among the people of this State (Iowa); this was the use of sheep-dung for
measles. The dung was made into what the old women denominated ‘tea,’
and was familiarly known as ‘sheep-nanny tea.’ It was believed to be
singularly efficacious in bringing out the eruption. The mixture was
sweetened with sugar, and thus disguised was given to children. This
practice was kept up among certain classes until about twenty years ago;
I have not heard of it, at least in recent years. I can trace the custom
through the origin of the families in which it was practised here to
Indiana and North Carolina.”—(Personal letter from Prof. S. B. Evans,
Ottumwa, Iowa, to Captain Bourke, April 16, 1888.)
“I was told by an old person, now dead, that some fifty years since the
urine of a cow was given internally as a remedy for chlorosis, in the
counties of Norfolk and Suffolk.”—(Personal letter from Prof. Frank Rede
Fowke to Captain Bourke, dated London, England, June 18, 1888.)
“In the country where I was born I have seen several times, when a cow or
an ox had one of its horns knocked away by a shock or any other cause,
people pissing into the horn before putting it again over its root. This
was supposed necessary to cause the horn to stick firmly against the
root.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, Cherbourg,
July 29, 1888.)
“The presence of ammonia in the secretions (whose power of neutralizing
acids may have been accidentally discovered) may have had something
to do with the repute of the excretions of the kidneys. I remember to
have been told as a little boy of the virtues of urine as a relief
to chapped hands, also as a counter-irritant for inflamed eyes. In
the former case the ammonia would soften as an alkali; in the latter,
the salts present would act to reduce congestion, like common salt,
by endosmosis.”—(Personal letter from Prof. E. N. Horsford, Harvard
University, to Captain Bourke, April 19, 1888.)
“I have been recently informed, by a man who is acquainted with the
peculiarities of Parisian life, that there are men who are in the habit
of swallowing the scum which they obtain from the street urinals, and
that they are known as ‘Les mangeurs du blanc.’” (Prof. Frank Rede
Fowke.) According to Parent du Chatelet, a “mangeur du blanc” meant in
Paris, until 1810, “a man who lived off the earnings of a strumpet.” The
name has since been changed to “paillasson.” (See “La Prostitution,”
Paris, 1857, vol. i. p. 138.)
“When I was a boy we had in my father’s house a gang of cats, and
I remember that frequently the people of Cherbourg came and asked
permission to search in our garrets for cat’s dung, which, they said,
mixed and infused in white wine, produced a very efficient drink against
periodical fits of fever.”—(Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy.)
“Lye-tea, made of human urine and lime-water, was used for colds by the
‘old people’ in the rural parts of Central New York.”—(Conversation with
Colonel Pierce, Dr. Pangborn, and Lieutenant W. G. Elliott, U. S. Army,
at San Carlos Agency, Arizona.)
The savages of Australia apply to wounds the resin of the eucalyptus,
and also the bark of the same tree, previously steeped in human urine.
(Personal letter from John Mathew, Esq., M. A., to Captain Bourke,
dated “The Manse,” Coburg, Victoria, November, 1889.) The same thing is
referred to in “The Australian Race,” E. M. Curr, Melbourne, 1886, vol.
i. p. 256. In regard to the uses of the crust of latrines, in connection
with “mangeurs du blanc,” see other pages of this volume.
“Philos.; hermet.; urine du vin, le vinaigre. Urine des jeunes colériques
Le Mercure Philosophe.” Dict. National, par M. Bescherelle, aîné, Paris,
1857, sub voc. Urine (p. 1573).
We have already been informed from Marco Polo that the prisoners taken by
the Tartars often poisoned themselves; “for which reason the great lords
haue dogs’ dung ready, which they force them to swallow, and that forceth
them to vomit the poyson” (in Purchas, vol. i. p. 92); and we have also
learned, from many sources,—Etmuller, Schurig, Levinus Lemnius, Flemming,
Paullini, Beckherius, Lentilius,—of the antidotal powers of the excreta.
The existence of the very same belief was detected among the natives of
America.
Padre Inamma, whose interesting researches upon rattlesnake bites and
their remedies (made in Lower California, some time before the expulsion
of the Jesuits, in 1767) are published in Clavigero,[74] says that the
most usual and most efficacious antidote was human ordure, fresh and
dissolved in water, drunk by the person bitten.
