... both greater and smaller ... requires an ablution, according to
circumstances.... If a drop of urine touches the clothes, they must
be washed.” For fear that their garments have been so defiled, “the
Bokhariots frequently repeat their prayers stark naked.” ... The matter
of cleaning the body after an evacuation of any kind is defined by
religious ritual. “The law commands ‘Istindjah’ (removal), ‘istinkah’
(ablution), and ‘istibra’ (drying,)”—i. e., a small clod of earth is
first used for the local cleansing, then water at least twice, and
finally a piece of linen a yard in length.... In Turkey, Arabia, and
Persia all are necessary, and pious men carry several clods of earth
for the purpose in their turbans. “These acts of purification are also
carried on quite publicly in the bazaars, from a desire to make a parade
of their consistent piety.” Vambéry saw “a teacher give to his pupils,
boys and girls, instruction in the handling of the clod of earth, and
so forth, by way of experiment.”—(“Sketches of Central Asia,” Arminius
Vambéry, London, 1868, pp. 190, 191.)
Moslems urinate sitting down on their heels; “for a spray of urine would
make hair and clothes ceremonially impure.... After urining, the Moslem
wipes the os penis with one to three bits of stone, clay, or a handful of
earth, and he must perform Wuzu before he can pray.” Tournefort (“Voyage
au Levant,” vol. iii. p. 355) tells a pleasant story about certain
Christians at Constantinople who powdered with poivre d’Inde the stones
in a wall where the Moslems were in the habit of rubbing the os penis
by way of wiping.—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 326. Again,
in footnote to p. 229, vol. iii., he says, “Scrupulous Moslems scratch
the ground in front of their feet with a stick, to prevent spraying and
consequent defilement.”)
Marco Polo, in speaking of the Brahmins, says, “They ease themselves in
the sands, and then disperse it, hither and thither, lest it should breed
worms, which might die for want of food.”—(“Travels,” in Pinkerton, vol.
vii. pp. 164, 165.)
Speaking of the Mahometans, Tournefort says, “When they make water,
they squat down like women, for fear some drops of urine should fall
into their breeches. To prevent this evil, they squeeze the part very
carefully, and rub the head of it against the wall; and one may see the
stones worn in several places by this custom. To make themselves sport,
the Christians smear the stones sometimes with Indian pepper and the root
called ‘Calf’s-Foot,’ or some other hot plants, which frequently causes
an inflammation in such as happen to use the Stone. As the pain is very
smart, the poor Turks commonly run for a cure to those very Christian
surgeons who were the authors of all the mischief. They never fail to
tell them it is a very dangerous case, and that they should be obliged,
perhaps, to make an amputation. The Turks, on the contrary, protest and
swear that they have had no communication with any sort of woman that
could be suspected. In short, they wrap up the suffering part in a Linen
dipped in Oxicrat tinctured with a little Bole-Armenic; and this they
sell them as a great specifick for this kind of Mischief.”—(Tournefort,
“A Voyage to the Levant,” London, 1718, vol. ii. p. 49.)
“Some of their doctors believe Circumcision was not taken from the Jews,
but only for the better observing the Precept of Cleanness, by which they
are forbidden to let any Urine fall upon their flesh. And it is certain
that some drops are always apt to hang upon the Præputium, especially
among the Arabians, with whom that skin is naturally much longer than in
other men.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 46.)
The Mahometans have “Two ablutions, the great and small.... The first
is of the whole body, but this is enjoined only to” those “who have let
some urine drop upon their flesh when they have made water.” This he
enumerates among “The Three great Defilements of the Mussulmans.”—(Idem,
vol. ii. p. 48.)
John Leo says of those “Arabians which inhabit in Barborie, or upon the
Coast of the Mediterranean Sea.... Their churches they frequent very
diligently, to the end they may repeat certain prescript and formall
Praiers, most sperstitiously perswading themselves that the same day
wherein they make their praiers, it is not lawfull for them to wash
certaine of their members, when, as at other times, they will wash their
whole bodies.”—(“Observations of Africa,” in Purchas’s “Pilgrims,” vol.
ii. p. 766.)
“Les lieux destinés à la décharge de la nature ... sont toujours
propres.... Les Turcs ne sont point assis comme nous quand ils sont en
ces lieux-là, mais ils s’accroupissent sur le trou qui n’est relevé de
terre que d’un demy-pied ou d’un peu plus.... Les Turcs et tous les
Mahométans en général ne se servent point de papier à de vils usages, et
quand ils vont à ces sortes de lieux ils portent un pot plein d’eau pour
se laver.”—(J. B. Tavernier, “Relation de l’intérieur du Sérail du Grand
Seigneur,” Paris, 1675, p. 194.)
