Sunday, February 01, 2009

Sunday night & medical cannibalism

Western civilised countries routinely used human body parts in pharmaceutical preparations up to the end of the 18th century.  The practise was widespread. Blood, meat the lot was tried with varying success. The potions didn't always work:
"In 1492, when Pope Innocent VIII was on his deathbed, his doctors bled three boys and had the pope drink their blood. The boys died, and so did the pope".
Not quite the flesh and blood of Jesus but I guess it was tasty enough.

Pity about those boys though. The pope was a slave trader, an adultera and a strong supporter of the Spanish Inquisition.  On the basis of that last sin the world was a better place with him dead.
HT John S.

2 comments:

Ros said...

I don't know if the following would classify as cannibalism but it would be a treatment I would avoid.

My Mum was a nurse back in the late thirties, in Australia. She told us of the doctor in a major hospital who hoped that ingesting placentas would be a cure for leukaemia. He apparently mixed them with milo. The patients were not told what it was they were being fed. One would assume that those who were collecting and supplying him with placentas had some idea what he was doing with them

It worked as well as the other treatments involving human body bits.

Anonymous said...

I thought JWH did something like that in an effort to win the last election. Didn't work either.