Citation Needed - Victorian Mummy Mania and Sundry Weirdness

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Mummia, mumia, or originally mummy referred to several different preparations in the history of medicine, from "mineral pitch" to "powdered human mummies". It originated from Arabic mūmiyā "a type of resinous bitumen found in Western Asia and used curatively" in traditional Islamic medicine, which was translated as pissasphaltus (from "pitch" and "asphalt") in ancient Greek medicine. In medieval European medicine, mūmiyā "bitumen" was transliterated into Latin as mumia meaning both "a bituminous medicine from Persia" and "mummy". Merchants in apothecaries dispensed expensive mummia bitumen, which was thought to be an effective cure-all for many ailments. It was also used as an aphrodisiac.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts, because this is the internet. And that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be leading the expedition tonight, but I'll need a group of sarcophagy's to join me. First up, it gets better. Hey, hey, no, no, don't change that.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad. Oh, seven listeners, goodbye forever. It wasn't bad. Just do the fucking intro. First up, two men who were eating your mummy before it was cool. Noah and Cecil. And when you see her, tell her, I said,

no, no, thank you. Why, yes, dear, I am slicing carrots into the jacuzzi. Why do you ask? And also joining us tonight, two men with skin so chalky, a Victorian orphan would give them a dram of sugar, Heath and Tom. Okay.

I prefer the term alabaster, Eli, and I will still have the sugar, though. Thank you. Sure, you're welcome. Old dram. I'm doing keto. Before we begin tonight. Canonically, apparently.

Yeah, exactly. Canonical keto, yeah. Keith, though. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons. Just thank the fucking patrons. Everyone on this podcast is into weird stuff. Cecil likes swords. Noah likes old Nintendo's. Geith likes living in a different house than his wife. And none of us. None of us could indulge in these perversions if it weren't for you. So try not to think about what I'm into and be sure to stick around to the end of the show to find out how to contribute. And with that out of the way, tell us Noah what person plays thing, concept phenomenon or event.

what we'll be talking about today? Well, as if you're not hungry enough already, today we're going to talk about eating mummies. And Tom, you unwrapped this mystery. Are you ready to give us a taste? I've got my fava beans all warmed up and ready to go. So tell us, Tom. What?

How we... You're doing a Hannibal Lecter thing, right? Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Oh, I thought you were still eating my mummy. So tell us, Tom, how'd we get weird about mummies? I listen, people are really, really bad with words, which is a shame because pretty much the best thing about being human is words. That we can speak and write means that we can take the accumulated knowledge from one generation and pass it on not iteratively but cumulatively.

We can stand on the shoulders of giants. because those giants stand on giants who stand on giants. And all of them rest finally on a bedrock of these humble words. The future success or demise of this human experiment will inevitably be forged in the crucible of language. And in all of the pantheon of human invention, nothing now or ever will ever rival language. It is the tool we use not just to understand the world, but indeed to create it. Words are how we know who we are, how we experience in catalog, love, loss, and the very fabric of what it means to be alive.

And these essays have a specific word count, so I'm using a lot of them in the opening paragraph. Notice? You've noticed? Yes. Will all of that being said? Are you widening the margins? On our podcast?

It's one and a half space. I've done it a one and a half space. There it is, I figured. Will all of that being said, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we might actually have some goddamn respect for words. We might appreciate and respect their utility would celebrate our own fluency and mastery of the goddamn things. But instead, we are a bunch of dumbfounded dipshits. And because we're bad at words, it turns out, sometimes we end up eating ground up human mummy parts. Well, maybe we fucking deserve it, right? Because in our defense, like pretty much any time you try to have proper respect for words, your other co-hosts make fun of you and call you a nerd and shit. Okay, Tom, I love the framing about the apocelipsis of the language of the Ancien regime. Did you say eating ground up money?

I did. I did indeed. Now, a long-time listeners of this show will remember that I often refer to the medieval peoples of Europe as filthy mud people. That is because of their disgusting filthiness, which is an indisputable fact in which you should not send me an email about. So, of course, if we are going to begin our journey into the desecration of insanely ancient, and archaeologically priceless cannibalism. It makes sense

that we are starting with the mud peoples of medieval Europe who are on the lookout for a substance called mummia. You sure they weren't just Italians?

Mamma Mia! Well, that pays the entire Mario franchise on a much darker light. Yeah. This is what he's looking for in that other castle. Yeah.

Yeah. I wasn't looking for a fucking princess, but I'll save her while she's here, you know. I feel like Tom had a dark,

traumatic experience with mud or something that we don't know about. We'll find out one of that. Or medieval Europeans. I'm going to go ahead and stop you at I feel like Tom had a dark traumatic experience. Yes. It's a funny story.

