Human Cannibalism (Anthropophagy)

We talk about human cannibalism (anthropophagy), why people have partaken, if it's still practiced today, how many calories the human heart has... and more.


Sources:
Cole, James. 2017. “Assessing the Calorific Significance of Episodes of Human Cannibalism in the Palaeolithic.” Scientific Reports 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44707.

‌Katz, Brigit. n.d. “New Study Fleshes out the Nutritional Value of Human Meat.” Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed August 22, 2021. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-cannibals-did-not-eat-humans-nutrition-study-says-180962823/?fbclid=IwAR04X-KaaoRHXFlWHMX1nv1Fa556iu0eGo3VpSZy9IXWuC43w6pCHACDges.

‌https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/311277?fbclid=IwAR2AO3e6Foo1OIG6TCYrKtJh-gK2M5fZjaT7wCVngudoo79fVy-OBuOFdvg#The-health-implications-of-eating-colleagues

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/5-gruesome-recipes-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-dfc675e53071

https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/fiji/articles/a-brief-history-of-cannibalism-in-fiji/?fbclid=IwAR1djKWrLRq3PXGdaxohRyp4XrTZhP9PdwCrxNoOvHohrADleSQI9UMSXS8

Roach, Mary, W Norton, and Amazon.com. 2004. Stiff : The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

‌Kang, Lydia, and Nate Pedersen. 2017. Quackery : A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything. New York: Workman Publishing.

Commercial inspired by The Mouse Police Never Sleeps, by Jethro Tull

‌https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1800435

Transcript

Matthew: 0:00

macabrepedia deals with dark subject matter that may not be suitable for all audiences listener discretion is advised. Brooklyn Berg, Germany 2001 42 year old Armin Mavis presses record. The video being recorded as a 43 year old computer engineer Bernard Brandis. Brantas is drinking a bottle of schnapps and taking handfuls of sleeping pills. Brandis explained to the camera that the two of them met responding to each other's ads online. Mavis in his ad was looking for a well built man who was willing to be eaten, and in Brantas his ad, his search was for someone willing to eat him. The video continues recording the events of the night, including the enthusiastic agreement and consent of brand us to being in the castration of Brandis and subsequent frying of his genitals that both Mavis and Brandis himself attempt to eat before they decide is too chewy to enjoy. Later, Brandis is slumped in a bathtub. drifting in and out of consciousness. Mavis reads a Star Trek novel The past the time waiting for his guests to finish bleeding out. With the chapter and his guest seemingly finished, he places the novel down, Mavis picks up a knife leans over and kisses grandness before slitting his throat. Over the course of weeks, Mavis would go on to consume over 40 pounds of Brantas his body, exploring many culinary techniques and pairings from soft tang with olive oil and pairing with Princess potatoes and red wine to using slices as toppings for pizza. At the time, Germany had no laws on cannibalism, assuming that murder would be sufficient to cover the act. But in this case, with Brandis being a willing participant to charge of murder became harder to make stick. So Mavis was charged with a number of lesser crimes that garnered him a sentence of only eight years later, the ruling was changed to murder and Mavis is sentenced to life in prison. We invite you to join us as we add another entry into this hour, macabrepedia.

Marissa: 2:16

Hello and welcome to macabrepedia a marriage of true crime and the truly bizarre. We're your hosts Marissa and Matthew. For today's entry, we'll be talking about anthropology, more commonly known as human cannibalism.

Matthew: 2:31

This one is a bit of a rough one seriously, if the opening wasn't proof enough, I'd like to take a second and let everyone know. We don't miss the seriousness of this type of thing. But we do make light of it. gallows humor, very dark gallows humor like rotting moss covered gallows flush with carrion birds at dusk in the rain. The water causing the earth and excrement to mingle and muddy puddles.

Marissa: 2:54

Okay, okay. All right. I think they got it.

Matthew: 2:57

Do we have an episode on gallows coming up soon?

Marissa: 2:59

Well, not gallows specifically, but Crime and Punishment throughout history. Yes,

Matthew: 3:04

good enough.

