Juice of Life: The Symbolic and Magic Significance of Blood

Piero Camporesi

“From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, bodily fluids or ‘humours’—whether blood, semen or phlegm—obsessed the educated and ignorant alike. These ‘elixirs’ were believed to possess magical powers guaranteeing long life, sexual potency, intellectual insight (particularly in women) and even holiness. These fluids were drawn from animals and even from human beings, or in visions and apparitions from the ‘sacred heart’ of Jesus or the eucharistic wafer. From birth to death, the sight and smell of blood were part of the moral pilgrimage of whole societies. All the organs of the body produced distilled ‘liquids of wondrous strength,’ and at the center the human heart pulsated, sending blood through all the canals of the city of the body. Camporesi, a specialist in popular culture from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, tells this fascinating story.”

Publisher: Continuum
Hardback: 139 pages