I call them funny stories. Okay, it's pretty much the same. Now, Mamia is a sticky, tar-like substance, bitumen, actually, which kind of oozes its way out of mountains. It's a kind of natural asphalt. And way back in garbage times when prevailing medical

wisdom had yet to evolve into even the most basic understanding about whether or not blood was most importantly kept in or out of the body. This viscous mountain glap was touted as medicine. But it was only medicinal memia if it came from a specific mountainside in Persia.

Otherwise, it was just sparkling asphalt. God. Those people were so stupid, man. And RFK just recommended this in place of all COVID protocols. Oh, man. Good times. Now, Mummia was...

COVID protocol. Mummia was, as you might imagine, incredibly valuable. It seemed there was nothing Mummia couldn't cure from headaches to stomach aches to cancer. Astute listeners will have noticed that Mummia kind of sounds like Mummy. It is not the same thing, but it sounds kind of the same. And translating stuff is hard work.

So when 11th and 12th century translators crossed mummia with mummy, the dye was cast. It didn't help matters that mummies were occasionally embalmed with bitumen or that mummies often sort of decomposed in a way that they leaked a kind of thick, brownish, tar-like glop. Guys, our fuckwords are getting way too close. We got mummia, mummy, mommy, mungi, centaurum. It's high risk, high risk, high reward, but it's high risk. You know, I give you guys a lot of grief for being sticklers about my spelling, but I'm starting to see your side of things. There are real consequences to grammar.

Now, add to the linguistic mix-up, the European fascination with all things ancient Egypt, and sprinkle in the confusion of time, and before you know it, Europeans had decided that the ancient texts referring to the healing properties of Mumia were referring not to the petrochemical leakage from Persian mountainsides, but it was a very much of the petrochemical leakage from Persian mountain sides, but instead to the embalmed leakage oozing from petrified human corpses. The cure for what ails you? Corpsegoo. Corpscoo.

Still better than that stuff, they make you drink before a colonoscopy. Oh, my God, right? Halfway through that shit, I'm like, fuck this. Just send in Dennis Quaid. I don't care. You don't even have to shrink him down. Just send him in there. We don't care if he makes it anymore.

It's great. Now, the language snafu might not have been enough to convince Europeans Dennis quaid on a string like an ant. Give me your body. The language snafu might not have been enough to convince Europeans to plop mummy bits into their blender bottles. Had there not also been a pervasive medical concept floating about at the same time that the human body itself contained healing powers that could cure other humans of whatever maladies, might afflict them. Medical cannibalism was a fairly widespread practice during the mud times.

Gladiator blood and livers were thought to cure epilepsy. And there was a thriving market for harvesting human fat from the newly deceased to treat wounds, obliterate scars, heal broken bones, treat sciatica, act as a painkiller, cure arthritis, and foster the growth of nerves and tendons. Now, it should go without saying that none of this is true. You take gladiator blood to cure epilepsy and watch a gladiator fight scene to induce it. It's like a whole yin-yang. And RFK said it's all true. Oh, it'll happen again. With the intellectual groundwork laid and the translations botched, this stage was now set for a corpse cure fad. Medical practitioners, it does seem a stretch to say

doctors here, were soon recommending mummy bits for everything from heart attacks to bunions. And medieval Sarah Palin declared a mummy. version of drill baby drill time. A run on ancient Egyptian mummies was on, which was a problem because there was a limited supply of corpse husks laying about. Suddenly ancient tombs were being ransacked and graves unearthed so that everyone could have some medicinal, desiccated human jerky. As you might imagine, there were a lot less available mummies than people clamoring to eat them. And soon a brisk black market trade opened up to sell bodily bits taken from criminals, enslaved people, or just about any dead body that could be dug up and made to look like an ancient mummy.

Just a pile of discarded Egyptian non-mummy stuff in England with a sign that says future site of the British Museum and Natural History, right on it. Okay, to be fair, all of this is gross. It is still better than a cemetery, but you know what? We're not here to talk about that. We're not here to talk about that. This is quoting directly from National Geographic, quote, Body Snatchers would steal by night the bodies of such as were hanged, wrote one observer,

who noted the bodies were then embalmed with salt and drugs, dried in an oven, then ground into powder that apothecaries added to their home remedies. It's weird that they thought that their fake dead guy had to still have real dead guy in it. Right? Because you're going to powder it. Like, guys, it's all bullshit. You just give them a sticky goo. momeopithe or something. All right, homieopathy like your friend. Anyways, while we reflect on

whose body in the cast and reflect, just do the fucking segue. All right. Well, while we reflect on whose body in the cast would fetch the highest dollar, it's Noah's he'd get you high. We'll take a quick break for some apropos of nothing. And then I said, well, if I don't have the palest cheeks at the party, I'm not going.

