Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians

Product Information

It is quite clear from his ease with his array of authors that he is competent in his field, and he has produced a wide ranging and at times compelling book. Richard Sugg’s book Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires is valuable to both survey student and specialist alike. There is a certain bias detectable in the book against what is now usually termed ‘folk medicine’, which Sugg labels ‘magic’, the only recourse of the poor. Unfortunately, for anyone preferring a straightforward narrative and a lucid exposition of the facts as known, it is intrusive and just a bit exhibitionist; a too self-conscious attempt at being a cool dude and down with the ordinary folk.

Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires charts in vivid detail the largely forgotten history of European corpse medicine, when kings, ladies, gentlemen, priests and scientists prescribed, swallowed or wore human blood, flesh, bone, fat, brains and skin against epilepsy, bruising, wounds, sores, plague, cancer, gout and depression. This book is full of rich detail, making you both recoil and yet read on, fascinated by our ancestors’ imaginative ways to try and heal the sick. I also enjoy how us Europeans are forced to reconcile with the fact that we are huge hypocrites and as beastialistic as all other people on earth. The icing on this jumble cake is the insertion in many of the chapters of little pieces of creative writing, in which Sugg (in the present tense; that most aggravating of docu-drama styles) relates historical fictions of his own devising.Mumia – of unknown origin, truth be told – was still available from 18 th century apothecaries, and ground up mummy for artist’s pigments, although no longer sold, is still around.

Not everything that appears on this blog, including individual ideas or opinions, is necessarily endorsed by the Department of English Studies or by Durham University. Children might be inoculated; babies were more frequently born in hospital, but home doctoring was a proud and continuing norm for many people, and some procedures and recipes were indeed very odd and ancient. The new edition with its expanded online content makes this book equally appealing to advanced scholars and students of history, medicine, and literature. Presented along with Sugg’s own interpretations of what the strange events, and the way they were perceived, might tell us both about the society of the. this rare macabre view of European life from royalty to peasant life is a must read for anyone who is in history class or considers herself an expert in European history.Does that suggest that your devoted reviewer has been less than wholly entranced by Richard Sugg’s opus? It features a blog on literature and books, book reviews, bookchat, podcasts and lectures on literature. I learned a lot that you can make Candles out of human fat, that there's a complex chain of retail businesses in corpse medicine throughout the 12th to 19th century. This rich and authoritative account of beliefs about the medical efficacy of dead bodies is a fascinating, if gruesome, eye-opener.

John Henry, University of Edinburgh, notes that “Richard Sugg’s excellent book opens up a lost world of magic and medicine. And yet the myths about cannibals in the furthest reaches of the New World only got started in earnest when cannibalism—sanctioned by church, state, and science—became a thing in the Old World.

My next book will be a groundbreaking study of ghosts and poltergeists, perhaps the strangest open secret of our times.