Transcript of October Bonus Episode - Corpse Medicine: Tomb to Table

My name's Chad Power. Streaming on Disney Plus. Glenn Powell is Chad Power. Who is that guy? He's doing a Mrs. Doubtfire.

That was one hell of a performance. But with football. I like you, Power. You are a puzzle.

A brand new original series.

Every choice, every mistake carried you to this spot. You were born for this moment.

Are you crying? Chad Power. A new original series exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Ready? Hold on. What if I started every episode like that?

I mean, do what you got to do.

Whatever it takes. You think you'd get over it?

I think I would just tolerate it. Okay.

All right.

Are we going? Whatever you feel.

Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elaina. This is Morbid.

I feel like you should just leave that in. That's the beginning of the bonus episode.

Yeah, I was just slapping my own face to get ready to record this.

Slapping and screaming.

Slapping and screaming. That's my motto. Wow. Like, you said, Girl, don't make that your motto.

You said, Girl, back it up.

It's a bonus episode, so we're leaving all of this.

Yeah, all the kookiness is probably going to still be in here.

Yeah, we're coming off of The most wonderful week.

Yeah, it's been a great week.

No one could even attempt to hurt my feelings right now.

And they have.

They sure have. And it hasn't worked. You can go fuck yourself because I met Andy Cohen, bitch. And Kelly Rippa. And they were both so sweet. And we were in the... This will haunt me until the day I die. Alex Cooper, if you're listening, that would be crazy. We were in the same room as Alex Cooper, and I didn't fucking realize it because she was just about to go out on stage. We just did this big thing with Serious. It was like the advertising upfront. So there's all these presentations that we got to be a part of. We got to meet some other people who work at Serious. I'm essentially coworkers with Andy Cohen now. Mikey brought that to my attention this morning. But yeah, we were in this little green room with so many cool people, and Alex Cooper was one of them, and I didn't see that she was in there because I think I was getting fitted for a microphone. I will regret that moment until the day I go into the grive.

And here's the I think I saw... I heard Alex Cooper first because you know her voice. Yeah. Then I looked over and she was getting touched up before she went on.

Yeah, so you don't want to interrupt.

I was like, I don't know what to say to her. Yeah.

Because I felt like, damn. She's a fucking boss ass bitch. I have been Daddy Gang.

But she was very sweet. I could see she was very sweet to everyone around her. Yeah.

And her presentation was so good. Yeah.

A plus behavior.

I have been Daddy Gang since day one. Yeah, you have. I will be Daddy Gang until I die.

I was a later Her Convert.

You were a leader to the Daddy Gang.

But I'm there.

Well, hopefully there's another event where we can meet Alex Cooper and apologize for not bowing down to her greatness the first time we met her.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Serious. It was a fucking blast with them. Serious?

Was the goddamn move.

Yeah. We love everyone we're working with right now. It's been really great. You guys have had such cool responses to it. You guys can feel it as well. You've been telling us that, and thank you for telling us that because it's nice to know that what we feel on the inside is coming out in the podcast. We're very happy. We're very happy at work.

It feels so good.

It feels so good. There's a little side tangent for the…

It feels so good. It's a bonus episode, so it's loose and it's goose. We are going to get to something crazy, but we're going to banter for it.

This is where we can go on our tangent. When we got home from a vacation, we have a whiteboard in our kitchen that we put all the school things on and all that. One of my kids wrote, On the whiteboard, it feels good to be home.

F-l-e-e-l-s. Which? It feels good.

First of all, writing, It feels good to be home, is the most adorable thing ever because I'm pretty sure she was seven. Yeah, she was.

She did that.

She was young. But she wrote, Fleels. We have literally put a border around it on the whiteboard, and it's been there for years now. It is not to be erased. And I will not allow anyone to erase it. I'm probably going to take a saw and saw that portion of the...

Yeah, like an exacto knife.

I need to keep it forever. Yeah. And it's dry erase marker, so I'm very scared. If you guys have any tips on how to keep that from smearing. Do you think?

Could you laminate it?

I don't know how to do it without smushing it or making it run or anything. So if you guys have tips.

Maybe you could go over it with permanent marker or something. We're both looking at Mikey.

Like, Mikey, what would we do? I know. I looked at Mikey like, I bet you no.

Like, he's a crafting king.

But we'll figure it out. If you guys have any tips, I would love them because I do want to keep my It feels good to be home forever.

It feels so good to be home.

You give it to her when she's 18 for a graduation present.

The first time she comes home from college. And just be like, here you go. Here's this chunk of our whiteboard. She's sentimental.

She's very sentimental.

She would love it. She'd cry. Yeah.

Yeah. That's my girl right there.

Yeah, but this weekend was incredible.

What else is going on? Still dealing with the golden globes of it all.

Still just dealing with that. Still just reeling from that. It's crazy. Yeah, we're going to submit our application pretty soon.

Yeah, see if we can make it into the nomination pool.

But either way- For me, even if we just get... First of all, this is plenty.

Just being on the shortlist is a win for me.

Being able to say multiple times this past week at different presentations, we're eligible to be nominated. It's like asterisk. Asterisk.

Asterisk test.

But even if we got nominated, that would also be enough for me. Oh, that's a win.

Everything is enough for me right now. So far, win, win, win for me. It doesn't matter what happens after this.

I'm pretty happy. This is just my anxiety talking, but are you ever terrified when things are so good that you're like, Oh, is everything okay?

