This chapter was the most eye-opening chapter for me in the book. It opens up with something called “mellified man” which is dead human remains steeped in honey. This shocked me immensely; I could not believe that this was once used as medicine. The book also explains that various human remedies were used in 16th century China, such as human dandruff, human knee dirt, human ear wax and human perspiration. Human mummies were also used in the brewing of medicine. There were even fake mummies sold when real mummies were scarce! Most times, with these so called “remedies”, the remedy was worse than the problem. In 1928, Dr.Shamov (a Russian surgeon) attempted to take blood from cadavers, and transfused it into humans. It was a success, and the practice caught on in the Soviet Union, but not in the U.S. The biology concepts that were addressed were how blood is transfused through veins, and this relates to our future biology class because we will surely be learning about the body’s circulatory system.
I agree with what is said about this chapter, I found it to be very eye- opening and disgusting at the same time. I would like to know if these remedies really worked. I personally wouldn't try it, but just to know if they actually helped you is good enough.
This chapter shocked me just as much! Though it is eye-opening like Jazmin said, I still can't understand how it seemed perfectly fine to consume those ingredients like dandruff, human ear wax and more. It's part of the human body! I would've been too disgusted to take part.
Isn't it interesting how the human body heals itself though? I mean, not just our Immune system! I did not know, before this chapter, that there are so many ways of curing ourselves with cannibalism. (Of course I would never try it out!! but the Idea is interesting~) I do agree that the normal person would find it difficult to consume Ear wax and urine, but I'm sure if you were desperate enough to find a cure that definitely it would sell.
I agree i believe that this chapter was incredibly disgusting. I did not expect to see those repulsive recipes this was in my opinion the most disgusting chapter
While a lot of the practices mentioned in this chapter appalled me the one that did not was the blood transfusion from cadavers. Even though many people may not want blood from dead bodies it might actually be a waste to well waste the blood if not collected in time.
I found many of these "cures" very repulsive and it is true that usually they were worse than what ever they would be helping. I think that these cures were like placebos making the patient think they will be cured but most of the curing being psychological.
I found this chapter to be one of the most disgusting chapters I have ever read in my life. Just the title caught my attention because I already started to think that it could have been about cannibalism, but I wasn't entirely sure. This was just mesmerizing and horrifying all at once.
I found this chapter interesting because of how horrified and disgusted I was by the medical use and consumption of corpses. The worst of them in my opinion was the women who chopped off their limbs and served it for their ailing parents or inlaws. I also found the nurses at the abortion clinic fighting over the aborted baby bodies, the kings bathing in the blood of virgins and infants, Mellified man, and the many other disgusting human remedies very disgusting. No matter how disgusting, a biology concept I would like to know is if these remedies actually works and helped those who consumed it , can consuming other humans cure sicknesses ? Were they really just concoctions made by witch doctors? Was it like a placebo where the curing is purely psychological? -Meyling Yi
I too found this chapter extremely disgusting but also interesting at the same time. I also would like to know if the remedies actually worked or were they just something that witch doctors made up as well. I mean honestly can human fat really be used to treat joint pain? I guess I will never really know.
While I agree that what was described in the chapter was horrifying and disgusting to learn, I myself did not feel horrified or disgusted by it. In the chapter, on page 228, there is a passage that reads,"'When you consider that a sugar pill for pain relief will get a twenty-five to forty percent response, you can begin to understand how some of these treatments came to be recommended'". A lot of these treatments were preposterous and it was suggested that most of the remedies did not influence the recovery of the patient. Perhaps human consumption can have some sort of health benefit though; I suppose more research would have to be put into the subject to ever know for sure (but who wants to volunteer for a cannibalism health benefit experiment?)
Yeah i think this was one of the most disgusting chapters for me. I also wonder too if these so called "placebos" were actually effective psychologically, making people have a mindset "Oh this will cure me" and it actually working.
Many of these treatments both shocked and disturbed me. One of the things that shocked me was that people would chop off limbs and body parts to serve to ailing parents as well, and that most of the times the parents would request that it be done as a sign of devotion.
This chapter...is the one that disgusted me and disturbed the most. It could not believe the recipes used containing human body parts, like the “mellified man”. It may seen like something perfectly fine in certain cultures, but to me, it was just unbelievable and I couldn't accept it. The biology concept addressed were the recipes and remedies created with the use of human anatomy to treat sicknesses or even help those who are aging. An example being how placenta can be eaten to starve off postpartum depression.
