Homunculus
From the Latin Homunculus (little man), the term does not refer to a person of short stature but to a miniature humanoid that alchemists claimed to be able to create through the manipulation of inert matter.
Paracelsus is said to have used the term for the first time. He claimed to have created a false human being some 30 centimetres tall by combining sperm, bones, scraps of skin, and hair from some animal. This mixture, buried and fertilised with horse manure for forty days, would allow an embryo to grow.
Other recipes from medieval alchemists for fabricating a homunculus included gathering a mandrake root and feeding it with honey, blood, and milk until it came to life, or taking an egg from a black hen, making a small hole in the shell and replacing a section of the white with human sperm, then sealing the opening with virgin parchment and burying the egg, fertilising it with manure on the first day of the March lunar cycle; after thirty days, a tiny human being would hatch from the egg.
The homunculus, whatever the method by which it had been brought into being, would after its birth be unconditionally devoted to its creator, protecting him and keeping him safe from all danger.