Besides the conditions of society itself, under which family and friends had primary
responsibility for the care of the dying and the dead, memento mon were spread throughout culture: in the church's art, in morality plays like Everyman, in drinking songs, in the
ordinary artifacts of everyday life (e.g., in Austria a towel hanger portraying a
human form split down the middle: one half a beautiful young woman, the other a skeleton) To be sure, the specter of death (and judgment) has been used as a form of social control.