140 %, yes.

In the back of my mind, I'm like, Things are really, really good.

No, but you just got to keep manifesting it and you got to keep being thankful for it. Oh, I? It's all I'm not being grateful.

I think that's really a big thing. I thank the universe every single day for every... What are you just jingling over there for?

Never take it for granted.

I thank the universe every day for Mikey's Jingle Jangle. I do, too.

Thank you for Mikey's Jingle Jangle's universe.

Thank you for Mikey universe.

Truly, thank you for Mikey universe.

Oh, yeah.

But yeah, I think it's I think it really is just never take it for granted. No. You know? You never know what can happen tomorrow.

Also, we learned a TikTok dance this weekend, and a lot of you were genuinely so surprised at Elaina's ability to tell the truth with her hips.

Which I did not know if I should take that as a compliment or an insult, but I'm just kidding. But yeah, I guess I can learn a dance. It was so funny.

After the first day in New York, it was this whirlwind of a day, which was so cool. We met all the cool people and everything. And then we were going to go. I was like, We should go out to dinner. I'm on such a high right now. I literally felt like I was on drugs. I was like, I feel so wonderful. We got home. I'm FaceTiming Drew, telling him how cool the day was. And I'm like, Yeah, we're going to go out to dinner and it's going to be awesome. And I sat down and I'm like, I don't really want to go out to dinner. I just want to hang here. And Elaina comes in my room. She's like, Hey, so what do you think if we just ordered food and hung out, maybe watched Laguna Bee? I was like, I'm in. And then we proceeded to get Chinese food and pizza. Which both were great. Oh, my God. Wherever we We got Chinese food from in New York, we need to order. Yeah, it was great. And the pizza was really good.

The pizza was so good. That shit was just lit. We just got in our sweats.

I got my Halloween PJs. Yeah.

We just like, there were parties happening. There were all kinds of... We didn't go out to dinner. We just said No, no. We're going to stay in this hotel room. We're going to watch some old episodes of Laguna Beach. Oh my God. We're going to learn a TikTok dance.

We've specifically watched- And Mike, you will film it. And he did. I need you guys to know that that was our first take.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that.

After learning it, it was our first take. So that's why I look so focused, okay?

So we were messing around with the lighting and the other takes, but because I'm getting old, every further take that was happening after that, I was getting more and more tired. It wasn't great.

I disagree.

I think they were good.

I appreciate that. But the first one was definitely the best.

When we changed the lighting in the later ones, there were all kinds of little orb things floating around, which is like, oh, ghosties.

Yeah, I slept really good in the hotel the first night, but then the second night, I think it was haunted for sure.

Yeah, you kept hearing creaking.

I was hearing lots of creaking, and it was freaking me out because there was a shit ton of windows in the room, and there were so many drapes. And all I could think, I woke up at 3: 00 AM, and all I could think of was the I have a story that I told about the alien abduction where she was like, I forgot to look behind the drape. Oh, my God. And I was like, I didn't look behind any of these drapes.

What if there's an alien?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's crazy. I know. There wasn't, luckily.

But yeah, that's how we roll in New York. We can handle a little bit of excitement, and then we are in our PJs.

I feel like- Order pizza. Sometimes I say that I'm an introverted extrovert, but I think I'm becoming more of an introvert who just has to be extroverted. Sometimes. That's what I am.

I'm for sure an introvert, but I know that my job requires me to be an extrovert sometimes, so I can pull it out. And it's the people that are around me at my job. That help. Our live shows require me to be an extrovert, but then the energy in the room feeds that. It makes it easier. And then meeting you guys afterwards. It's always so fun. It's so easy to be an extrovert there because you guys are just fun to meet.

I fully agree with that. But then I do need to recharge.

Oh.

And my recharging, it was so funny. We had just got home from New York, and then we got to, I should say, got to go to the Two Girls, One, Go! Show, which was so much fun. Sabrina and Gurren know how to put on a fucking show.

They're so fucking good.

I love them. We got to be guests for that. I was getting ready for it. It was so funny. Drew goes, You literally did... I was sitting down doing my makeup. He's like, You didn't say a word to me the entire time you were getting ready for that. And then you were just like, Okay, I love you. Bye.

Just recharging.

I was like, Yeah. I was on my charging block.

It's so true.

It's just how it is sometimes.

Yeah, you guys feel us.

But yeah, it's been a whirlwind of a week.

And you guys have been really supportive and awesome. Everybody's just been hyping us up. You guys have been really cool.

I love you guys.

And there's always a couple of assholes, but we eradicate them from the bunch.

We do. Sometimes they delete their comments asking you if you're pregnant when you're not. Yeah.

Don't ask people if they're pregnant. Yeah.

For a million and one reason, it's a really terrible idea.

Yeah. If somebody who went through infertility for three years, I would have fucking lost my mind if somebody asked me that. So don't do that. But none of you would. None of you listening. None of you listening. None of our good community here would. There's always those ones that just come out of nowhere and are like, oh, I'm going to yuck people's yum on the internet because I'm a miserable cunt.

It's like, sorry, I was on your discover page.

All right. So let's make sure. You know what? Because all you listening, I know it. You're all the good ones. Hey, Beauty Queens. Yeah. Hey, all you beauties. When you see people being shitheads on the internet, just chase them the internet. Chase them down. Get them gone. We got to start fucking chasing these assholes off the internet. Go on. People who just go around and leave nasty comments on people's happiness need to be like, chased off the internet.

