This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license
This book explores the magical and medical history of executions from
the eighteenth to the early twentieth century by looking at the
afterlife potency of criminal corpses, the healing activities of the
executioner, and the magic of the gallows site. The use of corpses in
medicine and magic has been recorded back into antiquity. The lacerated
bodies of Roman gladiators were used as a source of curative blood, for
instance. In early modern Europe, a great trade opened up in ancient
Egyptian mummies and the fat of executed criminals, plundered as
medicinal cure-alls. However, this is the first book to consider the
demand for the blood of the executed, the desire for human fat, the
resort to the hanged man's hand, and the trade in hanging rope in the
modern era. It ends by look at the spiritual afterlife of dead
criminals.