placenta pill
n. A pill made from a woman's placenta and taken by that woman to treat certain postpartum conditions.
Examples
2012
Anne Ferguson, mother of two, is one of those women. She prepares placenta pills by boiling, slicing and dehydrating the placenta and then pureeing what’s left into a fine powder. The powder is capped in a small pill. This entire process is known as placenta encapsulation.
2012
The placenta pill was the brainchild of American Lynnea Shrief who formed the Independent Placenta Encapsulation Network two years ago.
2007 (earliest)
I don't need research to say that it's going to help me," says Nicole Dodson-Sands, 32, of Albuquerque, who suffered depression after her third son's birth six months ago and took placenta pills she made herself. "It's not something that was dangerous.
—Steve Friess, “Ingesting the placenta: Is it healthy for new moms?,” USA Today, June 19, 2007
Notes
The general rule is that, if something is wrong, the body should be fed with something corresponding to the malfunction or crisis. So, for hepatitis eat liver…for menstrual problems or difficult pregnancies, eat human placenta pills.
—James Kell, “Hot and cold in every room,” The Guardian, April 30, 1988