Good for you. You have to stand up for yourselves. Hey, Victorians. Y'all got a second? Oh, it's the time traveler again, Heath. What do you want? Yeah, so I was hoping we might do a little bit of a... round table on some of the stuff that you guys are

doing here. Not this again. What did we do wrong this time? Well, it's not wrong. I'm just saying a lot of the things you do don't really hold up to modernity. Such as? Okay, so you guys remember the thing I said about baths last week? Like a common washerwoman? No, no, just staying clean. Yeah, I prefer perfume made of wailed for it. Thank you. Yeah, I know, I know, but it would really be just better.

No, the answer is no, next one. Right? Okay, okay, so the food stuff, mummies, roxy, mock turtle soup, just all really bad for you. But those are all my favorites. Mine too. It just feels like incredibly unlikely that as a society, like an entire society, you Victorians wouldn't have landed on any good ideas, like not even one. Oh, what about having sex? through a sheet.

Okay. Okay. No, I do, I do like that one. Right? The best. And we're back. When we left, when we left off, Victorian's misspelled medicine and house fires became barbecues. What happened next, Tom?

Well, like any medicine that doesn't work, eventually either the FDA completes its decades-long, slow-motion moratorium, or people get tired of taking it. And by the time the Victorian era rolled around, relatively little mummy powder was being pounded like a Jimbrose slamming creatine. But that's not to say that the Victorian sensibilities

had evolved over much because Egyptomania had well and truly gripped Europe by this time. They moved on to like mummy influencers and the liver king just started murdering Egyptians to eat their lungs from their warm corpse. Yeah, the corpse go definitely weird, but whatever fucking new mom breast harvesting

they're doing to get colostrum for the leg day podcast advertisements, that feels worse, doesn't it? Well, what better way for high society Victorians to celebrate and enjoy an evening with friends than to host a mummy unwrapping party? So it was this point in the first read-through where I was like, no, I'm just not, I'm going to give up on lunch now. No money today, thank you. What's a read-through?

This was exactly what it sounds like, and these were not uncommon affairs. Mummies, looted by grave robbers struggling to feed themselves and their families, were ransacked from their earthen beds, and these oversized souvenirs were sold on the streets of Egypt like they were eye-heart New York hats in time. Square. These priceless pieces of cultural anthropology were sold as novelties to Westerners flush with curiosity and cash. That's awful. They should have been left

in place to be stolen by Westerners' flush with curiosity. God. Once they had stowed and retrieved their mummies from the overhead bins and made their way back home, high society Victorians would gather a murder of their favorite rich

friends together so they could gather about and unwrap the mummy like it was a kinder egg with a prize inside. These unwrappings were presented as a sort of pseudo-medical quasi-scientific kind of affair. And we're unboxing. Cool. I like the case. Sleak. Right? That's a cool one. And it's death slamming. Okay. It's like this every week on our show. Premium. This feels premium. The first known mummy unwrapping took place in 1821 in Piccadilly's circus when archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni gathered a crowd of thousands to strip a long-dead corpse of both its heritage and its dignity and humanity. Before the mummy itself was unwrapped, while greeting guests, the very serious

Balzoni glad-handed partygoers wearing bandages to mimic the deceased. That's you. That's what you look like. You look like that. Again, still better than a true crime podcast. Lucinda will fight you, too. Teenage girls make fun of it afterwards, then it's fine, I guess. A Balzoni's assistant, Sir Thomas Pettigrew, was so taken with defiling the dead that he began his own series of mummy unwrappings, beginning with the Royal College of Surgeons in 1834. I should pause here to note that while unwrapping mummies is certainly awful, it is by far not even close to the worst thing that we have done to them. There were quite a lot of preserved bodies in Egypt, likely because when people die in arid parts of the world, they were more likely to mummify naturally, partially because there was a cultural and theological tradition that encouraged the practice, and partially, well, I guess the British just hadn't yet arrived to steal all of them. They pull one bandage and they spin like a top and a giant dust clouds. Like imperial locusts, the British did eventually arrive and stole a shit ton of mummies.

According to Mark Twain, mummified human remains were burned as fuel to power railway systems in Egypt, writing in 1869 in the Innocence Abroad, quote, 3,000 years old purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose. And sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, damn these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent. this almost certainly didn't actually happen and Mark Twain was notoriously full of shit. Or was the heart and soul of the podcast depending on how you define it. Could be both.

