smeared with filth and ashes.”—(“Native Tribes of South Australia,”
Adelaide, 1879, p. 75, received through the kindness of the Royal
Society, New South Wales, Sydney, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“In the burial ceremonies, the women of many tribes besmear or plaster
their heads with excrement and pipe-clay.”—(Personal letter from John F.
Mann, Esq., dated Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales.)
“When a child dies, women who carried it in their hands must throw their
jackets away if the child has urinated on them. This is part of the
custom that everything that has come in contact with a dead person must
be destroyed.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 612.)
The Kootenays of Canada have a ceremonial aspersion after funerals. “When
those who have buried the body return, they take a thorn bush, dip it
into a kettle of water, and sprinkle the doors of all lodges.”—(“Report
on the Northwest Tribes of Canada,” Dr. Franz Boas, to the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting,
1889, p. 46.)
Describing Italian funerals, Blunt says: “When the procession has reached
the church, the bier is set down in the nave, and the officiating priest,
in the course of the appointed service, sprinkles the body with holy
water three times,—a rite in all probability ensuing from that practised
by the Romans, of thrice sprinkling the bystanders with the same
element.”—(“Vestiges,” p. 183.)
In the Tonga Islands, there are two principal personages,—Tooitonga and
Veachi,—who are believed to be the living representatives of powerful
gods. Upon the death of Tooitonga, certain ceremonies are practised,
among which: “The men now approach the mount, i. e., the funeral mound,
it being dark, and, if the phrase be allowable, perform the devotions
to Cloacina, after which they retire. As soon as it is daylight the
following morning, the women of the first rank, wives and daughters of
the greatest chiefs, assemble with their female attendants, bringing
baskets, one holding one side and one the other, advancing two and
two, with large shells to clear up the depositions of the preceding
night, and in this ceremonious act of humiliation, no female of the
highest consequence refuses to take her part. Some of the mourners in
the ‘fytoca’ generally come out to assist; so that, in a very little
while, the place is made perfectly clean. This is repeated the fourteen
following nights, and as punctually cleaned away by sunrise every
morning. No persons but the agents are allowed to be witnesses of these
extraordinary ceremonies; at least, it would be considered highly
indecorous and irreligious to be so. On the sixteenth day, early in the
morning, the same females again assemble; but now they are dressed up
in the finest ‘gnatoo,’ and most beautiful Hamao mats, decorated with
ribbons, and with wreaths of flowers round their necks; they also bring
new baskets ornamented with flowers, and little brooms, very tastefully
made. Thus equipped they approach, and act as if they had the same task
to do as before, pretending to clear away the dirt, though no dirt is
now there, and take it away in their blankets.... The natives themselves
used to regret that the filthy part of these ceremonies was necessary to
be performed, ... and that it was the duty of the most exalted nobles,
even of the most delicate females of rank, to perform the meanest and
most disgusting offices, rather than that the sacred grounds in which he
was buried should remain polluted.” (Dillon’s “Expedition in Search of La
Perouse,” London, 1829, vol. ii. pp. 57-59.) Dillon says that this “must
be considered a religious rite, standing upon the foundation of very
ancient customs.”—(Idem, p. 57.)
XXXIX.
MYTHS.
“All peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain
customs.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 128.)
“Myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what
their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers
acted have long been forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt
to reconcile old custom with new reason; to find a sound theory for an
absurd practice.”—(Idem, p. 62.)
The Australians have a myth of the Creation of Man; it is given in Latin:
“Ningorope lætitiæ plena in latrina lutum amœne erubescens cernebat; hoc
in hominis figuram formabat, quæ tactu divæ motum vitalem sumebat et donc
ridebat.”—(“Aborig. of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 425.)
This myth is given in English from another authority, on next page of
this volume.
The Creation Myth of the Australians relates that the god “Bund-jil
oceanum creavit minctione per plures dies in terrarum orbem. Bullarto
Bulgo magnam lotii copiam indicat.” (Idem, vol. i. p. 429.) (Bund-jil
created the ocean by urinating for many days upon the orb of the earth.)
The natives say that the god being angry “Bullarto Bulgo” upon the earth.
Bullarto Bulgo indicates a great flow of urine.
The same myth has already been given from Andrew Lang, under “Ordeals and
Punishments.”
