Morbid｜October Bonus Episode - Corpse Medicine: Tomb to Table

📖 Transcript

What if I started every episode like that?

I mean, do what you got to do.

Whatever it takes.

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 should just leave that in as 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 is my motto.

Wow.

Like you said, girl, don't make that your motto.

You 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 Ripa.

And they were both so sweet.

And we were in the, 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 upfront.

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.

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.

Because she's a fucking boss ass bitch.

I have been daddy gang.

But she's very sweet.

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

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 die.

I was a later, later convert.

You were a 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.

Oh, yeah.

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

Yeah uh, 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 uh, one 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.

But she wrote fleals.

And we have literally put a border around it on the whiteboard.

And it's been there for years now.

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.

Yeah, like an exacto knife.

I need to keep it forever.

Yeah.

And it's like dry erase marker.

So I'm very scared.

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

Do you think?

Smearing.

Could you laminate it?

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 would we do?

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

Mikey's a crafting king.

But 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.

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.

Does it still feel so good?

Here's this chunk of our whiteboard.

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.

It's crazy.

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

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

But either way.

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.

Yeah.

It's like asterkasterk.

Asterkasterk.

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

Oh, that's a win.

Everything is enough for me right now.

So far, win, win, win for me.

It doesn't matter what happens after this.

I'm pretty happy.

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 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 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 tomorrow.

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 that as 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.

I was like, I feel so wonderful.

We got 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 Beach?

I was 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 there again.

Yeah, it was great.

And the pizza was really good.

The pizza was so good.

Yeah, shit was just lit.

We just got in our sweats.

I got my Halloween PJs.

Yeah.

We just, like, there were parties happening.

There were all kinds of... 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.

And we're going to learn... a TikTok dance.

And Mikey will film it.

And he did.

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 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, right?

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 there's an alien?

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 sometimes.

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, it 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 anger, and 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.

Yeah, 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 on my charging block.

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 you guys have been like really supportive and awesome, like everybody's just been like hyping us up, like you guys 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 and one reasons, it's a really terrible idea.

Yeah, if somebody who went through infertility for three years, I would have fucking lost my mind if somebody asked me that.

So don't do that.

Thanks.

But none of you would.

None of you listening would.

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.

All right.

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 off the internet.

Chase them down.

Get them gone.

We got to start fucking chasing these assholes off the internet.

Go on.

People who just go around and leave nasty comments on people's happiness need to be chased off the internet.

Nasty begets nasty, my dears.

Because...

I love nothing more now than to see a video of somebody that I'm like, wow, that's a fun video.

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.

Because there's so much yuckiness that you need to counteract.

Pump people up.

It feels so good.

It does.

Like it really does.

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.

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.

And like the Internet is a literal fucking garbage fire.

I was going to say dumpster fire.

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.

Absolutely.

And we need to continue doing that.

Absolutely.

So 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 air.

He's like, do not do that.

Let that person know that their makeup is awesome.

Yeah.

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 a 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.

And 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 worldwide.

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.

Uh, you know your day-to-day 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, it's just a common occurrence.

It is out here, especially mass jesus Scorpions everywhere.

Scorpions and snakes just biting 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.

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

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

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 that.

And you'll feel better in no time.

I mean, let's go.

Is it Gaius?

Gaius?

It's 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's name.

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.

That is Bitchman.

That's Bitchman.

It's Bitchin'.

It's Bitchman.

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

When you picture a mummy, obviously you think of like a Halloween costumey, 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 not funny 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 the substance.

Exactly.

Isn't that interesting?

That is very interesting.

I didn't know that.

So now, because 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.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

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

According to the Science History Institute writer Mariel 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 bitumen.

They were like, I'd like that arm.

I'd like that head.

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, Cannibals and Vampires the History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians.

Let's go, girl.

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 going to work.

I mean, I get the thinking, you know?

Yeah, like people are going to believe doctors and all these people being like hey, if your head hurts, you might as well eat some skull.

Yeah, do it.

Ingest some skull.

Yeah.

I'm not telling you to, but the doctors back then were 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, it's a blood jam.

But it's also like a jelly.

Yeah.

Ugh.

Yeah.

That just makes me think of like coagulated blood because it looks like jelly.

I mean, that's essentially what this was.

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.

Will do.

I will.

Renew it in the spring of every year.

It sounds very Martha Stewart at the end.

I was just going to say that.

It's literally Martha being like.

And you know what?

Keep on top of it, girl.

Yeah, keep on top of it.

Renew it in the spring of every year.

Or it's like Ina Garten 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.

That carried all this stuff.

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

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.

I said, 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.

Uh, 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 booked truly, but 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 that many different, complex and completely distinct problems.

Yeah.

Question.

I'm not saying it.

Just question it.

Just ask a few questions.

Just say, 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 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 for 6,000 pounds.

Damn.

And then he rebranded the name to The King's Drops.

It's the relaunch for me.

I bet they had a relaunch party and everything.

Like, it is the relaunch for me.

It's the rebranding.

Yeah.

I kind of love that.

He said, I bought these.

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

He said, relaunch.

King's drops.

He would add them to his wine.

He would add them to chocolates.

Some people said that he had like a goblet that was made of skull that he would drink his wine in with skull's 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 glass.

With a skull goblet.

With a skull.

Drinking your skull tincture and wine.

That's the thing.

Like a skull goblet filled with skull.

That's literally.

So much skull.

Skull in one.

Yeah.

Me, I'm going to look for a different remedy for my migraines.

You know, Excedrin seems to work great for you.

I will not be trying this.

I'm glad to hear that.

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 people get liquor and they start 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.

That's so weird that that didn't work.

Yeah, it's crazy.