Nasty begets nasty, my dears.

Because I love nothing more now than to see a video of somebody that I'm like, well, that's a fun video. Like, that's really cool. I now make it a point, and we all should, to leave a kind comment or an uplifting comment on as many videos as I possibly can. Yeah. And they're all real and genuine. Because there's so much yuckiness that you need to counteract it.

Pump people up.

It feels so good. It does. It really does.

It feels so good.

It feels so good.

Full fucking circle.

I'm telling you, pumping people up is so much better than trying to tear someone down. It's going to make you feel so much better.

You'll feel better about your own self.

And we can just turn that because everything's It sucks right now. Oh, God. It's so terrible. The internet is a literal fucking garbage fire. I was going to say dumpster fire. We can try to turn it around a little by just spreading more positivity and making those fucking troll ass bitches feel unwelcome. I'm seeing people start to do that more, and it's making me happy because I think we are starting to make the trolls feel very fucking unwelcome on the internet, and we need to continue doing that.

Absolutely.

If you see a video or something that even slightly tickles your pickle, you should comment, Hey, this tickles my pickle, even just the littlest bit. Let that person know.

Mikee is making an X in the air. He's like, No. He's like, Do not do that.

Let that person know that their makeup is awesome. Let that person know that the hair is fucking killing it.

Maybe you could say, Hey, this struck my fancy.

This struck my... This made me feel...

This made me feel a feel. This made me feel the feels.

Let that person know that dance was great. This was a funny video. This made me laugh. Just do it.

Just look them on up. Just look them on up. Throw them in the air. It's worth it. It's worth it. Become a stunter. Hell, yeah. Stunt on these hosts. All right. Well, with all that being said, let's talk about something hella nasty because this is called Morbid after all.

I'm very excited for this one. And Ash really did the damn thing.

I really went forth and conquered. Thank you for the recognition there, brother. You're welcome. Well, I was looking for something Halloweeny or Halloween adjacent to talk about because it's an October bonus episode. That's when I stumbled across a Smithsonian article about something called Corpse Medicine.

I said, Yeah, I want to hear about that.

I said, Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking morbid. Corpse Medicine, or Medical Cannibalism, it's also called, was a legit medical practice back in Europe from the 12th century all the way into the 17th century.

Wow, they were really committed to this.

Long time, yeah. Back then, people from all different kinds of walks of life, even medical doctors, believed that consuming things like blood, human fat, crushed up skull bits, would have different medical benefits, whether it was relieving headaches, treating bruises, improving circulation, or even curing epilepsy.

Damn.

Damn is right.

Mummy dust.

Well, I'm going to actually talk about mummy dust. Thank you for the foreshadowing, Tobias Forge. So it all started back in ancient Egypt with mummies. There we go. But before we get there, we I have to talk about something called bitumen. Okay. It's really called bitumen. And also a pretty big mix-up in language translation. So let's talk about bitumen first. Bitumen is actually one of the main ingredients in the asphalt. Oh, okay. It's like the black, sticky substance that holds everything together. It acts like a glue. It's actually a naturally occurring substance. And thousands of years ago, they would use it to treat things like asthma, stomach inflammation, broken bones, acne. No, like, literally. You know, your day to day snake and scorpion bites. Oh, yeah. Ear infections, two things.

I'm always looking for something for my day to day scorpion and snake bites.

It's just a common occurrence out here.

Especially in Massachusetts. You know, scorpions everywhere.

Scorpions and snakes just bite us all. We're all covered in an asphalt. Yeah. So now we obviously know all the harmful effects of ingesting bitumen, like skin cancer, skin irritation, respiratory problems, death.

Poison.

Poison. But back then people really thought it was the tits. Well-respected Roman scientist and close friend to the Emperor, Gaius Plineus Secundus, aka Pliny the elder. He used to tell people- Pliny the elder. Pliny the elder. He used to tell people to mix it in with wine, and it would treat their coughs and their dysentery. Damn. He said, Just mix a little tarin with your wine. Yeah, it's fine. Take a big sip. I love that. You'll feel better in no I mean, let's go.

Is it Gaias? Gaias?

It's Gaius.

Gaius.

Let's go, Gaius. Plineus secundus.

Oh, yes. What was it, the elder?

Pliny the elder.

I'm so sorry. Pliny the elder. Let's go. I was going to say, I don't want to fuck it up.

He's a goddamn elder.

Put some goddamn respect on his name.

Hello. So, yeah, that's Bitchman.

That is Bitchman. That's Bitchman.

It's Bichin? It's Bichin.

It's Bitchin.

It's Bitchin. Now to the mummies and the mistranslation of it all. When you picture a mummy, obviously, you think of a Halloween costume, toilet paper-wrapped dead person. Always. But the word mummy, originally, wasn't always referring to the entire being or the body itself. Around the 12th century, the Arabic word mumia, was mistranslated. Oh. Yeah. So originally it was just referring to the substance bitumen. That's what mumia was. But when Europeans started viewing ancient Egyptian bodies that had been preserved by this embalming process that used all kinds of different resin and things like that, they thought that was naturally occurring bitumen, and that... It's never not funny to say bitumen. But they thought that was naturally occurring and that it had all these cure-all properties. And they thought that the word was referring to the entire body. And that's how we got the English word mummy.

