British royalty dined on human flesh (but don't worry it was 300 years ago)

'One thing we are rarely taught at school yet is evidenced in literary and historic texts of the time is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine. 'Along with Charles II, eminent users or prescribers included Francis I, Elizabeth I's surgeon John Banister, Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, William III, and Queen Mary.' The history of medicinal cannibalism, Dr Sugg argues, raised a number of important social questions. He said: 'Medicinal cannibalism used the formidable weight of European science, publishing, trade networks and educated theory. 'Whilst corpse medicine has sometimes been presented as a medieval therapy, it was at its height during the social and scientific revolutions of early-modern Britain. 'It survived well into the 18th century, and amongst the poor it lingered stubbornly on into the time of Queen Victoria. 'Quite apart from the question of cannibalism, the sourcing of body parts now looks highly unethical to us.  'In the heyday of medicinal cannibalism bodies or bones were routinely taken from Egyptian tombs and European graveyards. Not only that, but some way into the eighteenth century one of the biggest imports from Ireland into Britain was human skulls.  link