New Post! (or searching for the imaginary)

I didn't read any paper for this one. I tried, but I could not find anything even remotely like I had searched for. I tried tea out of a lucky tin mug, even out of mom cat mug (with a chip), but to no avail. I am forced to conclude that I do not have the necessary access or clever search terms needed to find records of the use of bones of the dead in medicine (excluding the boring sort that happens these days). The thought sparking this search occurred to me when reading about the Vatya burials. The comment about storage allowed for and interesting thought to bloom. I immediately pictured a sealed top being opened and the contents taken out for some use. At this point I drifted off into daydreamy speculation.

I started to invent a culture. This culture I invented saw a separation between life and a soul. The soul was (still is in this place in my head) one thing and life and body were together in another. (This was influenced by Winnie-ther-Pooh, where the name Pooh was taken from a swan when he left as they did not think he would want it anymore). When a person dies, their soul leaves but there is still some life left in the body. The life that was in the flesh has mostly gone, hence it's rotting away, but there is still some left in the bones. That they keep holding together for so long after death is evidence of it. The bodies are thus placed in accessible urns and the flesh is allowed to rot away. The urns are then sealed tight and kept for later use. Periodically, when one gets sick, the medicine practitioner goes to the urn of a relative, for compatibility's sake, and takes a portion of bone. The bone is then ground and used as a component in whatever preparation comes about.

Such a belief system seem pretty reasonable to me, as well as the use of bone in medicine probably being innocuous enough not be a deterrent, so I did some searching for it. First, I went through my head map of places where there is mummification, but nothing there hinted at use of the body as a material. "Post-mortem body use" (including postmortem and post mortem) brought up nothing of much interest, though it did teach me that there is a journal of objects. "Use of human bone in medicine" also brought up nothing outside of modern medicine. Nothing cultural or old. Taking another route, I set the search refinements to:

-Scholarly Journals
-Journal Articles
-Archaeology,

and entered "death medicine." 380 results isn't bad, but I narrowed it a bit further with include human remains and exclude medicine, legal. That brought it down to sixteen, but none of them were of particular use. The following caught my eye, so I gave it a quick read.

" 

The man, the woman and the hyoid bone: From archaeology to the burial practices of the Xiongnu people (Egyin Gol Valley, Mongolia)

by Murail, P and Crubezy, E and Martin, H and Haye, L and Bruzek, J and Giscard, PH andTurbat, T and Erdenebaatar, D"

(The internet is failing me and the birds are of no help whatsoever. They can hardly see beyond their morning seed.)

They think the woman may have been sacrificed, with her tongue and throat removed, for the man and buried with him. Unfortunately, it is only a preliminary report and they conclude that they don't know anything yet, except that the hyoid bone in the offerings box might be the woman's. Rather disappointing.

Back to the relevant bit, after a good bit more research, I decided to give up on the topic for now. I like the idea of looking for something that would be interesting if it existed, for it allows for one's imagination be a resource for things to learn about in reality. Otherwise, one is limited to the narrow field of one's experiences and chance encounter. If all (one) of those that read this encounter anything that is related to the topic, Mongolian burial practices, or anything interesting, the sending word of which would be much appreciated on this side.