I agree, this chapter was one of the most disgusting and disturbing ones. The recipes were unexpected and didn't even think people did that, although I expected to read about it after reading the title.
This chapter was indeed disturbing, so I agree with you there. "Mellified Man" sounded really gross and it was really hard to believe that people believed this recipe could help improve their health; then again, I agree that it must've been seen as normal in that culture and time period.
I agree completely. This chapter was the most disgusting of them all. In different places this maybe normal but to me it is just plain weird to use human body parts in recipe. Even if it was to cure me, I don't think I would take the medicine knowing it had body parts in it.
This chapter was definitively a disturbing one, especially when talking about such things as the mellified man. I never would have imagined that a culture would believe such a recipe to be beneficial to a person's health.
It was disturbing to me, I think it was to everyone who read it. I was disgusted mostly by the children that chopped off their limbs to make a remedy for their ailing parents. I also wondered exactly how mellified man works. Does he decompose in the honey? How much honey does it take? I am curious about this.
This next chapter was out of the ordinary. Like other students wrote above, I too find this chapter to be extremely disturbing. I was surprised to see that others also called it an “eye opener” as I also thought the same thing right after reading this chapter. For starters, I never knew there was such thing as becoming a “mellified man”. The process for a man to become mellified was the most disturbing part in this chapter. As stated by Roach, “In Arabia there are men 70-80 years old who are willing to give their bodies to save others”. I believe this was the only interesting part to this chapter for the reason being that people were willing to sacrifice their own life in order to help another human being who most likely to have a longer life ahead of them. Additionally, The author heard many things and had to go tot the country itself to see if they were actually true. After having a hard time in being in a foreign country roach figured out that all that she had heard didn’t even exist! Although this chapter was quite disturbing, it was also informative at the same time.
It was disturbing, and made me scrunch my face up quite a few times from the disgusting "cures" that they had back then. It was informative. I wonder if Mellified Man was the earliest form of donating one's body for medicine.
While it was disturbing I was also intrigues by the fact that people would 'donate' themselves to the process. One of the redeeming things about that is that people believed that by donating themselves they would help another person. Hopefully such recipes are not still used today.
Chapter 10 of the novel "Stiff", titled "Eat Me", was my most favorite chapter out of the entire book. I've always found cannibalism in cultures a fascinating subject and was pleasantly surprised to see it become the main subject of one of this book's chapters. I had never heard of the word "Mellified" man and was intrigued by the method in which the ingredients for it was acquired; the fact that an elderly man would give himself up "to save others". That story, as well as the one about Chinese children giving up body parts in order to prove their devotion and treat their loved ones. As for biological concepts portrayed in the chapter, I believe that the method in which people, then and (as horrific and unlikely as it sounds) now, collected pieces from bodies and waste to create elixirs, medicine, treatments, etc,,.. This dissection and draining of the bodies, the way that they must separate fat from muscle mass to collect this for their medicines that supposedly work (obviously they do not work, because we now have modern medicine to properly treat dog bites and know better than to use human saliva). This will certainly tie into our Anatomy and Physiology course, as I am sure we will perform some dissections of our own and be introduced to different parts, or layers, of the human body and all it's inner working (hopefully we won't learn how to make fetus pills). The text itself was funny, informative, and a complete blast to read. I loved the short anecdotes described throughout the chapter and felt that they really added to the chapter, and the novel as a whole.
I agree that I was also excited to see a chapter about cannabalism since it is a subject that interests me. Before the book I also didn't know that a word like mellified existed and was actually surprised to see what it meant. The way the author worded everything helped take the edge out of a edgy subject as well.
This chapter was a real eye-opener because of the way Mary Roach decided to start it with twelfth-century Arabia mellified man. Mellifeid man is human parts cover entirely of honey which was use as medicine. Later she talk about a Chinese book called the Chinese Materia Medica which talk about different body parts that Chinese people ate for medicine. Children where cutting parts of their bodies, cooking them and giving it to their parents as a remedy to sickness. Then there was a event that happened in China that talk about human dumplings made out of human butt cheeks.
i think its really interesting how men in Arabia bathe in honey and only eat honey after a month start to urinate honey, i guess because the body doesn't use most of the honey and it just throws it away.
This was by far one of my favorite chapters out of the whole book. What I found very unbelievable was the fact that nurses would fight over aborted fetuses to make pills out of. Something else that was very interesting was also the beliefs of using urine or saliva or other things to cure illnesses, as well as chopping off a piece of yourself, cooking it up, and giving it to an ailing family member.