Along the Isthmus of Darien the belief was prevalent among the aborigines
that the most efficacious remedy for poisoned arrows was that which
required the wounded man to swallow pills of his own excrement.[75]
So in Peru, “when sucking infants were taken ill, especially if their
ailment was of a feverish nature, they washed them in urine in the
mornings, and when they could get some of the urine of the child, they
gave it a drink.”[76]
OCCULT INFLUENCES ASCRIBED TO ORDURE AND URINE.
In Canada, human urine was drunk as a medicine. Father Sagard witnessed a
dance of the Hurons in which the young men, women, and girls danced naked
around a sick woman, into whose mouth one of the young men urinated, she
swallowing the disgusting draught in the hope of being cured.[77]
Analogous medicaments may be hinted at in Smith’s account of the
Araucanians of Chili: “Their remedies are principally if not entirely,
vegetable matter, though they administer many disgusting compounds
of animal matter, which they pretend are endowed with miraculous
powers.”—(Smith, “Araucanians,” New York, 1855, p. 234.)
Brand enumerates obsolete recipes, one of which (disease not mentioned)
directed the patient to take “five spoonfuls of knave child urine of an
innocent.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” London, 1849, vol. iii. p. 282.)
The Crees apply the dung of animals lately killed to sprains.—(See
“Mackenzie’s Voyages,” etc., to the Arctic Circle, London, 1800, introd.
p. 106.)
Henry M. Stanley says that, for the cure of certain ulcers due to
fly-blow, from which his men suffered, “Safeni, my coxswain on the
Victoria Nyanza, ... adopted a very singular treatment, which I must
confess was also wonderfully successful.... This medicine consisted of a
powder of copper and child’s urine, painted over the wound with a feather
twice a day.”—(“Through the Dark Continent,” New York, 1878, vol. ii. p.
369.)
“It appeared that the dung of the donkey, rubbed on the skin, was
supposed to be a cure for rheumatism, and that this rare specific
was brought from a distant country in the East, where such animals
exist.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, Philadelphia, 1869, p.
372.)
“The Mandingoes of Africa dress abscesses with cow’s dung.”—(See Mungo
Park’s “Travels in Africa,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvii. p. 877. See, also,
the edition of his works, “Travels in Africa,” New York, etc.)
The author has seen cow-manure plastered with soothing effect upon
bee-stings in New Jersey.
“Pro remedio, in pluribus morbis urina fœminæ externe applicata, in
eximia estimatione habetur.”—(“The Native Tribes of South Australia,”
Adelaide, 1879, introduction, xvi. See, also, Eyre, “Expedition into
Central Australia,” London, 1845, ii. 300.)
“Pilgrim’s Salve. A Sir-Reverence; human excrement.”—(Grose, “Dictionary
of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)
“The medicine-men of the Ove-herero, who live south of Angola (which is
on the west coast of Africa), urinate over the sick, in order to cure
them.”—(“Muhongo,” interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
The Inuit medicine-man asperses the sick with human urine, “le
goupillonne avec de vieilles urines, à l’instar des docteurs à poison
bochimans ... les Cambodgiens aspergent également le démon de la
petite-vérole avec de l’urine, mais cette urine est celle d’un cheval
blanc.”—(Réclus, “Les Primitifs,” p. 98.)
“There are few complaints that the natives do not attempt to cure, either
by charms or by specific applications. Of the latter, a very singular one
is the application personally of the urine from a female,—a very general
remedy, and considered a sovereign one for most disorders.”—(Eyre,
“Expedition into Central Australia,” London, 1845, vol. ii. p. 300;
contributed by Prof. H. C. Henshaw, Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D. C.)
(See previous references to the therapeutics of the native Australians in
this volume.)
“Plasters of mixed grass, butter, and cow-dung were placed on the
wounds” of sore-backed animals in Abyssinia.—(“A Visit to Abyssinia,” W.
Winstanley, London, 1881, vol. ii. p. 3.)
Cameron employed a native medicine-man, near Lake Tanganyika, to treat
one of his men who had injured his eye. “His treatment consisted
of a plaster of mud and dirt, and his fee was forty strings of
beads.”—(“Across Africa,” London, 1877, vol. i. p. 322. The word “dirt,”
as used by Cameron in the above sentence, no doubt means ordure.)