This person is a mummy, not a healthy substance.

Exactly. Isn't that interesting?

That is very interesting. I didn't know that.

So now because they thought that the bodies were coded in bitumen, Everyone thought they had all kinds of medical uses.

People think I'm coded in bitumen a lot.

You are bitumen-coated. But because people wanted all the bitumen, these bodies started being disturbed so that people could access the substance. Oh, that's fucked up. Yeah, real messed up. It got even more fucked up as time went on. According to the Science History Institute writer, Mariel Carr, she said, After this point, the meaning of mumia expanded to include not just asphalt, but other hardened, resonous material from involved bodies, but the flesh of that involved body as well.

Oh, we're getting cookey.

Not only were they like, Hey, I'd like that bitumen. They were like, I'd like that I'd like that head.

Yeah, yeah. I don't want that.

Yeah, well.

No, thank you.

They did in Europe. Eventually, the practice of eating human flesh in other parts of the body found its way over there. Awesome. Richard Sugg, who wrote Mummies, Cannimals, andampires: The History of corpse medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians. Let's go, girl. He wrote, For certain practitioners and patients, there was almost nothing between the head and feet which could not be used in some way.

Wow.

And he was right. He was correct. He was correct. So the idea was rooted in sympathetic magic. Back then, they believed that there was a connection between two things or two actions. They said, like treated like. So if somebody had a migraine, cool. Give them this ground up skull tincture.

Yeah. I mean, Honestly, with such remedial understanding of pretty much anything at that point, I get why the connection was made, I suppose, if you think this is all going to work.

I mean, I get the thinking. Yeah.

People are going to believe doctors and all these people being like, Hey, if your head hurts, you might as well eat some skull.

Yeah, do it. Injust some skull. I'm not telling you, too, but the doctors back then were telling people, too. I mean, don't. Definitely don't. But they also thought, If somebody's bleeding, let's stop the bleeding with some blood jam. Oh, yeah. Which is funny because it's like a double entendra. It jams up the blood. Yeah, it's a blood jam. Stop the bleeding. But it's also like a jelly. Yeah.

That just makes me think of coagulated blood because it looks like jelly.

I mean, that's essentially what this was.

I can picture it.

Yeah. Well, Richard Sugg actually gives one of the original recipes for blood jam in his book. First, one needs to get blood from, quote, versons of warm, moist temperament, such as those of blotchy red complexion and rather plump of build. So then once you get your blood from your plump of build, blotchy red person, then you're going to let that dry into a sticky mass. One Once it's dry, the recipe says to place it upon a flat smooth table of soft wood, not hard, and cut it into thin little slices, allowing its watery part to drip away. When it's no longer dripping, place it on a stove on the same table and stir it into a batter with a knife. When it's absolutely dry, place it immediately in a very warm bronze mortar and pound it, forcing it through a sieve of the finest silk. When it has all been sieved, seal it in a Renew it in the spring of every year.

Okay, we'll do. I like, Renew it in the spring of every year. It sounds very Martha Stewart at the end. I was just going to say that.

It's literally Martha being like, And you know what? Keep on top of it, girl. Keep on top of it.

Renew it in the spring of every year. Or it's like Ina garden being like- Store bought is fine. If you can't make it yourself, store bought is fine.

Which I don't really... Well, you know what? I was going to say, I don't think you could get this in the store, but you could because we're going to talk about the apothecaries in a minute. Oh, here we There we go. That carried all this stuff. But first, let's get back to the ground up skull tincture. So originally- I would like to get back to that.

Thank you. I'm so glad. I didn't love that we were going so far away from it. I said, Where is it?

You always want to go back to the tincture.

As someone with migraines, I would like to hear about this ground up skull tincture, please.

All right. You might end up being disappointed, but you know what? I'll tell you everything you need to know.

I'm always looking for a remedy.

Here's the thing. Originally, the mixture was referred to as Goddard's Drops because they were invented by a doctor named Jonathan Goddard in the 17th century. He served as an army surgeon during the English Civil War, and he was one of Oliver Cromwell's personal doctors. Oliver Cromwell can get booked. But I'm an Irish woman. Somehow Now, through his own studies of corpse medicine, he came to believe that his tincture could cure all kinds of things: fainting, strokes, epilepsy, bladderstones, really just anything causing you any distress.

Whenever something is claiming claiming that it can fix that many different complex and completely distinct problems? Yeah. Question. Yeah. Question. I'm not saying... Just question it.

Just ask a few questions. Just say, How's it doing all that?

How's it doing all that?

You'll find out. Okay. So first, let's get to the recipe. The recipe was a mix of five pounds of human skull.

Whoa.

Five pounds of human skull, two pounds of dried vapors, two pounds of distilled deer horns, and two pounds of ivory. I know. It's fucked up. After a process of distilling and filtering and doing that all over again, they were then poured into a tincture bottle, and the instructions were to take seven to eight drops for things like headaches, migraines, fainting. Maybe even if you just needed a simple stimulant, you're a little tired. A little king's drop on your tongue. Yeah, why not? Or Goddard's drop, excuse me. We're not to king's drops yet. But in cases where you had had a stroke or suffered from epilepsy, the dose could increase to 50 drops. Holy shit. Now, here's where we get to king's drops. King Charles II was such a fan of this tincture. He was really into chemistry and science and everything. He literally had a lab built in the castle. But so he was so interested and he was such a fan of the tincture. He was said to have bought the recipe from Dr. Goddard for £6,000. Damn. And then he rebranded the name to the King's It's the relaunch for me. I bet they had a relaunch.

