October Bonus Episode - Corpse Medicine: Tomb to Table

Ondeck is built to back small businesses like yours.

Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast.

Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, ONDEC delivers funding you can count on.

Apply in minutes at ondeck.com.

Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank.

OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota, all loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Get ready for a restful holiday season season with Ashley's best mattress deals.

For a limited time, save 20% on a line.

Buy Ashley's sleep mattresses.

Or upgrade your sleep with a Tempur-Pedic mattress starting at only $37 a month.

And you can buy now and pay over time with special financing for 60 months with no money down on in-store purchases of $19.99 or more made with your Ashley Advantage Synchrony Credit Card.

The perfect gift to waits.

Sleep better today at Ashley's Holiday Savings Event.

Subject to credit approval, minimum monthly payments required.

See store for details.

A PSA from Instacart.

It's Sunday, 5 p.m.

You've had a non-stop weekend.

You're running on empty, and so is your fridge.

You're in the trenches of the Sunday scaries.

You don't have it in you to go to the store, but this is your reminder: you don't have to.

You can get everything you need delivered through Instacart so that you can get what you really need, more time to do whatever you want.

Instacart, for one less Sunday scary.

We're here.

Ready?

Hold on.

What if I started every episode like that?

I mean, do what you got to do.

Whatever it takes.

Do you think you'd get over it?

I think I would just tolerate it.

Okay.

You know?

All right.

Are we going?

Whatever you feel.

Hey, weirdos.

I'm Ash.

And I'm Elena.

And this is Morbid.

I feel like you you should just leave that in.

That's the beginning of the bonus episode.

Yeah, I was just slapping my own face to get ready to record this.

Slapping and screaming.

Slapping and screaming.

It's my motto.

Wow.

Mikey said, girl, don't make that girl.

He said, girl, back it up.

It's a bonus episode, so we're leaving all of this in.

Yeah, all the kookiness is probably going to still be in here.

Yeah, we're coming off of...

The most wonderful week.

Yeah, it's been a great week.

No one could even attempt to hurt my feelings right now.

And they have.

They sure have.

And it hasn't worked.

You can go fuck yourself because I met Andy Cohen, bitch.

And Kelly Rippa.

And they were both so sweet.

And we were in the...

This, this will haunt me until the day I die.

Alex Cooper, if you're listening, that would be crazy.

We were in the same room as Alex Cooper, and I didn't fucking realize it because she was just about to go out on stage.

We just did this big thing with Sirius.

It was like the advertising upfronts.

So there's all these like presentations that we got to be a part of.

We got to meet some other people who work at Sirius.

I'm essentially co-workers with Andy Cohen now.

Yeah.

Mikey brought that to my attention this morning.

But yeah, we were in this like little green room with so many cool people and Alex Cooper was one of them.

And I didn't see that she was in there because I think I was getting fitted for like a microphone.

Yeah.

I will regret that moment until the day I go into the Grive.

And here's the thing.

I saw, I heard Alex Cooper first because like, you know her voice.

Yeah.

And then I looked over and she was getting like touched up.

Yeah, so you don't want to like interrupt.

And I got like, I was like, I don't know what to say to her.

Yeah.

Cause she's like, I was like, damn, boss ass bitch.

I have been daddy gang.

She's very sweet.

I could see she was very sweet to like everyone around her.

So yeah.

And her presentation was so good.

Yeah.

A-plus behavior.

I have been daddy gang since day one.

Yeah, you have.

And I will be daddy gang until I get it.

I was a later.

Later convert.

You were later

daddy gang, but I'm, I'm, I'm there.

Well, hopefully there's another event where we can meet Alex Cooper and apologize for not, you know, bowing down to her greatness the first time we met her.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Sirius, it was a fucking blast with them.

Sirius was the goddamn move.

Yeah, we love everyone we're working with right now.

It's been really great.

And you guys have had such cool responses to it.

You guys can feel it as well.

And you've been telling us that.

And thank you for telling us that because it's nice to know that what we feel on the inside is coming out in the podcast.

We're very happy.

We're very happy at work.

It feels so, it feels so good.

That's so this is a little side tangent for the, it feels so good.

It's a bonus episode, so it's loose and it's goose.

We are going to get to something crazy, but we're going to banter for a bit.

There's, there's, you know, this is where we can go on our tangents.

Yeah.

When we got home from a vacation, we have like a whiteboard in our kitchen that we like put all the school things on and all that.

And one of of my kids wrote on the whiteboard, it feels good to be home.

F-L-E-E-L-S.

Which feels good.

First of all, writing It Feels Good to Be Home is the most adorable thing ever because I'm pretty sure she was like seven.

Yeah, she was.

She did that.

She was young.

And then, but she wrote Fleels, and we have literally put a border around it on the whiteboard, and it's been there for years.

It is not to be erased.

And I will not allow anyone to erase it.

I'm probably going to take like a saw and saw that portion of the

need to keep it forever.

Yeah.

And it's, and it's like dry erase marker, so I'm very scared.

If you guys have any tips on how to keep that from

smearing, could you laminate it?

That's the, I don't know how to do it without like smushing it or making it run or anything.

So if you guys have tips, maybe you could go over it with like permanent marker or something.

We're both looking at Mikey, like Mikey, what will you do?

I know I looked at Mikey like, I bet you know.

Like he's a craft, Mikey's a crafting king.

But we'll we're we'll figure it out.

If you guys have any tips, I would love them because I do want to keep my it feels good to be home forever.

Oh, it feels, it feels so good to be home.

Um, you give it to her when she's like 18 for like a graduation present.

The first time she comes home from college and just be like, here you go.

Here's my home.

It still feels so good.

Here's this chunk of our whiteboard on your seven.

She's sentimental.

She's very sentimental.

She would love it.

She'd cry.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's my girl right there.

Yeah, but this weekend was incredible.

What else is going on?

Still dealing with the golden globes of it all.

Still just dealing with that.

Still just reeling from that.

That's crazy.

Yeah, we're going to submit our application pretty soon.

