The “rare and marvellous virtues” of some form of lotion made from human fat to relieve earache, tumours and sciatica pain are listed on a leaflet now at the Notarial Archives in Valletta more than 250 years after it was printed.

The 1756 leaflet advertising grasso umano as a cure for inflamed nerves and fever in the young and old, comes complete with instructions of how and when to apply the product.

The single folio states that the product was distributed by Felice Tadini di Cesena and includes a list of colleges that approved it.

The leaflet was last printed in Naples, but the marketing campaign made it to other parts of Italy, Vienna and Paris.

This is one of the curious items found stacked with thousands of other documents in a store room with the words Eddie’s Bar printed in red letters on the door. It is one of the rooms at the archives in St Christopher Street that is being painstakingly emptied of piles of history on paper.

See video. More at http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140824/local/-Every-day-is-Christmas-at-the-Notarial-Archives-.532902