Mr. Stewart Culin, of Philadelphia, Penn., who has been making careful
investigations into the Chinese materia medica, states that “frequent
directions for the use of urine” are to be seen “among the official
remedies in the herbal.” Only a few pages back, reference was had to
the use by the Chinese in Batavia of all kinds of excrementitious
remedies.[78]
The Reverend Maurice J. Bywater writes from Nassau, Bahamas, that
during the seven years he was on missionary duty in the island of
Borneo, he witnessed several very curious and remarkable instances of
the restorative and stimulating effects of human urine, as used by the
Chinese immigrants in cases of accident.
The Coreans use the same system of medicine as the Chinese. Both employ
plasters of human excrement for bites, erysipelas, inflammations, etc.
They use the urine of a healthy boy as a tonic.—(Dr. H. T. Allen,
Secretary of Legation, Corean Embassy, Washington, D. C., 1888.)[79]
Our knowledge of the Thibetans is still so limited that we must not
attach too much importance to the little we have so far gained; there is
still much to be learned concerning that singular, isolated race.
The strange veneration accorded the excrement of the Grand Lama has been
fully discussed, but their sacred books do not show that the employment
of stercoraceous medicaments is carried any farther.
According to the translation of the “Pratimoksha Sutra” made by Mr. W.
W. Rockhill, sick Buddhist monks were ordered to employ the following
remedies: “Le beurre fondu, l’huile, la mélasse, le miel, l’écume de
mélasse.”—(“Asiatic Society,” Paris, 1885, p. 22.)
Dr. Francis Parkman, in his “Jesuits in North America,” Boston, 1867,
introduction, p. xl., speaks of the “revolting remedies” employed by the
Huron, Iroquois, and Algonquin tribes.
The following are among many of the curious recipes given in the “Tragedy
of the Gout,” written by Blambeauseant, in 1600:—
“Ther’s the odorous sheep’s dung, given always on the sly.”
“A little blue ointment, mixed with man’s ordure.”
“Virgin’s urine, as a cure for all the men in town.”
(“Medicine in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 88.)
Further references can be found in the following list, taken from the
“Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” which likewise contains several of those from
which citations have already been made.
“Cet emploi des stercora, et en particulier, de ceux de l’homme,
pour les usages pharmaceutiques, est très réel. On nommait médecins
stercoraires ceux qui les prescrivaient, et on dissimulait l’origine de
la substance sous diverses dénominations bizarres ou ridicules (carbon
humanum, oletum, sulphur occidentale). Suivant Paracelse, les excréments
humains pouvaient par une certaine préparation, acquérir l’odeur du musc
et de la civette; de là le nom qu’on leur donnait de civette ou musc
occidental.”—(“Bib. Scat.,” p. 29.)
Ganin, De Simplic. Medicament. facultat. lib. x. fol. m. 75, _seq._ “An
stercoris usus licitur? Conceditur.”—(No. 200 of the “Bib. Scat.,” p. 77.)
“202. Gufer, Joh. Medicin. domest. tab. 3, p. 11, et Joh. phil. Gieswein,
De Mater. Medic. p. 292, imprimis laudant stercus hominis qui lupinos
comedit.”—(Idem, p. 78.)
“203. Helvetius, Joh. Freder, Diribitor. med. p. 112, _seq._, recommande
le stercus humanum recens et adhuc calidum.”—(Idem.)
Hérodote, lib. ii.; Hésïode, “Opera et Dies.”
Sheep-dung, boiled in milk, recommended for the cure of the whooping
cough by the Swedish physician Hjoort, as well as by the French doctor
Baumer.—(“Bib. Scat.” p. 78.)
Hoffmann, Fred. annot. in Petr. poter, Pharmacop. Spagyric (lib. i. p.
445), dit que excrementa alvina magnam vim possident.
Homère, Odyssée, lib. vi.—(“Bib. Scat.” p. 78.)
Kircher, Podronus Ægypticus, cap. ult.
Laerce (Diogène) in Pythagor.
Langius (Christ.), Oper. Medic., “regarde les médicaments stercoraux
ut res indigna et execrabilis, cependant il en permet l’usage contra
desperatissimos morbos” (p. 79).
Lotichus, Johan. De casei nequitiæ, Francof. 1640, “sordidi medicastri et
σκατοφάγοι excrementis frui solent; sed homo vero cordatus et bonæ mentis
se abstinet” (p. 81).