Marissa: 3:05

So the practice of anthropology or cannibalism holds a particular level of disgust in most human cultures. It's a trait shared by many of our monsters and villains from Hannibal Lecter to vampires, werewolves and zombies. These creatures of folklore and fantasy have persisted as a benchmark of terror, amor once humans themselves before they turn to devouring people to fuel their terrible existence. But this practice is not something that comes solely from myths and horror films.

Matthew: 3:36

Yeah, the act of cannibalism has been documented throughout human and even pre human history with early humans and Neanderthals or Neandertals. I suppose it's sometimes they dropped the H off of that, but I feel like it flows better with the the H whatever,

Marissa: 3:50

more pretentious that way, but I actually prefer Neandertals.

Matthew: 3:55

Whatever wherever they find they found bones in Europe, in these caves that had signs of like crude butchery, and like nah marks of teeth. Needless to say, there's no shortage of stories with humans eating humans throughout history. This entry will focus on a handful of stories and examples of categories of cannibalism. Those being pathological, ritualistic, and survival. Each also has like subgroups of cannibalism, and cannibalism adjacent practices, such as forms of cannibalism, whose the practitioners may not even consider themselves cannibals, but with not too big of a stretch of imagination, you can see where some fingers could be pointed. And then also this is in the realm of like medicinal cannibalism and things like that. Pathological cannibalism is one that most will be familiar with. This is the type of cannibalism that we see with Arman Mavis from the opening, or the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, who in the 80s and early 90s, lured and killed and obviously 817 people, most of which were gay men, that He lured to his apartment. When people think of modern cannibalism. Dahmer is generally like one of the first on the list, but there are more recent and less well known cannibalism that will we will rather focus on today, such as Issei Sagawa.

Marissa: 5:15

Right so Issei Sagawa was known as the Kobe cannibal. He killed Rene heartfelt like the beef, right Kobe beef. He killed Rene heartfelt in Paris. Rene was his classmate friend, in 1981. So he invited her back to his apartment to do homework, they were working on some poetry and he wanted her to help translate from German, the stuff that he was doing because she spoke fluent German. He said that he wanted to absorb her energy. So it's a fairly common thing, but we'll talk about that in a minute. He shot her in the neck with a rifle from behind that he had sex with her corpse. And then he tried to bite her flesh, but his teeth were not sharp enough to tear through her skin. So he went out and he got a butcher knife. And so he used that to carve up some of her body. And then he ate parts of her flesh that he carved up so he ate her breasts at her face, either raw or cooked, but he then he put other parts in her frigerator. Then

Matthew: 6:12

I like the separate raw or cooked, like,

Marissa: 6:15

not really that many as opposed

Matthew: 6:17

to like he didn't like severe che, no.

Marissa: 6:21

He took photographs at each stage of the carving process. And when he tried to take the rest of her body parts to dump them, we put them in two suitcases and then he carried them toward the lake. But the French police caught him because it's not suspicious at all carrying two big suitcases toward the lake. He was then found legally insane and France and unfit to stand trial. Yeah, it's not a big stretch. Yeah, but he was sent to a mental institution at this point, of course, then he actually went on to publish an account of his kill. Some publishers met up with them, and he wrote a book about it. And this made him a celebrity in France, the French authorities kind of got a little fed up with them because he became a McCobb sensation, even writing restaurant reviews, which is nuts, and then they decided to send them to Japan, which was where it was originally from. So the extra added him

Matthew: 7:12

not just like, and the seat so weird, just randomly we got we got he's like he's got like, Tokyo Game Show written all over this dude. We're holding them back for keeping them in France.

Marissa: 7:25

The the Rolling Stone song too much blood was partly inspired by his act. So when he got sent to Japan, he was sent to a mental institution and he was transferred to from the mental institution in France. And there his psychologist decided that he was sane by Japanese standards. But the court documents in France are sealed to Japanese authorities who had no access to this. Because of this, he could not be legally detained in Japan. He's actually been free since. And even now he lives alone in Japan, and he has caregivers who provide him with assistance.

Matthew: 8:04

He lives alone because they can't stand his cooking. How?

