Bedside Manners 4: Give and Take

been saving some money to go to America. The farmer, deeply in debt, saw in the girl a temporary relief for his financial woes, so one dark night he coaxed the girl to follow him from their house. Her body was found sometime later, and the investigations trail led pretty obviously right back to our farmer. In the days leading up to his execution, he had become a nervous wreck,

so much so that it was actually delayed. Yet the final day had now arrived, But in the same way that he had counted down days in dread, many others were waiting too, not with fear, but with curious anticipation. In fact, extra trains had been scheduled to accommodate the thousands of people who were flooding in from all over Germany who wanted to catch a glimpse of the farmer's final breath. When the time for his execution came, the farmer was taken from his cell by soldiers and escorted

up the scaffolding platform by two priests. The three men began to pray, and the the crowd fell silent. The farmer meanwhile, fell deathly pale. With the prayer finished, the priests helped lift the farmer up and situate him in a wooden chair while his arms and legs were bound so that he would be unable to move. The faces and the crowd made for his last glimpse of the world just

before the blindfold was placed over his eyes. Next, leather strap was fastened under his chin and extended upward over his head. This wouldn't be a hanging, you see, but a beheading. The strap pulled high and taut, would allow for a clean swing. The executioner, a headsman as he was often called, was almost seventy years old and clad in a cloak. He was a notable character in the community for his station in life. He had an air of plainness and respectability about him, and a sense of

solemn duty. When everything and everyone was in their proper place, the headsman picked up a large sword. Still, not a whisper could be heard amongst the crowd. The headsman raised his tool and rotated it as if to show it off to all of those who had assembled to witness the event. He stepped forward, and, after making a few final adjustments, positioned his sword very deliberately a few inches

from the farmer's neck. He wanted to make sure that when he struck, it would be in just the right place. Holding the sword horizontally with both hands and about a foot away from the man's neck, the headsman swung, made contact with our unfortunate farmer, and severed his vertebrae. With a few more hacks through muscle and tissue and skin, the farmer's head lopped off. The whole process of severing the head is over almost instantaneously. The assistant executioner then

held the head high in the air. It read like a perverse trophy, a warning sign to all those who might consider committing similar crimes. But if you think this whole spectacle is shocking, what came next might just take it to the next level. As the farmer's head was still held above the crowd. About ten onlookers rushed forward. They jockeyed with their outstretched arms, trying to catch the blood spurting from the dead man's trunk in the goblets

that they had brought from their home. According to one source, one of the men jumped on the scaffolding, grabbed the corpse, and tipped it over as if he were pouring a decanter of fine red wine. He drank from the bloody stump of the man's neck, overcome with ecstasy and relief. You see, these men were epileptics, and it was believed that the blood from the body of a freshly executed person was a key remedy to their affliction. It was thought to be full of vim and vigor and life force,

a soothing tonic for the brains malfunctioning electrolytes. When we hear the word cannibalism, a few images might come to our minds. Perhaps we think of secluded or primitive tribal groups or cults scattered in out of reach regions around the globe, or coming a bit closer to home, we might think of groups like the Donner Party, Ordinary civilized folk who due to extreme and extraordinary conditions, were pushed

to inhumane activities that were simply for survival. Yet, humans likewise have a long history of willfully practicing this kind of medicinal cannibalism which we saw unfold here at the scaffold in Germany, and we need not look back far to find examples of it. In the case of our most unfortunate farmer, you might be surprised to hear that the year was eighteen sixty one. That's the same year

that the American Civil War began. The first version of the Periodic Table would be published just a few years later. Louis Pasteur was right in the middle of his career revolutionizing germ theory. This moment, you see, was far from a remote primitive period in the past. It was a part of the modern world. I'm Aaron Manky, and welcome to bedside manners. If you get a headache today, you might take some ib profin or maybe an antacid to

treat the stomach ache. These remedies, though, haven't been options for most of human history. Prior to the major medical and pharmaceutical advancements of the twentieth century, there were far more gaps in our understanding between illnesses and their cures. But you might be thinking, why did we fill that gap by choosing to drink hot, bubbling human blood. What we need to understand first is that for nearly all of history, the human body has been understood to be

special compared to other living organisms. That is, in the Judaeo Christian tradition, the belief of God's image and creation lad people to try to find his imprints. In the case of humans, these imprints could be the lines in one's home, wrinkles on the forehead, the size of their nose, or the color of their hair. These features were believed to convey the way in which God made each individual unique. This idea was paired with an ancient concept concerning the

interconnectedness of all matter. Plants and animals that resembled certain body parts were thought to contain healing powers for those body parts. It was thought that God had left such resemblances as deliberate clues throughout creation for humans to learn from. This phenomenon has come to be referred to as sympathetic magic. This idea that like needed to be cured by like would become a major part of the tradition of medical cannibalism.