“M. Gustave Brunet a inséré dans sa traduction des propos de table de
Martin Luther” (Paris, 1844, p. 377), “quelques pensées du célèbre
réformateur qui appartiennent à notre sujet. L’une roule sur la
transformation des excréments en nouveaux aliments; l’autre sur les
propriétés de la fiente,” etc. (p. 81).
Macrobii Saturnal. lib. iii.; Martialis, Epigrammata, iv. 88; vii. 18;
xii. 40, 77, et ailleurs (p. 81).
Mayern, Theodor. de Prax. Medic. syntagm. alter mêle le stercus à la
poudre d’œillets (gilly-flowers).
Menangiana. Paris, 1715, 4 vols. in 12 On trouve dans ce livre divers
passages relatifs à notre sujet. Voy. t. 1, pp. 9, 180, 222; t. 2, p.
198; t. 3, p. 239.
Clemens d’Alexandrie, Recogn. lib. v. p. 71.
Denne, Ludovic. Pharmac. dissert. l. p. m. 411, _seq._ “Il blâme l’usage
médical des excréments humains” (p. 73).
Diodore de Sicile, lib. i. cap. 8, p. 73.
Damian, P. Opuscula, c. 2, p. 73.
“Praterius, Praxis, lib. iii. p. 330, recommande surtout l’huile et l’eau
extraite de stercore humano. Suivant Belleste, Chirurg. d’hôpital, part
3, p. 248, chap. 4, le sel extrait des excréments du malade atteint de
dysenterie le guérit.”
Plutarque, Apoph. Laconic., p. 232. Petrus Pharmacop. Spagiric. p.
m. 445, regarde le stercus comme pouvant fournir rara et perfecta
remedia. Reference is had to the thirteenth chapter of Rabelais “sur les
anisterges.” Rivinus (Augustus Quirinus) Censur. Medicament. officinal.
cap. 2, p. 10, _et seq._ et 15 _et seq._, “strenue contra stercorum usum
pugnat.” There are other old medical authorities cited, some fully,
others only partially in favor of the medicinal use of the excreta; and
one or two in antagonism thereto.—(“Bib. Scat.” p. 38 _et seq._).
“On a appelé album nigrum les crottes des souris et des rats, jadis
employés comme purgatif par les médecins stercoraires. Merde du diable,
stercus diaboli, c’est l’assafœtida, espèce de gomme.” (“Bib. Scat.”
p. 128. See also Grose, Dict. of Buckish Slang, Lond. 1811, Assafœt.)
On the principle of “lucus a non lucendo,” the works of Swieten,
“Commentariorum,” etc., Lyons, 1776, are worthy of special mention;
careful examination fails to discover any allusion to the use of excreta,
human or animal, in pharmacy or therapeutics, and no mention is made of
witchcraft. Therefore the works of this author mark a new stage in the
development of scientific and religious thought.
In Warner’s “Topographical Remarks relating to the southwestern parts
of Hampshire,” 1793 (vol. ii. p. 131), speaking of the old register of
Christ Church, that author tells us, “The same register affords, also,
several very curious receipts, or modes of cure in some singular cases of
indisposition; they are, apparently, of the beginning of the seventeenth
century, and couched in the uncouth phraseology of that time.” I forbear,
however, to insert them, from motives of delicacy.—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.”
vol. iii. p. 306, article “Physical Charms.”)
“A new-born babe was not considered fully prepared for life’s journey
until its stomach had been filled and emptied by a potation of molasses
diluted with the vesical secretions of the first youngster that could be
secured for the purpose.”—(“Professional Reminiscences,” Benjamin Eddy
Cutting, M. D., Curator of the Lowell Institute, Boston, Mass., 1888, p.
40.)
OTHER EXCREMENTITIOUS REMEDIES.
It was not enough that the urine and ordure of men and animals should be
employed in pharmacy; everything that could be taken from the bodies of
men or animals, wild or domesticated, living or dead, was enlisted to
swell the dread list of filth remedies.
Etmuller supplies the following list of remedies; “sumuntur ex corpore
vivente:” Hair, nails, saliva, ear-wax, sweat, milk, menses, after-birth,
urine, ordure, semen, blood, calculi, worms, lice, caul (of infant),
... and these “ex partibus corporis demortui.” ... The whole corpse,
flesh, skin, fat, bones, skull, moss growing on a skull, brain, gall,
heart. Gall of animals has been used by the Indians of North America as
a stimulant. (See Etmuller, Michaelus, “Opera Omnia,” vol. ii. p. 265,
Schrod. “Dil. Zoöl.”)