It is the relaunch for me.

It's the rebranding. I love that.

He said, I bought these. I bought their name, their likeness, and they're mine now.

He said, relaunch.

King's drops. He would add them to his wine. He would add them to chocolates. Some people said that he had a goblet that was made of skull that he would drink his wine in with skulls drops in it.

Here's the thing that's extraordinarily metal, but it's not good.

Not good, but I have to agree with you.

But like, you have to do a guitar rift there.

You absolutely do. That's insane. Just walking around with a glass.

With a skull goblet.

With a skull.

Drinking your skull tincture in wine.

That's the thing. Like a skull goblet filled with skull. That's literally so much skull.

Skull and wine. Yeah. Me, I'm going to look for a different remedy for my migraines.

You know, excedrin seems to work great for you.

I will not be, be trying this.

I'm glad to hear that. That makes me feel like a lot more secure as your business partner. Yeah. But he also allegedly gave them to the Royal Court, too, as a truth serum.

Oh.

But it's also like... It's that, too. Well, they think so, but I'm like, you were just giving them wine. Yeah. And people tend to get drunk and tell you everything.

People get liquored up and they start telling you stuff.

You know? Yeah. Now, ironically, King Charles II died of a stroke in 1685, even after upping his dosage on his deathbed to 40 drops per day.

It's so weird that that didn't work.

Yeah, it's crazy. He wasn't the only person who died from that. Really? Yeah. King's Drops didn't really save a lot of people.

I had such faith.

I did, too. Now, here's the thing. One of the most important things when it came to the sourcing of skulls for King's Drops was that the skull came from a person who had died of violent death. Oh, yeah.

That gets even gnarlier.

Now, this This was rooted in the idea of the vital spirit, which is pretty similar to sympathetic magic. Paracelsus, who was a Swiss doctor who lived during the 14th and 15th centuries, he believed that if a person died suddenly, they would have more of this life force or vital spirit inside of them because it hadn't been damaged by any illness and the person wasn't expecting to die necessarily. So that meant that their spirits still possessed some desire to continue on. And therefore, if you ingested that, you would have that will to continue on and to not be sick or to not suffer from whatever was ailing you.

Damn. I love the mental gymnastics that they do to make these things make sense because you're like, Yeah.

All right. Yeah.

Sure. If I do a few back flips, that makes perfect sense.

Yeah, if I run over there, come back really quick, do a cartwheel, chug some gatorade, and then do 15 more flips. I think I get it.

Yeah. If I'm Simone Biles, that makes sense. Yeah.

If I get the spins, it makes sense. This is going to really send you. He was called the Father of Toxicology back then.

Wow. Yeah. We really... The bar was in hell.

It was. It sure was. What do you mean? It sure was. So in the case of sourcing- Father. Father. That's not my dad. That's not my dad. So in the case of sourcing skulls for the king's drops, a A lot of them came from Ireland, which was fucking pointed. Wow. Like I mentioned earlier, there was many reasons for it, but I think the biggest one is what I'm going to say.

He's definitely not my dad. No.

So like I mentioned earlier, Dr. Goddard was the army surgeon during the English Civil War, the first one, and he was also Oliver Cromwell's personal doctor. The English Civil War coincided with the Cromwellian massacres in Ireland, where thousands of Irish troops and civilians were killed incredibly violently. Oliver Cromwell was a fucked up person.

He was a turd bucket.

Yeah. He loved to... People that were captured, he would torture them. People that were literally just passing through an area who weren't involved in the war at all, he would capture them and torture them, and they died brutal, brutal deaths.

Yeah. For a guy named Oliver, he had a lot of nerve.

He really did. Yeah. It's like you're supposed to be gentle. Yeah.

I've never met an Oliver that was a piece of shit.

Yeah, that was like this. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the Cromwellian massacres obviously led to a surplus of skulls that physicians back then would have believed contained the perfect amount of vital force because of the way that they were killed. They weren't expecting to be killed. They died violently. Yada, yada, yada. Now, another desirable quality of the skulls found in Ireland was something called skull moss or osnia. A lot of times in Ireland, enemies killed on their land weren't buried. They were just left out as warning, not to fuck with Ireland.

What I do with spiders sometimes. Yeah.

You leave the dead body somewhere. I love that.

Just so the next one knows.

That's pretty much... The same thing. That's pretty much genius also. Yeah.

You got to let them know. Like, this is what I'm about. I'll leave you alone outside. My house is my house.

I mean, you are Irish after all. Yeah. So because they were left to the elements, moss would start to grow over the tops of the skulls. And physicians back then thought that these skulls would be even more potent with vital force because the moss would suck it all up. So it was ideal for king's drops, but also absorbent enough to be used to stop nosebleeds as well. Oh, good. So they would either- Delightful. They would either grind up the skull and add the moss to the tincture, like grind that up, too. Or they would literally just take the moss off of the skulls and shove it up their fucking nose.

Absolutely.

To stop nose bleeds. Of course. Or even it was put on wounds and that thing at times, too.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. We've come a long way. We have.

That's pretty wild. We have.

Skull moss is... What is the vital... What is it called?

A vital force.

Vital force in life. Sorry. Vital spirit.