Yeah, see if we can make it into the nomination pool.

But even for me, even if we just get, first of all, this is plenty.

Just being on the short list is

a win for me.

And being able to say multiple times this past week, like at different presentations, like, yeah, you know, like we're eligible to be nominated.

It's like Astrocastor.

Astercast.

But even if we got nominated, that would also be enough for me.

Oh, that's a whim.

Everything is enough for me.

So far, win-win-win for me.

Like,

doesn't matter what happens after this.

I'm pretty happy.

And this is just my anxiety talking, but are you ever terrified when things are so good that you're like, oh, is everything okay?

140%.

Yes.

In the back of my mind, I'm like, things are like really, really good.

No, but you just got to keep manifesting it and you got to keep being thankful for it.

Oh, I?

It's all about being grateful.

I think that's really like a big thing.

I thank the universe every single day day for every.

Yeah.

What are you just jingling over there for?

Never take it for granted.

I thank the universe every day for Mikey's jingle jangles.

I do too.

Thank you for Mikey's jingle jangles universe.

Thank you for Mikey universe.

Truly, thank you for Mikey and the universe.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it's, I think it really is just never take it for granted.

No.

You know, you never know what can happen to Maru.

Also, we learned a TikTok dance this weekend, and a lot of you were genuinely so surprised at Elena's ability to tell the truth with her hips.

Which I did not know if I should take a compliment or an insult, but I'm just kidding.

But yeah,

I guess I can learn a dance.

It was so funny.

After the first day in New York, it was like this whirlwind of a day, which was like so cool.

Like we met all the cool people and everything.

And then we were going to go.

I was like, we should go out to dinner.

Like, I'm on such a high right now.

I literally felt like I was on drugs.

Like, I was like, I feel so wonderful.

We get home.

I'm FaceTiming Drew telling him like how cool the day was.

And I'm like, yeah, we're going to go out to dinner and it's going to be awesome.

And I sat down and I'm like, I don't really want to go out to dinner.

I kind of just want to hang here.

And Elena comes in my room.

She's like, hey, so like, what do you think if we just like ordered food and like hung out, maybe watched Laguna Beat?

I was like, I'm in.

You're like, I'm in.

And then we proceeded to get Chinese food and pizza, which both were great.

Oh my God.

Wherever we got Chinese food from in New York, we need to order.

Yeah, very great.

And the pizza was really good.

The pizza was so good.

Yeah, shit was just lit.

We've gotten our sweats.

I got my Halloween PJs.

Yeah.

We just like, there were parties happening.

There were all kinds of that.

We didn't go out to dinner.

We just said, no, no.

We're going to stay in this hotel room.

We're going to watch some old episodes of Laguna Beach.

Oh, my God.

We're going to learn a TikTok test.

We specifically.

I hope you will film it.

And he did.

And I need you guys to know that that was our first take.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that.

After learning it, it was our first take.

So that's why I look so focused.

Okay.

So we were messing around with the lighting and the other takes, but because I'm getting old, every further take that was happening after that, I was getting more and more tired.

So it wasn't, it wasn't great.

I disagree.

I think they were good.

I appreciate that.

But the first one was definitely the best.

When we changed the lighting in the later ones,

there were like all kinds of little orb things floating around.

Which is like, ooh, ghosties.

Yeah, I slept really good in the hotel the first night, but then the second night, I think it was haunted for sure.

Yeah, you kept hearing creaking.

I was hearing lots of creaking, and it was freaking me out because there was like a shit ton of windows in the room and there were so many drapes.

And all I could think of, I woke up at like 3 a.m.

and all I could think of was the story that I told about the alien abduction where she was like, I forgot to look behind the drapes.

Oh my God.

And I was like, I didn't look behind any of these drapes.

What if this is an alien?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

I know.

There wasn't, luckily.

But yeah, that's how we like.

That's how we roll in New York.

Yeah.

We can handle like a little bit of excitement and then we are in our PJs.

I feel like ordering pizza.

Sometimes I say that I'm an introverted extrovert, but I think I'm becoming more of an introvert who just has to be extroverted.

That's what I am.

Yeah.

I'm one, I'm for sure an introvert.

And then, but I know that my job requires me to be an extrovert sometimes so I can pull it out.

Yeah.

And it's the people that are.

around me at my job like that help like our our live shows require me to be an extrovert but then the energy in the room kind of feeds that yeah makes it easier yeah and then like meeting you guys afterwards is always so fun it's so easy to be an extrovert there because you guys are just fun to meet and but then i do like i fully agree with that but then i do need to recharge oh and my recharging it was so funny um we were so we had just got home from new york and then we had to we or got to i should say got to go to the two girls one go show which was so much fun sabrina and garin know how to put on a fucking show they're so fucking good i love them and we were so we got to be guests for that and i was getting ready for it and it was so funny drew goes you literally did i was sitting down doing my makeup he's like you didn't say a word to me the entire time you were getting ready for that and then you're just like okay i love you bye just recharging i was like yeah yeah i was i was at my charging blade it's so true yeah it's just how it is sometimes yeah you guys feel us but yeah so it's been a whirlwind of a week and and you guys have been like really supportive and awesome like everybody's just been like hyping us up like you guys have have been really cool.

I love you guys.

And you know, there's always a couple assholes, but you know, we eradicate them from the bunch.

We do.

Sometimes they delete their comments asking you if you're pregnant when you're not.

Yeah.

Don't ask people if they're pregnant.

Yeah.

It's a really for a million.

Especially on reasons.

It's a really terrible idea.

Yeah.

If somebody, if somebody who went through infertility for three years,

I would have fucking lost my mind if somebody asked me that.

Yeah.

So don't do that.

But none of you would.

None of that's the thing.

None of you listening.

None of you listening.

None of our good community here would.

There's always those ones that just come out of nowhere and are like, oh, I'm going to yuck people's yum on the internet because I'm a miserable cunt.

It's like, sorry I was on your Discover page.

So let's make sure.

You know what?

Because all you listening, I know it.

You're all the good ones.

Hey, beauty queens.