“Nunquam Turcas seu papyro pro anistergio uti, sed pro magno ipsis
delicti habere, et quidem ideo, quia fortasse Nomen Dei ipsi inscriptum
sit vel inscribi possit, refert Thevenot, Itinerar. Orient. lib. 1,
cap. 33, p. m. 60. Et juxta A. Bubeqv., Ep. 3, p. m. 184, Turcæ alvum
excrementis non exonerant quin aquam secum portant, qua partes obscenas
lavent.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 796.)
Rabelais has written a characteristic chapter on the expedients to
which men resorted before the general introduction of paper for use in
latrines; see his chapter xiii., “Anisterges.”
“Nothing could be more filthy than the state of the palace and all the
lanes leading up to it. It was well, perhaps, that we were never expected
to go there; for without stilts and respirators it would have been
impracticable, such is the filthy nature of the people. The king’s cows
even are kept in his palace enclosure, the calves actually entering the
hut, where, like a farmer, Kamresi walks among them, up to his ankles in
filth, and inspecting them, issues his orders concerning them.”—(Speke,
“Nile,” London, 1863, vol. ii. p. 526, describing the palace of King
Kamresi, at the head of the Nile.)
“Shortly afterwards, a disturbance arose between some of my people
and the natives, owing to one of my men who retired into a patch of
cultivated ground having been discovered there by the owner. He demanded
compensation for his land having been defiled, and had to be appeased
by a present of cloth. If they were only half as particular about their
dwellings as their fields, it would be a good thing, for their villages
are filthy in the extreme, and would be even worse but for the presence
of large numbers of pigs which act as scavengers.”—(“Across Africa,”
Cameron, London, 1877, vol. ii. p. 200.)
“I was disgusted with the custom which prevailed in the houses like that
in which I was lodged, of using the terrace as a sort of closet; and I
had great difficulty in preventing my guide, Amer el Walati, who still
stayed with me and made the terrace his usual residence, from indulging
in the filthy practice.”—(Dr. Henry Barth, “Travels in North and Central
Africa,” Philadelphia, 1859, p. 429, description of Timbuctoo.)
“They (the Tartars) hold it not good to abide long in one place, for
they will say when they will curse any of their children, ‘I would
thou mightest tarry so long in one place that thou mightest smell
thine own dung as the Christians do;’ and this is the greatest curse
they have.”—(“Notes of Richard Johnson, servant to Master Richard
Chancellor,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 62. “Voyages of Sir Hugh Willoughby
and others to the Northern parts of Siberia and Russia.”)
The Tungouses of Siberia told Sauer that “they knew no greater curse than
to live in one place like a Russian or Yakut, where filth accumulates and
fills the inhabitants with stench and disease.”—(Sauer, “Expedition to
the North parts of Russia,” London, 1802, p. 49.)
“It is a common obloquy that the Turks (who still keep the order of
Deuteronomy for their ordure) do object to Christians that they are
poisoned with their own dung.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 115.)
“The aspect of the village itself is very neat, the ground being often
swept before the chief houses; but very bad odors abound, owing to
there being under each house a stinking mud-hole, formed by all waste
liquids and refuse matter poured down through the floor above. In most
other things, Malays are tolerably clean—in some scrupulously so—and
this peculiar and nasty custom, which is almost universal, arises, I
have little doubt, from their having been originally a water-loving and
maritime people, who built their houses on posts in the water, and only
migrated gradually inland, first up the rivers and streams, and then into
the dry interior.
“Habits which were once so convenient and cleanly, and which had been so
long practised as to become a part of the domestic life of the nation,
were of course continued when the first settlers built their houses
inland; and, without a regular system of drainage, the arrangement of the
villages is such that any other system would be very inconvenient.”—(“The
Malay Archipelago,” Alfred Russell Wallace, London, 1869, vol. i. p. 126.)
Forster speaks of “an intolerable stench which arises from the many tanks
dispersed in the different quarters of the town, whose waters and borders
are appropriated to the common use of the inhabitants” (“Sketch of the
Mythology of the Hindoos,” George Forster, London, 1785, p. 7); but, he
adds, “The filth alone which is indiscriminately thrown into the street.”
“There are some Guai, which ... dawbe ouer their houses with Oxe-dung....
They touch not their meat with the left hand, but use that hand only to
wipe and other unclean offices.”—(Marco Polo, in Purchas, vol. i. p. 105.)
