MUMMIES AND THEIR USE IN MEDICINE—THE UNICORN.
Who first introduced mummies as medicinal agents is not known, but
there is something particularly weird and gruesome in the idea of
the ancient physician dosing a sick patient, with the remains of a
predeceased fellowman, in order to restore him to health. The art of
embalming was practised thousands of years before the Christian era,
and was regarded as the greatest token of esteem that could be paid by
the living to the dead. Pomet says there were two kinds of embalming
practised by the ancient Egyptians. The first and most costly was used
to none but persons of the highest class, and was valued at a talent
of silver, or about £500. Three people were employed in the operation;
one was a kind of designer or overseer, who marked out such parts of
the body as were to be opened. The next was a dissector, who with a
knife of Ethiopian stone cut the flesh as much as necessary, and as
the law would permit, and immediately afterwards fled away with all
the expedition possible, because it was the custom of the relatives
and domestics to pursue the dissector with stones and do him all the
injuries they could, treating him as an impious wretch and the worst of
men.
After this operation the embalmers, who were accounted holy men,
entered to perform their offices, which consisted in removing the
internal organs, cleansing with palm wine and other aromatical liquor,
and during the space of thirty days they filled the cavity with
powdered myrrh, aloes, Indian spikenard, bitumen, and other aromatics.
In the process of embalming used by the middle class, which cost about
£250, the body was syringed with a decoction of herbs and oil of cedar,
then put into salt for seventy days, after which it was enveloped in
bandages of fine linen, which had been dipped in myrrh and asphaltum,
and the designer, who was called the scribe, covered the wrapping with
a painted cloth, on which were represented the rites of their religion
in hieroglyphics, and the animals which the dead loved most. There was
a third process of embalming used by the poorer people, in which a
mixture of pitch and bitumen was used. The bodies were first dried with
lime, and then coated with a mixture of nitre, salt, honey, and wax to
protect them from the air. Mummies of deceased persons were held in the
greatest reverence by their relatives. The faces were sometimes gilded
and painted and adorned with head-cloths, they were then placed in
elaborate cases according to the position and rank of the person, and
deposited in the highest part of their houses. An old writer states:
“They reckoned their deceased as such a valuable token and pledge of
their faith, that if any of them happened to want money he could not
give a better security than the embalmed body of his relation; and
that which made it esteemed so was, that they would spare no pains to
pay the money again; for if by mischance the debtor could not redeem
this pledge, he was reckoned unworthy of civil society, which engaged
him indispensably to find out ways to recover his kinsman in the time
limited, otherwise he was blamed by all the world”.
Some 300 years ago a large trade was carried on, mostly by Jews, who
imported mummies for medicinal purposes, as they were much used by
the ancient physicians; but there is little doubt that a great deal
of fraud was practised by the mummy merchants, and that many were
specially manufactured for the purpose. Pomet, alluding to this in his
_History of Druggs_, writes: “We may daily see the Jews carrying on
their rogueries as to these mummies, and after them the Christians;
for the mummies that were brought from Alexandria, Egypt, Venice, and
Lyons are nothing else but the bodies of people that die several ways.
Those from Africa called white mummies, are nothing else but bodies
that have been drowned at sea, which, being cast upon the African
coast, are buried and dried in the sands, which are very hot.” When
the ancient physician prescribed mummy for a bad headache, he rarely
got what he imagined. “For,” the writer continues: “I am not able to
stop the abuses committed by those who use this commodity. I shall only
advise such as buy to choose what is of a fine shining black, not full
of bones and dirt, of a good smell, and which being burnt does not
stink of pitch. Such is reckoned proper for contusions, and to hinder
blood from coagulating in the body. It is also given in epilepsies,
vertigoes, and palsies. The dose is two drachms in powder, or the same
made into a bolus. It also stops mortifications, heals wounds, and is
an ingredient in many compositions.” In a price list, dated 1685, mummy
is quoted at 5s. 4d. per lb.
Of the mummies used in medicine five kinds were known.
Factitious.—Those in which bitumen and pitch were largely used in the
process of embalming.
Those bodies dried by the sun in the country of the Hammonians between
Cyrene and Alexandria, being mostly the bodies of passengers buried in
the quicksands.
True Egyptian.
The Arabian, being those bodies embalmed with myrrh, aloes, and other
aromatic gums.
Artificial mummies. Crollius in his _Royal Chemist_ gives the following
process for preparing artificial mummy:—
“Take the carcass of a young man (some say red haired), not dying of a
disease but killed, let it lie twenty-four hours in clear water in the
air, cut the flesh in pieces, to which add powder of myrrh and a little
aloes, imbibe it twenty-four hours in spirit of wine and turpentine,
take it out and hang it up for twelve hours, then imbibe it again,
twenty-four hours in fresh spirit, then hang up the pieces in a dry air
and a shady place.” A rather cheerful operation for the apothecary. It
would possibly account for many a mysterious disappearance in those
days.
