The Mellified Man
Um.. Wow.
Ever heard of a Mellified Man? I hadn't- until today...
Mary Roach, author of a book called Stiff, apparently describes this 12th century Arabian practice in great detail for her readers. (However, I haven't read Stiff.. I just got the basics) She says that men 70-80 years old.. on the verge of dying.. would eat and drink only honey (even bathe in honey) until... until they began to excrete pure honey. (If thats not gross enough.. read on) THEN when they died (because you can't live long like that) their "loving" family would seal them in a stone coffin full of honey for 100 years. After that 100 years- yup you guessed it- The honey/decayed human mix was eaten.
I wasn't a believer... So I wikied it:
Mellified Man refers to a topical and oral medicinal substance from ancient Arabia.
To create a mellified man, an aging man would begin a strict diet of honey until he began to excrete pure honey. After death, the man would be entombed in a coffin filled with honey which was sealed for a century.
When the coffin was unsealed the contents were applied topically or ingested to cure a variety of illnesses and complaints.
[edit]
References
* Roach, Mary. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. W. W. Norton & Company.
Yummy.
Ever heard of a Mellified Man? I hadn't- until today...
Mary Roach, author of a book called Stiff, apparently describes this 12th century Arabian practice in great detail for her readers. (However, I haven't read Stiff.. I just got the basics) She says that men 70-80 years old.. on the verge of dying.. would eat and drink only honey (even bathe in honey) until... until they began to excrete pure honey. (If thats not gross enough.. read on) THEN when they died (because you can't live long like that) their "loving" family would seal them in a stone coffin full of honey for 100 years. After that 100 years- yup you guessed it- The honey/decayed human mix was eaten.
I wasn't a believer... So I wikied it:
Mellified Man refers to a topical and oral medicinal substance from ancient Arabia.
To create a mellified man, an aging man would begin a strict diet of honey until he began to excrete pure honey. After death, the man would be entombed in a coffin filled with honey which was sealed for a century.
When the coffin was unsealed the contents were applied topically or ingested to cure a variety of illnesses and complaints.
[edit]
References
* Roach, Mary. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. W. W. Norton & Company.
Yummy.
posted by DM @ 8:34 AM
2 Comments:
At 1:08 PM, July 27, 2006,
Anonymous said…
Tell me...HOW does someone come up with that idea in the 1st place?!? OH...just let me eat honey until I explode then come carve my dead petrified honeycombed petrude body up 100 years later and serve me up on a platter...maybe with fava beans and a nice chianti? YUM! [gag]
At 10:06 PM, July 27, 2006,
Anonymous said…
Personally, I think they were sitting around the campfire back then roasting nuts and drinking jello shots when some drunk harem chick said, Hey sweet sultan...if you can live on honey for a month...we can have the sweetest hoochie coochie. So he did...and he died. But he ate so much honey he was stuck to the sand where they left his sweet @$$ behind until one day some more drunken starving bedouins came by and found this sticky pile of grossness and dared Ahab Mohammed Salami Yomammi to eat a slice. The rest is history. The end
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