From classical Rome to the 20th century, the practice of corpse medicine—also known as medicinal cannibalism—ran rampant across every stratum of European society. The top 10 corpse remedies listed below show how extracts from human brains, flesh, fat, livers, blood, skulls, bone, hair, and even sweat were swallowed or applied by monarchs, popes, scholars, and common folk alike.

top 10 corpse Overview

10 Gladiator Blood and Liver

Slain gladiators turned the arena from a blood sport into blood medicine during classical Rome. Romans believed they could absorb the gladiator’s vitality and valor by drinking their hot blood.

Epileptics would crowd a fallen gladiator and suck the “living blood” from his open wound. Roman physician Scribonius Largus went to great pseudoscientific lengths to suggest that the liver of a stag killed by a weapon used to vanquish a gladiator could be a magical cure for epilepsy.

It was not long before simply eating the liver of a gladiator was deemed to hold similar curative effects. When gladiator matches were banned in A.D. 400 epileptics found a new blood source at executions.

9 Blood of a King and Other Criminals

The idea that epilepsy could be cured by the still-warm blood of the deceased lingered well on into the late 19th century. Crowds of epileptics used cups to catch the blood of freshly decapitated corpses at Scandinavian and German scaffolds. In one account from early 16th century Germany, an impatient member of the crowd snatched a corpse and drank the blood straight from its severed neck.

Consumption was not limited to the blood of common criminals. On January 30, 1649, Charles I of England, was beheaded for treason. Crowds rushed forward and washed their hands in the King’s blood. A monarch’s touch was thought to cure the “king’s evil,” which was the name given to swollen lymph nodes caused by tuberculosis, but it seems his blood was even better. After Charles I lost his head, the enterprising executioner reportedly made money auctioning off blood-soaked sand and bits of Charles’s hair.

8 The King’s Drops

While Charles I became corpse medicine, his grandson, Charles II, made his own. Apparently a skilled chemist, Charles II bought the recipe for a popular tincture called “Goddard’s Drops” and made it in his own laboratory. Jonathan Goddard, the physician who invented it, reportedly earned a handsome fee of £6,000, and for close to two hundred years the tincture became popularized as “the King’s Drops.”

The recipe was suitably vile: two pounds of hartshorn, two pounds of dried viper, two pounds of ivory, and five pounds of a human skull. The ingredients were minced and then distilled into the final liquid form. The human skull was the active ingredient and had an important spiritual purpose. Alchemists reasoned that a sudden, violent death trapped the soul within human remains, including the skull. Thus, consumption gave the recipient the vital life force of the deceased.

The King’s Drops’ success as a so-called miracle cure of nervous complaints, convulsions, and apoplexy is somewhat dubious. Instead, it could be deadly. Documents show that it knocked off a few important people. In the case of the English MP, Sir Edward Walpole, the King’s Drops brought on convulsions rather than cured them. Walpole was described as “the saddest spectacle” as he succumbed to the potency of the King’s Drops.

It seems that its only medical success was as a stimulant. Distilled hartshorn turns to ammonia which was a key ingredient in smelling salts. But most of the time, the King’s Drops just appeared to have little effect. On February 6, 1685, Charles II had it hastily administered to him on his deathbed to no avail.

Despite this, the King’s Drops remained popular with the privileged and lower classes. It even appeared as a medical recipe in the cookery book The Cook’s Oracle (1823), which detailed how to distil your home supply of human skull to treat your child’s convulsions.

7 Skull’s Moss

The dubious curative powers of human skull extended to the mildew or moss that grew on unburied human skulls. Called usnea, it was found in plentiful supply on exposed skulls on the battlefield. Soldiers met the required violent end needed to maintain the “vitality,” or life essence, within the body. Somehow this soul essence was absorbed into the skull moss under the influence of “celestial orbs.”

Usnea was used extensively during the 17th and 18th centuries. As a powder, people stuffed it up their noses to stem nosebleeds or used it internally for wide-ranging concerns from epilepsy to menstrual problems. The “father of medicine,” Sir Francis Bacon, proposed its use as part of a wound salve to be rubbed on a weapon. The idea was that rubbing the blade of the weapon would heal the wound it caused.

6 Distilled Brain Mash

In The Art of Distillation (1651), physician and alchemist John French described a particularly revolting preparation of an equally revolting remedy—brain tincture. In a matter-of-fact way, French lays out the process for aspiring practitioners.