There it is. I combined life force and Vital spirit. Yeah.

Vital spirit sounds like a really cool band name. Yeah. Skull Moss feels like a really good name of a book.

Yeah, I would read a book called Skull Moss. I feel like Skull Moss could even be a band, and they opened for Vital spirit.

Yeah, absolutely. I like it. I like it.

Well, physicians weren't the only people learning about and stocking their shelves with corpse medicine. There was also apothecaries who had entire stores filled to the brim with tinctures, body parts, fluids, anything you could dream of. Cool. To treat your ailments. Yeah. One of the main things that they carried was something that you foreshadowed earlier. Oh. Mummy powder.

Mummy powder.

Sort of mummy dust. So mummy powder was really looked at then to be another cure-all. It was like the end-all be-all in corpse medicine. They thought of it as a panacea, which is a remedy for anything that ails you whatsoever. They thought it was a cough suppressing, an anti-inflammatory, a blood thinner, a painkiller, you name it, mummy powder could fix it.

Let's go.

And just a quick little side detour. It didn't only serve medical purposes. It also had its role in the arts. There is a famous painting called Interior of a Kitchen, and it's by Martin Drolling. It was done in 1815, and a lot of art historians agree that he used a ton of this color called mummy Brown.

Mummy Brown.

And that was a mixture of white pitch, mer, and mummy flush. Damn. They were straight up painting with mummy flush.

With pieces of people.

Yeah. In 1797, a London publication actually wrote that, The most fleshy bits are the best parts.

The most fleshy bits are the best parts.

The best parts for to make paint.

Was that Hannah Belector who said that?

No, it wasn't even. What? And it was used for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And it became a great ghost song.

Yeah, mommy does.

That is really fun to watch live.

There you go. Yeah, he do be thrusting. He do be. He do be. Well, in 1881, a famous artist, Edward Bird Jones, found out the truth about mommy Brown. He thought he had heard in his fancy art community. Of course. People say like, oh, yeah, it's literally made of mummies. And he was like, oh, pish-posh.

Imagine that casual conversation. Somebody at coffee is just like, did you hear? Yeah. You hear that Marcus put fucking bits of flesh in his painting? Everybody's like, Ah.

They were like, His brown isn't really drying as it's supposed to because that was often a complaint of Mummy Brown was that it was a little bit see-through. It wasn't as potent as the rest of their paint.

Yeah, of course It's not.

They had to use a lot of it. That's the thing. He found out one day that all the rumors were true. Wow. He went into his backyard that day and buried the one remaining tube he had of Mummy Brown to give it a, quote, In a decent and proper burial.

Oh, that's sweet.

Yeah, he was sweet. He was very upset about it.

He's like, that's a person. Yeah. I should bury it. Yeah. Isn't that nice? That's sweet in the most fucking macabre way.

Yeah. We love an aware king. We do. Apparently, the use of mummy Brown, though, lasted all the way into the 20th century. Damn. Yeah. It died out, luckily. And now you can't find it anywhere.

No pun intended.

Now you can't find it anywhere except on display at the Harvard Art Museum. Oh, I want to see it. There's a tube on display. I can show you a picture of it.

We can just see it. We can just see it. It's right over there. Yeah. Let's go.

Well, back to the 16th century now. Back to it. So these apothecaries, like I mentioned, would travel to Egypt to buy mummies from merchants to make their powders. But it was hard to tell what was authentic and what wasn't. King Francis, the first of France, if you can even believe it, he was said to carry a mixture, a mixture of true moovia, which was a viscus black liquid directly extracted from a mummy who had at one time belonged to one of the wealthiest Egyptian families. Holy shit. And he knew for sure he sent the right people. They robbed the right grave and they got him his- They verified it. His mixture there. And he carried it in case of emergency, by the way. Yeah. It was literally in his first aid kit.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So it was probably easy for a king to get what he believed to be the good stuff, but it was hard for others to ensure what was authentic and what wasn't. There were merchants who would sell camels instead of humans. There were people who thought that they were purchasing royal Egyptian bodies that they believed would contain some of the best vital spirit you could buy who got completely bamboozled. Carl H. Danenfeldt wrote about these merchants and said, The bodies, now Mumia, had been those of slaves and other dead persons, young and old, male and female, which he had indiscriminately collected. The merchant cared not for what disease had caused these deaths since when involved, no one could tell the difference. Oh, man. So you, somebody, not you, I'm like, You over there, red.

Yeah, me.

People would be out here being like, Oh, I'm going to go buy the richest Egyptian mummy that I can get because obviously they're going to contain this rich, vital spirit. They're going to be buried with all these delicious bitumen.

Yeah, the fanciest vital spirit and all the bitumen.

You could receive a camel. Honestly, that's what you get.

I was just going to say, you play stupid games, you win stupid It's just you might get a camel. Yeah, you might. And that's on you.

But also, I think you might get somebody who died of the plague back then. You might get somebody who died of dysentery.

Yeah, and you're just ingesting their shit.

No wonder. Sometimes they really were ingesting their shit. I didn't even include this, but just a quick side note, because it's not really corpse medicine, but it's like adjacent. People would dry out feces. No. Like human and animal feces.

He just shot up from what he was doing. He was like, Excuse me?

And they would turn it into a powder that they believed would cure cataracts. So they would just literally fling shit into their eyes. Did powder into their eyes.

