Jacobean dramatist John Webster approached the taboo and the questionable with inexhaustible determination, plunging the contemporary reader into those dark, uncomfortable spaces we prefer to skirt around, never lingering for too long for fear of what we might uncover. For Webster, a preoccupation with the gruesome side of mortality manifests particularly strongly in his references to the practice of mummy, or corpse medicine (tinctures made from dead human flesh and bones), in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. Contrary to such a perceivably unthinkable medical practice being attributed to British “medieval” history, corpse medicine continued to be practiced well into the early modern period, where it reached its height of popularity…