British royals who have long been famed for their love of lavish banquets and rich recipes also had a taste for human flesh, according to a book. The book has revealed that British royals as recently as the end of the 18th century possibly swallowed parts of the human body. The practice was not only reserved for monarchs but was also widespread among the rich in Europe, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday quoting the author of the book Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires.
Although the royals denounced the barbaric cannibals of the New World, they applied, drank, or wore powdered Egyptian mummy, human fat, flesh, bone, blood, brains and skin. Moss taken from the skulls of dead soldiers was even used as a cure for nosebleeds, said author of the book Richard Sugg of Durham University.
“The human body has been widely used as a therapeutic agent with the most popular treatments involving flesh, bone or blood. Cannibalism was found not only in the New World, as often believed, but also in Europe,” he said. “One thing we are rarely taught at school yet is evidenced in literary and historic texts of the time is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine,” Sugg said. The history of medicinal cannibalism, he argues, raised a number of important questions. —IANS