“Having list at any time to ease themselves, the filthy lousels had not
the manners to withdraw themselves further from us than a Beane can be
cast. Yea, like vile slouens, they would lay their tails in our presence,
while they were yet talking with us.”—(Friar William de Rubruquis,
the Franciscan, sent by Saint Louis, of France (King Louis IX.), as
ambassador to the Grand Khan of Tartary in A.D. 1235,—in Purchas, vol. i.
p. 11.)
“A great magnifico of Venice, being ambassador in France, and hearing a
noble person was come to speak with him, made him stay till he had untied
his points; and when he was new set upon his stool, sent for the nobleman
to come to him at that time, as a very special favor.”—(Harington,
“Ajax,” p. 30.)
“The French courtesy I spake of before came from the Romans; since in
Martial’s time, they shunned not one another’s company at Monsieur Ajax.”
(“Ajax” as used by Harington, is a play upon the words “a Jakes.”)—(See
Harington, “Ajax,” p. 38.)
Carl Lumholtz stated to the author that the Australians urinate in the
presence of strangers, and while talking to them.
“Il n’est fonction physiologique ou besoin naturel qu’ils aient gêne à
satisfaire en public. ‘Une coutume n’a rien d’indécent quand elle est
universelle,’ remarque philosophiquement un de nos voyageurs.”—(“Les
Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 71,—“Les Inoits Occidentaux,”
quoting Dall.)
Padre Gumilla says that the Indians on the Orinoco have the same custom
as the Jews and Turks have of digging holes with a hoe and covering
up their evacuations. (See “Orinoco,” Madrid, 1741, p. 109.) No such
cleanliness can be attributed to the Indians of the Plains of North
America or the nomadic tribes of the Southwest.
“And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou
wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back
and cover that which cometh from thee.
“For the Lord, thy God, walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver
thee and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy
camp be holy; that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from
thee.”—(Deuteronomy xxiii.)
Speaking of the Essenes, Josephus informs us: “On the seventh day ...
they will not even remove any vessel out of its place, nor perform the
most pressing necessities of nature. Nay, on other days they dig a small
pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when
they first are admitted among them), and, covering themselves round with
their garment, that they may not affront the divine rays of light, they
ease themselves into that pit. After which they put the earth that was
dug out again into that pit.
“And even this they do only in the most lonesome places, which they
choose for this purpose. And it is a rule with them to wash themselves
afterwards, as if it were a defilement.”—(“Wars of the Jews,” edition of
New York, 1821, p. 241.)
“The Rabbinical Jews believed that every privy was the abode of an
unclean spirit of this kind” (i. e., an excrement-eating god), “which
could be inhaled with the breath, and descending into the lower parts of
the body, lodge there, and thus like the Bhutas of India, bring suffering
and disease.” (Personal letter from John Frazer, Esq., LL.D., Sydney, New
South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889.)
In descriptions of Jerusalem, we read of the “Dung Gate,” by or through
which, all the fecal matter of the city had to be carried.—(See
Harington, “Ajax,” p. 87.)
“When an aborigine obeys a call of nature, he always carries a pointed
instrument with which to turn up the ground, so that his fecal excreta
may be hidden from the keen vision of the vagabond Bangals.” (“Bangals”
are the native witches or their parallels.)—(“Aborigines of Victoria and
Riverina,” A. Brough-Smith, vol. i. p. 165.)
The same custom has been ascribed to the Dyaks of Borneo. It is by no
means certain that this custom had its origin in any suggestion of
cleanliness; on the contrary, it is fully as probable that the idea was
to avert the maleficence of witchcraft by putting out of sight material
the possession of which would give witches so much power over the former
owner.
Mr. John F. Mann confirms from personal observation that the natives of
Australia observed the injunction given to the Hebrews in Deuteronomy.
“From personal observation, I can state that the natives, all over the
country, as a rule, are particular in this matter, but it was many years
before I ascertained the reasons for this care. Sorcery and witchcraft
exist in every tribe; each tribe has its ‘Kooradgee’ or medicine-man; the
natives imagine that any death, accident, or pain, is caused by the evil
influence of some enemy. These ‘Kooradgees’ have the power not only of
inflicting pain, but of causing all kinds of trouble. They are particular
to always carry about with them, in a net bag, a ‘charm’ which is most
ordinarily made of rock crystal, human excrement, and kidney fat. If one
of these medicine-men can obtain possession of some of the excrement of
his intended victim, or some of his hair, in fact anything belonging
to his person, it is the most easy thing in the world to bewitch
him.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., Neutral Bay, New South
Wales.)