Yeah.

Hey, all you beauties.

When you see people being shitheads on the internet, just chase them, chase them off the internet.

Chase them down.

Get them gone.

We got to start fucking chasing these assholes off the internet go on get people who just go around and leave nasty comments on people's happiness need to be like chased off the internet nasty begets nasty because

i love nothing more now than to see a video of somebody that i'm like wow that's a fun video or like that's really cool i now make it a point and we all should to leave a kind comment or an uplifting comment on as many videos as I possibly can.

Yeah.

And they're all real and genuine.

I can always

have so much yuckiness that you need to counter around.

Pumpkin people up.

It feels so good.

It does.

Like, it really does.

It feels so good.

It feels so good.

Full fucking circle.

I'm telling you, like, pumping people up is so much better than trying to tear someone down.

Yeah, it really.

It's going to make you feel so much better.

You'll feel better about your own self.

And we can just like turn that because everything sucks right now.

Oh, God.

It's so fun.

And like the internet is a literal fucking garbage fire.

I was going to say, and we can try to turn it around a little by just like spreading more positivity and making those fucking troll ass bitches feel unwelcome.

Yeah.

Like we really got, and I'm seeing people start to do that more.

And it's making me happy because I think we are starting to make the trolls feel very fucking unwelcome on the internet.

And we need to continue doing that.

Absolutely.

If you see a video or something that even slightly tickles your pickle,

you should comment: hey, this tickles my pickle, even just the littlest bit.

Let that person know.

Mikey is making an X in the ear.

He's like, do not do that.

Let that person know that their makeup is awesome.

Let that person know that the hair is fucking killing it.

Maybe you could say, hey, this struck my fancy.

This struck my, this made me feel

feel.

You know, this made me feel the feels.

Let that person know that dance was great.

This was a funny video.

This made me laugh.

Yeah.

Like, just do it.

Just lift them on up.

Throw them in the air.

It's worth it.

Become a stunter.

Hell yeah.

Stunt on these hoes.

All right.

Well, with all that being said, let's talk about something hella nasty because this is called Morbid after all.

I'm very excited for this one.

And Ash really, really did the damn thing here.

I really went forth and conquered.

Thank you for the recognition there, brother.

Well, I was looking for something Halloween-y or like Halloween adjacent to talk about because it's, you know, an October bonus episode.

Yeah.

So that's when I stumbled across a Smithsonian article about something called corpse medicine.

I mean, I said, yeah, I want to hear about that.

And I said, yeah, that sounds pretty fucking morbid.

So corpse medicine, or medical cannibalism, it's also called, was a legit medical practice back in Europe from the 12th century all the way into the 17th century.

Wow, they were really committed to this.

Long time.

Yeah.

Back then, people from all different kinds of walks of life, even medical doctors, believed that consuming things like blood, human fat, crushed up skull bits would have different medical benefits, whether it was relieving headaches, treating bruises, improving circulation, or even curing epilepsy.

Damn.

Damn is right.

Mummy dust.

Well, I'm going to actually talk about mummy dust.

Thank you for the foreshadowing, Tobias Forge.

So it all kind of started back in ancient Egypt with mummies.

There we go.

But before we get there, we have to talk about something called bitumen.

Okay.

It's really called bitumen.

And also a pretty big mix-up in language translation.

So let's talk about bitumen first.

Bitumen is actually one of the main ingredients in asphalt.

Oh, okay.

It's like the black, sticky

substance that kind of holds everything together.

It acts like a glue.

Okay.

It's actually a naturally occurring substance.

And thousands of years ago, they would use it to treat things like asthma, stomach inflammation, broken bones, acne.

No, like literally,

you know, your day-to-day snake snake and scorpion bites.

Oh, yeah.

Ear infections.

I'm always looking for something for my day-to-day scorpion and snake bites.

It's just a common occurrence

out here.

Especially must cheese.

Scorpions everywhere.

Scorpions and snakes just biten us all, and we're all covered in asphalt.

Yeah.

So now we obviously know all the harmful effects of ingesting bitumen, like skin cancer, skin irritation,

respiratory problems, death.

Poison.

Poison.

But back then, people really thought it was the tits.

Well-respected Roman scientist and close friend to the emperor, Gaius Plinius Secundus,

aka Pliny the Elder.

He used to tell

Pliny the Elder.

He used to tell people to mix it in with wine and it would treat their coughs and their dysentery.

Damn.

He said, just mix a little tar in with your wine.

Yeah, it's fine.

Take a big sip.

I love it.

And you'll feel better in no time.

I mean, let's go.

Is it Gaius?

Gaius?

It's Gaius.

Gaius.

Gaius.

Let's go, Gaius.

Plinius Secundus.

Oh, yes.

What was it, the Elder?

Pliny the Elder.

I'm so sorry.

Pliny the Elder.

Put some respect on Pliny.

I was going to say, I don't want to fuck it up.

He's a goddamn elder.

Put some goddamn respect on his name.

Hello.

So, yeah, that's Bitchman.

Now that is Bitchman.

That's Bitchman.

It's Bitchin.

It's Bitchman.

OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours.

Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, ONDEC's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast.

Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, ONDEC delivers funding you can count on.

Apply in minutes at on Deck.com.

Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDEC or Celtic Bank.

OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Did you see the game last night?

Of course you did because you used Instacart to do your grocery restock.

Plus you got snacks for the game, all without missing a single play.

That's on multitasking.

So we're not saying that Instacart is a hack for game day, but it might be the ultimate play this football season.

Enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees apply.

First three orders in 14 days.

Excludes restaurants.

Instacart, we are here.

Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie.

When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well.

From roof repair to emergency plumbing and more.

Done well.

So the next time you have a home project, leave it to the pros.

Get started at Angie.com.

So now to the mummies and the mistranslation of it all.

When you picture a mummy, obviously you think of like a Halloween costume-y, toilet paper-wrapped dead person.

Always.

But the word mummy originally wasn't always referring to the entire being or like the body itself.

Around the 12th century, the Arabic word mumia was mistranslated.