“[T]ake the brains of a young man that hath died a violent death, together with the membranes, arteries, veins, nerves, [and] all the pith of the back,” and “bruise these in a stone mortar till they become a kind of pap.” Once mashed, the brain paste was covered in “spirit of wine,” then left to “digest” in horse poo for six months before finally being distilled into an unassuming liquid. French most probably had a fresh supply of young male heads from his work as an army physician, and plenty of left‑overs from dissections done at the Savoy Hospital, where he prepared his brain mash.

Like other corpse remedies, this was not a fad, and references to its use can be found throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. An even nastier version from the 1730s involved the smashing of human brains, hearts, and bladder stones with breast milk and warm blood.

5 Human Fat Ointment

Human fat became big business for executioners during 17th and 18th century Europe. In Paris, people would bypass the local apothecaries and line up at the scaffold for their personal jar of rendered human fat. Viewing the dismemberment and carving up of the corpse at least would have reassured the public they were receiving the genuine article, and not some animal fat knockoff. The human grease was touted as a great painkiller for aches, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and was even used to treat breast cancer.

It was popular among the elites as well. Queen Elizabeth I smeared the unguent of human fat over her face to treat pits left by smallpox. A recipe from the 18th century for human fat unguent describes a pretty toxic ointment of human fat and beeswax mixed with turpentine. There is a distinct possibility that a similar recipe was used by the queen. This, along with her use of lead‑based makeup, may have accounted for her death in 1603—rumored to be from blood poisoning.

4 Sweat of a Dying Man

English physician George Thomson (c. 1619‑1676), was well‑known for using every conceivable part of the human corpse, including a prescription of urine for plague, and the consumption of human afterbirth to combat excessive menstrual bleeding. But nothing was weirder than his cure for hemorrhoids. The sweat of a dying man (presumably induced from the terror of the scaffold) could be rubbed over your piles. If the executioner did not have sweat on tap, then the touch of the severed hand from the executed could apparently make your hemorrhoids miraculously disappear.

3 Honey Mummy

Mellified Man was basically the art of turning a man into candy. Reported by Chinese physician Li Shih‑Chen in his book, Chinese Materia Medica (1597), mellified man was a by‑product of an Arabian mummification process. The recipe is simple enough: take one aged male volunteer. Bathe him in honey, feed him nothing but honey (apparently, the volunteer would defecate only honey after a while), then when he dies from this diet, encase and seal him in honey for 100 years.

After 100 years, he would be rock‑hard candy that would be administered to heal broken or weakened bones. According to one source, this honey mummy confection was available throughout Europe and China. It is difficult to determine for sure, but not a stretch considering Europeans were consuming a mummy of a different kind for over 600 years.

2 Mummy Powder

Egyptian Mummy took Europe by storm as a cure for everything and anything including blood clots, poisoning, epilepsy, stomach ulcers, and broken bones. Various products existed: “treacle of mummy,” “balsam of mummy,” tinctures, and its most popular form, mummy powder.

Labeled in apothecaries across Europe as mumia, the powder became a staple medical aid from the 12th century to the 20th century. Early medical texts abound with its prolific use across Europe. Mummy powder is even referenced as a product in the archives of the pharmaceutical giant, Merck.

It was believed mummies were embalmed in bitumen. Bitumen removed from mummies was believed to have medicinal qualities, but it was not long before the flesh itself was considered to carry the health benefits. When supplies of genuine Egyptian mummy ran low, a fraudulent business replaced it. Recently deceased corpses were baked in the sun to age and emulate mummification.

Physicians swore by it, but there was one noteworthy detractor, French surgeon Ambroise Paré (c. 1510‑1590) who disparaged mummy powder’s usefulness along with another snake oil of the day, unicorn powder.

1 Red Tincture of 24‑Year‑Old Man

“Mummy” as medicine was eventually extended, legally, to include the flesh of recently deceased men prepared in a kind of pseudo‑mummification process. “Red tincture” was a particularly strange version in the recommendation of using a corpse of a specific age and complexion. Developed by German physician Oswald Croll, it soon became a popular remedy used in London during the late 1600s. Translations of Croll’s original work describe how to make it. “Choose the carcass of a red man [ruddish complexion], while, clear without blemish, of the age of twenty‑four years, that hath been hanged, broke upon a wheel, or thrust‑through, having been for one day and night exposed to the open air, in a serene time.”

The flesh would be cut into chunks, powdered with myrrh and aloe, then softened in wine. Then it was hung up for two days to dry in the sun and absorb the effects of the moon, before being smoked, and finally distilled. Apparently, the stench of the liquid was disguised with the sweet aromas of wine and elderflower.

Daniel is a museum anthropologist and bioarchaeologist who moonlights as a freelance writer.