These cures were unbelievably disgusting. It reminded me of potions made by witches in fairy tales. It is terrible to think that in other countries that chopping off a limb to cook for a sick parent was considered honorable. Even to this day there are still nurses that fight over aborted fetuses.
One of the most intriguing and eye opening chapters of the entire book was most likely this chapter. Before reading this book I had never heard of a mellified man, nor would I have ever imagined that the definition would be something that had to do with cannibalism. To think that a person would volunteer for such a process is almost unthinkable too. I also did not know that in some places cannabalism was used medicinally, or to prove devotion. While this was a somewhat disturbing chapter it was also one of the most interesting. This ties in with biology because how a body reacts to things is a part of biology, whether what it reacts to is an organism from the same species or not. The focus of this chapter was how cannabalism was used medicinally.
It is disgusting to think about. It isn't hard to think that someone would volunteer to do this. They believed that this would actually work as medicine. Just like many people volunteer their bodies to science and medicine today. It is pretty much the same thing.
This chapter has to be my absolute favorite so far ., i mean cannabalism , the mellified man and just the talk of bathing in blood . People used body parts to create elixirs, medicine , treatments , etc. Kings who bathed in the blood of virgins and infants . I knew kings bathed in the blood of virgins but infants , thats something new.
This chapter was very horrifying. I was actually disgusted and disturbed how they believed cannibalism was some kind of medical treatment. People even swallowed decayed human as a treatment for bruises. What caught my interest the most was the “mollified man”. I can’t believe that the men of Arabia were willing to give their bodies to save others. Even children gave up a few body parts in order to treat their loved ones. The cures were unbelievably alarming. Basically, this chapter is about how they used cannibalism to treat others.
I closely related all these odd and truly disgusting cures from this chapter to witchcraft, I mean how gross is it to eat a decaying piece of a human just to cure a bruise?! They pretty much gave away parts of their bodies to help their families or others in need.
This chapter was the most eye-opening chapter for me in the book. It opens up with something called “mellified man” which is dead human remains steeped in honey. This shocked me immensely; I could not believe that this was once used as medicine. The book also explains that various human remedies were used in 16th century China, such as human dandruff, human knee dirt, human ear wax and human perspiration. Human mummies were also used in the brewing of medicine. There were even fake mummies sold when real mummies were scarce! Most times, with these so called “remedies”, the remedy was worse than the problem. In 1928, Dr.Shamov (a Russian surgeon) attempted to take blood from cadavers, and transfused it into humans. It was a success, and the practice caught on in the Soviet Union, but not in the U.S. The biology concepts that were addressed were how blood is transfused through veins, and this relates to our future biology class because we will surely be learning about the body’s circulatory system.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what is said about this chapter, I found it to be very eye- opening and disgusting at the same time. I would like to know if these remedies really worked. I personally wouldn't try it, but just to know if they actually helped you is good enough.
DeleteThis chapter shocked me just as much! Though it is eye-opening like Jazmin said, I still can't understand how it seemed perfectly fine to consume those ingredients like dandruff, human ear wax and more. It's part of the human body! I would've been too disgusted to take part.
DeleteIsn't it interesting how the human body heals itself though? I mean, not just our Immune system! I did not know, before this chapter, that there are so many ways of curing ourselves with cannibalism. (Of course I would never try it out!! but the Idea is interesting~) I do agree that the normal person would find it difficult to consume Ear wax and urine, but I'm sure if you were desperate enough to find a cure that definitely it would sell.
DeleteI agree i believe that this chapter was incredibly disgusting. I did not expect to see those repulsive recipes this was in my opinion the most disgusting chapter
DeleteI agree that this chapter was disgusting because of the mellified man and about sixteenth century China were they ate human parts for medicine.
Deleteyeah i also blogged about the incredible process that these men went through, the chapter itself caught my attention with a tittle of eat me....
DeleteWhile a lot of the practices mentioned in this chapter appalled me the one that did not was the blood transfusion from cadavers. Even though many people may not want blood from dead bodies it might actually be a waste to well waste the blood if not collected in time.
DeleteI found many of these "cures" very repulsive and it is true that usually they were worse than what ever they would be helping. I think that these cures were like placebos making the patient think they will be cured but most of the curing being psychological.
DeleteI found this chapter to be one of the most disgusting chapters I have ever read in my life. Just the title caught my attention because I already started to think that it could have been about cannibalism, but I wasn't entirely sure. This was just mesmerizing and horrifying all at once.