He wasn't the only person who died from that.

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 King's drops 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 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.

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.

This is going to 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.

Father.

That's not my 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 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.

Yeah.

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

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

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

Like what I do with spiders sometimes.

Yeah.

You leave the dead body somewhere.

I love that.

Just 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 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.

Wow.

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?

Vital Force.

Vital Force and Life Moss.

Sorry, Vital Spirit.

There it is.

I combined Life Force and Vital Spirit.

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.

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.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

Um, 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, um, just a quick little side detour.

It didn't only serve medical purposes.

It also had its role in the arts.

Oh.

There is a famous painting, uh, called Interior of a Kitchen.

Okay.

And it's by Martin Droling.

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 flesh.

Damn.

They were straight up painting with mummy flesh.

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.

You 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 like coffee is just like, did you hear?

Yeah.

Did you hear that Marcus put fucking bits of flesh in his painting?

And everybody's like, ah.

They were like his brown isn't really drying as it's supposed to, because 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.

Yeah, of course not.

They 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 oh, isn't that nice.

That's sweet in the most fucking macabre way.

Yeah, we love an aware king, we do.

Um, apparently the use of mummy brown though, lasted all the way into the 20th century.

Damn yeah, it died out, luckily.

Um, 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.

It's right over there.

Yeah, let's go 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, the first of france, if you can even believe it, He was said to carry a mixture of true Mubia, which was a viscous black liquid directly extracted from a mummy who 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.

Mm-hmm.

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, Oh, man.

So you, somebody, not you.

I'm 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 going to contain this rich vital spirit.

And, you know, they're going to be buried with all these delicious bitumen.

Yeah, the fanciest vital spirit and all the bitumen.

And you could receive a camel.

That's what.

Honestly, that's what you get.

I was just gonna say i mean, 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 literally shit.

People would dry out feces.

No.

Like human and animal feces.

Mikey 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 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 line of thinking did they pass through here?

To be like if you fling dried up shit into your eyes?

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.

It's a little different.

So I left it for another day.

You said that's different.

Yeah.

But in these apothecaries they would have like little you know tins, that would say like goose fecal matter.

Poop.

You know?

They'd say...

We sell poop here.

Get your poop here.

And it wasn't just cataracts.

They used it for all different kinds of things.

Yeah, of course.

But that's another episode.

Wow.

That's really interesting.

Yeah.

So people were getting duped anyways, back to my original point.

But 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.

But they also felt better about using those kinds 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 was still fresh.

Oh, and obviously, you know, I hate that a lot.

These cups sold for a lot of money.

Like it was like going to a concert and paying like twelve dollars for a water.

You know, it was exactly like 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.

Thinking of somebody taking bread or taking a handkerchief and just letting it soak up the warm fucking blood.

And then drinking it.

We...

What are we as a species?

Barbarians.

Like, we're real wild.

Do you guys remember, I don't know if you will, Alayna, but do you guys remember Dave the Barbarian?

Yeah.

I just said barbarian and I literally just went, ba, barbarian, ba, ba, barbarian in my head.

Like, just so you know.

That show slapped, you guys.

That was a great show.

Quick detour.

But yeah, at King Charles I different from King Charles II who died after the king's drops didn't work when he had a stroke.

His dad actually 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 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 weedy bits in it.

If he wants a little texture yeah, he does.

That's a little tip from me to you.

Everybody has preferences.

You know.

But according to Best Love Joy, who wrote an article called A Brief History of Medical Cannibalism.

Cute.

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

Yep.

Yeah.

If they wanted to stay young.

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.

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?

I 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 good.

It's an interesting movie to watch now.

Period.

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

It's entertainment at its finest.

It is.

It's very entertaining.

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

Yeah.

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.

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 would melt it down to use in ointments, or they would dry it out to use it in powders.

You know what?

That one, I can almost understand the thought process behind.

Yeah no, I get that.

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

Yeah because, like that particular one, I can't put it into words why it makes sense, but I get it a little bit like like it doesn't yeah, but like you can understand why, without any kind of knowledge of biology or anything.

Yeah, 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 thought, but at least in that case they were just wrapping it around a wound and they're hoping it like promotes healing, which it's like it doesn't, but like 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 an 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.

Wow.

Damn.

Yeah.

Like shit was so fucking bleak back then.

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 for a second.

That entails a very gnarly image.

And also.

Very gruesome.

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.

Love that.

Yeah.

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.

That seems to be like a through line in our species.

Yeah.

Because even when we were talking about this a few days ago during the Salem witch trials, everyone's like how did it stop?

And it's like, it literally stopped because they pressed to death an old man in a field naked.

And some people were like, I think we went too far.

This shit is weird what we're doing.

Like, this is weird.

At least, you know, I'm hopeful that that actually starts to happen soon again.

I hope that, yeah.

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

Maybe we should stop.

Let's stop.

Maybe we should move along.

It is a trait of our species, so, you know, it's very, very well could happen again.

It always gets worse before it gets better.

But it seems to happen there, too.

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

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.

Yeah.

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.

Just 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 not.

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 dead people.

I can't go into that.

So I'll go into 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 the fallen blood.

Fuck.

Like warm execution blood.

Yeah.

Damn.

I mean, I read something 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 is symbolic and one is literal.

Luckily, it's moved on to 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 Halloweeny.

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.

Mummy Dust.

It's not talking about fucking.

No, I don't even think it is.

Oh, it's not?

It's literally about snake oil salesmen.

Oh, that's fun.

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

This one goes out to Tobias Forge.

Thank you.

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[]-[October Bonus Episode - Corpse Medicine: Tomb to Table]

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[]-[October Bonus Episode - Corpse Medicine: Tomb to Table]

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