medici medicine

i’ve been popping a lotta medicines lately: benzocaine for my meth teeth, blackmarket “kraken bile” which helps reduce the discolouration of my armpits, piperonyl butoxide to exterminate my pubic fleas, and reversitol for my prolapsed belly button. but none of my medications rivals the luxuriously idiotic remedy prescribed for the ailing lorenzo “il magnifico” de’ medici:

[His] end, in 1492, was certainly hastened by his medical treatment. [A] famous Milanese specialist…was called into consultation by [his] resident physician…but the case was hopeless. As though to mark the high human value of the patient’s life they lavishly prescribed a potion of crushed pearls and rubies!

gag! can you imagine convalescing all day in a puddle of your own humours riding a nauseous wave of feverish chills and abdominal pain and your doctor is like, “look bro, because you are like the biggest i-banker in all of europe, i’m gonna prescribe you something befitting your stature. what i’m gonna do is crush up some rubies, pulverize some pearls, mix ‘em together with the dopest chianti in all of florence and you are going to chug-a-lug until everything is rad again. capisce?”

i suppose that if i knew that my death was imminent, i would most likely skull the gritty concoction just for the thrills that it would give my coroner. he would be yanking out my entrails and weighing my gallbladder when all these bits of jewels would clangle to the floor like the payout from a slot machine. and my coroner would be like, “cha-ching” and dollar signs would roll into his eyes (euro signs if he is originally from europe) and he would cash in my organs and buy property in (the non-panhandle part of) florida and live the good life until one day when a swat team from the internal revenue service comes a’ knockin’.

sorry for moralizing, but if some idiot coroner ever sells my ruby-studded viscera, HE WILL GET WHAT IS COMING TO HIM. 

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sauce: the guilds of florence by edgecumbe staley (1906).