Medical cannibalism

Medical or medicinal cannibalism is the consumption of parts of the human body, dead or alive, to treat or prevent diseases. The medical trade and pharmacological use of human body parts and fluids often arose from the belief that because the human body is able to heal itself, it can also help heal another human body.^[1] Much of medical cannibalism applied the principles of sympathetic magic, for example that powdered blood helps bleeding, human fat helps bruising, and powdered skulls help with migraines or dizziness. Medical cannibalism has been documented especially for Europe and China.

In Europe, thousands of Egyptian mummies were ground up and sold as medicine, since powdered human mummy – called mummia – was thought to stop internal bleeding and to have other healing properties. Reaching its peak in the 16th century, the practice continued, in a few cases, until the early 20th century. Fresh human blood, particularly from recently executed criminals, was also highly valued because of its supposed healing powers, a custom that goes back to Ancient Rome, where the blood of wounded gladiators was thought to cure epilepsy.

In China, the consumption of human flesh as a medical treatment dates back to at least the Tang dynasty, when it was endorsed by medical texts like the Bencao Shiyi. In hundreds of documented cases, young individuals, often women, voluntarily cut flesh from their bodies to feed to their ill parents or parents-in-law. Later medical manuals like the Bencao Gangmu advised against the use of human body parts, though still acknowledging their use in treating diseases. During the Cultural Revolution, cannibalism resurged in the context of political and social upheaval, with instances of individuals consuming the organs of perceived "class enemies" under the belief they had healing properties. In the mid-1990s, journalists uncovered an underground market in aborted fetuses in China and Hong Kong, and more than 17,000 pills supposedly filled with the powdered flesh of fetuses or stillborns were seized by South Korean customs officials in 2011/2012.