In the cosmogonical myths of the islanders of Kadiack, it is related that
the first woman, “by making water, produced seas.”—(Lisiansky, “Voy.
round the World,” London, 1814, p. 197.)
“In the fourth story” (i. e., stories told by the Kalmucks and Mongols)
“it is under the excrement of a cow that the enchanted gem, lost by the
daughter of the king, is found.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, p. 129.)
In the mythic lore of the Hindus, the god Utanka sets out on a journey,
protected by Indra. “On his way, he meets a gigantic bull, and a
horseman who bids him, if he would succeed, eat the excrement of the
bull; he does so, rinsing his mouth afterwards.”—(Idem, p. 80.)
Further on we learn that Utanka was told “the excrement of the bull was
the ambrosia which made him immortal in the kingdom of the serpents.”
(Idem, pp. 81, 95.) Here we have the analogue of the use of excrement and
urine in Europe to baffle witches, and of the drinking of the Siberian
girl’s urine, which in all probability was proffered to the guest as an
assurance that no witchcraft was in contemplation, or else to baffle the
witches, much as, in England, bridal couples urinated through the wedding
ring.
The Chinese have a mythical animal which has been identified with the
Tapir; it is called the Mih; to it they ascribe the power to eat iron
and copper. “For this reason the urine of this animal is prescribed when
a person has swallowed iron or copper; it will, in a short time, change
them into water.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1839, vol. vii. pp. 46,
47.)
“The story of Joa lo Praube is repeated almost word for word in the
adventures of the Kamtchatkan god ‘Kutka;’ or, to be more exact, there
is a myth in which it is narrated that that god had a great many tricks
played upon him, in one of which he runs sticks into his gluteal
region.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
This god Kutka was a great sodomite, and in some points, resembled the
anti-natural god of the Sioux.
Speaking of the god “Aidowedo,” the serpent in the Rainbow as believed by
the Negroes of Guinea, Father Baudin says: “He who finds the excrement of
this serpent is rich forever, for with this talisman he can change grains
of corn into shells which pass for money.” (“Fetichism,” Rev. F. Baudin,
New York, 1885, p. 47.) He goes on to narrate a very amusing tale to the
effect that the negroes got the idea that a prism in his possession gave
him the power to bring the Rainbow down into his room at will, and that
he could obtain unlimited quantities of the precious excrement.
Another myth of the foolish god “Kutka” represents him as falling in love
with his own excrement and wooing it as his bride; he takes it home in
his sleigh, puts it in his bed, and is only restored to a sense of his
absurd position by the vile smell.—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Possibly all this may be a myth to explain or to represent the state of
mind into which those who indulged in the “muck-a-moor” were thrown, but
even this interpretation seems far-fetched.
Sir John Moore, it is stated, fell in love with his own urine, and we
have read from Montaigne the story of the French gentleman who preserved
his egestæ to show to his visitors.
The tribes of the Narinyeri, Encounter Bay, South Australia, have
a legend that difference in language was caused when certain of
their ancestors “ate the contents of the intestines of the goddess
‘Wurruri.’”—(“Nat. tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 60,
received through the kindness of the Roy. Soc., Sydney, N. S. Wales, T.
B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
In the same chapter we are told of the omission of one or two ceremonies
“which were too indecent for general readers” (p. 61).
In the “Bachiller de Salamanca,” Le Sage has a hero whose misfortunes
would lead us to suspect that Le Sage had been reading of some of the
doings of the Kamtchatkan god “Kutka,” who, among the numerous pranks
played upon him by his enemies, the mice, suffered the ignominy of having
“a bag made of fish-skin attached to his orificium ani while he lay sound
asleep. On his way home Kutka desired to relieve nature, but was much
surprised, on leaving, at the insignificant deposit notwithstanding he
had freed himself of so great a burden.
“Surprised at his cleanliness, he narrated the circumstances to Clachy
(his wife), who soon discovered the true state of affairs, and pulling
off Kutka’s pantaloons, detached the heavily laden bag with great
laughters.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
In the 14th century farce of “Le Muynier,” the Miller has absorbed some
of the popular ideas of his day, professed by certain philosophers of the
time. He believes that, at the moment of death, the soul of a man escapes
by the anus, and warns the priest to absolve him from his sins, saying:
“Mon ventre trop se détermine. Helas! Je ne scay que je face; ostez-vous.”
The priest answers: “Ha! sauf vostre grace!”
Then the miller remarks: “Ostez-vous, car je me conchye.”
