Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Medicinal and Sacred Drugs
- Part III Divine Blood for Sale
- Appendix I ‘Rariteiten te koop’
- Appendix II Family and business network of Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of poems by Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Plate Section
9 - The Human Body as a Drug
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Medicinal and Sacred Drugs
- Part III Divine Blood for Sale
- Appendix I ‘Rariteiten te koop’
- Appendix II Family and business network of Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of poems by Joannes Six van Chandelier
- Plate Section
Summary
Abstract
In Chapter 9, I discuss poems by Joannes Six van Chandelier where three types of ‘human’ drugs play a role: mumia (ground Egyptian mummies), Catholic relics, and human blood, more specifically the blood of the executed king of England, Charles I. The blood of the king is praised as a divine drug in ‘Rariteiten te koop’. I argue that the praise is ironic and that the lust for the blood must be understood as a ‘cannibalistic lust for power’ – a disease that forms a threat to the ‘body’ of the Dutch Republic. I argue that this and other poems serve a medical function in purging the Dutch nation of that illness. In this Chapter, I also show how Six gives a new interpretation to the name of his profession: ‘druggist’ as a ‘thirsting’ person, in the sense of longing for the blood of Christ.
Keywords: Charles I of England, human blood, mummy, relics, body politic, blood of Christ
And cynnamone, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oile, and fine floure, and wheat, and beasts, and sheepe, and horses, and chariots, and slaues, and souls of men.
Revelation 18:13Medical cannibalism
In this chapter, we will return to ‘Rariteiten te koop’. In many ways, the poem is a culmination of themes, motifs and exotic medicines that are present in Six’s poetry. It is therefore also a culmination of topics and drugs that we have looked at in this book. Six discusses drugs as food, as material and linguistic ornaments, as gifts – even his Roselle receives blood as a gift in the poem – as a religious and royal attribute, and as a means of poetic inspiration. Drugs from all ‘the three natural kingdoms’ are treated: plants, minerals and animals. As regards this last category, the drug at the centre of ‘Rariteiten te koop’ – originating from ‘the animal endowed with reason’, the human being – is a product from none other than a king: fresh blood from, a ‘cut in the King’s carotid’ (l. 48), following the beheading of the King of England, a grotesque product that surely no one would want to consume. But in fact, yes, they would. In the early modern period, Europeans were indeed hungry for human blood, especially that of a king.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dangerous DrugsThe Self-Presentation of the Merchant-Poet Joannes Six van Chandelier (1620–1695), pp. 301 - 346Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020