Part of the great thrill of exploration is the unknown, and among the many 10 suspected cases that have captured imaginations, the risk of being devoured by cannibals looms large. Risk and reward must be weighed on every venture; ships may sink, disease may spread, and quicksand may swallow the unwary, yet the lure of new knowledge and a place in history drives explorers onward.

10 Suspected Cases of Cannibalism Among Explorers

10 German Explorer Killed On Polynesian Goat Hunt

German-born Stefan Ramin and his partner Heike Dorsch were seasoned travelers who set sail around the globe, arriving at the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia on August 30, 2011. Enchanted by the islands, they lingered twice as long as planned. During this extended stay, Ramin arranged for a local, Arihano Haiti, to guide him on a traditional goat hunt.

The two men left Dorsch alone for several hours. When the dinghy returned, only Haiti was aboard. He claimed an accident had occurred in the forest, saying Ramin was badly injured and needed urgent assistance. Upon reaching the site, Haiti brandished a shotgun, telling Dorsch, “You die now.” A struggle ensued, and Haiti shifted tactics, assaulting Dorsch sexually before binding her to a tree, where she endured hours of torment.

Dorsch eventually broke free, spotting Haiti’s flashlight in the distance and sprinting to the shoreline. She clambered onto a fellow traveler’s boat, escaping with her life. Police later discovered Ramin’s remains among campfire ashes, confirming Haiti’s murder. The case sparked sensational media speculation about cannibalism, prompting outrage among French Polynesians who felt the coverage reinforced harmful stereotypes.

9 The Blanche Bay Massacre

In 1878, Methodist Reverend George Brown dispatched four Fijian missionaries to Papua New Guinea. Their mission balanced the delicate act of conversion against the possibility of severe cultural insult. The Tolai tribe, however, appeared unimpressed by the missionaries’ overtures.

The missionaries were slain and eaten at the behest of tribal leader Taleli. Brown, apparently forgetting Christian pacifism, retaliated by burning an entire village linked to the murders, killing at least ten people. British colonial authorities later cleared Brown of any wrongdoing.

Brown later boasted, “The natives respect us more than they did, and as they all acknowledge the justice of our cause they bear us no ill will.” Contemporary newspaper commentary warned that missionary endeavors could spark wars of extermination, suggesting withdrawal might be wiser. In 2007, the Tolai tribe, having abandoned cannibalism, issued a formal apology for the killings.

8 Andrei Kurochkin’s Siberian Fishing Trip

In 2012, Andrei Kurochkin and three companions embarked on a Siberian taiga fishing expedition. Their jeep and supplies sank into a river, turning a few‑week trip into a grueling four‑month ordeal. Kurochkin perished during this period, and one other participant remains missing.

Survivors Alexei Gorulenko and Aleksandr Abdullaev were rescued, and Kurochkin’s remains were discovered, showing clear signs of butchery. Gorulenko altered his story, claiming Kurochkin died from a leg injury before the group resorted to cannibalism for survival, hacking off flesh as they trekked to safety. Abdullaev faced no charges, while Gorulenko was initially tried for murder but escaped prison, later receiving a 12‑year sentence after the Russian Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision.

Kurochkin’s widow expressed horror, lamenting the remnants of her husband: “One foot with toes, one finger, and the back of his skull with some hair. This is all I have left from the man I loved.” The case underscores the brutal decisions forced by extreme isolation.

7 Giovanni Da Verrazzano’s Final Voyage To The New World

Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer active in the early 1500s, first impressed King Francis I of France after ventures in North Africa. Commissioned for New World expeditions, he sought a clear passage to the Pacific and lucrative Asian trade routes.

His early voyages charted Maine, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. On a third trip, he reached Brazil, returning to France laden with exotic timber. In 1528, Verrazzano launched his final sea journey, again heading toward the Americas. He landed in Florida before sailing south into the Caribbean.

Near Guadeloupe, Verrazzano reportedly launched a rowboat toward an island, where his crew observed from afar as he was killed and allegedly eaten by the island’s inhabitants. Some historians doubt the cannibalism claim, suggesting instead that Verrazzano may have been a French pirate named Jean Florentine, captured and hanged by the Spanish. The story remains contested.

6 Thomas Baker And Seven Of His Followers Are Eaten By The Villagers Of Nabutautau

Fiji, historically dubbed “the Cannibal Isles,” saw Methodist Reverend Thomas Baker arrive in 1859. He survived until July 1867, when he ventured deep into Viti Levu to attempt converting a local chief.

Legend says Baker offered the chief a comb as a peace‑making gift. When the chief rejected the gospel, Baker reclaimed the comb, inadvertently touching the chief’s head—a grave insult in local custom. Whether this incident truly occurred is uncertain; tensions likely stemmed from broader distrust of sanctimonious outsiders.

