Tozette’s Reviews > Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: the History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians > Status Update

I'm trying to imagine Swift writing A Modest Proposal at the same time as people were happily downing medicines made out of human skulls. There seems to be a pretty fine line here between 'cannibalism' and, um, 'cannibalism'.

'Taking "a whole carcass with the bone, flesh, bowels (of one killed by a violent death)" cutting it into very small pieces and mashing it up until the whole pulverised mass is indistinguishable. It is then distilled, and is used in the manner of Irvine, to take disease away from a patient ... we can assume that it would also have been a valuable source of protein.'

Obviously somebody had to go there.