An assumption championed by our good friend Paracelsius and his followers was that the spirit was not just a way of talking abstractly about the human essence, but was understood to be a very real physiological part of the human body, and was thought to be contained in the blood. By consuming human bodies, weak living humans could take the vitality

and thus find a possible cure from deceased humans. Now, another somewhat related assumption that would be very important to the practice of corpse medicine was that bodies killed violently and suddenly were the best dying. A quick, violent death, rather than a long, slow decline from illness or old age, meant that the life force within the body was still

strong at the point of death. Some recipes even advocated for blood to be taken, especially from people in their mid twenties, as they would have most likely been physically in the prime of life. This was evidently often paired with the idea that a person's lifespan was fore ordained, and thus if that were cut short, the residual power that remained in the body could be transferred to someone else.

The seventeenth century medical textbook Pharmacopeia Medico Kaimaka advocates the practice of drinking blood and even describes some bodies as being more beneficial than others. It prescribed that one acquire, and I quote, a fresh, unspotted cadaver of a red headed man, because in them the blood is thinner and

the flesh hence more excellent. Better still, if that body had been about twenty four years old and recently executed, the body should be laid out for twenty four hours, but only in good weather, it recommended, after which it should be cut into pieces and sprinkled with aloe and mirror. Then, it said, soak it in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up for six to ten hours, soak it again in spirits of wine. Then let the pieces dry and dry air in a shady spot. Thus they will

be similar to smoked meat and will not stink. The practice of medical cannibalism reached its peak in Western Europe towards the end of the Renaissance and lasted well into the latter years of the eighteenth century. And lest you think that this is just a folk practice, people across class lines participated in corpse medicine on a more or

less routine basis. The influential eighteenth century theologian and clergyman Richard Baxter was treated for a fit of bleeding by applying moss that had been grown on a buried human skull. The unfortunate Charles the Second, who, if you recall, met his demise in a previous episode, was famously fond of something known as the King's drops, which consisted of human skulls ground to a fine powder and mixed with alcohol, which was then drunk to cure a variety of diseases.

With interest peaking in the sixteenth century, European apothecaries were chock full of salves and powders made of pillaged mummies. But as mummies became harder to come by, people's cannibalistic attention shifted from ancient Egypt to their local gallows, and that likewise brought attention not just to the bodies of those who were executed, but to the person tasked with carrying out the deadly deed itself. It was a strange role,

this one of the executioner. Their job was to end lives, and yet when the rich and poor, educated and uneducated alike look to the gallows for medicine. We find that life and death, punishment and healing became in the person of the executioner, the very strangest of bedfellows. Let's imagine that you are a good family man. You're an attentive husband and father, teaching your children your trade so that they can make a living when they grow up. Perhaps

you enjoy spending time in your garden. Maybe you like to feed stray cats. You go to church when or if you are able. What is more, you have a relatively well paid job working for the government, and yet the wages of your honest labors include the crippling stain of dishonor by virtue of the tasks which your government job requires you to perform. And what's worse, this social disease is both a blood borne pathogen because your children

automatically inherit it, and it's also highly contagious. An otherwise honorable member of your town could contract your dishonnor simply by getting too close. If you're allowed into churches or taverns, you have to stay in a special section, far away

from other people. Sometimes you even are required to wear special clothing whenever you're in public, so that people will notice stay away from you, so it's no surprise to you or anyone else when people cross the street when they see you coming, and that few are ever willing

to darken the doorway of your house. This is your lots, of course, because you're a professional executioner in pre modern Europe, and on account of your trade, there are very few people in society who are considered more repulsive, more untouchable, and dishonorable than yourself. Executing criminals has been around for as long as there have been well crime, but for a long time, governments took a rather passive role in

criminal prosecution. They began to change that in the late Middle Ages, though, local governments became more proactive in investigating

and punishing crime, resulting in a rise of convictions. Likewise, a new array of specialized public spectacles of punishment were developed, which were meant to both demonstrate the government's power and to horrify any onlooker who might even consider entering into a life of crime themselves, and this in turn led to the creation of a professional class of people who