Marissa: 8:08

Oh, no, no.

Matthew: 8:10

That seems so weird that like, okay, the case files are locked. The dude admitted to it and wrote a book like and then he was also in prison for it or in a mental mental is in or a mental institution for it. It's not like, they're like, well, we can't really prove it. Well, I mean, you can ask the guy.

Marissa: 8:30

So basically, he got off on a technicality. That's pretty much what happened here. He's definitely a cannibal, definitely killed an atheist lady, but because of a technicality, he is now free.

Matthew: 8:42

Though many pathological cannibals do claim to have received some form of energy from the consumed, they don't quite fall into the category of ritualistic as they are generally committing these acts while in a very deliberate way. They are still acting on a dangerous sexual desire or a fantasy, or due to some form of psychosis. funerary or ritualistic cannibals practice the eating of one's enemies or relatives to take part of their essence, their power, their knowledge, something from some skill that they had or something along those lines. This is a practice that is all over the world, one of which would be the for a tribe of Papa New Guinea, they would consume the brains of their relatives to carry on their knowledge and their learned experiences. This did end up resulting in a disease called Kourou or the shakes,

Marissa: 9:36

right? It comes from prions. It's like it's very similar to Mad Cow Disease.

Matthew: 9:40

It's yeah, it's like a folded protein that's just kind of deformed protein that causes all kinds of issues. This is actually something that you can It was noted to in a Denzel Washington movie called The Book of Eli, where the cannibals in that movie will shake you to watch that. It's actually a really good movie for us. Reasons to date night. But also, a ritualistic or practice could also be not just relatives but it could also be eating with one's enemies. This would be something again to kind of consume their power, their abilities, their knowledge, their strength, their vitality. This was very common on the island of Fiji hole of possibly the most prolific cannibal ever, as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. Ratu Urdu Bertie, who was said to have eaten up to 999 people.

Marissa: 10:33

He didn't quite crack it 1000 I guess?

Matthew: 10:35

No, it's just such a short just so short of a milestone muddy. So close. Oh, his gravesite still has the bones of more than 800 of the people that he had eaten. Or victims, I suppose might be more appropriate word at that point. Fiji was actually known as the cannibal islands for a time they refer to butchered humans as long pigs.

Marissa: 10:58

Oh, yeah, I've heard that term. Well, yeah, that's because you know, humans are said to taste like

Matthew: 11:03

pork. That is something that that obviously that that name would lead you to believe. But also, Mavis had said that too. You can see that in an interview that he had given where he said, it tastes like pork but harsher. And he even said that he thinks that the harshness of it to somebody who didn't know what they were eating, it wouldn't seem harsh. They would just taste just like pork. But it was the essence of the connection that he had with Brandis as to what made it harsh in his words.

Marissa: 11:32

But as far as her dark emotions,

Matthew: 11:35

Brandis was masked. Now he was he's fucked. Yeah, he was a super messed up dude. Like, it

Marissa: 11:42

wanted to be eaten. That was his fantasy. That is. Yeah,

Matthew: 11:45

yeah. That, that that that it gets so dark. That is that is something for like, that is something that we can't let somebody stumble upon on one of our podcasts. That's that's, that's like a Patreon episode or something. But back to the Feagins. The Fijian government even made a public apology to the family of a Thomas Baker, who was a Methodist missionary, who in 1867, was captured along with seven of his Feagin followers.

Marissa: 12:12

Isn't Tom Baker of Doctor Who fame? Presumably not,

Matthew: 12:16

but anyways, he was eaten with, they came to like this like church or school, that, that Tom Baker and his I say they this like rival, chieftain, and his and his his group came there. And they captured seven of the teachers or that were with Thomas Baker. And while they ate them all, what remains of his boots can still be viewed in the museum. And it is believed that he was the last white man to ever be eaten on the island. I guess his teachings of the Eucharist did not land the way he expected her body of Christ. That's another ritualistic kind of,

Marissa: 12:59

it's not cannibalism, we're not saying it's cannibalism.