Oh.

Yeah.

So originally, it was just referring to the substance bitumen.

Oh, that's what mumia was.

But when Europeans started viewing ancient Egyptian bodies that had been preserved by this embalming process that used all kinds of different resin and things like that, they thought that was naturally occurring bitumen and that it's never natural bitumen.

I'm going to say bitumen, yeah.

But they thought that was naturally occurring, and that it had all these cure-all properties.

And they thought that the word was referring to the entire body, and that's how we got the English word mummy-like this person is a mummy, not a healthy substance.

Exactly,

isn't that interesting?

That is very interesting.

I didn't know that.

So, now because the but they thought that the bodies were coated in bitumen, everyone thought they had all kinds of medical uses.

People think I'm coated in bitumen a lot,

you are bitumen-coated,

But because people wanted all the bitumen,

they,

you know, these bodies started being disturbed so that people could access the substance.

Oh, that's fucked up.

Yeah, real messed up.

And it got even more fucked up as time went on.

According to the Science History Institute writer Marielle Carr, she said, after this point, the meaning of mumia expanded to include not just asphalt, but other hardened resinous material from embalmed bodies, but the flesh of that embalmed body as well.

Oh, yeah.

We're getting kooky.

Not only were they like, hey, I'd like that bitchman, they were like, I'd like that arm.

I'd like that head.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't want that.

Yeah.

Well, no, thank you.

They did in Europe.

Eventually, the practice of eating human flesh and other parts of the body found its way over there.

Awesome.

Richard Sugg, who wrote Mummies, Canimals, and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians.

Let's go, girls.

He wrote, for certain practitioners and patients, there was almost nothing between the head and feet which could not be used in some way.

Wow.

And he was right.

And he was correct.

He was correct.

So the idea was kind of rooted in like sympathetic magic.

Back then, they believed that there was a connection between two things or two actions.

They said, like, treated like.

So if somebody had a migraine, cool, give them this ground up skull tincture.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, with...

such like, you know, remedial understanding of pretty much anything at that point.

Yeah.

I get why the connection was made, I suppose, if you think this is all gonna work.

I mean, I get the thinking, you know, like, yeah, like people are gonna believe doctors and all these people being like, hey, if your head hurts, yeah, might as well eat some skull.

Yeah, do it, ingest some skull.

Yeah.

I'm not telling you to, but the doctors about me are telling people to.

Definitely don't.

But they also thought if somebody's bleeding, let's stop the bleeding with some blood jam.

Oh, yeah.

Which is funny because it's kind of like a double entendre.

It like jams up the blood.

Yeah.

The blood thing, but it's also like a jelly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that just makes me think of like coagulated blood because it looks like jelly.

I mean, that's essentially what this was.

It just, I can picture it.

Yeah.

Well, Richard Sugg actually gives one of the original recipes for blood jam in his book.

First, one needs to get blood from, quote, persons of warm, moist temperament, such as those of blotchy red complexion and rather plump of build.

So then once you get your blood from your plump of build, blotchy red person, then you're going to let that dry into a sticky mass.

Once it's dry, the recipe says to place it upon a flat smooth table of soft wood, not hard, and cut it into thin little slices, allowing its watery part to drip away.

When it's no longer dripping, place it on a stove on the same table and stir it into a batter with a knife.

When it's absolutely dry, place it immediately in a very warm bronze mortar and pound it, forcing it through a sieve of the finest silk.

When it has all been sieved, seal it in a glass jar.

Renew it in the spring of every year.

Okay.

We'll do.

We're like, renew it in the spring of every year.

It sounds very Martha Stewart at the end.

I was just gonna say that.

It's literally Martha being like, and you know what?

Keep on top of it, guys.

Keep on top of it.

Renew it in the spring of every year.

It's like Inegarten being like, store-bought is fine.

If you can't make it yourself, store-bought is fine.

Which I don't really, well, you know what?

I was going to say, I don't think you could get this in the store, but you could, because we're going to talk about the apothecaries in a minute.

Oh, here we go.

I carried all this stuff.

But first, let's get back to the ground-up skull tincture.

So, originally...

I would like to get back to that.

Thank you.

I'm so glad.

I didn't love that we were going so far away from it.

Yeah.

Where is it?

You always want to go back to the tincture.

As someone with migraines, I would like to hear about this ground-up skull tincture, please.

All right, you might end up being disappointed, but you know what?

I'll tell you everything you need to know.

I'm always looking for a remedy.

Here's the thing.

Originally, the mixture was referred to as Goddard's drops because they were invented by a doctor named Jonathan Goddard in the 17th century.

He served as an army surgeon during the English Civil War, and he was one of Oliver Cromwell's personal doctors.

Oliver Cromwell can get fucked.

Truly.

I'm an Irish woman.

So

somehow, through his own studies of corpse medicine, he came to believe that his tincture could cure all kinds of things.

Fainting, strokes, epilepsy bladder stones really just anything causing you any kind of distress whenever something is claiming that it can fix everything

different complex and completely distinct problems yeah question yeah question

i'm not saying yeah just question just ask a few just saying

How's it doing all that?

How's it doing all that?

You'll find out.

Okay.

So first let's get to the recipe.

The recipe was a mix of five pounds of human skull.

Whoa.

Five pounds of human skull, two pounds of dried vapors, two pounds of distilled deer horns, and two pounds of ivory.

Oh.

I know.

It's fucked up.

After a process of distilling and filtering and doing that all and all over again, they were then poured into a tincture bottle.

And the instructions were to take seven to eight drops for things like headaches, migraines, fainting.

Maybe even if you just needed a simple stimulant, you're a little tired.

Yeah.

Pull a little King's drop on your tongue.

Yeah, why not?

Or Goddard's drop.

Excuse me, we're not to King's Drops yet.

But in cases where, you know, you had had a stroke or suffered from epilepsy, the dose could increase to 50 drops.

Holy shit.

Now here's where we get to King's Drops.

King Charles II was such a fan of this tincture.

He was like really into chemistry and science and everything.