doled out these punishments. Enter the professional executioner now The executioner's main job was to carry out all interrogations, particularly with the skilled use of torture, and to dispatch those found guilty in whatever way the authorities dictated. He often had many other dirty or demeaning tasks, though, such as overseeing the town's sex workers, cleaning the public out houses, and driving lepers out of town. Even still, people would

apply for this job. For those born into an execution or family, there was little else they could actually do. Their familial dishonor after all, excluded them from practicing pretty much any other trade, and it paid surprisingly well. But not only that, this trade, which pushed them far to the edges of society, also opened one very particular back door among the honorable of all classes. For centuries, you see,

reviled executioners also moonlighted as revered village healers. In Germany, which had a particularly developed tradition of execution or healers, we first heard about execution or medicine in the early fifteenth century when an executioner set up a stand to sell local remedies. In fourteen sixty, in the city of Munich,

they hired an executioner to treat local burn victims. A few years later, the city hired one to help treat local pregnant women as well as folks afflicted with venereal diseases. They were true gig workers, occupying multiple community spaces and wearing many hats. In the moments that they were healing, the social boundary of acceptability flexed for them. How much did it flex well? Later on, King Frederick the First of Prussia hired Berlin's executioner to be his personal physician

at the moment when medicine was attempting to professionalize. And we've heard all about physicians, guilds, barber surgeons and the likes earlier in our series. Executioners occupied a very complicated liminal space. Public executions unfolded almost as a kind of

sacred liturgy, which began days before the execution itself. In the process, the condemned criminal, so long as they repented and received absolution, was thoroughly transformed from a vile center into a saintly martyr in the eyes of the public. These rituals caused the bodies of these criminals to take on a kind of spiritual power of their own in

the popular mind and from the gallows. Then the executioner became a kind of pharmacist of the sympathetic magic variety of medicine, a lucrative side gig that helped bulk up their salaries. Epileptics, as we've seen, might pay to drink the hot blood from a criminals caldaver, or they might consume ground skulls or drink wine from the skull of

an executed criminal. Executioners often provided local apothecaries with the raw materials for medicines like these, but they were also good examples of some of the early direct consumer marketing folks. People would buy corpse medicine right from the executioner himself. This way they could be assured of its quality and

know about the efficacy of it. Sometimes executioners served as a competitor to apothecaries selling human fat and goblets of blood at reduced prices, cutting out the middleman, kind of like a farmer's market, but for medicines made of human body parts. Right, people with external maladies like goiter's could come to the gallows and pay the executioner to rub the hand of a freshly dispatched criminal over their skin.

Novelist Victor Hugo famous for authoring The Hunchback of Notre Dame, documented the case of the last person executed in Guernsey, one of the Channel islands off the coast of France. He wrote that epileptics came and could not be prevented from seizing the convulsive hand of the dead man and passing it frantically over their faces, and this power to

heal was likewise sometimes transferred to the executioner himself. Now, remember, being physically touched by an executioner would in almost any other circumstance infect a person with their dishonor which might result in being ejected from their own guild. In a healing context, though the executioner's touch was thought to have

almost magical healing power. In a more practical sense, executioners knew the human body better than most physicians at the time, who, as we've learned in earlier episodes, looked down on touching the body. You have to remember that during this period human dissections were incredibly rare. Executioners were among the few who had any practical hands on experiences with human bodies

and human anatomy in real time. The medicine. These executioners often performed was external setting bones and suturing skin, the skills and knowledge of which were passed down from father to son, just as the necessary skills of the deadly part of their trade were passed down. It was highly practical work, and they evidently were very good at what

they did. Executioners were a kind of living crossroads. They're deadly trade imbued them with a socially lethal disease, but the same trade made them attractive and powerful healers, capable of greater social mobility than just about anyone else at the time, and in at least one case, these execution or healers could find their dishonor cured by their own medicine. Franz Schmidt had never known a life without shame, but his parents had. Their small town of Hoff, Germany, was

laid under siege, their lord having abandoned them. When he returned, his people were, as you can imagine, pretty upset with his performance. As tensions in the community rose further, he caught wind of an attempt on his life. He had three local gunsmiths arrested, and, invoking an ancient custom, the cowardly lord commanded an innocent bystandard to carry out their

executions as opposed to sending for a professional. The unfortunate person chosen for the job was France's father, Heinrich, a respectable woodsman, and he couldn't protest, which meant that his fate was sealed. France was born shortly after sometime in the first half of fifteen fifty four. Heinrich was determined to make the best of the lot that was forced upon his family. After France's mother died, he remarried and

relocated the family. He applied for better pain and more prestigious execution or positions, and eventually found work for the prince Bishop of Bamberg. France would grow up listening to the song of the local hangman, receiving a rudimentary education at home. He would shadow his father at executions as his apprentice, studying the trade, knowing full well that it would be his own someday. By the age of twelve, he was already practicing different forms of dispatching condemned criminals.

