Usnea , also known as beard lichens , is a group of pale , grayish - dark-green lichens which like to develop on anything from bark and twigs to headstone and skulls . In lateMedievaltimes , the latter was regard to be worth its weight in gold as doc prescribed skull lichen for various diseases , and the nature of the skull - owner ’s death was think to dictate the potency of the “ medicine ” .
Usnea, “the periwig of a dead cranium”, ormuscus ex craneo humano(true moss of a dead man’s skull)
Should a human promontory find itself forsake in a cool , squiffy surroundings , such as the United Kingdom , it will break down and the resulting bony skull can become an anchor for Usnea . While battle have yielded portion of fall back heads to grow skull lichens , the ingredient was so covetable that people actually cultivated it .
incisively when skull lichen began being used as medicine is something that ’s hard to trap down , write Christopher J Duffin in his article‘The periwig of a dead cranium ’ : medicinal skull moss . Written record put it back to 1493 , as detailed by Swiss physician Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim , but it ’s likely it emerge as a traditional practice of medicine before than this .
In 1590 , the ” don of German Botany ” Tabernaemontanus ( also referred to as Jacobus Theodorus or Jacob Diether ) publish a loudness of 2,255 plant exemplification entitledEicones plantarum seu stirpium . It contains a famous image of skull lichens growing on human remains and detail how medic and pharmacist would purposefully leave behind skulls in damp places where they ’d be colonized by woodland mosses . The Usnea would “ cling ” and “ crawl back and forth like a long rough worm ” over the skull ’s surface , he wrote .
As for how they got those heads ? Well , that ’s a whole other can of worms .
How death and the delivery of heads influenced Usnea’s worth
When skull lichens were a popular product on the pharmacist ’s ledge , it was widely trust that within the human body live a soul , or heart . When a person died by nature , it was thought that that somebody extinguished but the great unwashed who die by the sword or some other violent means were considered to be chock - full of profitable spirit .
That our bones do n’t molder away like soma tell the doctors of the sentence that they were the store of this life history personnel and that it could be harvested to offer the lives of the living . The headspring was of particular interest , peculiarly in display case where someone died by strangling or hanging as this was believed to fundamentally pressure the sprightliness force-out up into the head . The bones of the skull also allegedly benefited from chugging on our mental capacity goo .
“ The Belgian chemist Jean Baptise Van Helmont … explain that , after death , all the mental capacity is devour and dissolved in the skull ’ . It is , he believed , by ‘ the continual … drink of [ this ] precious liquor ’ of dissolved brains , that ‘ the skull acquires such virtue ' , ” wroteDr Richard SuggInMummies , Cannibals And Vampires : The History Of Corpse Medicine From The Middle Ages To The Falun Gong .
“ The skull seems here to have been all but marinaded in its own brains . Steeped in the ‘ precious hard drink ’ which elaborate and improves with metre like some uncommon old wine , the mental capacity - soppy skull playact as a kind of innate laboratory or alchemist vessel . ” Try couple that with some artisanal cheeseflower .
But a violent death and brain mush marinade was n’t the only thing that dictate the Charles Frederick Worth of a skull for usnea cultivation . At least , not for the British .
“ Despite [ usnea ’s ] widespread handiness , there was only one type of skull which English doctors considered to be appropriate : the Irish , ” compose James Watson and William Regan in their paperUsnea and the Commodification of Irish Bodies in 16th and 17th Century London .
“ After stories of large - scales massacres and beheadings committed by both sides of the conflict were feed back to the London public , English doctors and pharmacists came to look to the land across the Irish Sea as a profitable reservoir of corporeal medicine . As Francis Bacon wrote , the wars had left ‘ heaps of slain bodies ’ unburied and ripe for harvesting . ”
Butchers and bandits were incentivized to go out and fetch head both for show and medication in the 16thcentury , and the deliverance of a skull dictated its economic value . While good “ hedd monie ” was paid for public figures ( the Earl of Desmond ’s head earned a bumbler named Kelly £ 93 in the 1600s ) it seems extra was given for vogue ( Captain Thomas Cheston earned £ 120 for a skull around the same meter as Kelly , simply for give it over on the tip of his steel ) .
How was Usnea from skull lichens used and consumed?
Skulls in shop windows adorned with lichens were seen as a symbolic representation of wealthiness and condition in late Medieval London . consumer would take those skulls and kowtow them for their lichens which were grind up and used to promote wound healing , treat whooping cough , and manage epilepsy , among other thing .
Van Helmont , as well as promoting the benefits of brain slushies , had a story of a nobleman who wore a lock of skull lichen sewn inside his skin , wrote Sugg . You might gasp , but fit in to Van Helmont , the seemingly brutal act would save the noble ’s sprightliness when , during a affaire d’honneur , he receive a blow to the headway with a sword which , despite cut off through his hat and hair , failed to break the cutis .
And it perplex strange still . Skull lichen were also the main ingredient ofUnguentum armariun , or artillery balm , a embrocation used in the “ magnetized cure of wounds ” . The practice involved healing injury by give a treatment to the weapon that inflicted it , rather than the wounds themselves .
“ The artillery could be place very far from the wounded , and sometimes it could even be different from the one which had caused the wound , supply that it was of similar shape ; it could even be a stone , a peg or a dagger , ” compose Paolo Modenesi in their reviewSkull lichens : A curious chapter in the story of phytotherapy .
“ The weapon system had to be put into the wound first , to afford it and also to stain the weapon system with blood . The arm , or its dummy , was then anoint and bandaged until the injury was dead heal . Weapon salve was celebrated and very popular even in intellectual rope , and commonly used by physicians , who were convince of its efficacy . ”
So , next meter you ’re out walking , and you see a strip show of Usnea growing on a wet branch , doff your cap to its complex account . In our time , humans have done some pretty uncanny things with the humble lichen and our own , brain - drenched skull .
