This is King Charles II of England and Scotland (d. 1685), dressed in very fancy clothes which made him look very civilized and not at all the sort of person who would consume crushed human skull as part of his medical regimen. But there you are, because, as it turns out, 17th-century English folks did that sort of thing regularly.
“The King’s Drops” were associated with Charles because of his high station, but the recipe had come his way — for the extravagant price of £6,000 (some sources say £1,500) — from one of the premier scientist-physicians of the day, Jonathan Goddard, a founder of the Royal Society, famed for its advancements in the scientific method.
It really was paradoxical that “Goddard’s Droops” as the medicine was also known, would be so popular at the same time as the Scientific Revolution: there was no evidence that they worked, and the ingredients were ghastly: crushed human skull of someone who had died violently, crushed vipers, and crushed deer’s horn and ivory . . . And it was supposed to cure many things — apoplexy and lethargy are just two examples.
In fact, cannibalistic medicine was extremely popular in the Early Modern period, partly stemming from an ancient folk belief that “like treats like”, so skulls could help cure neurological and mental diseases, as well as headaches.
Fantastically, as I discovered whilst Googling, you can still buy “Goddard Drops,” in the form of silver polish (see image two). I am assuming the modern formula is skull free.
Source(s): _Urology News_, “Goddard’s Dropps, a Paradox of the 17C,” by Jonathan Goddard (! really — a distant ancestor?), Sept/Oct 2015 v19/6.