Mummy entered into a large number of preparations which we come across
in the old dispensatories. There was the balsam, which is described
by an old writer as “having such a piercing quality that it pierceth
all parts and restores wasted limbs, consumption, and cures all ulcers
and corruptions”. Beside mummies, the apothecaries stocked human fat,
respecting which gruesome material Pomet says: “Everybody knows in
Paris the public executioner sells it, the druggists and apothecaries
a little; nevertheless, they vend a sort of it prepared with aromatic
herbs, and which is without comparison much better than that which
comes from the hands of the hangman”. Human fat was much esteemed for
rubbing, in cases of rheumatism and kindred complaints.
Another part of the body used in ancient medicine was the human skull;
also a growth called the moss from the human skull, probably of fungoid
origin, that appeared on the bone on keeping. An old writer in the
seventeenth century says: “You may see in the druggist shops of London
some skulls entirely covered with moss, and some that only have the
moss growing on some parts. They send these skulls especially to
Germany, to put into the composition of the sympathetic ointment which
Crollius describes in his _Royal Chemist_, and which is used for the
falling sickness.”
Special virtue was attributed to skulls taken from gibbets. Referring
to these, Pomet states: “The English druggists, especially those of
London, sell skulls of the dead upon which there is a little greenish
moss called usnea, because of its near resemblance to the moss which
grows on the oak. These skulls mostly come from Ireland, where they
frequently let the bodies of criminals hang on the gibbet till they
fall to pieces.” The human skulls were sold at 8s., 9s., 10s., and
11s. each. They were given in the form of powder, or one of the
preparations, such as the oil or tincture. Besides the skull, other
human bones, calcined and powdered were used. An oil and a tincture of
skulls, an extract of the gall and the heart of man made with rectified
spirit, was dropped into the ear as a remedy for deafness, and also
given internally for epilepsy. Human hair was used for jaundice,
finger-nails as an emetic (which one can hardly wonder at), and blood
drawn from a healthy man, drunk hot, was used to prevent fits coming
on. The brains of various birds and animals were highly esteemed. The
latter were roasted and rubbed on children’s gums when teething. The
livers of ducks and frogs, and a dead mouse dried and beaten into
powder, were given to relieve kidney disease.
Another extraordinary article used in medicine was the horn of that
fabulous animal the unicorn. Concerning its origin we have recourse
again to Pomet, who states, “the unicorn is an animal which our
naturalists describe under the figure of a horse, having in the middle
of his head a spiral horn of two or three feet long, but we know not
the real truth of this matter to this day”. This horn was formerly held
in high esteem because of the great virtues attributed to it by the
ancients, especially against poisons, “which is the reason that so many
great persons are fond of it, so that it has been valued at its weight
in gold”.
Ambrose Paraens, in a treatise which he wrote on the unicorn, says that
in the deserts of Arabia he found wild asses carrying a horn in the
front, which they used to fight against the bulls. That there _was_ an
animal with one horn, most of the old writers agree, but whether it was
a goat, or an ox, or a hart, or an ass, no one could say. The horn was
probably collected from any of these animals, and as long as the horn
was there it doubtless answered the purpose. The _true_ unicorn, if you
dare believe Ludovicus Vertomanus, who says he saw two of them in Mecca
which were kept within the precincts of Mahomet’s sepulchre, is of a
weasel colour, “with the head like that of a hart, the neck not long,
and the mane growing all on one side, the legs slender and lean like
the legs of a hind, hoofs cloven like a goat’s feet, and the hinder
legs all hairy and shaggy on the outside. His horn was wreathed in
spires of an ivory colour.” There is little doubt that most of the horn
used medicinally, was that obtained from the narwhal or sea unicorn. In
the year 1553 a great unicorn’s horn was brought to the King of France,
and valued at £20,000 sterling. That which was presented to Charles I.
of England is supposed to have been one of the largest ever seen in
the world. “It was seven feet long, weighed thirteen pounds, and was
in the shape of a wax candle, but wreathed within itself in spires,
hollow about a foot from its root, growing taper little by little
towards the point of polished smoothness, and the colour not perfectly
white.” Ancient authors ascribe wonderful properties to the horn of
the unicorn. It was supposed to resist all kinds of poisons, cure the
plague, all manner of fevers, the biting of serpents, mad dogs, etc.,
and was chiefly used as a cordial, for which purpose a jelly was made
of it.