10 Creepy Ways People Have Recycled Body Parts
By: Carlyn Beccia
Tags: Humor, Science, Culture, History, Life Lessons

Bringing up the bones

Nothing says death and decay like a charnel house. A charnel house, or ossuary, is a great big house decorated with human bones. It’s always tough to pick your favorite ossuary, but I have to go with Sedlec Ossuary (shown above) in the Czech Republic.

Known as the Bone Church, Sedlec was founded in the thirteenth century after Abbott Henry brought some “holy soil” back from Jerusalem and scattered it on Sedlec Cemetery.

Obviously, everyone wanted to be buried in holy soil instead of just plain old dirt. Soon there were so many bones they had to be moved inside to the crypt. And let’s face it…if you are going to go through the trouble of moving a large pelvic bone, you might as well turn it into a chandelier.

Tibetan “kangling” 2009 | Public Domain

The sound of death

The Tibetian Buddhists have been making beautiful music from human bones for centuries. While Americans might find such instruments macabre, to Tibetians, they are a way to celebrate life.

The above is a Kangling made from a human thigh bone. A Kangling literally translates as “leg” (kang) “flute” (ling). The instrument is played as part of Tantric ritual and is meant to symbolize “cutting off of the ego.”

The music sounds hauntingly mournful and, in my humble opinion, far more entertaining than your usual organ funeral dirge.

Funky invisible ink

Spies throughout history have had to get resourceful when sending secret messages. During World War I, Allied spies used the ancient, invisible ink standby — lemon juice. The problem with lemon juice is that it needed iodine as a reactive. Unfortunately, the enemy quickly figured out how to splash some iodine vapor on a letter to reveal its secret message.

In 1915, a British naval officer in M16 came up with a far better invisible ink solution — semen. Oddly enough, his name was Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming. (This supports my theory that your name influences your destiny.)

Mansfield Smith-Cumming, Anonymous circa 1900–1920 | Public Domain

Cumming even created a catchy motto for his wanking agents, “Every man his own stylo.”

Unfortunately, letters penned in semen had a certain funk that gave them away (and it wasn’t lemony fresh). Rules were put in place. Agents were instructed only to use a fresh batch, but alas,…the scent always prevailed.

Eventually, the practice fell out of favor due to the smell and the obvious drawback of having to close your eyes and think of England every time you wrote a letter.

The skull cup from Gough’s Cave, About 14,000 years old | CC0

Cheers…to your death

What can you do if you find a random skull in your garden? If you are Romantic poet Lord Byron, you might think, “Hmmm, it’s round, it’s hollow, and it’s creepy…Why I could polish it up and drink out of it!”

When writer Nathanial Hawthorne visited Lord Byron’s house years after Byron had died, he peeked inside the cabinet and found the ghoulish goblet. Hawthorne couldn’t help but remark, “A man must be either very drunk or very thirsty before he would taste wine out of such a goblet.”

(Tip: If you want to drink out of a skull, you must drink from the skull’s back, or the liquid will fall out of the eye sockets and wreck your shirt. Please don’t ask me how I know this.)

Byron isn’t the only drunk clever enough to turn a skull into a dining vessel. Before child labor, Tibetan Buddhists would use carrion birds to pick a corpse clean and then recycle the skull cap as a drinking bowl. (Climates were often too cold to bury the dead.)

But if you want to be as cool as Byron or a Buddhist and serve that bean dip with a bit more panache, remember that it is illegal in the United States to make bowls or cups out of human remains. For now…

Victorian hair mourning jewelry, nineteenth-century | CC BY-SA 4.0

Where did you get that broach?

While skulls, teeth, and saved bones look similar, there is something singular about hair. Maybe it is the indestructible nature of those strands of keratin to withstand the decomposition that flesh cannot. Or maybe it is because we remember our loved ones by the halo of hair surrounding their face.

Emperor Napoleon requested his hair be made into bracelets for his wife, mother, son, and relatives. Decades after his death, Queen Victoria wore Prince Albert’s hair weaved into broaches. And Charles II had a watch fob made out of his mistresses’ pubic hair. (A little less romantic.)

This may seem pretty creepy today, but it was once common to weave hair into elaborate jewelry. Called mourning jewelry, the Victorians took this to a new art form. Hair was cut off and saved during someone’s life or after they died as a way to mourn them in death.

How did the iconic Gibson Girl get such big hair? Charles Dana Gibson, 1891 | Public Domain

Hair recycling

You have probably come across many delicate porcelain and glass pots in antique shops. These bowls were not used to keep buttons. They are called hair receivers, and they were used to recycle hair.

During Edwardian times, it was common to take the hair out of your brush or comb and then save it in your hair receiver. This hair was then stuffed into small bags and sewn shut to create a “ratt.” Ratts stuffed the family sofa or were put back on the head to bulk up the hair.

Much like today, wearing wigs and hair extensions was seen as fake, so Victorian women liked to go au natural and use their own hair.

Teeth recycling

No one really bothered to brush their teeth in the days before modern dentistry, so missing teeth became pretty common. But if you needed a new set of chompers…No worries. Just steal from the dead.

In 800 B.C in Etruria (central Italy), corpse teeth were removed and used in dentures for wealthy people. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, teeth were stolen from soldiers who had died on the battlefield. These dentures became known at Waterloo teeth, named after the Battle of Waterloo.

Even George Washington took teeth from his slaves to make his famed dentures. I know. Gross…

The executioner’s side business

In the seventeenth century, the local executioner hung criminals by day and sold their bits by night. One of the most profitable body parts was human fat. It was rubbed on wounds and also used to make candles and soap.

In medieval times, the executioner could make a quick buck by selling an executed criminal’s blood. It was believed that drinking a criminal’s blood would make you stronger. People would even drink it hot and fresh right off the scaffold.

Corpse medicine continued into the eighteenth century. When Louis XVI was sent to the guillotine in 1793, the crowds rushed toward the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in his royal blood. It was believed that a king’s blood was especially potent to bring good health.

The fountain of the dead

While vampire facials — facials that use your blood plasma — have become a popular cosmetic procedure today, using blood for beauty is an old chestnut.

German Countess Elizabeth Bathory believed a young girl’s blood could do wonders for her complexion. In 1610, Elizabeth was arrested for torturing and killing over 600 servant girls for her blood baths.

Small print that wrecks my fun: The murders were collaborated by over 300 witnesses, but accounts of the blood bubble baths were recorded years after her death and never came forth in her trial. Most historians are suspicious about the blood baths because her trial was so sensationalized.

A 17th-century book on female virginity rebound in human skin by Dr. Ludovic Bouland around 1865, Wellcome Library, CC BY 4.0

Bound in history

Leather bound books are beautiful to behold unless…you are holding one of the many bound in human skin.

Anthropodermic bibliopegy — the practice of using skin to bind books — became popular during the French Revolution. There were even rumors that a tannery was established at Meudon, outside Paris, to recycle the guillotined aristocrats’ skin into books. And sometimes French erotica was bound in human skin with a human nipple attached.

After a criminal was hanged in the United States, his skin was sometimes tanned and made into anything that needed sturdy material — belts, bags, boots, and fancy book covers. In 1881, outlaw George Parrott was arrested for killing two police officers. After he was hanged, his skin was made into boots and a medical bag.

One of the most famous examples of recycled skin was bodysnatcher, William Burke. When Burke was convicted of murdering people and selling the corpses to medical students, it seemed only fitting that his body would also be recycled. Burke’s skin was tanned and made into wallets and books. Legend has it that author Charles Dickens owned a bookmark made from Burke’s skin.

Now, aren’t you glad you are reading this online and not in a skin-bound book?