Ethics of Cannibalism

Ethics of Cannibalism In the history of philosophy, cannibalism plays a pivotal role in the development of early modern medicine across the world. In its early years, cannibalism, in the form of ingesting mummies, was recommended by Avicenna (980-1037) as a subtle but resolutive remedy that could be used as an antidote to poison, and could cure epilepsy or nausea, and other popular cold symptoms. Louise Noble, “And Make Two Pasties of Your Shameful Heads: Medical Cannibalism and Healing the Body Politic in ‘Titus Andronicus’” The Johns Hopkins University Press 70:3 (Fall, 2003): 677-708. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029895 (accessed January 21, 2010). By the late sixteenth century, the ingestion of mummies became a renowned pharmaceutical drug used widely all over the Europe, and were still sold at reputable German phamacies as recent as 1908. Shirley Lindenbaum, “Thinking about Cannibalism” Annual Reviews vol. 33 (2004): 475-498. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064862 (accessed January 20, 2010). Further, ingestion of human bodies was practiced in many of the islands in the Pacific Ocean until the second half of the twentieth century. The question necessarily occurs: what’s good about it? Ingestion of human bodies is not necessarily an appealing notion even to the people in the sixteenth century. When one is prescribed a half a pound of mummy dust by a doctor as a remedy for a cold, it sounds like the risk isn’t worth taking, for one could ask many questions such as, ‘For how long do I need to take it?’ or more obviously, ‘Does that work?’ and so on. Dwelling deeper, can one consume another being of the same species? What would its moral implication be? Apparently, these are types of questions that were asked and have been asked by those who promoted medicinal ingestion of flesh as well as the deliberate act of cannibalism. In this paper, I will examine the types of cannibalisms as well as ways to prepare human flesh, discuss the theoretical and practical implications of cannibalism and briefly touch upon the alleged relationship between cannibalism and witchcraft in early modern Europe. The term ‘cannibal’ was first coined after Columbus’ second voyage to the Caribbean (or Caribs, so they were referred to) where the Caribs were seen eating human flesh. Ibid. Shirley Lindenbaum, in her article, gives us brief descriptions for different types of cannibalisms that may be worth mentioning. Broadly speaking, there are two types: survival cannibalism and psychopathological cannibalism. The former of the two is sporadically wistnessed in modern times – that is, it is a form of cannibalism that forces you to consume human flesh out of necessity to survive, e.g., stranded on a deserted island due to a plane crash, etc., and the latter of which is more or less what we normally understand cannibalism, as when we hear the word – that is, simply put, what the messed up people might do. Anthropologically, however, psychopathological cannibalism may further be divided into endocannibalism, which is to eat someone from within the group, and exocannibalism, in which case the desire to eat someone who is geared towards the people outside the group. It may be useful to associate endocannibalism as eating out of affection – ingesting someone dear to us – whereas exocannibalism as eating out of aggression – ingesting the enemies. Ibid. These differences are remarkably evident in the case of Asabano tribes in Papua New Guinea prior to their contact with Europeans in 1972. Although Asabano people did not eat the people they liked, exocannibalism was sometimes practiced as a sign of expression to destroy the victim’s souls. Roger Ivar Lohmann, “The Afterlife of Asabano Corpses: Relationship with the Deceased in Papua New Guinea” University of Pittsburgh – Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education vol. 44:2 (Spring, 2005): 189-206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3773996 (accessed January 21, 2010). The focus of my interest is, however, the third type of cannibalism, that is, medicinal cannibalism. Medicinal cannibalism is concerned with consuming human flesh, blood, heart, skull, bones and tissues as well as other parts of the body as a cure for epilepsy amongst other things. Lindenbaum gives an account of the best condition of human flesh for ingestion, citing Paracelsians who were the followers of Paracelsus – the seventeeth century medical philosopher and an alchemist, one of the most influential philosophers in the early modern Europe, as “[h]uman flesh obtained from ‘mummy shops,’ where the remains of an embalmed, dried, or otherwise prepared human body that had ideally met with sudden, violent death.” Lindenbaum, “Thinking about Cannibalism”, 475-498. This is because “[a] violent death is essential to ensure the ‘occult qualities of medicines’ … because the corpse must possess the ‘balsamick spiritual substance fit to nourish’ [that is] absent from