Believe it or not, powdered ancient dead guys were prescribed to cure what ails you. With all the moisture gone and other things mixed in, doctors could tell themselves this wasn't exactly cannibalism.
Physicians pre-scribed powdered mummy for diverse ailments. An English pharmacopeia published in 1721 specifies two ounces of mummy as the proper amount to make a “plaster against ruptures.” Ambroise Paré, royal surgeon to sixteenth century French kings, proclaimed mummy to be “the very first and last medicine of almost all our practitioners” against bruising.
Read more about this gruesome (to our sensibilities) practice at the Neatorama Halloween blog. Link
YouTube of weigh in at Topsfield MA fair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-awCFR5breM&feature=player_embedded