“The disposal of excreta is not so much for the sake of cleanliness
as to prevent any human substance from falling into the hands of an
enemy.”—(Idem.)
Schurig devotes a long paragraph to an exposition of the views
entertained by learned physicians in regard to the effects to be expected
from the deposition of the fecal matter upon plants that were either
noxious or beneficial to the human organism; in the former case, the
worst results were to be dreaded from sympathy; in the latter, only
the most salutary. Rustics, in his opinion, enjoyed better health than
the inhabitants of cities for the very peculiar reason that the latter
evacuated in latrines and in the act were compelled to inhale the
deleterious gases emanating from the foul deposits already accumulated;
whereas the countryman could go out to a comfortable place in the fields
and evacuate without the danger and inconvenience to which the urban
population were subject.
But he takes occasion to warn his readers that they must be careful not
to defecate upon certain malignant herbs which might be the cause of
virulent dysentery. “Præterea cavendum est ne feces supra herbas malignas
exulcerantes sive violenter purgantes deponamus hinc enim causa latente
dysenteria periculosa inducitur quæ vix nisi herbis prorsus putrefactis
ullis medicamentis cedit.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 792, paragraph 66.)
Colonel Garrick Mallery, United States Army, reports having met with
people of respectability and intelligence in the mountainous parts of
Virginia who hold the same views upon the subject of latrines.
“Ye great ones, why will ye disdain
To pay your tribute on the plain?
Why will you place in lazy pride?
When from the homeliest earthenware
Are sent up offerings more sincere
Than where the haughty Duchess locks
Her silver vase in cedar box.”
(Dean Swift.)
“Si une bhikshuni jette des excréments sur l’herbe croissante, c’est un
pacittiya, etc.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill,
Paris, 1884. Soc. Asiatique.) These bhikshuni are the nuns of Thibet, and
the word “pacittiya” means a sin.
The following beastly practices are related of the Capuchins:
“Tunica replicata, absque impedimento cacat et mingit, anum fune
abstergit.”—(Fosbroke, “British Monachism,” quoting “Specimen
Monchologiæ.”)
There are no latrines of any kind in Angola, West Africa; the negroes
believe that it is very vile to frequent the same place for such
purposes. They do not cover up their excrements, but deposit them out
in the bushes. Sometimes it happens that a man will defecate inside the
house, in which case he will be laughed at all the rest of his life, and
be called “D’Kombe,” which is a kind of leopard.—(“Muhongo,” an African
boy, translation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
The following is the epigram of Martial “ad Furium”:—
“A te sudor abest, abest saliva,
Mucusque et pituita mala nasi,
Hunc ad munditiem adde mundiorem,
Quod culus tibi purior salillo est,
Nec toto decies cacas in anno;
Atque id durius est faba et lapillis,
Quod tu si manibus teras fricesque,
Non unquam digitum inquinare possis.”
The Hon. John F. Finerty called public attention to the fact that in the
city of Mexico, ten years ago, beggars of the vilest caste invariably
made a practice of defecating upon the marble steps of the main entrance
to the grand cathedral.
Dr. J. H. Porter states that in some parts of the Mexican republic the
women come out in front of their doors to urinate; the author has seen
them doing this, and also defecating in the streets of Tucson, at that
time the capital of Arizona; he has seen the same practice in several
of the smaller hamlets of that territory and Sonora and New Mexico, but
always at night.
The Mexicans living on our side of the border never constructed privies
for their dwellings, a custom perhaps derived from Spain, where we have
seen that even in Madrid the construction of such conveniences was
unknown until after the middle of the last century.
POSTURE IN URINATION.
The Apache men in micturating always squat down, while the women,
on the contrary, always stand up. Giraldus Cambrensis says of the
Irish: “Præterea, viri in hac gente sedendo, mulieres stando, urinas
emittunt.”—(“Opera,” edited by James Dimock, and published under the
direction of the Master of the Rolls, London, 1867, vol. v. p. 172.)
The author has seen an Italian woman of the lower class urinating in
this manner in the street near San Pietro in Vinculis, Rome, in open
daylight, in 1883.
French women were to be seen in the streets of Paris urinating while
standing over gutters.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
“Among the Turks, it is an heresy, to p—s standing.”—(Harington, “Ajax,”
in the chapter “Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 43.)
The Egyptian “women stand up when they make water, but the men sit
down.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 35.)
Mr. Carl Lumholtz (author of “Among Cannibals,” New York, 1889) also
stated that the Australian men squatted while urinating; the women
generally stood erect, but upon this point he was not quite sure.
