For centuries, the human body wasn't just a patient in medicine, it was also a bizarre ingredient in the medicine itself.
Imagine a doctor looking at your ailments and reaching not for antibiotics, but for a vial of… mummy powder? Yep, you heard that right. For centuries, ground-up mummies were all the rage in medicine, believed to be a magic bullet against everything from the common cold to the deadly plague. And that's just the tip of the sarcophagus!
The royal medicine cabinet of King Charles II, held his "elixir of choice" that involved a rather unsettling ingredient – human skull! But it wasn't just eccentric monarchs indulging in the strange, oh no.
Throughout Victorian England, those prim and proper lovers of Egypt (and yes, this would include the timelines of Omm Sety and Lord Carnarvon), weren't immune to the allure of the unconventional cure either. Blood and bone-based tinctures were all the rage, believed to be the pinnacle of medical science. Of course, from our vantage point, these treatments seem more like the stuff of nightmares than effective medicine.
But here's the thing – these historical practices offer a glimpse into the evolution of medicine and the lengths people would go to in their quest for health. So, grab your stethoscope and prepare to do rounds through a truly strange chapter in the history of medicine, on today’s episode of Idiopathic!