He literally had like a lab built in the castle.

But so he was so interested and he was such a fan of the tincture.

He was said to have bought the recipe from Dr.

Goddard Goddard for £6,000.

Damn.

And then he rebranded the name to the Kingsdrops.

It's the relaunch for me.

I bet they had a relaunch for me.

Like, it is the relaunch for me.

It's the rebranding.

I kind of love that.

He said, I bought these.

I bought their name, their likeness, and they're mine now.

He said, relaunch.

Kingsdrops.

He would add them to his wine.

He would add them to chocolates.

Some people said that he had

a goblet that was made of skull that he would drink his wine in with skulls drops in it.

Here's the thing.

That's extraordinarily metal.

But it's not good.

Not good, but

I have to agree with you.

But like,

like you have to do

a guitar riff there.

You absolutely do.

That's insane.

Just walking around with a guitar.

With a skull goblet?

With a skull gold.

Skull tincture and wine?

That's the thing.

Like a skull goblet filled with skull.

That's literally.

so much skull and wine.

Yeah.

That's I'm me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look for a different remedy for my migraines.

You know, Excedrin seems to work great for you.

I will not be be trying this.

I'm glad to hear that.

Yeah.

That makes me feel like a lot more secure as your business partner.

Yeah.

But he also allegedly gave them to the royal court too as a kind of truth serum.

Oh.

But it's also like...

It's that too?

Well, they think so, but I'm like, you were just giving them wine.

Yeah.

And people tend to get drunk and tell you

telling you stuff you know yeah no ironically king charles ii died of a stroke oops in 1685 even after upping his dosage on his deathbed to 40 drops per day it's so weird that that didn't work yeah it's crazy he wasn't the only person who died from that really yeah king's drops didn't really save a lot of people i had such faith i did too now here's the thing one of the most important things when it came to the sourcing of skulls for kingstrops was that the skull came from a person who had died a violent death.

Oh,

yeah, that gets even gnarlier.

Now, this was rooted in the idea of the vital spirit, which is pretty similar to sympathetic magic.

Paracelsus, who was a Swiss doctor who lived during the 14th and 15th centuries, he believed that if a person died suddenly, they would have more of this life force or vital spirit inside of them

because it hadn't been damaged by any kind of illness and the person wasn't expecting to die necessarily.

So that meant that their spirits still possess some kind of desire to continue on.

And therefore, if you ingested that,

you would have that will to continue on and to, you know, not be sick or to not suffer from whatever was ailing you.

Damn, I love the mental gymnastics that they do to make these things make sense because you're like, yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Like, sure.

If I do a few backflips, that makes perfect sense.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, if I run over there, come back really quick, do a cartwheel, chug some Gatorade, and then do 15 more flips.

I think I get it.

Yeah, if I'm Simone Biles, that makes sense.

Yeah, if I get the spins, it makes sense.

Yeah, um, this is gonna really send you.

He was called the father of toxicology back then.

Wow, yeah, we really the bar was in hell, it was, it sure was.

What do you mean?

It sure was.

So, in the case of sorcery,

that's not my dad, Dad!

So in the case of sourcing skulls for the king's drops, a lot of them came from Ireland, which was fucking pointed.

Wow.

Like I mentioned earlier, there was many reasons for it, but I think the biggest one is what I'm going to say.

He's definitely not my dad.

No.

So like I mentioned earlier, Dr.

Goddard was the army surgeon during the English Civil War.

the first one, and he was also Oliver Cromwell's personal doctor.

The English Civil War coincided with the Cromwellian massacres in Ireland, where thousands of Irish troops and civilians were killed incredibly violently.

Like Oliver Cromwell was a fucked up person.

He was a turd bucket.

Yeah, he loved to like people that were captured, he would torture them.

People that were literally just passing through an area who weren't involved in the war at all, he would capture them and torture them and they died brutal, brutal deaths.

Yeah, for a guy named Oliver, he had a lot of nerve.

He really did.

Yeah.

It's like, you're supposed to be kind of gentle.

Yeah, I've I've never met an Oliver that was like a piece of shit.

Yeah, that was like this.

Yeah.

Well, unfortunately, the Cromwellian massacres obviously led to a surplus of skulls that physicians back then would have believed contained the perfect amount of vital force because of the way that they were killed.

They weren't expecting to be killed.

They died violently.

Yada, yada, yada.

Now, another desirable quality of the skulls found in Ireland was something called skull moss or usnia.

A lot of times in Ireland, enemies killed on their land weren't buried.

They were just left out as a warning, like not to fuck with Ireland.

Like what I do with spiders sometimes.

Yeah, you leave the dead body somewhere.

I love that.

So the next one knows.

That's pretty much the same thing.

That's pretty much genius, also.

Yeah, you gotta let them know.

Like, this is what I'm about.

I'll leave you alone outside.

My house is my house.

I mean, you are Irish after all.

So...

Because they were left to the elements, moss would start to grow over the tops of the skulls.

And physicians back then thought that these skulls would be even more potent with vital force because the moss would suck it all up.

So it was ideal for king's drops, but also absorbent enough to be used to stop nosebleeds as well.

Oh, good.

So they would either,

they would either grind up the skull and, you know, add the moss to the tincture, like grind that up too, or they would literally just take the moss off of the skulls and shove it up their fucking nose.

Absolutely.

To stop nosebleeds.

Of course.

Or even like it was put on wounds and that kind of thing at times too.

Wow.

Yeah.

We, wow, we can't, we've come a long way.

We have.

That's pretty wild.

We sort of have.

Skull Moss is.

What is the vital?

What is it called?

A Vital Force.

Vital Force and Life Moss.

Sorry, Vital Spirit.

There it is.

I combined Life Force and Vital Spirit.

Yeah.

Vital Spirit sounds like a really cool band name.

Yeah.

And Skull Moss feels like a really good name of a book.

Yeah, I would read a book called Skull Moss.

Yeah.

I feel like Skull Moss could even be a band and they opened up for Vital Spirit.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I like it.

I like it.

