Mummies.
The employment of mummies in medicine does not seem to have been very ancient, nor did it become permanent. Who introduced it is not known. Ephraim Chambers in his Cyclopœdia (1738) says, “Mummy is said to have been first brought into use in medicine by the malice of a Jewish physician, who wrote that flesh thus embalmed was good for the cure of divers diseases, and particularly bruises, to prevent the blood’s gathering and coagulating.” Pomet also says that a Jewish physician had written about the medicinal value of mummy, but he does not suggest that he had recommended it out of malice.
The trade in mummies was evidently in the hands of the Jews and Armenians at the time when Pomet wrote, and, according to him, the fading popularity of mummy as a medicine was the result of the rogueries practised by these Jews. He tells of a Guy de la Fontaine, the King’s physician, who, when visiting in Egypt, went to see a Jew in Alexandria who traded in mummies, and after some difficulty was admitted into the Jew’s warehouse, where he saw several bodies piled one upon another. “After a reflection of a quarter of an hour he asked him what druggs he made use of, and what sort of bodies were fit for his service. The Jew answered that as to the dead he took such bodies as he could get, whether they died of a common disease or of some contagion. As to the druggs, they were nothing but a heap of some old druggs mixed together which he applied to the bodies, which after he had dried in an oven he sent into Europe, and was amazed to see the Christians were lovers of such filthiness.” This very frank Jew must have been on the point of retiring from business.
Pomet regrets that he is not able to stop the abuses of the dealers in this commodity, so he has to content himself with advising those who buy mummy to choose what is of a fine shining black, not full of bones and dirt, and of a good smell. He also tells us it is good for contusions, and to prevent the blood from coagulating in the body (1694).
Ambrose Paré, who wrote before Pomet, was even more suspicious. He mentions that it was held by some that the mummies then in use were made and fashioned in France; that they were bodies stolen at night from the gibbets, the brains and entrails removed, and the bodies dried in a furnace, and then dipped in pitch. Paré states that he never prescribes mummy.
Oswald Crollius seems to have had no objection to artificial mummies. In his “Royal Chemist” he gives a process for preparing one. The carcase of a young man (some say a red-haired young man) who had been killed, that is, did not die of disease, and, it is to be presumed, had not been buried, was to lie in cold water in the air for twenty-four hours. The flesh was to be cut in pieces and sprinkled with myrrh and a little aloes. This was then to be soaked in spirit of wine and turpentine for twenty-four hours, hung up for twelve hours, again soaked in the spirit mixture for twenty-four hours, and finally hung up in a dry place to dry.
Mummies were principally recommended for consumption, wasting of flesh, ulcers, and various corruptions.
Nicasius Le Febre, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry to Charles II, in his “Compleat Body of Chymistry,” 1670, says the best mummies for medical use were those of bodies dried up in the hot sands of Lybia, where sometimes whole caravans were overwhelmed by simooms and suffocated. “This sudden suffocation doth concentrate the spirits in all the parts by reason of the fear and sudden surprisal which seizes on the travellers.” Next to these Lybian mummies Le Febre recommends the dried corpse of a young lusty man of about 25 to 30 years of age who has been suffocated or hanged. He gives directions for drying the flesh, smoking it for a philosophical month, and then it is to be given in doses of 1 to 3 grains with some old treacle (theriaca) and vipers’ flesh made into an electuary with spirit of wine. It was specially good against pestilential diseases.