“Mantegazza, in his ‘Gli amori degli uomini,’ describing the operation of
splitting the male urethra, practised among Australian tribes, remarks:
‘To urinate, they squat down like our women, lifting the penis slightly.
It appears that, on the contrary, Australian women urinate standing.’
(He is apparently quoting from Michluchs-Maclay.) Among the Kaffirs,
etc., at the Cape, the usual practice, I understand, does not differ
from ours.”—(Personal letter from Havelock Ellis, Esq., editor of the
Contemporary Science series, dated Red Hill, Surrey, Oct. 8, 1889. From
this gentleman there was also received much matter of a most valuable
character, from the early English dramatists, travellers, and others,
which has been already quoted from these sources direct.)
“Behold the strutting Amazonian whore!
She stands in guard, with her right foot before:
Her coat tucked up, and all her motions just,
She stamps, and then cries, ‘Hah!’ at every thrust.
But laugh to see her, tired from many a bout,
Call for the pot, and like a man piss out.”
(Juvenal, Satire VI., Dryden’s translation.)
The Thibetan nuns are forbidden to adopt certain postures, as are the
monks.
“110, 111. Ne pas se soulager debout, n’étant pas malade, est une
règle qu’on doit apprendre.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W.
Rockhill, Paris, 1884, Soc. Asiatique.)
“Æsop, that great man, saw his master make water as he walked. ‘What!’
said he; ‘must we, then, dung as we walk?’”—(Planudus, quoted by
Montaigne, “Essays,” Hazlitt’s translation, New York, 1859, vol. iii. p.
467.)
The lazzaroni of Naples are more filthy in all these respects than the
wildest Maori, Bedouin, or Apache Indian, as the author can assert from
disagreeable personal observation.
“It can be justly said that the inhabitants of Cadiack, if we except the
women during their monthly periods and their lying-in, have not the least
sense of cleanliness. They will not go a step out of the way for the most
necessary purposes of nature; and vessels are placed at their very doors
for the reception of the urinous fluid, which are resorted to alike by
both sexes.”—(Lisiansky, “Voyages,” p. 214, quoted also in Bancroft’s
“Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 81.)
“Par suite des ordures et du manque d’air, l’intérieur des huttes répand
une puanteur presque insupportable.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus,
Paris, 1885, “Les Inoits Orientaux.”)
Old women in Switzerland urinate standing, especially in cold
weather.—(Rev. Mr. Chatelain, himself a native of Switzerland, and now a
Protestant missionary in Angola, Western Africa.)
The men of Angola, Africa, urinate standing; the women of the same tribes
urinate standing, as a general thing, although there are some exceptions.
It should be remembered that the Jesuits have had missions in that region
for two hundred years, and some effect upon the ideas of the people, due
to these ministrations as well as to the occupancy of the country by the
Portuguese, should be perceptible.
Gómara says of the Indians of Nicaragua: “Mean todos do les toma la
gana—ellos en cuclillas y ellas en pie.”—(“Historia de las Indias,” p.
283.)
The Mojaves of the Rio Colorado follow the same rule as the Apaches.
In Ounalashka, the houses are divided by partitions. “Each partition
has a particular wooden reservoir for the urine, which is used both for
dyeing the grass and for washing the hands, but after cleansing the
latter in this manner, they rince them in pure water.”—(Sarytschew, in
“Phillip’s Voyages,” London, 1807, vol. vi. p. 72.)
Dr. Porter communicates the information that he has often heard the
Arctic explorer Dr. Hayes speak of the propensity of the Eskimo of the
east coast of Greenland to use the trench to the hut as a latrine. He
tried in vain to prevent this practice among his Eskimo attendants, but
believed that they had a pride among themselves in leaving conspicuous
traces of their presence.
For urinals among the Eskimo, see also notes from Egede, Egede Saabye,
and Richardson, under “Industries,” in this volume.
“Neither is it lawfull for any one to rise from the table to make
water; but for this purpose the daughter of the house, or another maid
or woman, attendeth always at the table, watchfull if any one beckon to
them; to him that beckoneth shee gives the chamber-pott under the table
with her owne hands; the rest in the meanwhile grunt like swine least
any noise bee heard. The water being poured out, hee washeth the bason,
and offereth his services to him that is willing; and he is accounteth
uncivill who abhorreth this fashion.”—(Dittmar Bleecken’s “Voyage to
Iceland and Greenland,” A.D. 1565, in Purchas, vol. i. pp. 636-647.)
Steller’s account shows that in his time the people of Kamtchatka had no
regular water-closets.