| dc.description.abstract | This thesis will examine the practice of using human ingredients in medical remedies in seventeenth-century England. Scholars have largely ignored this practice, or mischaracterized it as 'superstitious' or as a 'folk' practice while primarily focusing on only a small number of the ingredients used. Instead, this research will demonstrate that this practice was founded in the physiological theories of both Paracelsus and chemical practitioners and of traditional Galenic medicine. Even the Royal College of Physicians included human ingredients in their approved lists of medicaments and many human ingredients were among those that apothecaries were required to keep in stock. This demonstrates that human ingredients were accepted as medical remedies by professionals, and that both chemical and traditional theories could utilise these treatments. Trained practitioners believed that humans had a predetermined amount of life force, or vital spirit, within their body, and that this spirit could be transferred to another person to restore health and cure ailments through parts of the body. Human ingredients used included mummy, or the preserved body of deceased individuals, powdered skull, blood, human fat, and bodily fluids such as urine and breast milk. Looking at the sixteenth-century works of Paracelsus and others, we can identify the medical theories that originally justified this practice. Furthermore, by comparing these writings to the work of seventeenth-century practitioners we can see how Paracelsian theories evolved over time to include a wider variety of ingredients and applications. Practitioners of lay medicine, or kitchen physic, were also using human ingredients at home to create cures for their family and friends. Through studying a range of sources, we can determine that it is not the professional practitioners but the lay practitioners who provide a more accurate representation of how frequently human ingredients were used and the ingredients that were most often chosen. By examining printed recipe collections and personal manuscript collections, the occurrence of human ingredients in remedies can be calculated. These figures suggest that people were choosing ingredients that featured less in the writings of medical theorists, but were instead easier to obtain and most often came from living donors rather than the deceased, suggesting contrasting approaches to choosing the types of human ingredients included in medicinal preparations Furthermore, we can better identify which factors, including gender and wealth, would influence what ingredients were considered more useful. Ultimately, this study of the medical usage of human ingredients provides new insights into perceptions of the body, medicine, and remedy preparations. | en_GB |
