King’s Drops”: When European Nobles Literally Drank Human Skull Medicine

When people imagine 17th-century Europe, they usually picture powdered wigs, philosophers, royal courts, and the beginning of modern science. But medicine during that period could be disturbingly grotesque.

One of the strangest examples was something called “corpse medicine” — the belief that parts of the human body could cure illness.

And this wasn’t fringe superstition. Kings, doctors, nobles, and scholars all took part in it.

King Charles II of England reportedly kept a private laboratory where he experimented with chemical remedies. One preparation became especially famous: “The King’s Drops.” It involved alcohol mixed with powdered human skull.

At the time, many physicians believed that violent or sudden deaths trapped a person’s “life force” inside the body. Because of that, the skulls of executed criminals or soldiers killed in battle were considered especially valuable medicinal ingredients.

People used powdered skull to treat epilepsy, headaches, paralysis, depression, and even internal bleeding.

This belief created an entire trade around human remains.

Bodies from battlefields and graveyards were stolen and sold to apothecaries. In some cases, moss growing on old skulls — called Usnea — was scraped off and sold as medicine. Wealthy Europeans mixed human skull powder into drinks like wine, chocolate, or spirits.

The poor had their own version of the practice.

Crowds reportedly gathered around public executions to collect or drink the fresh blood of the condemned because warm blood was believed to carry the strongest vitality.

What makes this especially unsettling is the hypocrisy behind it. Europeans often described non-European rituals as “barbaric,” while many members of European high society were literally consuming human remains as medicine.

Even stranger: these beliefs survived far longer than most people realize.

Medicinal “mummy powder” made from Egyptian mummies continued to be sold in Europe well into the modern era. There are even records from the 1800s describing families still using skull-based remedies for epilepsy.

It’s one of those historical rabbit holes that sounds fictional until you realize it was completely normalized for centuries.

Sources & Historical Documentation:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/drinking-skulls

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284/