Could be both. It is however true that in the United States huge amounts of linen taken from mummified corpses was imported to make brown wrapping paper during the U.S. Civil War. Really? Other reports from the UK and Germany indicate that some mummies were dug up,

ground up, and then sold as fertilizer. Sometimes if Victorians couldn't afford the whole mummy, they might just buy a leg or a foot or a hand of a mummy, so they too could get in on the mummy craze. I was only able to afford it from the wrist down, so I call it the sound of one hand wrapping. I love the idea of the bargain hunter that first proposed that deal, though, right? She's like, all right, what do you take for just a little?

the leg? Just one of the legs. Okay, what about tranches? Do you know about derivatives at all? Providing liquidity matters. That's important. But when it came to the good stuff, the coveted invite to one of Thomas Pedigrews or mummy pedigrew, as his friends would come to call him, the mummy parties, there was something of a standardized format. The body was laid out on a table, in some room in a house, and a house, that was definitely not designed with this purpose in mind and the room and the table

the body lay on was usually decorated with the Victorian version of Egyptian themed live laugh love shit and hieroglyphics and whatnot and before a lecture by pedigrew was ultimately delivered and then they ate sushi off

of it, right? They still do this today. Again, quoting from the National Geographic article, the unrolling itself involved separating the different layers of bandaging, removing amulets from their layers as progress was made, eventually revealing the body itself. An examination would be made of it, remarking on its situation, as the unrolling progressed and observing things about it, such as body decorations, presence of hair, pliability of skin, and guessing at ethnicity.

I'm going to say, Egyptian. Eight for eight, everybody. Somebody pops a balloon, slime goes everywhere, a slimy dead person. Gender not clear But that was fun Put that on TikTok Put it on TikTok Now as we're

And we started a forest fire As the word got out About how awesome Naked corpses were To feature in your home As party favors More and more dinner parties Would feature their own unrollings

These were often less studious And more drunken affairs undertaken by inebriated Unserious Assholes Who it seems clear had no real interest in anything other than the macabre spectacle of undressing an ancient corpse and flexing for your guests how much you just spent unimported luxury fidget spinners. Thank you, Tom.

It's fucking Johnny Come Lately, drunks are ruining corpse desecration for the rest of us. We're doing it for science. Brave. All right. Now, unfortunately, there was nothing more interesting or salacious to say about mummy unwrapping or mummy eating. And I'm still a little short on my page count. Jesus. Early, that's okay.

It's all right. I'm going to say some big words. Tell you some more crazy Victorian quirks, just to kind of fill things out here. Tom, I believe the term is fun fact. Fun fact. Fun fact. I just say fun fact. A medical professionals and both medical and professional are doing a lot of work in that phrase there.

Believe that this time that those suffering from mental anguish could be cured of their miseries and discombobulations by a thought transplant. Yes, it is they believe that a healthy person's thoughts could by telekinesis be transmitted from the healthy party to the afflicted in a process known as thought transference. Tim's on Heath's thoughts. Okay. Happy, pretty good idea. I was smart. That's great. I'm thinking about a grilled cheese man.

Who wants mine? Can we go splitzies, Eli? That sounds nice. No, they're all fine. I really need it. With the frico, you know, with like the cheese on the outside. My dad said I'm not allowed to share. I know.

This was not a fringe belief. This was studied as if this were a real and serious phenomenon. In 1882, a bunch of Brits founded the Society for Psychical Research, which aimed to apply science to supernatural nonsense to see what was actually what. This resulted in a bunch of papers appearing on the possibility, probability, and potential mechanisms for action on how thoughts would get beamed out of one skull across a room and then enter into another skull. Obviously, this doesn't work because if people knew what I was really thinking, I would never

have held any job longer than 10 days. So, Tom, I hate to correct you on air. That's a lie I actually live to correct you on air. But you said, when you said aimed to apply, what you mean is aims, don't, don't anybody get all comfortable with the fact that we've gotten any better about this shit. that society for psychical research still operates 140 years later.

Yeah, it's still going. Oh, it's not about anything. Nothing. Any minute now. Literally nothing. We hear about Christianity, though, yeah. It's all zeros, huh? No, nothing in the wind column?

Nothing. Look again. Nothing. I like me trying to wake up. Hold on. No. Checked every page. That was you. No, that was you. Just your shadow was on the, never mind.

