Until 90 years ago, powder made from mummies, i.e. human corpses, was considered a useful drug in Europe, and available in pharmacies until 1924. I need to remind myself of this when reading about body-part juju in Africa. The practice arose from a misinterpretation of the Arabic word for bitumen, mumiya.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
![](http://vuyogo.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/800px-Albarello_MUMIA_18Jh.jpg)
The third step in misinterpreting mummia was to substitute the blackened flesh of an entire mummy for the hardened bituminous materials from the interior cavities of the cadavers.[16] The ancient tombs of Egypt and the deserts could not meet the European demand for the drug mumia, so a commerce developed in the manufacture and sale of fraudulent mummies, sometimes called mumia falsa.[17] The Italian surgeon Giovanni da Vigo (1450-1525) defined mumia as “The flesh of a dead body that is embalmed, and it is hot and dry in the second [grade], and therefore it has virtue to incarne [i.e., heal over] wounds and to staunch blood”, and included it in his list of essential drugs.
![](http://vuyogo.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Zwischenablage01-1024x665.jpg)
See also this article (in English) published by German pharma company Merck.
An interesting article on bog bodies (in German).