those of ‘diseased dispositions’ who ‘dye of themselves.’” Louise Noble, “Medical Cannibalism” 677-708. The Paracelsians believed that the human body could contain the spirits after death as long as the death comes so suddenly that there is no time for the spirits to escape. Ibid. Another source tells us that the best human flesh is obtained from those bodies that are dried in the desert sand by the continuous heat of the sun, for a “mummy made of these bodies was particularly prized because ‘this sudden suffocation doth concentrate the spirits in all the parts by reason of the fear and sudden surprisal which seizes on the travellers.’” Karen Gordon-Grube, “Evidence of Medicinal Cannibalism in Puritan New England: ‘Mummy’ and Related Remedies in Edward Taylor’s ‘Dispensatory’” University of North Carolina Press vol. 28:3 (1993): 185-221. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25056942 (accessed January 21, 2010). The opposing school of thought, current in the Renaissance, was that of Galenic tradition. However, Galenic medicine too, though not as explictly as the Paracelsians, promote cannibalism as somewhat natural. This is because, coming from the Aristotelian tradition, “the four humours make human flesh tasty to humans who are made of the same stuff,” and because of the belief that sickness is caused by imbalance in a human body of the humoural temparaments, and ingesting a healthy human flesh would rectify such a deficiency. Lindenbaum, “Thinking about Cannibalism”, 475-498. Indeed, the seventeenth century doctors as well as theologians did not think of cannibalism as a theological sin but it was nothing: “a form of immoderate eating.” Ibid. Theodore de Bry, “Tupinamba grilling human body parts”. This fact is well portrayed in a number of surviving accounts about the scene of the public execution. For instance, one account from a Danish forklore tells us how “ecliptics stood around the scafforld in crowds, cup in hand, ready to quaff the red blood as it flowed from the still quiverling body.” Mabel Peacock, qtd. in Noble, “Medical Cannibalism” Its method of collecting blood is also most consistent with the Paracelsian prescription of fresh blood from a decapitated man, which has to be administered according to certain astrological rules. Lousie Noble, “Medical Cannibalism”, 475-498. Such practice, however, faced some serious moral issues, specifically regarding the possible effect on the well-being of the blood drinker that he might inherit the criminality of the executed. Indeed, the primary ethical implication had to do with the moral risk that the one who feeds on the criminal’s blood could most likely result in the acquisition of the criminalistic character as well as the criminal career the beheaded was to pursue. Ibid. The satirical work by Jonathan Swift, Modest Proposal, anonymously published in 1729, argues that “the sale of small children for human consumption would rescue the economy, please the Irish nation, prevent the children of the poor from being a burden to their parents … put a stop to abortions, and make men fond of their pregnant wives as they were of their mares in foal … no longer beating them for fear of miscarrige.” Jonathan Swift, qtd. in Lindenbaum. This, in addition to the apparent satirical criticism, also displays how widespread the social phenomena towards the consumption of human flesh tended to be. Another curious decree given by King James I in 1604 regulates the dissection of human bodies, either public or private, only to the licenced, skilled practitioners at the Barber-Surgeon’s Company in order to control the disorderly, barbaristic theft of human flesh and to prevent individuals from freely engaging in dissection of human bodies. Ibid. This decree was to guarantee and to maintain the civilized standard of the Western tradition as opposed to islanders who would devour human flesh at any given time anywhere without proper manner. Despite the obvious inconsistency in declaring the people in the New World barbarians for their cannibalistic character while the European people themselves were consuming human flesh and prided themselves for their civilized attitudes towards their own practice of cannibalism, several of the accounts left in the literature continue to tell us that even the flesh professionally prepared medicinally can invoke in us the sense of intricate barbarousity performed through early modern Europe. I suppose the difference lies in the way in which the flesh is prepared: the barbarians prepare flesh on a barbecue grill whereas the Europeans prepare it medicinally Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of English (1785), for example, tells us that human flesh was still commonly used for various medical purposes and was sold at stores. Even in the beginning of the twentieth century, in 1908 Germany, a few pharmacuetical companies were selling the “genuine Egyptian mummy, as long as the supply lasts, 17 marks 50 per kilogram.” Annonymous account qtd. in Noble. Perhaps here, it is worthwhile to list and quote some of the most famous recipes for preparing human flesh. What follows is the recipe by Oswald Croll (circa. 