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The 16th-17th Century Black Market For Human Fat

kamalktk

Antediluvian
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
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Article also includes information on one of the early cases of spontaneous human combustion

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/human-fat-was-once-medicine-black-market/590164/
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In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, physicians, butchers, and executioners alike hawked the salutary effects of Axungia hominis.
....

If the fat of warriors was efficacious, that of executed criminals was easier to lay one’s hands on. What was called “poor sinner’s fat” was rendered from the bodies of the recently executed and used to treat sprains, broken bones, and arthritis. Beyond such uses, human fat was also prescribed as a painkiller or to treat sciatica and rheumatism, while dead men’s sweat was collected for the treatment of hemorrhoids. Until the mid-18th century, executioners in the city of Munich, who often prescribed and administered homemade remedies from the corpses of their doomed clients, had a lucrative trade in the fat they delivered to physicians by the pound.
 
nice!

similar to the trade in bits of mummies?
 
The pishtaco figure from Andean (especially Peruvian) folklore was strongly associated with - and may have originated from - Spanish conquistadores' practice of treating battle wounds with corpse's fat.

This exploitation of human fat wasn't limited to medical applications. The Spanish invaders were reputed to process human fat to produce grease for their weapons and other metal equipment.

The pishtaco mythos has served as the basis for indigenous peoples' avoidance of outsiders and lurid crime rumors all the way down to our current century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pishtaco
 
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