Matthew: 13:02

It is a bit of a stretch, but some people make the argument that the Eucharist is cannibalistic. I won't get into the deep end on this but basically, it's in Matthew 26, where the Last Supper takes place and Jesus breaks the bread and wine with his apostles and tells them that the bread is his body in the wine is the wine is his blood. The Roman Catholics and other Orthodox Christian denominations believe that through the blessing of the Holy Communion, the bread and the wine literally becomes the blood and flesh of Christ though that through the miracle of Transubstantiation, probably best to leave the rest of that one clock this is going to be the part where we get somebody mad in the story that includes eating genitals and, and breasts and necrophilia, all, whatever. All I'm saying is, when I was snapping into some Jesus and juice, I was just thinking it was symbolism.

Marissa: 13:51

There's another example the bemmon Cusco skin, they lived on what's now considered the Bahamas, they practice mortuary cannibalism, which means that they ate their dead to maintain their reproductive health. So for them if their wife or husband died, they would eat their genitals. And when I was reading about this, I said that for the males, you would eat the heart, and females uterus and the vagina, I'm assuming also probably the penis if it was a male. I don't know why it would just be the heart. But that that's, that's what I read. tribal elders did this for other tribal elders. So it wasn't just spouses. And this was done so that they would not lose that reproductive power, and they could recycle it back to the members of their community.

Matthew: 14:37

And what better time would there be after talking about the eating of elder genitals to take a quick commercial break and see what we can dig up from our sponsors?

Marissa: 14:53

So the sponsor, Dara ask,

Matthew: 14:56

it's coming up, but first macabrepedia would like to thank all Those of you who took the time to leave us a comment and review, Jeremy Sisler Eric cheek, Nick white, and one of the world famous hosts of Carolina crimes Matt hires, go check out the Carolina crimes podcast if you haven't already, it structured a bit more like our second episode where we where they dive into the details of a specific crime, but with less jokes about genitals, though, sex and genitals do,

Marissa: 15:24

maybe some of them they do get still a fair bit of mentioning,

Matthew: 15:28

but seriously, a sincere thank you to all of our listeners and onto this week's sponsor. Oh, can't wait. A howling Late Night Town Crier winter's chill warmth stealer with claws and fangs from purest ancestry. from dusk to dawn, it prowls the shadows. It's past time. Pleasure is murder. This week's sponsor is the domestic murder floof once worshipped in Egypt, you're trying to get sponsored by cats. Once worshipped in Egypt, the domestic cat has never let us forget it. They are always there to make demands upon our servitude in such classic ways, like waking us up hours before they know the alarm will go off. Like can you up or attack hands, ankles, feet and face just to watch something bleed tacking my feet Thank you domestic cat, for without you, the world would be less one more creature who kills simply for sport. We are proud to have cats as this week's sponsor and by sponsor I mean all hail are clawed overlords. Long may they rain long may they rain back to eating people, which also your cat would probably also eat you but it wouldn't be cannibalism it would just be you know snack them.

Marissa: 16:39

Oh, they would absolutely your face.

Matthew: 16:45

Thus far, we have covered, ritualistic and pathological cannibalism. Now we're moving into survival cannibalism, which is often considered a more forgivable form of direct cannibalism. This is when nearly all hope is lost, people are forced to survive off the remains of others, such as in 1972 airplane crash and the high Andes, which is a mountain range that forced the survivors to eat the dead while they were trapped for more than two months in the snow capped mountains, or the famous Donner party that were stranded in the Sierra Nevada as for the winter after trying to seek a shortcut into California forced Well, I say forced to eat people each other. There is some evidence and then some accounts that make it seem as though some of the Donner party were a little more willing to chow down on some human flesh than others. There's always a few. There's, there's a cannibal and every group survival cannibalism was so common among sailors in the 18th and 19th century, that the practice was actually called the custom of the sea. This is where survivors would draw lots to see who gets eaten first, and who had to do the killing of lots or like you draw the short stick kind of thing. And you can just imagine like, you know, there's a cannibal in every group. So you're looking over and you see all Tommy three racks and ped full belly over there cutting lots and licking their chops, and you're like, we haven't even slowed down yet. Dude,

Marissa: 18:25

we still have some biscuits left.

