For centuries, Europeans believed the dead could heal the living. This wasn’t just folklore or superstition—it was science. Royalty, doctors, and even the most respected minds of their time all turned to one shocking remedy: Medicines made from human bodies!
Ground-up skulls were prescribed for headaches. Human fat was used to heal wounds. Fresh blood was believed to restore vitality and cure a range of nasty diseases. It sounds like something out of a horror story, but for hundreds of years this was just a routine visit to the Doctor!
So what led some of the world’s greatest minds to prescribe dead bodies to their patients? What exactly did it involve? And why did this gruesome tradition last for so long…?
Find out as we dig into the ‘Bizarre But True!’ history of ‘Corpse Medicine.’
In 17th-century England, a young man named Richard Baxter was in constant pain. His body ached. His joints stiffened. His stomach churned with illness and his head throbbed every single day.
Medicine at the time had no real answers – no antibiotics, no proper surgeries and no scientific understanding of infection or disease. So, like many people at the time, Baxter turned to the most advanced medical treatments available. And that meant ingesting medicine made from the remains of the dead…
This wasn’t some strange underground practice or witchcraft, this was mainstream. For centuries, European doctors prescribed human remains just as they would herbs, medicinal plants or minerals. Bones, blood and even fresh flesh were all considered powerful cures.
And it all began with Mummies…
During the Renaissance, European apothecaries became obsessed with the preserved bodies of ancient Egypt. They believed that the resins used in mummification held incredible healing properties and physicians began grinding up Mummies and selling the powders as a cure for internal bleeding, epilepsy and a whole range of other diseases.
The demand for this supposed miracle cure was enormous. So enormous, in fact, that real mummies started to become scarce. So instead of giving up, European doctors took matters into their own hands. They began making their own Mummies and the process wasn’t for the faint hearted…!
A 17th-century German physician named Johann Schroeder documented the process in shocking detail. According to him, the best human body to be turned into medicine was a ‘young red-haired man, hanged at the gallows’. His body needed to be dismembered, soaked in alcohol, dried in the sun and finally, cut into pieces. This, he said would be a perfect homemade substitute for ancient Egyptian mummies.
But bones and flesh were just the beginning…
One of the most popular medical theories at the time was the idea that “like cures like.” Physicians believed that if you had a disorder affecting one part of the body, you needed to consume that same body part from someone else to restore the balance If you had a headache, then you needed ground-up human skull. If you suffered from blood disorders, fresh human blood was the answer.
Even the wealthiest and most powerful members of society enjoyed the supposed benefits of this medicinal cannibalism. King Charles II of England was known to drink a special concoction which became known as “The King’s Drops”. It consisted of a mixture of powdered human skull and alcohol. He believed it could cure everything from epilepsy to depression. Even on his deathbed, the King’s doctors frantically administered corpse medicines – but this time, they failed.
Beyond the apothecaries, another unexpected profession became involved in the booming business of making corpse medicine available to the masses…The Executioners.
In parts of Germany, executioners were seen not just as bringers of death – but also as healers too. People would gather at public executions ready to collect the fresh blood of the condemned. It was believed that warm, recently spilled blood contained the life force of its victim, making it the most potent medicine of all. Some even paid more to drink blood directly from the scaffold, hoping to absorb the energy of the dying man!
As gruesome as it sounds, the use of corpse medicine wasn’t seen as unnatural at the time. Physicians, priests and scientists all accepted it as a logical and effective way to treat disease.
But here’s where things get even more bizarre…
Even as Europeans eagerly ingested human remains, they condemned other cultures for doing exactly the same. Protestants accused Catholics of symbolic cannibalism through Holy Communion, even as they drank wine laced with actual powdered human skull. European colonisers used accusations of cannibalism to justify the persecution of indigenous people in the Americas, completely ignoring the fact that their own apothecaries were selling ground-up human body parts which they eagerly consumed!
So what changed? And why did corpse medicine eventually disappear?
The shift happened slowly. By the 18th century, scientific advancements had led to better treatments that showed better outcomes for patients. The practice of consuming human remains declined, but never disappeared entirely. The last known sale of powdered mummy in Europe happened in the early 1900s, and the final documented case of someone drinking human blood for medicine, at least in western cultures, took place in 1908.
But, have we really moved on…?
Today, we STILL rely on the bodies of the dead to heal the living…
Blood transfusions, organ transplants and skin grafts all depend on human tissue to save lives. The difference is that modern medicine is more ethical, scientific and above all, voluntary, in it’s use of human products. But not all practices today are as quite as honourable.
Around the world, black markets still exist for human organs, bones and even whole stolen cadavers. In some countries, prisoners have allegedly had their organs forcibly removed for sale to others in need. The idea that the dead can heal the living has never truly disappeared—it’s just changed with the times.
So, is modern medicine truly so different from the past? We no longer grind bones into powder or drink blood straight from the gallows, but we do still rely on the bodies of others to heal and survive.
The real horror might not be the gruesome remedies of history, but the unsettling truth that the line between progress and the past is actually far thinner than we might find comfortable.
So, next time you visit the doctor or go into hospital, dare to look a little bit closer at the treatments you’re getting… and you might see some echoes of history’s Corpse medicine staring right back at you!