Well, physicians weren't the only people learning about and stocking their shelves with corpse medicine.

There was also apothecaries who had entire stores filled to the brim with tinctures, body parts, fluids.

anything you could dream of cool to treat your ailments.

Yeah.

One of the main things that they carried was something that you foreshadowed earlier.

Mummy powder.

Mummy powder.

Of mummy dust.

So mummy powder was really looked at back then to be another cure-all.

It was like the end-all-be-all in corpse medicine.

They thought of it as a panacea, which is a remedy for like anything that ails you whatsoever.

Yeah.

They thought it was a cough suppressant, an anti-inflammatory, a blood thinner, a painkiller.

You name it, mummy powder could fix it.

Let's go.

And just a quick little side detour.

It didn't didn't only serve medical purposes, it also had its role in the arts.

Oh.

There is a famous painting called Interior of a Kitchen, and it's by Martin Droeling.

It was done in 1815, and a lot of art historians agree that he used a ton of this color called mummy brown.

Mummy brown.

And that was a mixture of white pitch, myrrh, and mummy flush.

Damn.

They were straight-up painting with mummy flush.

With pieces of people.

Yep.

In 1797, a London publication actually wrote that, quote, the most fleshy bits are the best parts.

The most fleshy bits are the best parts.

The best parts for to make paint.

Was that Hannibal Lecter who said that?

No, it wasn't even.

Like, what?

And it was used for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And it became a great ghost song.

Yeah, Mummy Dust.

That is really fun to watch live.

There you go.

Yeah, you do be thrusting.

He do be.

do be well in 1881 a famous artist edward burr jones found out the truth about mummy brown he thought he had heard like in you know his fancy art community of course people say like oh yeah it's literally made of mummies and he was like oh pish posh imagine that casual conversation somebody at at like coffee is just like did you hear yeah you hear that marcus put fucking bits of flesh in his painting and everybody's like ah they were like his brown his brown isn't really drying as it's supposed to because that that was often a complaint of mummy Brown was that it kind of was like

a little bit see-through.

Like it wasn't as potent as the rest of their paint.

Of course not.

You've had to use a lot of it.

That's the thing.

So he found out one day, like that the rumors, all the rumors were true.

Wow.

And he went into his backyard that day and buried the one remaining tube he had of Mummy Brown to give it a, quote, decent and proper burial.

Oh, that's kind of sweet.

Yeah, he was sweet.

He was like, he was very upset about it.

He's like, that's a person.

Yeah.

I should bury it.

Yeah.

Aww.

Wasn't that nice?

That's sweet in the most fucking macabre way.

Yeah, we love it.

A weird king.

We do.

Apparently, the use of Mummy Brown, though, lasted all the way into the 20th century.

Damn.

Yeah, it died out luckily.

And now you can't find it anywhere.

No pun intended.

Now you can't find it anywhere except on display at the Harvard Art Museum.

Oh.

I want to see it.

There's a tube on display.

I can show you a picture of it.

We can just see it.

We can just see it.

It's right over there.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Cash flow crunch.

On Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it.

Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently.

Apply today at on deck.com.

Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow.

Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by Ondac or Celtic Bank.

Ondac does not lend in North Dakota.

All loans and amount subject to lender approval.

A PSA from Instacart.

It's Sunday, 5 p.m.

You've had a non-stop weekend.

You're running on empty, and so is your fridge.

You're in the trenches of the Sunday scaries.

You don't have it in you to go to the store, but this is your reminder.

You don't have to.

You can get everything you need delivered through Instacart so that you can get what you really need, more time to do whatever you want.

Instacart for one less Sunday scary.

We're here.

Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie.

When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well from roof repair to emergency plumbing and more.

Done well.

So the next time you have a home project, leave it to the pros.

Get started at angie.com.

Well, back to the 16th century now.

Back to it.

So these apothecaries, like I mentioned, would travel to Egypt to buy mummies from merchants to make their powders, but it was hard to tell what was authentic and what wasn't.

King Francis I of France, if you can even believe it, he was said to carry a mixture, a mixture of true mubia, which was a

viscous black liquid directly extracted from a mummy who had at one time belonged to one of the wealthiest Egyptian families.

Holy shit.

And he like knew for sure he sent the right people.

They robbed the right grave and they got him

his mixture there.

And he carried it in case of emergency, by the way.

Yeah.

Like it was literally in his first aid kit.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So it was probably easy for a king to get what he believed to be the good stuff, but it was hard for others to ensure what was authentic and what wasn't.

There were merchants who would sell camels instead of humans.

And there were people who thought that they were purchasing royal Egyptian bodies that they believed would contain some of the best vital spirit you could buy, who got completely bamboozled.

Carl H.

Dannenfeld wrote about these merchants and said, the bodies, now Mumia,

had been those of slaves and other dead persons, young and old, male and female, which he had indiscriminately collected.

The merchant cared not for what disease had caused these deaths since when embalmed, no one could tell the difference.

Oh man.

So you, somebody, not you,

like you over there, Red.

Yeah, me.

People would be out here being like, oh, I'm going to go buy like the richest Egyptian mummy that I can get because obviously they're gonna contain this rich vital spirit and you know they're gonna be buried with all these delicious yeah the fancy bitch vital you know spirit and all the bitumen and you could receive a camel

that's which honestly that's what you get i was just gonna

get you play stupid games you win stupid prizes it's just you might get a camel yeah you might and that's kind of on you but also like think you might get somebody who died of the plague back then you might get somebody who died of like dysentery.

Yeah, and you're just ingesting their shit.

No wonder, like, sometimes they really were ingesting their shit.

Yeah.

They actually, I didn't even include this, but just a quick side note, because it's,

it's not really corpse medicine, but it's like adjacent.

People would

dry out feces,

like, no, like human and animal feces.

He just shot up from what he was doing.

He was like, excuse me.

And they would turn it into a powder that they believed would cure cataracts.

So they would just literally like fling shit into their eyes.

Shit powder into their eyes.

Were they able,

here's where I'm like,

we really have come far because I'm like,

what maybe, who knows?