The wife and the priest pull the sick man to the edge of the bed and
place him in such a position that if the doctrine of soul-departure by
the anus be true, they may witness the miller’s final performance. The
phenomenon of rectal flatulence is now observed, when suddenly, to the
consternation of the wife and priest, a demon appears and placing a sack
over the dying miller’s anus, catches the rectal gas and flies off in
sulphurous vapor.—(“Med. in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 84, translated
from “Le Moyen Age Médical,” by Dupouy.)
It was generally believed in Europe that the eggs of the Basilisk
or Cockatrice could only be hatched by a toad or by the heat of a
manure-pile.—(See “Mélusine,” Paris, January-February, 1890, p. 20.)
Ireland has been called the “Urinal of the Planets” from the constant
and copious rains which visit it.—(See Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang,”
London, 1811.)
The Apaches have a myth, or story, the analogue of the “Fee-fo-Fum” of
our own childhood; but the giant, instead of smelling the blood of an
Englishman, in the words given in Spanish, “huele la cagada.”
The Chinese myth concerning the wonderful digestive powers of the “Mih”
has its counterpart in the ancient belief that the same power was
possessed by the Ostrich.
“The Wangwana and Wanyumbo informed me ... that if the elephant observes
the excrement of the rhinoceros unscattered, he waxes furious, and
proceeds instantly in search of the criminal, when woe befall him if
he is sulky, and disposed to battle for the proud privilege of leaving
his droppings as they fall. The elephant, in that case, breaks off a
heavy branch of a tree, or uproots a stout sapling like a boat’s mast,
and belabors the unfortunate beast until he is glad to save himself by
hurried flight. For this reason, the natives say, the rhinoceros always
turns round and thoroughly scatters what he has dropped.”—(“Through the
Dark Continent,” Henry M. Stanley, New York, 1878, vol. i. p. 477.)
“In other myths, in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates man from his body,
or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes
a man, etc.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887,
vol. ii. p. 248. See also under chapter on the Mistletoe, p. 99 of this
volume.)
“Moffatt is astonished at the South African notion that the sea was
accidentally created by a girl.” (“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Lang,
vol. i. p. 91.) Perhaps this tale belongs to our series of myths.
“The Encounter Bay people have another myth, which might have been
attributed by Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it
attribute to mankind.”—(Idem, Lang, vol. i. p. 170.)
“As the mythology and traditions of other heathen nations are more or
less immoral and obscene, so it is with these people.” (“Nat. Trib. of S.
Australia,” p. 200.) “Mingarope having retired upon a natural occasion
was highly pleased with the red color of her excrement, which she began
to mould into the form of a man, and tickling it, it showed signs of life
and began to laugh.”—(Idem, p. 201.)
The myth relating that differences in language sprung up after certain of
the tribes had eaten the excrement of the goddess “Wurruri” is given on
p. 268; it has been recited in this volume on a previous page. There was
another god, named Nurunduri, of whom the story is told that he once made
water in a certain spot, “from which circumstance the place is called
Kainjamin (to make water.)”—(Idem, p. 205.)
Among the Bilgula of British Columbia, there is a myth which relates that
a certain stump of a tree was a cannibal and had captured a girl. Once,
when he had gone out to fish for halibut, “he ordered his urinary vessel
to call him if the girl should make an attempt to escape. When she did
so, the vessel cried, ‘Rota-gota, Rota-gota, gota.’”—(Personal letter
from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
There is a riddle among the Kamtchatkans in regard to human feces: “My
father has numerous forms and dresses; my mother is warm and thin and
bears every day. Before I am born, I like cold and warmth, but after I
am born, only cold. In the cold I am strong, and in the warmth, weak; if
cold, I am seen far; if warm, I am smelled far.”—(Steller, translated by
Bunnemeyer.)
Among some of the Eskimo tribes the Raven is represented as talking to
its own excrement and consulting it; excrement occurs frequently in their
legends.—(Personal letter from Dr. Boas, as above.)
From the preceding paragraph we see that the Eskimo must have formerly,
even if they do not now, consulted excrement in their Divination; the
extract from Gilder, given under “Mortuary Ceremonies” confirms this
hypothesis.
The people of Kamtchatka believed that rain was the urine of Billutschi,
one of their gods, and of his genii; but, after this god has urinated
enough, he puts on a new dress made in the form of a sack, and provided
with fringes of red seal hair, and variously colored strips of leather.