1560-1608) for the preparation of a new mummy: Take the flesh, unspotted cadaver of a redheaded man (because in them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent) aged about twenty-four, who has been executed and died a violent death. Let the corpse lie one day and night in the sun and moon – but the weather must be good. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it myrrh i.e., the dried sap of a tree and just a little aloe. Then soak it in spirits of wine aqua vitae, water of life, i.e., concentrated aqueous solution of ethanol for several days, hang it up for 6 or 10 hours, soak it again in spirits of wine, then let the pieces dry in dry air in a shady spot. Thus they will be similar to smoked meat, and will not stink. Oswald Croll qtd. in Noble (Trans.) Johann Schroeder (1600-1664), a German physician and a pharmacologist, gives us yet another recipe, which is representative of all of the mummy preparations: “take finely cut mummy or dried human flesh, pour spirits of terpentine i.e., a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin from pine trees on it, and put it in a hermetically sealed a seal which is airtight container for one month to petrify,” and “the liquid drained out of this [flesh] is to be mixed with several parts of rectified spirits of wine, then distilled and what not, so that the liquid, or the quintessence that is, a universal tincture, or the soul of an object. in the most subtle form, is to be mixed with the spirits of wine.” Lousie Noble, “Medical Cannibalism”, 475-498. Just how much popular medical cannibalism became is also evident from the fact that the London Pharmacopoeia A book for dispensing chemists, or the pharmacists, which contains the instructions for the preparing of compound medicine and information on diagnoses. First published in 1618 in London, following the charter of 1617 that prohibited grocers from keeping apothecary’s shops. in 1618 included mummy as well as human blood and skull as Paracelsian remedies. The Pharmacopoeia was issued a number of times throughout the seventeenth century with updates, and by the end of the century the book treated other human parts as officially approved remedies, such as “excrements, fat, mummy, man’s skull, bones, ‘moss of mummy,’ perspiration, urine, bladder stone, woman’s milk and afterbirth, saliva of a fasting man, etc.” Louise Noble, “Medical Cannibalism”, 475-498. Among which, the ‘moss of mummy’ is particularly of a curious one. According to Paracelsians, it refers to a greenish moss that appear in the top of the skull, also called ‘usnea’, after about six years after a man is hanged, for when hanged “his vital spirits would ‘burst forth to the circumsference’ of his skull and [would] remain there for six years” until the aforementioned moss comes to grow. Ibid. Such moss was greatly treasured by the apothecaries that the price of each skull at stores varied depending on how much moss the skull possessed. Ibid. But why was medicinal cannibalism so popular in the Europe? To go back to the initial question posed, what is good about ingestible mummies? The answer to this, in fact, has its origin in the ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle, and later propounded by the famous Hellenistic medical philosopher Galen in the 3rd century. Aristotle had said that things in the terrestial world are made out of four basic elements: fire, air, water and earth. Of these, each element possesses two qualities, viz., fire is made out of the qualities of hot and dry, air is made out of the qualities of hot and wet, those of water are cold and wet, while those of earth cold and dry. Further, Artistotle’s view dictates that changes occur only from one opposite to another, that is, what is cold becomes cold from what is hot, and vice versa. Such is the nature of change that it is impossible for one thing to be both hot and cold, or both wet and dry, at the same time in every respect. Indeed, the changes occur between the contraries that if something is too hot, by adding cold to it, it can rectify the imbalance between the said quality and bring it to an equilibrium in said object. By the same token, Galenist physicians believed that by finding out what qualities are lacking, or defective, and by restoring the supposed imbalance of the four humours, i.e., hot, cold, wet and dry, in a patient, they could restore health of the sick. This is the precept of so-called, ‘contraries cure’. Ibid. It is by such a precept that Galen could consider using excrements as well as other bodily substances such as remedies, as these were believed to occasionally contain some curative qualities, even though Galen himself thought drinking sweat or urine and “certain other uses of feces as ‘outrageous and disgusting’.” Lindenbaum, “Thinking about Cannibalism”, 475-498. However, towards the