Would you be able to convince people that like dried up shit flung into your eyes?

I mean, they could.

And like, what?

What line of thinking did they, did they pass through here?

Here's the thing.

If you fling dried up shit into your eyes, it will cure your cataract.

Here's the thing.

I didn't really go down that rabbit hole because I had to go down many other rabbit holes for this.

And I found out that, you know, fecal medicine is not necessarily corpse medicine.

So I left it for another day.

I said that's different.

Yeah, but I, but in these apothecaries, they would have like little, you know,

patients that would say like, goose fecal matter.

Poop.

You know, like they'd say, we sell poop here.

Get your poop here.

And it wasn't just cataracts.

It would, it would, they used it for all different kinds of things.

Yeah, of course.

But that's, I mean, that's another episode.

Wow.

That's really interesting.

Yeah.

So people were getting duped, anyways.

Back to my original point.

Luckily, question mark for people who couldn't afford the high-end corpse medicine, there was somebody you could go to for cheaper stuff.

And I guess you could at least guarantee what you were getting there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not only could you go to your local executioner for the finest entertainment of the day, but they were also one of the main suppliers of human remains at the time.

Once mummies got harder to come by, people would flock to executions to get their hands on different body parts, skulls, blood, fat, tissue, you name it.

Delicious.

Eventually, executed criminals actually became the number one source for the medicine.

And people back then felt like it was perfect because they could get their extra vital spirit from people dying quickly and violently.

You know, they're either being beheaded or hanged.

Yeah.

But they also felt better about using those kinds of of bodies for medicine because these people weren't the most desirable members of society.

So you didn't have like the moral implications that came with.

Because they were undesirable.

Yeah, like grave robbing.

Yeah.

Because that's the other thing.

The uptick in grave robbing back then.

Oh, yeah.

Crazy.

Oh, you were never safe.

No.

But at executions, you could literally buy cups of warm blood.

Oh.

And it was suggested that you do drink it while it was warm or that you did drink it while it was warm because that meant that the spirit of the person person was still fresh.

Oh,

and obviously, you know, these

cups sold for a lot of money.

Like, it was like going to a concert and paying like $12 for a water.

You know, it was exactly like that.

It was similar.

Yeah.

People who couldn't afford to buy a cup for themselves would either dip cloths into the blood left over from the execution site and get it that way.

Yeah, I remember hearing this.

Or they would bring their own bread and dip the bread into it.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

That

image conjured in your mind.

Seeing, thinking of somebody taking bread or taking a

handkerchief and just letting it soak up the warm fucking blood.

And then drank in it.

We,

what are we?

What are we?

Barbarians.

Like, we're real wild.

Do you guys remember?

I don't know if you will, Alina, but do you guys remember Dave the barbarian?

Yeah.

I just said barbarian and I literally just went

barbarian

in my head like just so you know that shows that show slapped you guys that was a great show quick detour but yeah at uh king charles the first different from king charles the second who died after the king's drops didn't work when he had a stroke his dad actually

uh was executed and people were seen mopping up his blood with their handkerchiefs at his execution site yeah

and obviously that would be like the most vital of

spirits that you could get that's the king all the spirit and back then they actually believed that they believed in something called the royal touch so like if you even touched the king or if if he allowed his hand to touch you they believed even that touch alone could heal you wow so imagine what his blood could do for you imagine you know i can only but yeah back to the blood of the execution times that was thought to be the best cure for epilepsy and tuberculosis yeah of course but it was also just thought to be a good drink if you wanted to stay looking young and fresh yeah i mean just ask spike from buffy the vampire slayer i know he warms up his blood He does.

And he also puts weedie bits in it if he wants a little texture.

Yeah, he does.

So that's a little tip from me to you.

Everybody has preferences.

But according to Bess Lovejoy, who wrote an article called A Brief History of Medical Cannibalism.

Cute.

Marsilo Ficino, I think, who is a highly respected 15th-century Italian scholar and priest, wrote that elderly people should, quote, suck the blood of an adolescent who is clean, happy, temperate, and whose blood is excellent, but perhaps perhaps a little excessive.

Yep.

Yep.

If they wanted to stay young.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

You know what?

That young person who's clean and happy and temperate and all that.

Become a vampire.

They might have a little extra blood and you should drink it right from them.

I love that they're just like, you know what?

Become a vampire.

Yeah.

Like do it.

Let's just all, you know, I feel they're like, I feel like Twilight's going to come out in a few hundred years and we're going to love it.

We're going to be ahead of that.

They said, have you even seen Carlisle?

Have you even seen the skin of a killer, Bella?

Have you even just watched Twilight?

And I can't stop saying, this is the skin of a killer, Bella.

I love it so much.

It's the best.

It's so,

it's an interesting movie to watch now.

Period.

I was like, I just told everyone to be nice.

It's entertainment at its five.

It is.

It's very entertaining.

I started watching it the other night and I got all the way halfway through Eclipse.

Yeah.

So that's that's a lot.

Yeah.

I'm trying to finish the whole.

I haven't watched the series through in so long.

No.

It's been years and years and years.

But back to the blood.

Yeah.

So you could suck the blood of the people who were young and temperate and happy.

And then you would get the skin of a killer.

I like that he specified clean, too.

That was smart of him.

That was nice.

But this belief actually might have been rooted in Roman history, where people allegedly would drink the blood of fallen gladiators, hoping to get some of their strength and bravery via ingestion of them.

Wow.

Yeah.

So many shortcuts people are looking for.

Yeah.

Shortcuts that are very complicated.

Like maybe just lift, bro.

Yeah.

Just do you even lift, bro?

Do you even lift?

Maybe just make sure you're hydrated.

Just drink some water.

Yeah.

Well, the local executioners weren't just doling out cups of warm blood and stepping aside while people dipped bread in it like they were just having some oil and balsamic.

He would also harvest the fat from executed bodies.

Most of the time he would sell it to the local apothecaries and they they would melt it down to use in ointments, or they would dry it out to use it in powders.