Now the most difficult method of execution, according to Heinrich, was the infamous beheading by sword. He took his cherished in streament down from the mantel over the fireplace and allowed his son to practice on pumpkins and gourds. They eventually moved on to livestock as France learned to definitely wield the weapon and his aim became true. France came of age during a period of history that historians referred

to as the Golden Age of the executioner. It marked the culmination of a long transformation of German law, which in part saw the part time hangman evolved into the office of a full time, salaried professional executioner, who, while still officially dishonorable, enjoyed a much better status and social position than had executioners in the past. This evolved role of the executioner, though required a higher standard of work

and personal character, their family's life was largely comfortable. Heinrich, made as much money as a teacher or a pastor, and had an enviable amount of job security. He was known and respected for his honesty, integrity, and diligence, and young France watched closely, taking pains to model at through his father, because he knew this was deeply necessary if they were to ever restore their family's name. He might have been angry, yes, but he was also principled and determined.

France's training culminated when he was nineteen years old. He and his father traveled to Bamberg to dispatch a criminal as part of his test to become a recognized master of his trade. Although hangings required the least amount of skill for an executioner, there was always a chance that something could go wrong for him. But as it would happen, the convict was dropped and swung freely from his neck. I hate to say it, given the circumstances, but France

couldn't have hoped for a better day. His father climbed to top the scaffolding and, standing tall and in accordance with ancient custom, slapped France across the face three times. He had passed the test with flying colors. Having achieved master executioner status, France now needed to refine his skills and build a client base. Like any good tradesman at the time, he set out on the road, working on a gig basis and gaining experience as he did so.

Think of it as something like a study abroad for executioners. As France grew in technical skill, he also very intentionally cultivated a reputation as a respectable man who kept respectable company. Most dramatically, he swore off alcohol for the rest of his life, quite uncharacteristic for an executioner, and people noticed

his self possession with admiration. The breakthrough moment in France's life, which would open up the path to his family's restoration, was in fifteen seventy eight, when he was appointed the Master executioner of the city of Nuremberg. The city was spectacular for its day, made up of hundreds of streets, ornate public buildings, bustling with artisans and merchants, public squares and parks, and amazingly a well developed water and sewage system.

It stood in stark contrast to the squalid hoff of France's youth. As part of his salary, France was given his own stately home and a five year contract that made him the best paid executioner in the Empire. Within a few years, he received the guarantee of lifetime appointments in Nuremberg, a pay raise, and even a pension. But even still, being an executioner always came with a price.

On one occasion, for example, he was forced to torture and execute his own brother in law, Friedrich Verner, over the course of several decades, France would carefully and painstakingly establish an incredibly good name for himself as Nuremberg's faithful executioner. He performed hundreds of executions, maintained excellent relations with city officials, and became widely known for his technical skill, his piety, and his calm demeanor. He was also widely known for

his successful medical trade. For him, healing and not torturing and killing was his true vocation. By his own accounting, he treated over fifteen thousand people nursing to health, prisoners whom had confessed under torture, high society types, and everyone in between. We know this because of the diaries he kept, and he did so for an entire four plus decade service to the Emperor. He retired as an old man,

but still had one task left to do. In June of sixty four, he sent a letter to the Emperor. In it, he told of his honorable exploits, focusing especially on his medical work, which had benefited so many people in his community. In all of this, he asked for one thing in return, that the Emperor restore his family's honor that had been stolen from them. Doing so would release his sons from a life that they were set to inherit and open up a world of possibilities for them.

Three months later, he received a letter of response. It said, on account of the subservient petition to us from the highly esteemed Mayor and Council of the City of Nuremberg, the inherited shame of Franz Schmidt that prevents him and his heirs from being considered upright or presents other barriers, is out of imperial might and clemency hereby abolished and dissolved, and his honorable status among other reputable people declared and restored.