These represent the origin of the Rainbow.
The Kamtchatkan god Kutka was once pursued by enemies, but saved himself
“by ejecting from his bowels all kinds of berries, which detained his
pursuers.”
The myths of the Kamtchatkans offer a parallel to the stories that the
presents of the devil always turned into dross. There is the story of the
god Kutka, upon whom, as we have seen, many tricks were played. In one
the food with which he supplied himself “turned into peat, rotten wood,
and piss.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
“The Central Eskimo believe that rain is the urine of a deity.”—(See “The
Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 600.)
“Amber (as some thinke) is made of whale’s dung.”—(John Leo, “Observ. of
Africa,” in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 772.)
Ambergris was anciently supposed to be the dung of the whale or other
monster of the sea.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
This view about the origin of amber was not credited by Avicenna. “Ambram
non esse stercus animalis maris.”—(Vol. i. p. 273, b10.)
In the liturgy of the hill tribes of the Nilgherris, it is related—
“Mada a uriné dans le feu.”
“Mada a fienté à la face du soleil.”
—(Quoted in “Les Primitifs,” p. 245.)
Réclus, in the same work, gives a fragment of an Orphic song: “Glorieux
Jupiter, le plus grand des Olympiens, toi qui te plais dans les crottins
des brebis, qui aimes à t’enfoncer dans les fientes des chevaux et des
mulets.”—(p. 246, quoting from “Fragmenta Orphei,” edited by Hermann.)
“The blessed Apostle Paul, being rapt in contemplation of divine
blissfulness, compares all the chief felicities of the earth, esteeming
them (to use his own words) as ‘stercora,’ most filthy dung in regard of
the joys he hoped for.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 26.)
“He is truly wise that accounteth all earthly things as dung that he may
win Christ.”—(Matt. xvii. 23, quoted in Thomas à Kempis, cap. iv., “Of
the Doctrine of Truth.”)
“It was current among the small boys at school some thirty-five years
since, that were a man to make water whilst in connection with a woman
she would die.”—(Personal letter from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, South
Kensington Museum, London, England.)
The name of the city of Chicago has been traced by some philologist
to the Indian word for skunk; and it is said to be “equal to bestiola
fœda mingens.” The urine of this little animal was believed by some of
the Indian tribes to be capable of blinding the man in whose eyes it
entered; the animal itself was deified by the Aztecs under the name of
Tezcatlipoca.
For the interpretation given for the word “Chicago,” see the work “Indian
Names of Places near the Great Lakes,” by Captain Dwight Kelton, U. S.
Army, Chicago, Illinois, 1888.
XL.
URINOSCOPY, OR DIAGNOSIS BY URINE.
The examination of the urine and feces of the sick seems to have obtained
in all parts of the world, and among all sorts of people; but in the
earlier stages of human progress it was complicated with ideas of
divination and forecast, which would make it a religious observance.
The health of a patient was shown by the condition of his urine.—(Pliny,
lib. xxviii. cap. 6.)
The Arabians used to bring to their doctors “the water of their sick in
phials.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. iv. p. 11.)
In the index to the Works of Avicenna there are two hundred and
seventy-five references to the appearance, etc., of the urine of the
sick.—(Translation of Avicenna made by Gerard of Cremona, edition of
Venice, 1595.)
“Apothecaries used to carry the water of their patients to the
physician.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 526,
article “Urine.”)
To determine whether a man had an affection of the lungs or liver, some
of his urine was cast upon wheat bran, which was then put aside in a
cool place; if worms appeared, he was afflicted, etc.—(Beckherius, “Med.
Microcosmus,” p. 62.)
From an examination of the feces and urine of the patient to determine
his present state of health, and if possible to make a prognosis of
his future condition, was, in the minds of ignorant or half-educated
men merely the first step in the direction of determining the future
of the commonwealth by an inspection of the viscera and the excrement
of the victims whose blood smoked upon its altars. The Romans were
addicted to this mode of divination, which Schurig incorrectly styles
“Anthropomancy.” He relates that Heliogabalus was especially fond of
this, and, indeed, he credits that voluptuary with its introduction, and
expresses his gratification that he met his deserts in being killed in
a privy and left to die in ordure. The Saxons also were given to this
method of consulting the future.—(See “Chylologia,” pp. 749, 750.)