The ointments could be used topically to treat things like bruises, scars, gout, general aches and pains.

And in powder form, they were also thought to stop bleeding.

Sometimes they would soak bandages in human fat before they were wrapped around like wounds or injured bones because they thought that promoted healing.

You know what?

That one I can almost understand

the thought process behind.

behind.

Yeah.

No, I get that.

Like I we know it's ridiculous, but it's like you can almost see the through line of thinking there.

Yeah, because like particular one.

I can't put it into words why that makes sense, but I get it.

That's a little bit like it doesn't.

Yeah.

But like you can understand why

without

any kind of knowledge of biology or anything,

that that would seem to make some type of sense.

It's the least, it's the least intrusive of them that I can think of.

Well, and at least, I mean, like in some cases, they were like ingesting the fat, but at least in that case, they were just wrapping it around a wound.

And they're hoping it like promotes healing, which is like, it doesn't.

No, but I kind of get it.

But yeah, I can, I'm like, all right.

Yeah.

It's not as offensive.

Well, it was especially popular.

It was a especially popular form of corpse medicine during wartime.

Makes sense.

Army surgeons like Dr.

Goddard, who I mentioned earlier, would go out onto the battlefield and literally fill up bags of fat from fallen soldiers.

That's horrifying.

And they would take the huge bags back to medical tents and treat wounded soldiers with the fat of fallen soldiers.

Damn.

Yeah.

Like shit was so fucking bleak by gnarly.

Like, and the fact that she, just hearing they were harvesting fat from fallen soldiers, do you, that entails a lot.

You have to picture that first.

That entails a very gnarly image.

And also

probably harvesting their skulls as well.

You know?

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

You also might remember from some of our coverage of the Paris catacombs, that leftover fat from the surplus of bodies there at that time was used to make soap and candles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Love that.

Yeah.

Sponification.

Luckily, though, by the 18th century, the Enlightenment slash the Age of Reason came along and people started looking a little deeper into science and actual medicine.

And they were like, hey, you know what's fucking crazy?

None of this seems to work and everyone is still dying super young so wild i feel like we should try something else you know that seems to be a like a through line in our species

because like even when like we were talking about this like a few days ago that like during the salem witch trials everyone's like how did it stop and it's like it literally stopped because they like pressed to death an old man yeah in a field naked and they were and some people were like i think we went too far this shit is weird what we're doing huh like and so this is weird At least, you know, I'm hopeful that that actually starts to happen soon again.

I hope that yeah.

People start looking around and being like, hey, it's fucking weird, really gross what we're doing.

Maybe we should stop.

Let's stop.

Maybe we should.

It is a trait of our species.

So, you know, it's very, very well could happen again.

It always gets worse, but it seems to happen there, too.

It's just like everyone's like, huh.

Yeah.

None of this is working.

We should stop.

Yeah.

I think they were definitely feeling weird too about the moral implications that were involved.

Yeah.

I love for like a long time.

They were just like, I guess we just deal with it.

I guess, you know,

once we ran out of bodies to steal, at least we were eating criminals.

Yeah.

Like it's medicinal happiness.

Very much like a hunter's mentality that it's like, well, I use everything on the animal.

Yeah.

So it's fine.

Yeah.

You know.

I mean, it also got harder to supply mummies from Egypt.

And people were also catching on to like the trickery involved.

Oh, yeah, the snake oil of it all.

Yeah.

But mostly people just got smarter and a little more empathetic.

Good for us.

But shockingly enough, the last recorded listing of a mummy for sale was in a magazine in the 20th century, 1924 to be exact.

So I guess not really good for us.

Yeah.

I can't really give us too much of a pat on the back.

Just a little tap tap.

It's a little like, we're getting there.

Yeah.

And that, my friends, is a brief history of corpse medicine.

That is fucking fascinating.

It was really fun to dive into.

I loved that.

Maybe next I'll look into fecal medicine.

As you should.

Mikey said absolutely new medicine.

I wanted to include it, but

I got like very OCD about it.

I was like, well, technically, it's not corpse medicine because it's not deadly to that.

So I'll go and do it another time.

This was great.

I liked this.

I'm glad.

I had a feeling you would love this.

Yeah.

Anytime I get to reference a ghost song

during a morbid episode, I'm here for it.

Yeah.

And talk about people like dipping their fucking bread into

fallen blood.

Fuck, like warm execution blood.

Yeah.

Damn.

I mean, I read something that that was like, is it all that different from taking the Eucharist?

I mean, at church, they're like, here's the blood of Jesus.

Yeah.

It's real fucked up.

I guess one, one is symbolic.

Luckily.

Literal.

Luckily, it's moved on to symbolism.

Symbolism.

Back then, they were less symbolic about it.

Apparently.

Fucking crazy.

Damn.

Yeah.

That's wild.

Crazy.

Well, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

It conjures up so many images, doesn't it?

Yeah, it really does.

All right.

Well, thank you for joining us on our little bonus episode for Halloween-y.

Hell yeah.

And we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that you go to corpse medicine as a way to treat your ailments.

It's not going to work.

It's not.

But go listen to Mummy Dust by Ghost.

A Mummy Dust?

Isn't that talking about fucking?

No, I don't even think it is.

Oh, it's not.

It's literally about like snake oil salesmen.

Oh, that's it.

It's referring to the corpse medicine aspect of it.

This one goes out to Tobias Forge.

Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie.

And one thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home.

Because with every fix, update, and renovation, it becomes a little more your own.

So you need all your jobs done well.

For nearly 30 years, Angie has helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter.

From plumbing to electrical, roof repair to deck upgrades.

So leave it to the pros who will get your jobs done well.

Hire high-quality pros at Angie.com.

Shop best sellers at Ashley, where no matter what your holiday traditions are, you're always at home.

Whether you're making extra room with our extendable dining tables so your family can make something delicious together, or creating a cozy space by rearranging our modular seating.

Ashley's selection of adaptable furniture is here to help carry on your treasured traditions.

Year after year, for years to come, shop holiday deals and make lifelong memories with Ashley.