sixteenth century, as Paracelsian medicine became prevalent throughout the Europe, in addition to the bodily derivatives, the extensive employment of mummy or human corpse as a sovereign remedy came to be regarded as the norm. This is due to the Paracelsian doctrine of ‘like cures like’, as opposed to that of Galenists’. The sixteenth century physicist, botanist, alchemist, astrologer and chymist, Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541), promoted the view that there is a corresponding relation between the celestial world and the terrestial world. In this line of thought, each man is a mirror of the universe, and in every man there is a corresponding aspect of the whole universe, in the form of reflection. The only difference is that, as Pico della Mirandola puts it, a degree of perfection between the world above and the world below. Louise Noble, “Medical Cannibalism”, 475-498. Paracelsians believed that because each part of the human body is a mirror reflection of a superior world, by means of appealing to the corresponding parts of the terrestial world to those of the celestial world, one could induce the celestial influence, or the sympathetic attraction from above. Since man is a microcosm, “he had within himself all the forms of external nature – minerals, plants, animals, and the celestial bodies … [w]ith his knowledge of of the sympathies and antipathies existing between macrocosm and microcosm,” Paracelsians used medicine as a means to “channel the healing influences of a particular celestial body – of the World Soul – into the corresponding organ of man’s ailing body.” Ibid. It is this tradition of the precept, ‘like cures like’, that came to prevail in early modern medical practices across the continent over the Galenic precept that was previously dominant. The English poet, Edward Taylor, who had also served as a town physician for forty years, and a Puritan pastor, had compiled a medical Dispensatory. He was largely influenced by the Paracelsian doctrine, and his Dispensatory lists a number of animal remedies, such as wolves’ teeth, hare’s kidneys, boar’s urine, fox fat and the blood taken from a donkey’s ear. Ibid. Among these lists of remedies, there is an entry for the listing of medicinal uses of human flesh and parts. Indeed, “[e]ntry number 61 in Taylor’s alphabetical list of animals is ‘Man. Homo. Anthropos’ … [with] the subheadings ‘[Regarding] his Materialls while living,’” and “‘Touching the Deade body of fflesh’ of ‘Man.’” Ibid. Not surprisingly, the remedies listed there are in accordance with the Paracelsian precept of ‘like cures like’, and some are not too hard to make sense of, such as that the hair distilled in liquor makes hair grow, or that man’s skull is good for head diseases, etc. Ibid. But what remains of a primary interest to us is, do they work? Indeed, even if we granted those opinions in our time that drinking urine can be good for us, it is still hard to accept claims like “[t]he earwax drunk in Beer is chiefly recommended as a present cure of the Colick, and externally it cures the strokes of scorpions.” Edward Taylor, qtd. in Noble, “Medical Cannibalism”, 475-498. It is not at all clear who is to drink the earwax (though, applying the Paracelsian belief of heavenly influences acting upon the patients, or the ‘action from distance’, it seems likely that the person who is suffering the effect of the colick should drink the earwax and not the baby crying), and what the possible connections are to the healing of the strokes of scorpions. When one hears that man’s dung eases pain, and some burn it and drink it, one could only imagine that whoever it is that prescribes him human feces as a cure for pain is doing it for fun. For does it not matter whose dung is to be taken, since depending on whose it is and what that person has consumed, does it not have different ingredients, thus having differing effects on the patient? Such a worry was not without precedence. In fact, a lot of contemporaries were quite often disgusted by such remedies. In a much similar way to the Greek physicians reacting against the dirt therapy, many of the early modern contemporaries too voiced their concerns against the mainstream employment of mummy as well as human blood and its derivatives. For instance, one “physician Mundella declare[d] such practice to be ‘abominable and detestable’, [while another] condemn[ed] mummy as ‘a true posion’ and ‘a useless drug.’” Lindenbaum, “Thinking about Cannibalism”, 475-498. Another English explorer left us an account of how he was forced to swallow mummies in the name of cure. Ibid. Quite a number of the contemporaries did recognize the ingestion of human flesh as well as blood as cannibalism, and Ambroise Pare (1510-1590), the great surgeon for the kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III, as well as an expert in battlefield wounds, for instance, expressed his repulsion, explaining his reasons for rejecting mummy treatment as the following: The ancients