Were they able... Here's where I'm like, we really have come far because I'm like, maybe, who knows? Would you be able to convince people that dried up shit flung into your What line of thinking did they pass through here?

Here's the thing.

To be like, if you fling dried up shit into your eyes, it will cure your cataract.

Here's the thing. I didn't really go down that rabbit hole because I had to go down many other rabbit holes for this. I found out that fecal medicine is not necessarily corpse medicine. I left it for another day.

That's different.

But in these apothecaries, they would have little tins that would say, Goose fecal matter. Poop. They'd say, We sell poop here. Get your poop here. It wasn't just cataracts. They used it for all different kinds of things. Yeah, of course. But that's another episode.

Wow.

That's really interesting. Yeah. So people were getting duped anyways. Back to my original point. Luckily, for people who couldn't afford the high-end corpse medicine, there was somebody you could go to for cheaper stuff. I guess you could at least guarantee what you were getting there. Yeah. Yeah. Not only could you go to your local executioner for the finest entertainment of the day, but they were also one of the main suppliers of human remains at the time. Once mummies got harder to come by, people would flock to executions to get their hands on different body parts, skulls, blood, fat, tissue, you name it. Delicious. Eventually, executed criminals actually became the number one source for the medicine. People back then felt like it was perfect because they could get their extra vital spirit from people dying quickly and violently. They're either being beheaded or hanged. But they also felt better about using those kinds of bodies for medicine because these people weren't the most desirable members of society. So you didn't have the moral implications that came with.

Because they were undesirable.

Yeah. Grave robbing. Because that's the other thing. The uptick in grave robbing back then. Oh, yeah. Crazy.

Oh, you were never safe.

No. But at executions, you could literally buy cups of warm blood. It was suggested that you do drink it while it was warm or that you did drink it while it was warm because that meant that the spirit of the person was still fresh. Obviously, these That a lot. These cups sold for a lot of money. It was like going to a concert and paying $12 for a water.

It was exactly like that.

It was similar. People who couldn't afford to buy a cup for themselves would either dip cloths into the blood leftover from the execution site and get it that way.

Yeah, I remember hearing this.

Or they would bring their own bread and dip the bread into it. I'm sorry. That image conjured in your mind.

Thinking of somebody taking bread or taking a handkerchief and just letting it soak up the warm fucking blood.

And then drinking it.

What are we as a species? Barbarians. We're real while.

Do you guys remember? I don't know if you will, Elaina, but do you guys remember Dave the Barbarian? Yeah. I just said Barbarian, and I literally just went, Barbarian. Barbarian. Barbarian in my head.

Just so you know.

That show slapped you guys. That was a great show. Quick detour. But yeah, at King Charles I, different from King Charles II, who died after the King's drops didn't work when he had a stroke. It's different. His dad, actually, was executed, and people were seen mopping up his blood with their handkerchiefs at his execution Great. Yeah. Obviously, that would be the most vital of spirits that you could get. That's the king. All the spirit. Back then, they actually believed that they believed in something called the royal touch. If you even touched the king or if he allowed his hand to touch you, they believed even that touch alone could heal you. Wow. Imagine what his blood could do for you.

Imagine. I can only.

But yeah, back to the blood of the execution times. That was thought to be the best cure for epilepsy and tuberculosis. Yeah, of course. But it was also just thought to be a good drink if you wanted to stay looking young and fresh.

Yeah. I mean, just ask Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know. He warms up his blood. He does. And he also puts wheat bits in it if he wants a little texture. Yeah, he does. That's a little tip from me to you.

Everybody has preferences. But according to Best Lovejoy, who wrote an article called A Brief History of Medical Cannibalism. Cute. Marcilo Fusino, I think, who was a highly respected 15th century Italian scholar and priest, wrote that elderly people should, quote, Suck the blood of an adolescent who is clean, happy, temperate, and whose blood is excellent, but perhaps a little excessive.

Yeah.

If they wanted to stay young. Yeah, absolutely. You know what? That young person who's clean and happy and temperate and all that. Become a vampire. They might have a little extra blood and you should drink it right from them.

I love that they're just like, You know what? Become a vampire. Yeah.

They're like, Do it.

Let's just all, I feel like, I feel like twilight's going to come out in a few hundred years and we're going to love it. We're going to be ahead of that.

They said, Have you even seen Carlyle?

Have you even seen the skin of a killer, Bella?

Have you even? I just watched twilight and I can't stop saying, This is the skin of a killer, Bella.

I love it so much.

It's the best.

It's an interesting movie to watch now.

Period.

I was like, I just told everyone to be nice.

It's entertainment at its finest. It is. It's very entertaining. I started watching it the other night, and I got all the way halfway through Eclipse.

Yeah, that's a lot.

Yeah. I'm trying to finish the whole... I haven't watched the series through in so long or the... No.

It's been years and years and years.

But back to the blood. Yeah. So you could suck the blood of the people who were young and temperate and happy.

And then you would get the skin of a killer.

I like that he specified clean, too. That was the smart of him.

That was nice.

But this belief actually might have rooted in Roman history, where people allegedly would drink the blood of fallen gladiators, hoping to get some of their strength and bravery via ingestion of them.

Wow.

Yeah.

So many shortcuts people are looking for. Yeah. Shortcuts that are very complicated.

It's like, maybe just lift, bro.

Do you even lift, bro?

Do you even lift?

