Today’s Loud, Smacking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A creepy [and ridiculous – DeSpair] phenomenon described in the 1670 book De miraculis moruorum by medical practitioner Christian Friedrich Garmann was the masticatio mortuorum, the ability of cadavers to eat their shrouds, or even their own fingers and arms. Garmann devoted an entire chapter to these matters: typically, a groaning sound is heard from the tomb, along with a loud smacking and chewing as the cadaver eats away. A dead woman had eaten her hands, and a man had devoured his entire body. There was no question that these noisy cadavers were actually still alive, and Garmann quoted observations where people had actually dug up the coffin in question and found that its groaning and chewing inmate had been reduced to a loathsome heap of putrefaction. The masticatio mortuorum was considered to be a bad omen, a warning that famine or disease was imminent. In 1734, the German doctor Michael Ranft published an entire “Treatise concerning the Screaming and Chewing of Corpses in their Graves.” [My next album title! – DeSpair] He agreed with Garmann that this phenomenon was a supernatural one, which could not be explained by medical science.
Engraving from “Tract of the Chewing and Smacking of the Dead in Graves” – I love the alternative translation – I think THIS will be my album title! (Look out for those early pressings with the first title – they will be collector’s items!)
Culled from: Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear
Vintage Medical Photo Du Jour!
Advertisement for Dr. Meigs Case’s Spinal Apparatus for Furnishing Elastic Extension and Motion, without Restriction. For Use in All Forms and Stages of Disease and Curvature of the Spine. Manufactured by the Pomeroy Truss Company, 1878, New York City – photographer unidentified.
Culled from: The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia