[Sca-cooks] An ingredient listing

[Terry Decker]

Mummy powder has a long history of being an ingredient in medicine.  The 
practice may have started with Arab physicians in Alexandria and been 
transmitted to European physicians during the early Crusades.  Use of 
powdered mummy continued until some time in the 18th Century.  In the 19th 
Century, mummies became curios.

The heyday of powdered mummy came between the 14th and 17th Centuries, when 
powder of sun dessicated corpses may have been as common as the real thing. 
Just another ingredient in the Shakespearean medicine cabinet.

IIRC, Jame Joseph Walsh provides more info in Medieval Medicine.

Bear



----- Original Message ----- 



I've been researching the witches potions ingredients from MacBeth.
One site 
here<http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-three-witches-spell-in-macbeth-double-double-toil-and-trouble/>
claims that witches mummy was "a medicinal substance".  At least one
other site suggests that they are refering to actual mummified human
remains.  I wanted to see if anyone here knows if this is correct, or
if this is a reference to a plant substance?


thanks
alex