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While many executioners practiced their medicinal trade quite legally, there were others that didn’t. Executioners were often challenged by more reputable surgeons and doctors, and many broadened the scope of their practices. It’s been well documented that Pierre Forez, an executioner at Lille, France, also dabbled in the sale of “hanged man’s grease” for various medical practices.
his hanged man’s grease (also called “poor sinner’s fat”) was fat taken from the corpses of hanged men. It was believed to work as a salve when applied to limbs suffering from lameness or restricted blood flow, arthritic joints, and it even aided in the mending of broken bones. It was, of course, a commodity that executioners had access to in quantity, and allowed many of them to work as pharmacists and apothecaries as well as doctors and surgeons.
Other body parts salvaged from executed criminals were also used in medicinal practices of the era. Ground human skull was mixed into drinks for those suffering from epilepsy, and it was believed that “poor sinner’s blood” could also cure the seizures of epilepsy. Human skin was tanned and made into belts to be worn by pregnant women to ease labor pains or chokers to be worn for the prevention of goiters.
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In a 1662 manifesto, physician Johann Joachim Becher of Bavaria wrote that all apothecaries should keep an ample supply of no less than 23 types of human by-products in stock for the creation of different remedies. One of these—and perhaps the most important—was mummy, defined as the “menstruation of the dead,” or the blood of corpses.
The executioner as doctor was one of the few professionals who were allowed to cross the boundaries of the social hierarchy without stigma. Lower-class individuals often went to the executioner for his knowledge of herbal medicine and ability to set bones, and it wasn’t unheard of for members of the aristocracy to appoint executioners to high-ranking positions—in a medical capacity, of course. King Frederick I of Prussia appointed an executioner from Berlin as his personal physician in 1711, and it was his grandson, Frederick the Great, that issued a decree making the executioner’s right to practice medicine legal.

Many times, the families of executioners would learn from them and also practice medicine. Commonly, wives of executioners would serve as midwives, and sons would go on to assist their fathers as skinners.

"Сало бедняка", толчёный череп и порошок мумии - наше всё.