Unknown: 18:26

Yeah, there's plenty of supplies. Tommy, son of a bitch.

Marissa: 18:32

Right. One example of this would be the Essex. The story of this actually helped inspired Moby Dick written by Herman Melville. So the SX was a WhaleShip that was actually originally launched from Nantucket, which is in Massachusetts, which, you know, near Cape Cod, this, this ship was in the Southern Pacific Ocean in 1820. It was on a trip that was supposed to last for two years, but it was sunk by a sperm whale. And they read, I read a couple things, and it seems like they think maybe the whale was originally confused. But I'd like to think that you know, it's all these guys trying to kill all his buddies and being like, No, I'm gonna kill you guys. And Ramadan. Wasn't that

Unknown: 19:13

wasn't confused, right? He's like, Oh, you don't even see

Marissa: 19:17

me. COVID KUBU ma'am, sorry. So they had to get into these little, little well, boats, which are much smaller, of course, to make for land. And they're 20 man crew split up into these boats. Seven of these were eaten before they were eaten, or you know, the people were eaten Come on now. So six of the seven actually died from exposure or and starvation. But one had to go because he lost the lottery. So I guess they ran out of people to eat and, you know, getting hungry, so they drew lots. The captain actually offered to take the sky spot But okay, so this is what I said, man, this man his name was oh and coffin. And of course

Matthew: 20:05

his name was coffin. Was Richie dead man.

Marissa: 20:09

I thought that too. Oh wooden coffin he insisted that it was his right to die so that others could live.

Matthew: 20:15

Oh yeah heroic, heroic, heroic last last words, only people to tell the story are the survivors all Yeah, he was begging for it. And he was practically brand us over here.

Marissa: 20:27

But we're gonna we're gonna go with that because that's what the story is. But this is just so yeah, this is just one of many examples like there's the the terror which was there was a TV show written about a book that was kind of based upon the Aerobus and the terror that were, you know, they were shocked in the Arctic Circle and they got ice in and they had to try to make way for land and get food across the ice. And they found some of these, some of the crew members and they were like, there was evidence that they had cut off like flesh from the bones. So they probably also resorted to cannibalism. There are a lot of examples of this. It

Matthew: 21:07

does happen particularly more often on like isolated areas or small islands or places that are remote and difficult to get to. And often European explorers and sensationalist would use the term cannibal to cast a dark and terrifying light on foreign peoples. I feel like that kind of lays the groundwork for an excuse as to why you had to like go in there and does roll on their culture. Well, they're cannibals. Sure they were. But all the while while Europeans are pointing the fingers and trying to make it seem like the whole world outside of of Europe is just full of man eaters. All the while the Europeans are practicing what is now called medicinal cannibalism. Where a practitioner would crush up the remains of a mummy, or recently executed person and ingest it for pretty much any ailment. You can. You can think of anything that you can think of complaining about headaches, blood clots, epilepsy, healing of wounds, menstrual problems, epilepsy and even epilepsy. There. There was something you could eat. That was from a human that was supposed to cure cure epilepsy, and particularly epilepsy there. Apparently just people were just falling out with the shakes all the time.

Marissa: 22:32

It really is crazy. Everything just says it's gonna cure epilepsy.

Matthew: 22:35

It Yeah, I don't know. These and other curative properties were recorded in the 18th century English physician Robert James is Pharmacopoeia universe Salus headaches, drink some alcohol with some crushed skull like Charles the second of England, arthritis gout, try the rendered fat of a supple youth with just a pinch of mercury, erectile dysfunction drink the blood of a young executed man.

Marissa: 23:03

Right? So they would sometimes they would when they executed a young man, sometimes he would get an erection, his blood would be taken to increase virility. This erection was called Angel lust. And this can this can be because of many things, because just gravity if the blood pulls Near the waist, if it's hanged pressure on the cerebellum caused by the news can cause this to happen. But basically, they saw it happen and they figured that by taking His blood that would make them more Virol

Matthew: 23:32

I wish I knew this when I was a kid in middle school. I mean, just blaming your blood no blaming blaming my head injury for the reason that I had an erection in the middle of classes seems more comfortable than you know crashing my wiener down with with with with the social studies book

Marissa: 23:49

can't relate. There were also a lot of recipes and stuff that were made similar to this. So you could eat placenta if you had sexual impotence. Also, if you had that really difficult labor, you could drink your husband urine.