were very eager to embalm the bodies of their dead, but not with the intention that they should serve as food and drink for the living as is the case at the present time. They did not contemplate such an abomination but were either thinking of the universal resurrection or of the memory of their dead parents or friends. Ambroise Pare, qtd. in Noble. The Puritan minister of England, Cotton Mather (1663-1728), also expressed his abhorrence towards the medicinal ingestion of human body, in referrence to the use of human skulls: I declare, I abominate it. For I take Mans Skull to be not only a meer dry Bone, void of all Vertue, but also a nasty, mortified, putrid, carrionish piece of our own species; and to take it Inwardly, seems an Execrable Fact that even the Anthropophagi would shiver at. And therefore, in my Opinion, it would be decent; and almost pious, to carry them all out of the Shops, and heap up a sepulchral mound for the reception of the bones. Cotton Mather, qtd. in Noble. But if so many of the influential people also believed the practice of ingesting human body, or its parts, to be abhorrent, why did this practice continue to spread, uninterrupted? It is probably because those who argued against it did nothing but opine their own feeling of repusion or disgust against such practices, and did not go farther than these complaints. Indeed, in this sense, the Paracelsians were strong and persistent since their practices were supported by their theory, even though a lot of patients might have found such treatment dubitable. This brings us to the question: who actually were the willing participants of cannibalism? Aside from the barbarians in the New World as well as in some small islands around the world, there was one more group that was said to consume human flesh with delight. Those cannibals were the ones who abducted children at night and burnt them on a dinner table, namely, the witches. But was there really a connection between the witchcraft and cannibalism? Considering those paintings in early modern Europe that depict witches, it is hard to tell. Charles Zika, in his article, “Cannibalism and Witchecraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images”, seems to show, by extensive study, that the claim that witches devour human flesh is dubious at best. For most early paintings prior to the seventeenth century did not depict witches as children eaters. Charles Zika, “Cannibalism and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images” History of Workshop Journal 44 (Autumn, 1997): 77-105. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289520 (accessed January 21, 2010). Further, although depictions can be found where witches are cooking human children in a large pot, it is never certain for what purposes they are cooking them. It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that many of the paintings depicting witches began to explicitly show the witches with body parts of children in one hand, devouring the flesh. Ibid. In other words, it was only at around the time of Paracelsus when the witches in the drawings started to eat children. From this, it seems plausible that cannibalism was still seen as a barbaristic activity even in the midst of the seventeenth century by the artists, when the Paracelsian doctrine of ingestible mummy came to be one of the most reputable medicine. The matter becomes even more curious when the paintings from the ealy sixteenth century that depict cannibals abroad, i.e., in the New World, are taken into consideration. For explicit dipiction of cannibalism is there already present, as can be seen in figure 1 above. There seems to be a connection between the flourishing of medicinal cannibalism in Europe after Paracelsus and the depiction of witches as flesh eaters, for primarily witches were seen to cook with abhorring ingredients in order to make salves and use them as spells, but not to eat. It may have been the case that the reason why witches began to consume human flesh, especially that of children, was an expression of abominance by the artists, or the common public, towards the rapidly prevailing tendency of cannibalism in the development of early modern medicine. The employment of witches as a means of visual conveyance served well for such a purpose, for generally speaking, “[t]he threat of witch was that she could insinuate herself into everyday life through the process of the food chain, through the words of curse, through the look of the eyes – essentially through the everyday human contact and human exchange.” Ibid. Although Zika argues that the increasing depiction of witches as man eaters suggest the social fragility and religious divisions brought about in Europe in the late sixteenth century, I think the depiction is also demonstrated on a literal level. That is, an expression of a social fragility in public life followed by the invasion of a barbaric trend into the private life through such a mundane yet prevailing concept as medical treatment.