It's awkward. Now, like me trying to wake up in the morning, Victorian scientists had just discovered the transformative power of electricity. And they were immediately convinced it would solve all of the world's problems, including curing the sick. A number of inventions were introduced to the public so that Joe's six-pack could take control of their own electrical health. These apparatus all pretty much operated on the principle that you should just shut. the shit out of yourself until you aren't sick anymore. And thus was born the electric shock

hairbrush. What? The electric corset. Okay. And electric suspenders and of course just to be safe electric belts. Now, none of them work but there's idiots right now listening to this in a cold plunge. So who are we to talk?

Thomas Edison electrocutes an elephant. It just flexes its brand new six pack Adam. Okay, I've been doing medium plunges, and it's been great for my recovery from the serious exercise that I do. So that's cool. Got to stay in pickleball shape, baby. Exactly.

Thank you. Support. Cheers. I appreciate it. Cheers. A baby's in Victorian time. Hold on. Dude, you're not sneaking into cheers.

You're not sneaking into cheers. I stole it. I stole it's in the real world. I have it. Cecil, you got this? Yeah, I'll delete it. Get deleted from my heart. we'll figure it out

babies in Victorian times like babies now are difficult without language they just cry a bunch and sometimes they don't stop and it's horrible which is why solutions such as stickney and poors pure paragoric serum and Godfrey's cordial entered the marketplace he's were sold as baby soothing miracle

medicines and they actually they worked pretty darn well inconsolable difficult babies screaming with gas or tooth pain became suddenly calm and chill little tykes all thanks to the secret ingredient opium okay before the judge my son has asked me what happens if he breaks his bed approximately a hundred thousand times and I am open to opium as a solution for the problem

well also the fact that these motherfuckers were chasing the dragon by age two explains a lot of the other shit that we just talked about. I'll eat a fucking mummy. Yeah, that's fucking... I think if I could catch Noah after enough bowls but far enough after a meal,

he would eat a mummy. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Some of these medicines, such as Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup, were said to be suitable for children from newborn to win the fuck ever.

And they were recommended for constipation and dental hygiene. This was a delightful and potent combination of alcohol and morphine, neither of which, by the way, are available in children's doses. This would be because opiates and booze are a deadly combination and lots of kids just died, which may or may not be better than the teething remedies, which are routinely in use at the time, that contain high levels of mercury. And not the satanic panic nothing burger variation in quantity that RFK Jr. is lying about right now, but actual methyl mercury instead. all right and tom you have to summarize what you've learned in one sentence what would it be nostalgia for the past is best left to those who don't remember yesterday and have nothing to look forward to tomorrow exactly well said and are you ready for the quick jameson actually is good

it's very good for tea it's true yeah that my parents told me he's still teething is for those i might lose a tooth i always thought it was where you rubbed it on your gums before we went drinking. I just, that was the cocaine. And Tom, are you ready for the quiz? I am indeed. Okay, Tom, what was the best slogan to sell mummy parts? A, choosy mummies, choose hieroglyph. If you're curious answer me, it's hyra jiff, I guess. B, melts in your mouth, not in the sand. C. Scarabwee, eat flesh, or D.

Free Mumia Oh god All right It's got to be D free Mamia That's so good That's so good Absolutely Eat flesh

I like eat flesh is also All right Tom It's always a foot long Always All right Tom Based on your revulsion at mummy wrappings It's obvious you care About how we treat the dead

So what's better than unwrapping them at a party? a burning them and then giving a sad old lady a box of mostly wood to put in her house B laying them out flat on giant golf courses we call c or C letting more than 50% of medical students get a failing grade while hacking them open These are secret answer D none of those are better Those are all a fucking mess You got me It's right. It's Viking funeral or nothing.

Yeah. It's like it wasn't even a serious question, Eli. All right. So Tom, when you are, if you should happen to find yourself at a Victorian-era mummy unwrapping party, who should you avoid talking to? A. The biddy men's rights activists. Nicely done. Thanks. B, people who have been Egyptian.

see anyone talking about crypto or D literally everyone they all probably have fucking syphilis of the breath or something D they do they all have syphilis of the breath They do have syphilis No but actually I said it was secret answer E all of the above fuck everybody else there too

So all right so that I win No wins All right Somehow, despite D being all of the above and me saying that the answer was all of the above I won. I love these rules. Nice work. I would like a Heath essay. All right.

Excellent. Well, for Tom, Cecil, Noah, and Heath, I'm Yelan Bosnick. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, and by then, Heath will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to our other podcasts in the same place you're listening to this one. Literally, if you just scroll down a little bit, you'll see that those are the ones. Just do the fucking outro. okay

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