The urban expression “eats your dead” has never been as truthful as in the Middle Ages. XIIe XVIIe A century, doctors regularly prescribed powder from mummified human remains to treat a multitude of ailments, from the internal hemorrhage to stroke, passing by tuberculosis or even transient melancholy. A medicinal substance called “mumia”, the use of which is actually based on … a bad translation of doctors of the time.
At the start of the second millennium, knowledge of the Islamic world, especially with regard to medicine, shade those of Europe. We then seek to translate into Latin the remedies of Arab doctors, not without difficulty. Thus, while the latter had described the therapeutic use of a kind of bituminous resin, which they called Mūmiyā, for its healing properties, European scientists have slightly tangled the brushes when the text is translation. They confused this resin with … mummy powder, thus giving it false medicinal virtues.
This confusion, then the craze which followed for the remedy, was facilitated by the medical beliefs of the time. According to an ancient theory resumed in the Middle Ages, called the principle of signature, the appearance of natural substances, plants in mind, was supposed to cure the evils to which they resembled.
Decline and perlimpinpin powder
For example, nuts, which physically resemble a brain, were prescribed to treat any affection of the human brain. It is therefore surprising therefore to prescribe mummified flesh, which seemed to be very suitable for treating the decomposition, wounds and internal deterioration of the body.
This is how the rich were snatched the remains of mummy for centuries, to the point that a flourishing trade of powdered humans was put in place. The high demand in the face of the limited offer was not long in making the remedy more and more morbid. From Egyptian tombs, public executions, or even the desecration of freshly dug graves were gone to the market. A real rush to the Mumia.
After the peak came the decline. From the 16the century, some doctors began to question the efficiency and the ethical dimension of this practice. With the rise of empirical science in the XVIIe and XVIIIe A centuries, the phenomenon of mumia ended up losing its vigor, before the advances in terms of anatomy ended up undermining the idea that the tissues preserved for centuries could cure the living.
From the start of the 18th centurye A century, Mumia has disappeared from medical practices, falling into macabre depths in the history of European medicine. The perception of mummies, on the other hand,, however, experienced a renewed interest, driven by the beginning of Egyptology. No question of reducing them to powder: now, they will be preserved as historical artifacts.