Matthew: 24:04

Wait a second, how are you? Like, how do you go to somebody be like hey, oh, hey, so Congratulations on the birth of your child

Marissa: 24:12

do with the placenta or you go eat that or

Unknown: 24:15

that is I mean, mascot for a friend.

Marissa: 24:20

You can also do menstrual blood for epilepsy. Of course, you could take a human skull and grind it up into a fine dust and mix that with alcohol drops. And this was used to treat apoplexy, bleeding or epilepsy. And people hope that it would also help them avoid death. You can mix it in with alcohol or with chocolate so you could have a chocolate bar with bits of human skull in it

Matthew: 24:44

which is just super metal.

Marissa: 24:47

Right well whatever. King Charles a second was trying to use these drops and even on his deathbed he kept using them hoping for a miracle didn't work. But you know you can hope.

Matthew: 24:58

See the light. Good More crushed skulls. Yeah, the only thing

Marissa: 25:03

you can also use human fat mixed with cinnabar, which was Mercury sulfide to cure rabies. I mean even today, we do not have a cure for rabies. If I mean you can take a shot if you know you've been bitten by an animal with rabies, but

Unknown: 25:16

once symptoms what's called a cure, no, but

Marissa: 25:19

once symptoms actually show up, I think you're pretty much dead. If you start having symptoms, you're done. They can't do anything for you. You start frothing at the mouth, you're dead.

Unknown: 25:29

Are you I don't know, I've never had rabies. Never seen anybody with rabies. Also, not every raccoon has rabies.

Marissa: 25:35

No, I like raccoons. We get to raccoons and kumbaya all the time. can also rub human fat into the body for healing gout, powdered moss that was growing from a skull left out in the elements, you could take that and grind it up to treat nosebleeds and epilepsy, hair growth, take the core of hair, or that can also help jaundice. You can take fresh blood to maintain your vitality. Some people would even pay the executioner after a prisoner was executed to take some of the blood from a fresh corpse. They would even soak it up with a cloth sometimes while it was still warm. I know in ancient Rome, they also would do something with gladiators like you could buy the blood of Gladiator, you could buy the liver of a gladiator you they would also like oil up the skin of a gladiator and then scrape it off into a jar with their sweat and their oil and you could drink that. Lots of lots of gladiator stuff. You can also blow powdered human excrement into the eyes to cure cataracts with pinkeye. Right. I mean, I think I'd rather take the cataract maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I guess it would show something was happening even though it wasn't a cure. But

Matthew: 26:43

yeah, I mean, that's the kind of the way that a lot of this kind of I don't want to say old timey because I mean, a lot of people still kind of have the same idea that if something is happening, it must be working. You know, like those? Yeah, even if it even if it's a negative thing like well, so yeah, so pinkeye must be helping my cataract. I mean, my eyes are all paying that shows that they're healing like a freshly healed wound. Proof. It was

Marissa: 27:07

really common practice. Actually, they would take mummies that they found in Egypt, and they would grind them up. And they were doing this to create something called Mumia because they believed partly that in the mummification process that they used something called bitumen, which is actually asphalt. It's a black sticky substance that occurs naturally but was really hard to find in the ancient world. And they thought that it cured everything from toothaches, cataracts, gout, leprosy, poisonings, even probably epilepsy. But the thing is, it really was not used that often a modification and probably only for like the really poor folk. So it was not used for the pharaohs and stuff. So if they got a Pharaoh to grind up for the health benefits, it really, I mean, it wasn't gonna do anything anyway, but it didn't do what they thought it was gonna do. And when people didn't have enough mummies from Egypt, they made them. For instance, the German doctor Johann Schroeder talked about mummification in the 17th century by saying you could take the fresh, new cadaver of a redheaded man. And the reason for this is that the blood was supposedly thinner the flesh more excellent because of it.

