Explore
Executing Magic in the Modern Era
Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni
2017
0 Ungluers have
Faved this Work
Login to Fave
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.
This book is included in DOAB.
Why read this book? Have your say.
You must be logged in to comment.
Rights Information
Are you the author or publisher of this work? If so, you can claim it as yours by registering as an Unglue.it rights holder.Downloads
This work has been downloaded 129 times via unglue.it ebook links.
- 129 - pdf (CC BY) at OAPEN Library.
Keywords
- afterlife
- Capital punishment
- Eighteenth century
- executions
- Gallows
- Gibbeting
- Hanging
- History
- Humanities
- magical history
- medical history
- nineteenth century
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History
- Twentieth century
Links
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59519-1Editions