DeleteI found this chapter interesting because of how horrified and disgusted I was by the medical use and consumption of corpses. The worst of them in my opinion was the women who chopped off their limbs and served it for their ailing parents or inlaws. I also found the nurses at the abortion clinic fighting over the aborted baby bodies, the kings bathing in the blood of virgins and infants, Mellified man, and the many other disgusting human remedies very disgusting. No matter how disgusting, a biology concept I would like to know is if these remedies actually works and helped those who consumed it , can consuming other humans cure sicknesses ? Were they really just concoctions made by witch doctors? Was it like a placebo where the curing is purely psychological?
ReplyDelete-Meyling Yi
I too found this chapter extremely disgusting but also interesting at the same time. I also would like to know if the remedies actually worked or were they just something that witch doctors made up as well. I mean honestly can human fat really be used to treat joint pain? I guess I will never really know.
DeleteWhile I agree that what was described in the chapter was horrifying and disgusting to learn, I myself did not feel horrified or disgusted by it. In the chapter, on page 228, there is a passage that reads,"'When you consider that a sugar pill for pain relief will get a twenty-five to forty percent response, you can begin to understand how some of these treatments came to be recommended'". A lot of these treatments were preposterous and it was suggested that most of the remedies did not influence the recovery of the patient. Perhaps human consumption can have some sort of health benefit though; I suppose more research would have to be put into the subject to ever know for sure (but who wants to volunteer for a cannibalism health benefit experiment?)
DeleteYeah i think this was one of the most disgusting chapters for me. I also wonder too if these so called "placebos" were actually effective psychologically, making people have a mindset "Oh this will cure me" and it actually working.
DeleteMany of these treatments both shocked and disturbed me. One of the things that shocked me was that people would chop off limbs and body parts to serve to ailing parents as well, and that most of the times the parents would request that it be done as a sign of devotion.
DeleteThis chapter...is the one that disgusted me and disturbed the most. It could not believe the recipes used containing human body parts, like the “mellified man”. It may seen like something perfectly fine in certain cultures, but to me, it was just unbelievable and I couldn't accept it. The biology concept addressed were the recipes and remedies created with the use of human anatomy to treat sicknesses or even help those who are aging. An example being how placenta can be eaten to starve off postpartum depression.
ReplyDeleteI agree, this chapter was one of the most disgusting and disturbing ones. The recipes were unexpected and didn't even think people did that, although I expected to read about it after reading the title.
DeleteThis chapter was indeed disturbing, so I agree with you there. "Mellified Man" sounded really gross and it was really hard to believe that people believed this recipe could help improve their health; then again, I agree that it must've been seen as normal in that culture and time period.
DeleteThis chapter was disturbing but very interesting. I didn't know human body parts could be used in this way, it's completely understandable though.
DeleteI agree completely. This chapter was the most disgusting of them all. In different places this maybe normal but to me it is just plain weird to use human body parts in recipe. Even if it was to cure me, I don't think I would take the medicine knowing it had body parts in it.
DeleteThis chapter was definitively a disturbing one, especially when talking about such things as the mellified man. I never would have imagined that a culture would believe such a recipe to be beneficial to a person's health.
DeleteIt was disturbing to me, I think it was to everyone who read it. I was disgusted mostly by the children that chopped off their limbs to make a remedy for their ailing parents. I also wondered exactly how mellified man works. Does he decompose in the honey? How much honey does it take? I am curious about this.
DeleteThis next chapter was out of the ordinary. Like other students wrote above, I too find this chapter to be extremely disturbing. I was surprised to see that others also called it an “eye opener” as I also thought the same thing right after reading this chapter. For starters, I never knew there was such thing as becoming a “mellified man”. The process for a man to become mellified was the most disturbing part in this chapter. As stated by Roach, “In Arabia there are men 70-80 years old who are willing to give their bodies to save others”. I believe this was the only interesting part to this chapter for the reason being that people were willing to sacrifice their own life in order to help another human being who most likely to have a longer life ahead of them. Additionally, The author heard many things and had to go tot the country itself to see if they were actually true. After having a hard time in being in a foreign country roach figured out that all that she had heard didn’t even exist! Although this chapter was quite disturbing, it was also informative at the same time.
ReplyDeleteIt was disturbing, and made me scrunch my face up quite a few times from the disgusting "cures" that they had back then. It was informative. I wonder if Mellified Man was the earliest form of donating one's body for medicine.
DeleteWhile it was disturbing I was also intrigues by the fact that people would 'donate' themselves to the process. One of the redeeming things about that is that people believed that by donating themselves they would help another person. Hopefully such recipes are not still used today.
