33:20
Speaker 2: that does look fantastic And I've never heard of that
33:22
Speaker 2: one before, but it is very similar to like an
33:24
Speaker 2: empanada or almost like a perogi or something, or like
33:26
Speaker 2: a Pats pasty. You ever had a pasty? Yes? Yes,
33:30
Speaker 2: is that a Pennsylvania thing? Certainly in that part of
33:32
Speaker 2: the country, right, Yeah, probably.
33:34
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm always down for turnover meat pie
33:37
Speaker 1: kind of situation. That's just who I am. I've accepted it.
33:39
Speaker 1: I lean into it. Thank you Benjamin, and thank you
33:43
Speaker 1: Ryan for writing to us. This concludes our listener mail,
33:48
Speaker 1: but not our show. Tune in for our next episode,
33:51
Speaker 1: where we explore the fact and fiction behind what may
33:54
Speaker 1: well be history's first serial killer. Oh, we should also
33:58
Speaker 1: make an announcement, nool, since we're gonna be on the road.
34:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, with our other show stuff. They don't want you
34:05
Speaker 2: to know. Yeah, we are gonna You're gonna have one sad,
34:09
Speaker 2: sad week where you only get one episode out of us.
34:12
Speaker 1: But it's gonna be a very special episode. We don't
34:14
Speaker 1: want to spoil it, but you may just bust a
34:17
Speaker 1: gud laughing.
34:18
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, man, that's very cooy of you. Yeah, because typically,
34:22
Speaker 2: you know, we we were more grove, a grown inducing
34:25
Speaker 2: show than a laugh inducing show. And this episode and
34:28
Speaker 2: my friends is gonna flip that on his head and
34:30
Speaker 2: that paradigm is going to shift.
34:32
Speaker 1: Boy, I hope we're not making too too many promises,
34:35
Speaker 1: but I feel confident and all I feel confident in
34:37
Speaker 1: they too.
34:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, we might even do some Heroin live on the show.
34:41
Speaker 2: That's another clue. I'm joking. We're not gonna do Heroin,
34:45
Speaker 2: but it's a it's a it's a clue about what
34:46
Speaker 2: the episode might be about. Bust a gut, laughing comedy
34:49
Speaker 2: and heroin.
34:51
Speaker 1: Just put the you know, put the pieces together, build
34:53
Speaker 1: a build yourself a conspiracy wall, sort of like Charlie
34:56
Speaker 1: Day and that episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and
34:59
Speaker 1: in the time, contact your fellow Ridiculous Historians and take
35:03
Speaker 1: a guess as to what this episode might be. It's
35:06
Speaker 1: gonna be tough to guess. I will personally be surprised
35:09
Speaker 1: and impressed if anybody guesses it in advance. But you
35:13
Speaker 1: can cooperate with your fellow listeners on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook,
35:17
Speaker 1: especially our community page Ridiculous Historians.
35:21
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
35:22
Speaker 2: you can write us an email at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
35:24
Speaker 2: dot Com. Take a cue from your fellow listeners and
35:27
Speaker 2: we'll read those things on the show. Awen, lest we forget,
35:31
Speaker 2: thanks to superproducer. Guest superproducer. He's just a run of
35:34
Speaker 2: the mill excellent producer. Oh yeah, and a great guy too,
35:37
Speaker 2: great guy, Paul decant, Ladies and gentlemen. He doesn't have
35:40
Speaker 2: a voice, though he is in fact mute, but he
35:43
Speaker 2: is really good at hand gestures and headshakes.
35:46
Speaker 1: And Paul Paul is MBC mute by choice, by choice exactly.
35:51
Speaker 1: We'd also like to thank Alex Williams, who composed our track,
35:53
Speaker 1: and of course we'd like to thank our research associates
35:56
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Coat and as we often
35:59
Speaker 1: do and closed the show, Nol, I'd like to thank you.
36:03
Speaker 2: This was illuminating. It was something. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
36:15
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
36:19
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.