The Mellified Man
Nothing demonstrates the act of early drug processing more than turning the dead into medicines.
PART 1: The first of a two part series about creating strange early pharmaceuticals. Learn how the dead were turned into medicines. Mellified Man was a legendary medicinal substance created by steeping a human cadaver in honey which later included mummies and led to the mummy trade and horrific atrocities against the Arab world.
Photo: Detail of the Guanajuato mummies, Mexico. Black and white version. Photo taken at Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato.
In English, the noun "drug" is thought to originate from Old French "drogue", possibly deriving later into "droge-vate" from Middle Dutch meaning "dry barrels", referring to medicinal plants preserved in them. The transitive verb "to drug" (meaning to intentionally administer a substance to someone, often without their knowledge) arose later and invokes the psychoactive rather than medicinal properties of a substance.
A drug is, in the broadest of terms, a chemical substance that has known biological effects on humans or other animals. In pharmacology, a drug is "a chemical substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being."
At some point in history parts of herbalism and alchemy and in fact medicine generally, transmutated into the chemical soups that we know of as pharmacology today. If we turn the clock back we can explore the certain transitions, which have led to the present dynamics of Big Pharma.
Iatrochemistry (or chemical medicine) is a branch of both chemistry and medicine. The word "iatro" was the Greek word for "physician" or "medicine." Having its roots in alchemy, iatrochemistry seeks to provide chemical solutions to diseases and medical ailments.
This area of science has fallen out of use in western countries since the rise of modern establishment medicine. However, iatrochemistry was popular between 1525 and 1660, especially in Flanders. Its most notable leader was Paracelsus, an important Swiss alchemist of the 16th century and the founder of “toxicology”. Iatrochemists believed that physical health was dependent on a specific balance of bodily fluids. Iatrochemical therapies and concepts are still in wide use in South Asia and East Asia.
Iatrochemistry was a new practice in the 17th century, a time when traditional medicines were based on a legacy from the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. Much of this tradition was derived from Galen and Avicenna. The iatrochemists rejected the traditional medical theories of the day, mostly from Galenic traditionalists who sought to establish the balance of temperament within the body. In this balance there are two pairs of qualities, hot and cold; and wet and dry. Sickness came from the imbalance of one quality. That is, a cold was an excess of heat (hot quality), so it can be cured by reducing hot quality or by increasing cold quality. The iatrochemists, influenced by Paracelsus's belief, believed that the sickness was from the outside source, not because of the imbalance within the body.
Another controversy between Galenic traditionalists and iatrochemists was the way to use herbs. The Galenic traditionalists thought that the strength of remedies relied on the amount of plant materials that were used. The iatrochemists, however, supported the chemical preparation of materials within remedies to increase the effectiveness of the materials or to find the stronger medicine.
Additionally, Galenic traditionalists argued that chemically prepared medicines were poisonous, and the iatrochemists were inadequately trained. The former was true, and in some cases, both were correct. Since Paracelsus claimed that poisons could have beneficial medical effects, the number of toxic ingredients used in chemical medicines had then increased. Galenic traditionalists later adapted some of these medical methods and remedies to use in their own fields.
Oswald Croll or Crollius (c. 1563 – December 1609) was an alchemist, and professor of medicine at the University of Marburg in Hesse, Germany. A strong proponent of alchemy and using chemistry in medicine, he was heavily involved in writing books and influencing thinkers of his day towards viewing chemistry and alchemy as two separate fields.
Croll believed that chemistry and alchemy were two halves of a tightly related field, in the same way that organic and inorganic chemistry are related. He used the framework of Parcelsus' works to organize his beliefs about the geometrically important relationships between various forms of matter and alchemical reactions from rectangles to megagons.
The Mummy: The Roots of Chemical Medicine
Nothing demonstrates the act of early drug processing more than turning the dead into medicines. Mummies of humans and other animals have been found on every continent, both as a result of natural preservation through unusual conditions, and as cultural artifacts deliberately embalmed with substances. In the Middle Ages, based on what some believe was a mistranslation from the Arabic term for bitumen, it was thought that mummies possessed healing properties. As a result, it became common practice to grind Egyptian mummies into a powder to be sold and used as medicine. When actual mummies became unavailable, the Sun-desiccated corpses of criminals, slaves, drowned and suicidal people were substituted by mendacious merchants who sold them into the marketplace. The practice developed into a wide-scale business that flourished until the late 16th century. Two centuries ago and even into the early 20th century, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties to stop bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form as in Mummia or Mellified Man.
Artists also made use of Egyptian mummies as pigment suppliers mixed a brownish pigment known as Mummy brown, based on Mummia (sometimes called alternatively Caput mortuum, Latin for death's head), which was originally obtained by grounding human and animal Egyptian mummies. It was most popular in the 17th century, but was discontinued in the early 19th century when its composition became generally known to artists who replaced the said pigment by a totally different blend - but keeping the original name, Mummia or Mummy. It was brown-yielding a similar tint and based on ground minerals (oxides and fired earths) and or blends of powdered gums and oleoresins (such as myrrh and frankincense) as well as ground bitumen. These blends appeared on the market as forgeries of powdered mummy pigment but were ultimately considered as acceptable replacements, once antique mummies were no longer permitted to be destroyed.
Charles J. Thompson in his book “Alchemy” which was first published in 1897 dedicates a full chapter to mummies and their use in medicine and makes mention that “…there is something particularly weird and gruesome in the idea of the ancient physician dosing a sick patient with the remains of a predeceased fellowman in order to restore him back to health…”. In Thompson’s research he outlines that there were five kinds of mummies used in medicine:
True Egyptian
The Arabian – being those bodies embalmed with myrrh, aloes and other aromatic gums.
Dried in the Sun – but specifically in the country of the Harmmonians between Cyrene and Alexandria, being mostly the bodies of passengers buried in the quicksand.
Factitious – those in which bitumen and pitch were largely used in the process of embalming.
Artificial Mummies
Oswald Croll in his book the “Royal Chemist” gives the following process for preparing an artificial mummy:
“Take the carcass of a young man (some say red haired), not dying of a disease but killed. Let it lie twenty-four hours in clear water in the air, cut the flesh in pieces, to which add power of myrrh and a little aloes, imbibe it twenty-four hours in spirit of wine and turpentine, take it out and hang it up for twelve hours in fresh spirit, then hang up the pieces in a dry air and a shady place.”
A few hundred years later Thompson would review this account and write. “A rather cheerful operation for the apothecary. It would possibly account for a many mysterious disappearance in those days”.
The mummy trade represented horrific atrocities to the Arab world, which had been largely colonized by European countries. The mummified remains of ancestors represented a spiritual backbone to their traditional culture and one that could not be measured by money alone. Arab physicians recognized that mummification had value in medicine but instead of raiding sacred places for sacred remains, they created a deliberate mummification process – yet also disturbing.
Next Week: Part 2 - Mellified Man: The Human Mummy Confection