Matthew: 28:16

More Porky. Porky

Marissa: 28:18

pies, ginger,

Matthew: 28:20

Oh, no. Is this a flavor of joke time? Pork the joke pork long pigs. Okay, it's a call back joke. No, why just gingers

Unknown: 28:29

because they have a harsher pork flavor. Okay. Overseer,

Marissa: 28:33

I don't know, we'll go with that never tasted human corpse had to be aged about 24 years old, just been executed and died of violent death, you would then let the corpse live for one day in one night in the sun in the moon. But the weather must be good. Can't do this on a stormy night. And then you would cut the flesh into pieces and sprinkle it with myrrh, and quote just a little aloe. And then you would soak it in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up for six to 10 hours, soak it again and wine and then let the pieces dry

Matthew: 29:04

in a shady spot. And then you got ginger flavored jerky.

Marissa: 29:07

Exactly. And then move over to China. And there's a practice that was called koku. So for instance, a son or a daughter would take they would actually carve a bit of their flesh from their leg or their thigh and feed it to their parent

Matthew: 29:22

when when they're sick when the parent is sick. Yeah. Not just like, not just me, grandma.

Marissa: 29:29

Right? It's just like a way that it was it was believed to cure whatever was wrong with anything. Yeah, yeah. But if it didn't happen to work, then you could move on to something called co con. And that meant you would take a piece of your own liver, and then cook that up and serve that to your parents. And you were supposed to do this without them ever knowing in order for it to really work.

Matthew: 29:51

Yeah, the exact opposite of a placebo. It only works if you don't know that you're taking medicine, right?

Marissa: 29:57

This was a if you ever seen Amy Tan's Read the Joy Luck Club. There's a movie also. They actually mentioned this in there.

Matthew: 30:06

This text, the Ben Cao Gong Lu, there is a process that is called the malafide. Man, which is people rock candy.

Marissa: 30:17

Well, kind of. So yeah, the malafide man, to mollify comes from the word Mel, which despite mine taking four years of Latin in high school, I did not know that means honey. It's called the the honey man, though we've never found like definitive proof that this practice existed. It's, I mean, it's, it seems like it's probably logical. So the process of this a 70, or 80 year old man would typically be the volunteer for this process. And then he would not eat anything except for honey. And we'd also bathe in honey. And after a month, his excrement would supposedly be honey. So both his urine and his feces would just be honey. And then they have another

Matthew: 30:58

volunteer who also, like tested it like,

Marissa: 31:03

oh, no, not full honey, yet,

Matthew: 31:06

he still got a little bit of a nutty flavor to it. KB and honey Grampy

Marissa: 31:12

right now, I think it's probably because he died, you know, a certain point is eating honey. And that's it, and it kills your microbes, I'm sure that wreaks havoc, but then it would be placed in a stone coffin full of honey with a date written on the top to be opened in 100 years. At that point, they would then take out the substance that was in the coffin and sell it as a medicine to treat broken limbs and wounds, and this would sell for a lot of money. And they would either rub it on themselves topically or they would take it orally so they would eat it.

Matthew: 31:42

Yeah, and most likely, this was probably like a powder form or something like that. Or you might be able to add water to it or something that because there was there were pots or jars or something that were found in Egypt that still contained edible honey that once it was rehydrated, so honey does preserve pretty well.

Marissa: 32:01

Right? And there's, like I said, there's no definitive proof that this actually happened. But like, if you think about it, honey actually has natural antimicrobial properties. People throughout history have like put it on wounds and stuff to keep it from getting infected. So

Matthew: 32:15

unless you're worried about ants, well, yeah, that can happen. I'm infected. So

Marissa: 32:19

like carbon pretty good.

