Put that thing back where it came from or so help me...

Have you ever read an article that had you thinking "that sounds like a great way to get a curse" or maybe "please put that back before we are stuck in a dark age?" In today's Arbitrage Blog post, it will be that back to back - of course, in the spirit of Halloween. 

You may or may not have heard, but in 2006 what is thought to be the first prosthetic eye was discovered on a roughly 5,000 year old 6 foot tall woman discovered at a site in Iran. The artificial eye, found in the skull's left socket, is believed to be made of natural tar and animal fat, but the attention to detail in the eye is amazing. The blood vessels of the eye were recreated using golden wires measuring less than half a millimeter in diameter, and the eye was covered in a thin layer of gold and engraved with a central circle to represent the iris, which would give it a closer appearance to what an eye should look like. While it is not entirely clear why the woman needed the prosthetic eye, it is considered the first prosthetic eye in medical history, predating artificial eyes crafted in 2,000 B.C., according to the preliminary report. 

Honestly, we are just glad no one ate her. Yes, you read that correctly. Something you may not know is that for several hundred years, peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans routinely ingested remedies containing human bones, blood, and fat as medicine. This practice was so intense that mummies were stolen from Egyptian tombs, and skulls were taken from Irish burial sites for the purpose of consumption. There is an actual shortage of mummies due to this practice, but it doesn't stop there.

Blood was procured as fresh as possible, while it was still thought to contain the vitality of life. Hence the odd rumors surrounding certain royal figures who would allegedly bathe in blood or drink blood for immortality. Of course, medicine has improved leaps and bounds from that time so we can promise there are no human remains in your flu shot. The more you know!