1656: Dr Schroeder’s recipe for red-headed mummy

Johann Schroeder was a German physicist and medical researcher, best known for isolating and describing arsenic. Belonging to the Paracelsian medical school, Schroeder was also fond of prescribing ‘mummy’ – dried and powdered human corpse – as a catch-all treatment.

In his 1656 book Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, Schroeder claimed the very best mummy was sourced from Egyptian tombs or deserts. This variety, however, was often expensive and hard to come by. As an alternative, Schroeder provided his own recipe for high quality medical-grade human mummy:

“Take the fresh unspotted cadaver of a red-headed man (because in them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent) aged about 24, who has been executed and died a violent death. Let the corpse lie one day and night in the sun and moon – but the weather must be good. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it with myrrh and a little aloe. Then soak it in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up against for 6 to 10 hours, soak it again in spirits of wine, then let the pieces dry in a shady spot. Thus they will be similar to smoked meat and will not stink.”

Once dry the flesh could be powdered and used both internally and externally for a variety of ailments – from epilepsy to scrofula, from gout to haemorrhoids.

Source: Johann Schroeder, Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, 1656. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.