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What is mummy medicine?
Was powdered Egyptian Mummy used as a drug?
@Carruthers......The question relates to Egyptian and European History and the Histoy of Medicine. I take it that you are a specialist in another field.
4 Answers
- Michael BLv 78 years agoFavorite Answer
Good question (take a star), and it deserves a serious answer - ignore the three stooges who tried to make fun of it.
Mummy was used through the Renaissance for two purposes: medicine and art.
Because mummies had lasted so long, their embalmed flesh was supposed (on the principle of sympathetic magic) to have preservative virtues. It was taken as medicine to prolong life, restore youth and specifically as a sort of Viagra - to help the helpless to get it up. It was rare, cost a lot and was effective only, perhaps, as a placebo.
Paste of mummy was also used (by those who could afford it) in art for pink flesh tones. It is known that Titian used it - so those acres of tempting breast and thigh in his paintings actually have real human flesh in them. A nice thought for cannibals and necrophiles.
Hope this helps.