It's possible that this man alone killed more people than anyone in the entire Empire. But with this letter the story turned once more. He would experience honor for the first time in his life, something that his father had so quickly been stripped of. His sons could now exist in a society that welcomed them with open arms, and could now begin to chart a path of their own. By the end of the nineteenth century, public executions of

any kind were largely abolished in most European countries. Some countries even abolished the death penalty altogether, as criminal bodies, and those who sold their parts became more and more difficult to come by. Folks turned less and less to the gallows to cure what ailed them. Yet corpse medicine

didn't disappear entirely. It just evolved these days. Of course, we might not eat or drink the blood or body parts of other humans in order to cure our various ailments, but we do, at least in principle, sometimes engage in a very similar activity and for the very same reasons as the folks in Frantz Schmidt's day. Think about blood

transfusions and organ transplants. Sure these are deeply scientific procedures, but at their roots they arose from the realization that sometimes there are afflictions in our bodies that can be cured by and only by transferring the blood or organs, and thus the ability to live from one human body to another. In principle, we might say we are doing the same thing as the folks who came to the executioners for their medications. Only the methodology and the physiological

understanding beneath it looks just a bit different. In the life and career of the ever faithful execution or healer, fronts Schmidt, we see two healing miracles at work. On one hand, he, like so many others in his trade, was a source of medicine and healing for the community around him. But that work of healing, intimately connected, as it was, with his dishonorable trade of being a professional killer on behalf of the government, was also the means

of his own healing in the social sense. And for those of you who love a happy ending, here's one more detail for you. After his death, it was declared that France would be remembered in court records as a physician and not as an executioner, the deadly and dishonorable job that he'd held for over forty five years. It's wild to imagine that's in the grand scheme of things. These gruesome stories you've heard today didn't actually take place that long ago. We'd like to believe that as time

marches on, progress does too. But sometimes old habits and old beliefs die hard, which is why there's more to explore. Stick around through this brief sponsor break, and my teammates Robin Miniter will tell you all about one more cannibalistic treatment. Right the South Korean Custom Service knew they had a

problem on their hands. They've been cracking open pills and testing powders, which usually was a very typical part of their job, but for about seven months, one particular kind of case started showing up more frequently, and by the time they completed their investigation and released their report in mid the agents had documented over thirty five cases and confiscated over seventeen thousand pills that contained dehydrated and powdered

human remains. Further testing show that these remains were young, very young. The data pointed to them originating largely from unborn fetuses are stillborn babies. Some capsules even contained the remnants of fingernails and human hair. Consuming placentas as a way to improve blood supply and increased stamina has long been practiced in China, and these particular pills were billed

as youth enhancing stamina boosters. Ironically, not only does this not work, but the super bacteria discovered within the capsules is actually pretty deadly. The idea that ingesting someone else's blood supply is not only curative but life giving is a belief that we just can't seem to shake, and we see it underground in the cases of folks who call themselves medical sanguinarians, which are roughly the equivalent of modern day vampires. But we also see this in the

bright light of day. A startup company called Ambrosia Medical was launched in which offered a very particular kind of service, blood transfusions for older patients, using the blood specifically of a young donor. The idea was that it would help them reverse the aging process. In seventeen, the company ran a trial to study the effects of young blood transfusions

and what the possible health benefits might be. The procedure would involve transfusing one and a half leaders of plasma from a younger donor over a two day period into an older patient to the tune of eight thousand dollars. In eighteen, Ambrosia announced a plan to open its flagship clinic in New York City, with dreams of expanding to other wealthy cities. That didn't end up happening, but there are smattering of sites across the US where people could

go and have the procedure performed. The results of the

study were never published. It seems even so many people shelled up big money eight thousand dollars from one leader, or twelve thousand dollars for two of young blood, despite there being no clinical evidence that would be beneficial, and despite the fact that it came with many risks and rosia medical shutdown in Our scientific and medical knowledge has increased dramatically over the last several hundred years, and yet it seems that we're not as far removed from spreading

jam made of human blood on a piece of toast, or sipping a goblet of hot, bubbling blood alongside the gallows and our attempts to be healthy as we might like to think. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by Aaron Manky and narrated by Aaron Manky and Robin Minat. Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with research by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggard Orn and Robin Miniter. Production assistance was provided by Josh Thane,

Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show, the Grim and Mild team, and all the other podcasts that we make over at Grimm and Mild dot com, and as always, thanks for listening.