Medieval scientists tried to create people with semen, blood and an animal womb
The question of how to create life goes back not only to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when the eponymous character used forbidden science to create life. Medieval scientists tried for centuries to create artificial miniature people using human semen mixed with other substances and implanted in the womb of an animal!
The homunculus is first mentioned in alchemical writings of the 16th century. However, this concept is likely older than these writings. The idea that fully formed people can be created in miniature dates back to the early Middle Ages (400 to 1000 AD) and is based in part on the Aristotelian belief that the spermatozoon is greater than the ovum in its contribution to the production of offspring.
The homunculus is a diminutive humanoid creature believed to have been created through magical alchemical means. 19th century engraving of Homunculus from Goethe’s Faust II ( public domain )
The earliest known account of the production of the homunculus is said to be found in an undated Arabic work called the Book of the Cow, supposedly written by the Greek philosopher Plato himself.
The materials needed for the creation of the homunculus include human semen, a cow or sheep, and animal blood, while the process includes artificial insemination of the cow/sheep, smearing the genitals of the inseminated animal with the blood of another animal and feeding it exclusively on the blood of another animal .
The pregnant animal would eventually give birth to a formless substance, which would then be placed in a powder made from ground sunstone (a mystical phosphorescent elixir), sulfur, magnet, green tutia (an iron sulfate), and the sap of a willow tree. white. When the stain begins to develop human skin, it will need to be placed in a large glass or lead container for three days. After that, he must be fed his decapitated mother’s blood for seven days before turning into a fully formed homunculus.
The 16th century alchemist Philip von Hohenheim, also known as Paracelsus, provides a different recipe for creating the homunculus in his work De Natura Rerum. This recipe uses a horse as a surrogate mother for the homunculus, and a man’s semen is left inside the animal’s womb to rot for forty days, before a little man is born.
Rather than use the homunculus to gain supernatural powers as some scientists had hoped, Paracelsus said the homunculus should be “trained with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and begins to show intelligence.” Paracelsus also claims that the procedure for making the homunculus is one of the greatest secrets revealed by God to mortals, perhaps suggesting that the creation of artificial life is divine wisdom that can be used by humans.