DeleteChapter 10 of the novel "Stiff", titled "Eat Me", was my most favorite chapter out of the entire book. I've always found cannibalism in cultures a fascinating subject and was pleasantly surprised to see it become the main subject of one of this book's chapters. I had never heard of the word "Mellified" man and was intrigued by the method in which the ingredients for it was acquired; the fact that an elderly man would give himself up "to save others". That story, as well as the one about Chinese children giving up body parts in order to prove their devotion and treat their loved ones. As for biological concepts portrayed in the chapter, I believe that the method in which people, then and (as horrific and unlikely as it sounds) now, collected pieces from bodies and waste to create elixirs, medicine, treatments, etc,,.. This dissection and draining of the bodies, the way that they must separate fat from muscle mass to collect this for their medicines that supposedly work (obviously they do not work, because we now have modern medicine to properly treat dog bites and know better than to use human saliva). This will certainly tie into our Anatomy and Physiology course, as I am sure we will perform some dissections of our own and be introduced to different parts, or layers, of the human body and all it's inner working (hopefully we won't learn how to make fetus pills). The text itself was funny, informative, and a complete blast to read. I loved the short anecdotes described throughout the chapter and felt that they really added to the chapter, and the novel as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI agree that I was also excited to see a chapter about cannabalism since it is a subject that interests me. Before the book I also didn't know that a word like mellified existed and was actually surprised to see what it meant. The way the author worded everything helped take the edge out of a edgy subject as well.
DeleteThis chapter was a real eye-opener because of the way Mary Roach decided to start it with twelfth-century Arabia mellified man. Mellifeid man is human parts cover entirely of honey which was use as medicine. Later she talk about a Chinese book called the Chinese Materia Medica which talk about different body parts that Chinese people ate for medicine. Children where cutting parts of their bodies, cooking them and giving it to their parents as a remedy to sickness. Then there was a event that happened in China that talk about human dumplings made out of human butt cheeks.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10
ReplyDeletei think its really interesting how men in Arabia bathe in honey and only eat honey after a month start to urinate honey, i guess because the body doesn't use most of the honey and it just throws it away.
This was by far one of my favorite chapters out of the whole book. What I found very unbelievable was the fact that nurses would fight over aborted fetuses to make pills out of. Something else that was very interesting was also the beliefs of using urine or saliva or other things to cure illnesses, as well as chopping off a piece of yourself, cooking it up, and giving it to an ailing family member.
ReplyDeleteThese cures were unbelievably disgusting. It reminded me of potions made by witches in fairy tales. It is terrible to think that in other countries that chopping off a limb to cook for a sick parent was considered honorable. Even to this day there are still nurses that fight over aborted fetuses.
DeleteOne of the most intriguing and eye opening chapters of the entire book was most likely this chapter. Before reading this book I had never heard of a mellified man, nor would I have ever imagined that the definition would be something that had to do with cannibalism. To think that a person would volunteer for such a process is almost unthinkable too. I also did not know that in some places cannabalism was used medicinally, or to prove devotion. While this was a somewhat disturbing chapter it was also one of the most interesting. This ties in with biology because how a body reacts to things is a part of biology, whether what it reacts to is an organism from the same species or not. The focus of this chapter was how cannabalism was used medicinally.
ReplyDeleteIt is disgusting to think about. It isn't hard to think that someone would volunteer to do this. They believed that this would actually work as medicine. Just like many people volunteer their bodies to science and medicine today. It is pretty much the same thing.
DeleteThis chapter has to be my absolute favorite so far ., i mean cannabalism , the mellified man and just the talk of bathing in blood . People used body parts to create elixirs, medicine , treatments , etc. Kings who bathed in the blood of virgins and infants . I knew kings bathed in the blood of virgins but infants , thats something new.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter was very horrifying. I was actually disgusted and disturbed how they believed cannibalism was some kind of medical treatment. People even swallowed decayed human as a treatment for bruises. What caught my interest the most was the “mollified man”. I can’t believe that the men of Arabia were willing to give their bodies to save others. Even children gave up a few body parts in order to treat their loved ones. The cures were unbelievably alarming. Basically, this chapter is about how they used cannibalism to treat others.
ReplyDeleteI closely related all these odd and truly disgusting cures from this chapter to witchcraft, I mean how gross is it to eat a decaying piece of a human just to cure a bruise?! They pretty much gave away parts of their bodies to help their families or others in need.
ReplyDelete