Human fat

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Two pharmacy jars with the inscription "AXUNG [IA] HOMINIS" for human wax
Humanol sterile from Kreuz-Apotheke Leipzig, probably early 20th century.
Test tube with contents and inscription "Adeps Humani"

Fat people , as human fat referred to as a term for people Schmalz is an in historic pharmacopoeia mentioned since the 16th century, an important part as a high erachteter ointments and other fat-containing dosage forms . In the old recipes, human fat is referred to in Latin as (natural) pinguedo hominis or (omitted as lard) as Axungia hominis , where it is found, along with other animal fats, from bears ( Axung.ursi ), vipers ( Axung.viperarum ), beavers ( Axung . castoris ), cats ( Axung. Cati sylvestris ), vultures and marmots and many others. Johann Agricola (1496–1570) describes the extraction of human fat and its areas of application.

Use in the Middle Ages and early modern times

With therapeutic magic significance it was produced and sold as so-called “poor sinners fat”, “poor sinners fat” or “poor sinners lard” in folk medicine until the 19th century by executioners from the bodies of those who were executed. Like many other parts of the executed, their fat was also assigned a special potency, which developed out of a pagan belief in sacrifice. The sale of human fat was an important source of income for the executioners. Arm sin fat was used in the manufacture of various ointments for bone pain, toothache, and gout . It was also seen as a panacea, especially for diseases associated with cachexia (e.g. tuberculosis ). Human fat was also said to have a pain-relieving effect on rheumatism and arthritis .

The executioner from Hall in Tirol , Sebastian Waldl, officially asked the Tyrolean government to be allowed to use “poor sinners fat” from those who were executed, which was regarded as harmless in a letter of October 10, 1705.

Differences arose between the Innsbruck University and the executioner in Hall over the corpses of those executed. While the executioner believed that the corpses and all benefits derived from them were his, the university felt that they were of no use to him and that they should be freely available to the university. In 1715, the Tyrolean government recognized the executioner's claim to the corpse, if he renounced it and gave the body to the university's anatomy, the human fat and whatever he could use it publicly would be withdrawn and should therefore be appropriately for the transfer will be rewarded. Due to a complaint from the Hall executioner in 1737, because he only received four guilders for a corpse from anatomy instead of eight guilders including transport, the value of a corpse can also be determined, whereby a final regulation was made in 1738 , so that the executioner from Hall received six guilders for a corpse if it came from the high court near Innsbruck and otherwise eight guilders.

Use in the 19th and 20th centuries

Since the late 19th century, human fat was offered under the trade name Humanol ("omitted human fat ") in a sterile, liquefied preparation for injection purposes, and in 1909 it was introduced into surgical therapy for scar treatment , wound revision and wound disinfection . Little success in healing and the occurrence of fat embolisms made the application out of fashion again in the 1920s. For external use, alleged wrinkle creams from various manufacturers ( Placentubex C and Placenta-Serol from Merz Pharma ) still contained human fat from placentas up until the 1980s , which in addition to the fat component of the placenta , which is said to contain hormones and vitamins, in addition to the fat component of the placenta , which supposedly penetrates well into the human skin. The embryonic origin should evoke a rejuvenating effect . The use of these "natural" substances was openly advertised, which was also evident from the name of the products. The placents were collected by midwives and obstetrical departments for industrial purposes. The use of human placentas was discontinued in favor of animal products after the discovery of the HI virus in the 1980s, although there was no risk of infection at any time due to the manufacturing process, but products with ingredients of human origin were generally no longer positive.

In Peru , a gang known as pishtacos were charged in 2009 with producing and distributing human fat ; the case turned out to be the investigators ' free invention . The basis for this was the Quechua legend of Pishtaku or Nak'aq ("butcher"), a white murderer who sucks the fat out of the murdered indigenous people.

Trivia

Soap was allegedly made from the fat from a liposuction performed by the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi and exhibited in the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art .

literature

  • Heinz Moser: The executioners of Tyrol , Innsbruck 1982, Steiger Verlag, ISBN 3-85423-011-7 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b From the holdings of the German Pharmacy Museum in Heidelberg.
  2. ^ From the holdings of the Museum of Hamburg History , Hamburg.
  3. ↑ Thomas Gleinser: Anna von Diesbach's Bernese 'Pharmacopoeia' in the Erlacher version of Daniel von Werdts (1658), Part II: Glossary. (Medical dissertation Würzburg), now at Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1989 (= Würzburg medical-historical research , 46), p. 198 ( Menschenschmalz ).
  4. ^ Rainer Möhler: ›Epistula de vulture‹ Investigations into an organotherapeutic drug monograph of the early Middle Ages. Horst Wellm, Pattensen / Han. 1990, now at Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, ISBN 3-921456-85-1 , p. 348 f.
  5. ↑ Ferdinand Giese: Chemistry of plants and animals in pharmaceutical consideration . Hartmann Verlag, Leipzig 1811, p. 337.
  6. ↑ Christiane Wagner, Jutta Failing: Hacked on the head many times ... Gallows and executioners in Hesse. Naumann, Nidderau 2008, ISBN 978-3-940168-17-7 .
  7. ↑ Human fat used to be a sought-after raw material. In: Die Welt from November 20, 2009, ISSN  0173-8437 .
  8. ↑ Adolf Wuttke , Detlef Weigt (ed.): The German people's superstition of the present . Superbia, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 978-3-937554-19-8 (reprint of the first edition, Hamburg 1860 at the Rauhen Haus agency in Hamburg).
  9. ↑ Philip Bethge: The healing power of death . In: Der Spiegel . Vol. 63 (2009), No. 5 from January 26, 2009, ISSN  0038-7452 .
  10. ^ Josef Moser, Die Scharfrichter von Tirol , p. 43.
  11. ↑ Josef Moser, Die Scharfrichter von Tirol , p. 47 f.
  12. ^ H. Koch: fat embolism due to humanol infection . In: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Chirurgie , Vol. 186 (1924), pp. 273-278 ( doi: 10.1007 / BF02797752 ).
  13. ↑ Edmund Schrümpf: Textbook of cosmetics . Vienna, Bonn 1957, p. 238
  14. ↑ Rolf Müller: The commercial use of human body substances: legal bases and limits (Volume 191 of writings on civil law, ISSN  0720-7387 ), Duncker & Humblot 1997, p. 105
  15. ↑ The legend of human fat . In: TAZ , vol. 32 (2009) of December 2, 2009, ISSN  0931-9085
  16. ↑ Selling human fat was a duck . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of December 2, 2009.
  17. ↑ Examples of the legend ( Ancash-Quechua with Spanish translation) on S. Hernán AGUILAR: Kichwa kwintukuna patsaatsinan ( Memento of July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). AMERINDIA n ° 25, 2000. Pishtaku 1, Pishtaku 2 (in Ankash-Quechua , with Spanish translation) and on http://www.runasimi.de/nakaq.htm (only Chanka-Quechua )
  18. ^ Allegedly soap made from Berlusconi's body fat in www.welt.de; October 8, 2010

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