Regardless, Baker and seven of his followers were slain and consumed by the Nabutautau villagers. The tribe later believed the act invoked a curse, prompting a 2003 visit by eleven of Baker’s descendants. A formal apology and a curse‑lifting ritual were performed, marking a reconciliation.

5 Richard Parker Is Killed And Eaten Out Of ‘Necessity’

In 1884, four men set sail from Southampton in a yacht bound for Australia. Two months into the voyage, a rogue wave capsized the vessel, leaving the crew adrift in a dinghy with only two tins of turnips, rationed over twelve days.

When supplies ran out, the 17‑year‑old cabin boy Richard Parker, having drunk seawater, grew gravely ill. Captain Thomas Dudley, noting their familial obligations, told crew member Edwin Stephens, “The boy is dying… Human flesh has been eaten before.” Parker was then pinned down while Dudley thrust a penknife into his throat. The trio drank Parker’s blood and ate his liver and heart, setting aside chunks for later consumption before discarding the rest overboard.

Rescued later, Dudley openly admitted the act, arguing it was a desperate necessity. Most of England sympathized, even shaking hands with the men during their trial. Nonetheless, they were found guilty of murder, sentenced to death, then reduced to six months’ imprisonment. The fourth sailor, who participated in the cannibalism but not the murder, escaped charges.

4 Oliver Fellows Tomkins And James Chalmers Keep Promise To Visit Cannibal Islanders

Congregationalist missionaries Oliver Fellows Tomkins and James Chalmers operated in Papua New Guinea, with Chalmers having spent 23 years there and Tomkins just over a year. In 1901, both men attempted to spread the Christian gospel to the Goaribari Island inhabitants, traveling along the Aird River.

Tomkins recorded a harrowing encounter: a short service aboard the ship was interrupted by the sight of twenty canoes approaching. The canoes lingered for three hours, inspecting everything from rigging to buttons, urging the men to come ashore. The missionaries declined, promising to visit the village the following morning.

True to their word, Tomkins, Chalmers, and several crew members went ashore the next day, where they were slain and eaten. Their bones were later displayed by the islanders, cementing a grim legacy.

3 Owen Coffin And His Crewmates Eat Each Other After Whale Attack

Seventeen‑year‑old Owen Coffin served aboard the whaling ship Essex, which embarked on a sperm‑whale hunt in the Pacific. In November 1820, a massive whale struck the Essex twice, sinking it. Crew member Owen Chase vividly described the second blow, noting the whale’s ferocious tail and half‑emerged head.

The survivors escaped in three small boats, rationing the bodies of deceased crewmates. After more than two months adrift, the men on Coffin’s boat drew lots to decide who would be sacrificed for sustenance. Coffin drew the short straw; when his cousin, the ship’s captain, offered to take his place, Coffin allegedly replied, “No, I like my lot as well as any other.”

The boat was eventually rescued on the South American coast on February 23, 1822, after 92 days at sea. The harrowing ordeal inspired Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby‑Dick.

2 John Williams’s Poorly Timed Visit To Erromango

John Williams, a prolific missionary with over two decades of experience in the South Pacific, met his end in 1839 while exploring Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides). Alongside fellow missionary James Harris, Williams arrived on Erromango island shortly after European sandalwood traders had violently clashed with locals.

The recent violence painted Williams and Harris as threats. Harris was clubbed to death, and Williams fled toward the sea before being clubbed and shot with arrows. Their bodies were subsequently consumed by the islanders.

In 2009, Williams’s descendants visited the murder site, and, echoing the earlier reconciliation with the Nabutautau tribe, the Erromango people performed a ceremony to lift a perceived curse, seeking closure for both sides.

1 The Lost Franklin Expedition

In 1845, Sir John Franklin set sail with the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, aiming to navigate the final uncharted stretch of the Northwest Passage in the Arctic. The expedition began with 134 men, reduced to 129 after five were discharged in Greenland.

The ships vanished, prompting numerous rescue attempts. No survivors were found; all 129 crew members eventually perished. Lady Franklin, John’s wife, funded a series of searches, the last being the 1857 steam schooner Fox, which uncovered letters indicating Franklin’s death in April 1848.

In 1992, archaeologists discovered 400 bone fragments on King William Island, bearing cut marks consistent with defleshing. The wreck of HMS Erebus was located in 2014, followed by HMS Terror in 2016, finally solving the mystery of the lost expedition.

David is a freelance writer and windowlicker. You can read more of his writing @ CultureRoast.com and check out his videos @ YouTube.com/CultureRoast.