Maybe just make sure you're hydrated. Just drink some water.

Yeah. Well, the local executioners weren't just dolling out cups of warm blood and stepping aside while people dipped bread in it like they were just having some oil and balsamic. He would also harvest the fat from executed bodies. Most of the time he would sell it to the local apothecaries and they would melt it down to use an ointment or they would dry it out to use it in powders. The ointments could be used topically to treat things like bruises, scars, gout, general aches and pains. And in powder form, they were also thought to stop bleeding. Sometimes they would soak bandages in human fat before they were wrapped around wounds or injured bones because they thought that promoted healing.

You know what? That one I can almost understand the thought process behind. Yeah.

No, I get that.

We know it's ridiculous, but it's like you can almost see the through line of thinking there. Yeah, because- On that particular one.

I can't put it into words why it makes sense, but I get it a little bit.

That's the thing. It doesn't. But you can understand why without any knowledge of biology or anything, that that would seem to make some type of sense. It's the least intrusive of them that I can think of.

Well, not at least. I mean, in some cases they were ingesting the fat. But at least in that case, they were just wrapping it around a wound.

And they're hoping it promotes healing, which it doesn't.

No, but I get it.

But yeah, I'm like, All right, that one's not as offensive.

Well, it was especially popular. It was a especially popular form of corpse medicine during wartime. Makes sense. Army surgeons like Dr. Goddard, who I mentioned earlier, would go out onto the battlefield and literally fill up bags of fat from fallen soldiers. That's horrifying. They would take the huge bags back to medical tents and treat wounded soldiers with the fat of fallen soldiers.

Damn.

Yeah. Shit was so fucking bleak back then.

Narly. The fact that... Just hearing they were harvesting fat fat from fallen soldiers. That entails a lot.

You have to picture that first.

That entails a very gnarly image.

And also- Very gruesome. Probably harvesting their skulls as well.

Oh my God.

You also might remember from some of our coverage of the Paris Catacombs, that leftover fat from the surplus of bodies there at that time was used to make soap and candles.

Yeah, yeah. Love that. Luckily, though, by the 18th century, the Enlight, the Age of Reason came along and people started looking a little deeper into science and actual medicine.

They were like, Hey, you know what's fucking crazy? None of this seems to work and everyone is still dying super young. I feel like we should try something else.

That seems to be a through line in our species. Because even when we were talking about this a few days ago, during the Salem witch trials, everyone's like, How did it stop? And it's like, it literally stopped because they Like, press to death an old man in a field naked. And some people were like, I think we went too far. This shit is weird what we're doing.

Like, this is weird. At least I'm hopeful that that actually starts to happen soon again. I hope that people start looking around and being like, Hey, it's fucking really gross what we're doing. Maybe we should stop.

Let's stop. Maybe we should move along. It is a trait of our species. So it's very well could happen again. It always gets worse before it gets better. But it seems to happen there, too. It's just everyone's like, Yeah. None of this is working. We should stop. Yeah.

I think they were definitely feeling weird, too, about the moral implications that were involved. Yeah.

I love for a long time, they were just like, I guess we just deal with it.

I guess once we ran out of bodies to steal at least we were eating criminals. Yeah. It's medicinal happiness.

Very much like a hunter's mentality that it's like, well, I use everything on the animal. Yeah. So it's fine. Yeah.

I mean, it also got harder to supply mummies from Egypt. People were also catching on to the trickery involved.

Oh, yeah. The snake oil of it all.

Yeah. But mostly people just got smarter and a little more empathetic. Good for us. But shockingly enough, the last recorded listing of a mummy for sale was in a magazine in the 20th century. 1924, to be exact.

So I guess not really good for us. Yeah. It can't really give us too much of a pat on the back. Just a little tap, tap. It's a little like, we're getting there.

Yeah. And that, my friends, is a brief history of corpse Corpse Medicine.

That is fucking fascinating.

It was really fun to dive into. I loved that. Maybe next I'll look into fecal medicine.

As you should. Mikey said absolutely not.

I wanted to include it, but I got very OCD about it. I was like, well, technically it's not Corpse Medicine because it's not dead people. I can't go into that. So I'll go into it another time.

This was great.

I liked this. I'm glad. I had a feeling you would love this. Yeah.

Anytime I get to reference a ghost song during a morbid episode, I'm here for it.

And talk about people like, dipping their fucking bread into their bread into fallen blood. Fuck.

Like warm execution blood. Yeah. Damn.

I mean, I read something that was like, is it all that different from taking the Eucharist? I mean, at church, they're like, here's the blood of Jesus.

Yeah, it's real fucked up. I guess one is symbolic and one is literal.

Luckily, it's moved on to symbolism. Back then, they were less symbolic about it.

Apparently.

Fucking crazy.

Damn. Yeah.

That's wild. Crazy. Well, thank you for that. You're welcome. It conjures up so many images, doesn't it?

Yeah, it really does.

All right. Well, thank you for joining us on our little bonus episode for Halloween. Hell, yeah. And we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you go to Corpse Medicine as a way to treat your ailments.

It's not going to work. It's not. But go listen to Mummy Dust by Ghost. A Mummy Dust.

Isn't that talking about fucking?

No, I don't even think it is. Oh, it's not? It's literally about snake oil salesman. Oh, that's fine. It's referring to the Corpse Medicine aspect of it.

This one goes out to Tobias Forge.