Matthew: 32:20

Yeah, I'm infected with ants. Now, a lot of these practices, particularly with medicinal speaking specifically to the medicinal cannibalism, a lot of people you know, that you would immediately think of this seems like hokey or crazy for someone to to do these practices, but kind of following that same like through line of like heals like, I mean, that's what a lot of the supplement companies nowadays are even still kind of based on right so like, though it's not human remains, they still have in order to heal you or to strengthen your your tendons and joints, the you they have ingredients, such as chicken collagen, and stuff like that, you can get entire powders of collagen, and bone broth. And all of these are supposed to have curative and healing and strengthening properties, which I'm not going to get into the science of whether or not it does but I mean, you can follow that same kind of thought that that philosophy

Marissa: 33:18

bodybuilders and stuff, they will take a lot of protein powder.

Matthew: 33:21

Yeah, and a lot of that protein powder comes from well, I guess not a lot of it. I mean, I think whey is still like the protein powder, but they still have like all beef, protein powder and stuff like that. And then and then a normal normal bodybuilder not supplementing with powders would also consume a lot of what chicken breasts and pieces of steak and stuff like that. These are all muscles, they eat muscles to grow muscles, you know, like heels, like, you know, I mean, it's not that far away. Steak does not necessarily cure epilepsy. Actually, it does. It actually does. Does it? Yeah, there's a that's what the the ketogenic diet was originally. Ah, yeah, that the fat based diet was to eat a lot of fatty red meats, and it was to cure epilepsy. So that was kind of just a lot of broad strokes. When it comes to cannibalism. There's, there's other forms. There's tons of other stories where I don't want to turn this into a cannibal podcast kind of a thing. But we, we may touch on a lot of these and do some callbacks, because a lot of really McCobb stuff comes with a little little touch of cannibalism, and

Marissa: 34:28

a lot of these stories of talked on can be expanded upon greatly. Oh, yeah.

Matthew: 34:33

All right. All right. I know what you're all thinking right now. You're asking yourselves, okay, okay. But really, though, in a survival situation, where do I start? What is the choices cut of human flesh? I was not asking myself. That's because you're in the know. Armen Mavis, and Bernard Brandis already let you know. This may be why the people in the Bahamas chose to eat the man's heart. The penis is a tough piece to choke down But you can't just Nash on some glutes. in a survival situation just eating muscle meat isn't going to do the trick in the long run, you need more of the macronutrients minerals and fats from around the organs in order to meet your needs and not die. If you don't eat those. This is called rabbit starvation, which should help save some of the lives of my friends and also my namesake. You see, wild rabbits don't have enough fat to sustain human life as an owner of two rescued meat bonds. I will say that that may not be true for all breeds, but either way, don't eat rabbits and steaks, pretty fat. Yeah, and Mila too. But either way, don't eat rabbits. Instead, choose from a smorgasbord of human organ meat.

Marissa: 35:44

And just in case you're curious, we actually found how many calories are in human meat. So an archaeologist at the University of Brighton named James Cole did this study, and he calculated how many calories are actually within the human body. So He calculated that taken in whole, the human body contains 125,800 calories. On average, they did this on adult males. But he was able to also calculate a bit more than that. So the torso and head contain about 5400 calories, the human thighs, about 13,355 calories, and the heart is about 651 calories. Now the brain, the spinal cord and the nerve trunks altogether, about 2700 calories,

Matthew: 36:33

but watch out for Kourou cannibalism is a topic that you can really sink your teeth into. It's a feast of topics and categories a real buffet that you can just endlessly devour the information upon. But it really does just yield hours of topics in conversation that we can continue on.

Marissa: 36:55

So plenty

Matthew: 36:57

Stay tuned and listen to all of the great things that subscribe and follow. Follow us on your pod catcher of choice. We are now on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, et cetera, et cetera. If you are on Apple, please leave us a review and a comment please it does help us out and you know you will get a shout out most likely until we just get so many likes which obviously we will that we can't possibly do that but throw us a like comment. We also if you're unable to do that, you know reach out to us on one of our social media platforms that we are on we are at macabrepedia and Twitter and Facebook.

Marissa: 37:42

We're also on Instagram so that one is macabrepediapod so if you want to reach out to us on email you can do so at macabrepediapod@gmail.com And that is going to be ma ca br e p e dia pod@gmail.com

Matthew: 37:58

Thanks for listening please join us next week as we enter another entry into this our macabrepedia Oh my God still