CHAPTER XVII.

MUMMIES AND THEIR USE IN MEDICINE—THE UNICORN. Who first introduced mummies as medicinal agents is not known, but there is something particularly weird and gruesome in the idea of the ancient physician dosing a sick patient, with the remains of a predeceased fellowman, in order to restore him to health. The art of embalming was practised thousands of years before the Christian era, and was regarded as the greatest token of esteem that could be paid by the living to the dead. Pomet says there were two kinds of embalming practised by the ancient Egyptians. The first and most costly was used to none but persons of the highest class, and was valued at a talent of silver, or about £500. Three people were employed in the operation; one was a kind of designer or overseer, who marked out such parts of the body as were to be opened. The next was a dissector, who with a knife of Ethiopian stone cut the flesh as much as necessary, and as the law would permit, and immediately afterwards fled away with all the expedition possible, because it was the custom of the relatives and domestics to pursue the dissector with stones and do him all the injuries they could, treating him as an impious wretch and the worst of men. After this operation the embalmers, who were accounted holy men, entered to perform their offices, which consisted in removing the internal organs, cleansing with palm wine and other aromatical liquor, and during the space of thirty days they filled the cavity with powdered myrrh, aloes, Indian spikenard, bitumen, and other aromatics. In the process of embalming used by the middle class, which cost about £250, the body was syringed with a decoction of herbs and oil of cedar, then put into salt for seventy days, after which it was enveloped in bandages of fine linen, which had been dipped in myrrh and asphaltum, and the designer, who was called the scribe, covered the wrapping with a painted cloth, on which were represented the rites of their religion in hieroglyphics, and the animals which the dead loved most. There was a third process of embalming used by the poorer people, in which a mixture of pitch and bitumen was used. The bodies were first dried with lime, and then coated with a mixture of nitre, salt, honey, and wax to protect them from the air. Mummies of deceased persons were held in the greatest reverence by their relatives. The faces were sometimes gilded and painted and adorned with head-cloths, they were then placed in elaborate cases according to the position and rank of the person, and deposited in the highest part of their houses. An old writer states: “They reckoned their deceased as such a valuable token and pledge of their faith, that if any of them happened to want money he could not give a better security than the embalmed body of his relation; and that which made it esteemed so was, that they would spare no pains to pay the money again; for if by mischance the debtor could not redeem this pledge, he was reckoned unworthy of civil society, which engaged him indispensably to find out ways to recover his kinsman in the time limited, otherwise he was blamed by all the world”. Some 300 years ago a large trade was carried on, mostly by Jews, who imported mummies for medicinal purposes, as they were much used by the ancient physicians; but there is little doubt that a great deal of fraud was practised by the mummy merchants, and that many were specially manufactured for the purpose. Pomet, alluding to this in his _History of Druggs_, writes: “We may daily see the Jews carrying on their rogueries as to these mummies, and after them the Christians; for the mummies that were brought from Alexandria, Egypt, Venice, and Lyons are nothing else but the bodies of people that die several ways. Those from Africa called white mummies, are nothing else but bodies that have been drowned at sea, which, being cast upon the African coast, are buried and dried in the sands, which are very hot.” When the ancient physician prescribed mummy for a bad headache, he rarely got what he imagined. “For,” the writer continues: “I am not able to stop the abuses committed by those who use this commodity. I shall only advise such as buy to choose what is of a fine shining black, not full of bones and dirt, of a good smell, and which being burnt does not stink of pitch. Such is reckoned proper for contusions, and to hinder blood from coagulating in the body. It is also given in epilepsies, vertigoes, and palsies. The dose is two drachms in powder, or the same made into a bolus. It also stops mortifications, heals wounds, and is an ingredient in many compositions.” In a price list, dated 1685, mummy is quoted at 5s. 4d. per lb. Of the mummies used in medicine five kinds were known. Factitious.