Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture examines an important moment in the long history of the medical use and abuse of the human body. In early modern Protestant England, the fragmented corpse was processed, circulated, and ingested as a valuable drug in a medical economy underpinned by a brutal judicial system. In a meticulous engagement with an extensive range of medical, religious, and literary texts, Louise Noble shows how early modern writers became obsessed with medicinal cannibalism and its uncanny link to the contested Eucharist sacrament. In the process, Noble points out startling continuities between early modern and contemporary medical consumptions of the body.