This was bad enough, but a great advance (in the line of sacrifice) was made when to the mere odiousness, we may say beastliness, of the dose _per se_ could be added the horror of eating what had once formed part of a human body,--in short, of cannibalism. The _ordonnances_ which follow really seem to have a connection with ancient idol-rites of human sacrifice, and possibly (had we means of tracing them) might be fathered on the earliest worshippers of Hesus or of Odin. The seasons of the year (spring and autumn) wherein the victim must die (very carefully defined in these prescriptions) seem to give color to this view. Down to the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, Helps tells us, the Aztecs used yearly to slay a young man in spring that the nobles might eat his heart as a sort of sacrament. Anyway, it is rather startling to find that just two hundred years ago in London the physician in ordinary to the King recommended cannibalism to Englishmen without the smallest apology or hesitation. _A Mummiall Quintessence._ Take of the flesh of a sound young man, dying a natural death about the middle of August, three or four pounds. Let the flesh be taken from his thighs or other fleshy parts. Put it into a fit glass and pour upon it spirit of wine. Let it stand so three or four days. Take out the flesh and put it upon a glass plate, and imbibe it with spirits of salts. Let it stand uncovered, but in the shade, where no dust or other filth may fall upon it. Be sure you often turn it, and, being well dried, you may put it up in a fit jar and keep it for use.--_Aurora Chymica_, chap. iii. A still more efficacious remedy, “producing wonderful effects both in preserving and restoring health,” may be obtained by distilling, filtering, calcining, and coagulating this “Mummiall” till it have a “saccharine taste,” when the “matter may be left of the thickness or consistency of honey, which must be kept in glass vessels closely shut.” (_Ibid._, p. 8.) If the “sound young man” should have been killed in the spring instead of in “the middle of August,” the learned Dr. Bolnest is not without a remedy. His flesh is, indeed, no longer useful for a “Mummiall,” but his blood may be made into a “very high balsam, exceeding much the powers and virtue of natural balsam; a potent preservative in time of pestilence, leprosie, palsie, and gout of all sorts.” “Take of such blood a large quantity. Gather in glass vessels. Let it settle some time till it hath thrown out all its waterish humor, which separate by wary inclination. Take now of this concrete blood five or six pounds, which put to ten or twelve pints of spirits of wine. Shake them well together, and let it digest six or eight days in warm ashes.” Distil. Add the fixed salt drawn out of the _caput mortuum_ of the blood by “calcination,” “solution,” “filtration,” “coagulation,” often repeated; “and what shall remain behind is the Arcanum of Blood” (p. 10).