“Uromantie. ff. (Med. et Divin.), mot formé de “ouron,” urine, et
“manteia,” divination, qui signifie l’art de diviner par le moyen des
urines l’état présent d’une maladie, et d’en prédire les évènements
futurs.”—(“Encyc. ou Dict. Rais. des Sciences,” etc., fol. Neufchatel,
1745, vol. xvii. p. 499, given in personal letter to Captain Bourke from
Professor Frank Rede Fowke, South Kensington Museum, London, England.)
“_Falstaff._ Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my
water?
“_Page._ He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy
water; but for the party that owed it, he might have more
diseases than he knew for.”—(Shakspeare, “2 King Henry IV.,” i.
2.)
Sir Thomas More was possessed of great wit and a fine flow of spirits,
which even the approach of death could not dispel. Upon receiving
notification that he had been condemned to death by his master, King
Henry VIII., “he called for his urinal, and having made water in it, he
cast it and viewed it (as physicians do) a pretty while; at last he sware
soberly that he saw nothing in that man’s water but that he might live if
it pleased the king.”—(“Ajax,” p. 61.)
Thibetan doctors examine the urine of the patient; then churn it and
listen to the noise made by the bubbles.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
“How to vex her,
And make her cry so much that the physician,
If she fall sick upon it, shall want urine
To find the same by, and she, remediless,
Die in her heresy.”
(“Scornful Lady,” v. 1, Beaumont and Fletcher.)
The people of Europe did not restrict their examinations to the egestæ
of human beings; they were equally careful to scrutinize every day the
droppings of the hounds, hawks, and other animals used in the chase.—(See
“Ajax.”)
In the farce of “Master Pathelin” (A.D. 1480), the hero, “in his ravings
abuses the doctors ... for not understanding his urine.... Charlatans
especially exploited in this field of medicine, practising it illegally
in the country under the name of ‘water-jugglers’ and ‘water-judges.’
Such men still practise in Normandy and in certain northern provinces of
France.”—(“Med. in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 82.)
“It is a common practice in these days, by a colourable deriuation
of supposed cunning from the vrine, to foretell casualties, and the
ordinary euents of life, conceptions of a woman with child, and definite
distinctions of the male and female in the womb.” (Cotta, “Short
Discovery,” London, 1612, p. 104. He goes on to say that even as a mode
of strict medical diagnosis, urinoscopy is not a certain test, the body,
in every disease, being more or less disordered, and this disorder acting
upon the urine.)
Montaigne tells the story of a gentleman who always kept for seven or
eight days his excrements, in different basins, in order to talk about
and show them. (Buckle, “Commonplace Book,” vol. ii. p. 357, quoting from
Montaigne’s “Essais,” lib. iii. cap. 9, p. 600.)
Speaking of melancholy people, Burton says, “Their urine is most part
pale and low-colored, ‘urina pauca, acris, biliosa’ (Arctæus), and not
much in quantity.... Their melancholy excrements, in some very much, in
others little.”—(“Anatomy of Melancholy,” vol. i. p. 268.)
ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE EMOTIONS UPON THE EGESTÆ.
Reciprocally, the influence exerted by the emotions over functional
disturbances has been made the subject of investigation by learned
commentators.
“Aristote, dans les Problèmes Physiques, s’occupe des rapports qui
lient les impressions de l’âme aux fonctions intestinales. Il recherche
pourquoi une frayeur subite et violente cause presque toujours et
incontinent la diarrhée.” (Aule-Gelée, lib. xix. c. 4, “Bib. Scatalog.”
p. 66.)
Schurig gives numbers of instances of the power of the mind over the act
of alvine dejection; evacuation may be caused by perturbation of mind,
by fear, by insomnia, by thunder, by anger, etc. See “Chylologia,” p.
701. In a preceding chapter Schurig narrates several examples of people,
principally women, who were never able to excite nature to the act of
evacuation except by artificial aids addressed to some faculty of the
mind,—imagination, laughing, etc.
Harington, in “Ajax,” mentions the case of the Pope’s Legate, “who
brought the last jubilee into France; who, fearing the pages who by
custom bustle about him to divide his canopie, and suspecting treason
among them, suddenly laid you wot of in his breeches” (p. 16).
Dr. Fletcher, United States Army, has devoted considerable attention
to this subject. He has kindly placed the results of his wide range of
reading at the disposal of the author of this volume.