—Those in which bitumen and pitch were largely used in the process of embalming. Those bodies dried by the sun in the country of the Hammonians between Cyrene and Alexandria, being mostly the bodies of passengers buried in the quicksands. True Egyptian. The Arabian, being those bodies embalmed with myrrh, aloes, and other aromatic gums. Artificial mummies. Crollius in his _Royal Chemist_ gives the following process for preparing artificial mummy:— “Take the carcass of a young man (some say red haired), not dying of a disease but killed, let it lie twenty-four hours in clear water in the air, cut the flesh in pieces, to which add powder of myrrh and a little aloes, imbibe it twenty-four hours in spirit of wine and turpentine, take it out and hang it up for twelve hours, then imbibe it again, twenty-four hours in fresh spirit, then hang up the pieces in a dry air and a shady place.” A rather cheerful operation for the apothecary. It would possibly account for many a mysterious disappearance in those days. Mummy entered into a large number of preparations which we come across in the old dispensatories. There was the balsam, which is described by an old writer as “having such a piercing quality that it pierceth all parts and restores wasted limbs, consumption, and cures all ulcers and corruptions”. Beside mummies, the apothecaries stocked human fat, respecting which gruesome material Pomet says: “Everybody knows in Paris the public executioner sells it, the druggists and apothecaries a little; nevertheless, they vend a sort of it prepared with aromatic herbs, and which is without comparison much better than that which comes from the hands of the hangman”. Human fat was much esteemed for rubbing, in cases of rheumatism and kindred complaints. Another part of the body used in ancient medicine was the human skull; also a growth called the moss from the human skull, probably of fungoid origin, that appeared on the bone on keeping. An old writer in the seventeenth century says: “You may see in the druggist shops of London some skulls entirely covered with moss, and some that only have the moss growing on some parts. They send these skulls especially to Germany, to put into the composition of the sympathetic ointment which Crollius describes in his _Royal Chemist_, and which is used for the falling sickness.” Special virtue was attributed to skulls taken from gibbets. Referring to these, Pomet states: “The English druggists, especially those of London, sell skulls of the dead upon which there is a little greenish moss called usnea, because of its near resemblance to the moss which grows on the oak. These skulls mostly come from Ireland, where they frequently let the bodies of criminals hang on the gibbet till they fall to pieces.” The human skulls were sold at 8s., 9s., 10s., and 11s. each. They were given in the form of powder, or one of the preparations, such as the oil or tincture. Besides the skull, other human bones, calcined and powdered were used. An oil and a tincture of skulls, an extract of the gall and the heart of man made with rectified spirit, was dropped into the ear as a remedy for deafness, and also given internally for epilepsy. Human hair was used for jaundice, finger-nails as an emetic (which one can hardly wonder at), and blood drawn from a healthy man, drunk hot, was used to prevent fits coming on. The brains of various birds and animals were highly esteemed. The latter were roasted and rubbed on children’s gums when teething. The livers of ducks and frogs, and a dead mouse dried and beaten into powder, were given to relieve kidney disease. Another extraordinary article used in medicine was the horn of that fabulous animal the unicorn. Concerning its origin we have recourse again to Pomet, who states, “the unicorn is an animal which our naturalists describe under the figure of a horse, having in the middle of his head a spiral horn of two or three feet long, but we know not the real truth of this matter to this day”. This horn was formerly held in high esteem because of the great virtues attributed to it by the ancients, especially against poisons, “which is the reason that so many great persons are fond of it, so that it has been valued at its weight in gold”. Ambrose Paraens, in a treatise which he wrote on the unicorn, says that in the deserts of Arabia he found wild asses carrying a horn in the front, which they used to fight against the bulls. That there _was_ an animal with one horn, most of the old writers agree, but whether it was a goat, or an ox, or a hart, or an ass, no one could say. The horn was probably collected from any of these animals, and as long as the horn was there it doubtless answered the purpose. The _true_ unicorn, if you dare believe Ludovicus Vertomanus, who says he saw two of them in Mecca which were kept within the precincts of Mahomet’s sepulchre, is of a weasel colour, “with the head like that of a hart, the neck not long, and the mane growing all on one side, the legs slender and lean like the legs of a hind, hoofs cloven like a goat’s feet, and the hinder legs all hairy and shaggy on the outside. His horn was wreathed in spires of an ivory colour.” There is little doubt that most of the horn used medicinally, was that obtained from the narwhal or sea unicorn. In the year 1553 a great unicorn’s horn was brought to the King of France, and valued at £20,000 sterling. That which was presented to Charles I. of England is supposed to have been one of the largest ever seen in the world. “It was seven feet long, weighed thirteen pounds, and was in the shape of a wax candle, but wreathed within itself in spires, hollow about a foot from its root, growing taper little by little towards the point of polished smoothness, and the colour not perfectly white.” Ancient authors ascribe wonderful properties to the horn of the unicorn. It was supposed to resist all kinds of poisons, cure the plague, all manner of fevers, the biting of serpents, mad dogs, etc., and was chiefly used as a cordial, for which purpose a jelly was made of it.