Doctors Prescribed Ground-Up Mummies for 500 Years

For about 500 years, European doctors prescribed a medicine made from Egyptian mummies. You could still order it from a drug catalogue in 1924. In this animated documentary: • How a Persian word for mountain tar turned into the name for a preserved body • The 1500s mummy trade: bodies hauled out of tombs, broken up and shipped by the pound • The fake mummy factories of Alexandria, and the surgeon who exposed them • Kings, skulls and Shakespeare: why corpse medicine was for the rich and educated • A 2013 lab test on an old pharmacy jar labelled MUMIA, and a paint colour that got a funeral ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 The Strangest Prescription 0:50 A Word That Meant Tar 2:26 Pharaoh by the Pound 3:47 The Fake Mummy Factory 5:08 Kings, Skulls and Shakespeare 6:45 The Last Jar 📚 Educational & historical note: This video is for education and entertainment. It simplifies complex history, and some details are debated among historians (noted in the video). Historical remedies shown are NOT medical advice. ⚠️ Unverified claims: The story that King Francis I of France always carried mummy mixed with rhubarb is a long-repeated anecdote that historians cannot confirm. Guy de la Fontaine's 1564 visit to an Alexandrian dealer with 30–40 home-made mummies survives only through Ambroise Paré's 1582 account. Tomé Pires's warning about toasted camel meat sold as mummy comes from a single writer. Robert Boyle's skull-moss nosebleed cure is his own claim. These are labelled UNVERIFIED on screen. Sources: Science History Institute, "Mummies and the Usefulness of Death"; Richard Sugg, "Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires" (Routledge); Ambroise Paré, "Discours… de la mumie" (1582); John Sanderson's account in "Purchas His Pilgrims" (1625); "An 18th century medication 'Mumia vera aegyptica' — fake or authentic?", Organic Geochemistry 65 (2013); Merck corporate history; Art UK, "The corpse on the canvas: the story of mummy brown paint". 👉 Subscribe to Past Explains for more strange true history, explained with stick figures! 💬 If you had to take one: mummy powder in wine, or the King's Drops? #History #WeirdHistory #Animation