He also recites that the following parts of domestic kine were used in
medical practice: horns, bile, liver, spleen, blood, marrow, tallow,
fat, hoofs, urine, ordure, testicles, milk, butter, cheese, phallus, and
bones.—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 248 _et seq._)
HAIR.
“The first hair cut from an infant’s head will modify the attacks of
gout.... The hair of a man torn down from the cross is good for quartan
fevers.”—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 7.)
“The smell of a woman’s hair, burnt, will drive away serpents, and
hysterical suffocations, it is said, may be dispelled thereby. The ashes
of a woman’s hair, burnt in an earthen vessel, will cure eruptions and
porrigo of the eyes ... warts and ulcers upon infants ... wounds upon the
head ... corrosive ulcers ... inflammatory tumors and gout ... erysipelas
and hemorrhages, and itching pimples.”—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. c. 20.)
Schurig commends the use of human hair in cases of baldness, applied
externally in salve, chopped fine or in ashes; for the cure of yellow
jaundice, it was powdered and drunk in some suitable menstruum; it was
employed in luxation of the joints, for hemorrhage from wounds: “Ad canis
morsuum, infantis capilli cum aceto impositu morsum sine tumore sanant
et capitis ulcera emendant.”—(Sextus Placitus, art. “De Puello et Puella
Virgine.”)
Flemming advised that it be powdered and drunk in wine as a cure for
yellow jaundice; woman’s hair, powdered and made into a salve, with
lard, was of general efficacy; men’s hair was burned under the nostrils
of those suffering from lethargy; and was drunk for “suffocation of the
womb.”—(“De Remediis,” etc. p. 8.)
A medicinal oil was distilled from the hair of a full beard, and an
ointment made from the same. Powdered human hair was drunk as a potion
in a cure for yellow jaundice; the ashes of burnt hair were made into
an unguent with mutton tallow, and applied to the nostrils of people
in a state of lethargy; in “suffocation of the uterus,” this ointment
was applied to the pudenda. The hair of a patient was frequently used
in affecting “sympathetic cures,” or in what were called “Cures by
Transplantation,” but the names of the diseases are not given by Flemming
(p. 21). (But see under “Cures by Transplantation” in this volume.)
In China, the shavings of the hair, which must amount to a considerable
quantity, since hundreds of millions of people shave the head close
daily, are preserved for manuring the land.—(See “Bingham’s Exped. to
China,” London, 1842, vol. ii. p. 7.)
In China, everything connected with the tilling of the fields is still
a religious rite. Probably no country in the world of equal advancement
has adhered with more tenacity to old usages in all that pertains to the
turning-up of the soil; there are ceremonies in which the Emperor himself
must lead with a plough. How much all this may have to do with the
utilization of a refuse which has been so generally regarded as possessed
of “magical” or “medicinal” properties, is, in all likelihood, never to
be ascertained; but attention should be attracted to the fact, in the
same manner that it was found worth while to make an examination into the
history of latrines.
“Among ourselves, it is a Devonshire belief that you can give a neighbor
ague by burying a dead man’s hair under his threshold.”—(“Folk-Medicine,”
Black, p. 27.)
“In Devonshire and in Scotland alike, when a child has whooping-cough, a
hair is taken from its head, put between slices of bread and butter, and
given to a dog, and if in eating it the dog cough, as naturally he will,
the whooping-cough will be transferred to the animal, and the child will
go free.” The same method of cure is practised in Ireland, but the animal
selected is an ass.—(Idem, p. 35.)
“Certain oak-trees at Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, were long famous
for the cure of ague. The transference was simple, but painful. A lock of
hair was pegged into an oak, and then, by a sudden wrench, transferred
from the head of the patient to the tree.”—(Idem, p. 39.)
Clippings of hair and rags are offered to holy wells in Ireland, Borneo,
Malabar, etc., not merely as offerings to deities, but in order to
effect a “transference” of diseases to the people who may take hold of
them.—(Idem, pp. 39, 40; quoting from Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” vol.
ii., and others.)
“In New England, to cure a child of the rickets, a lock of its hair is
buried at cross-roads, and if at full moon, so much the better.”—(Idem,
p. 56.)
It is believed in parts of England that the hairs from a donkey’s
back, wrapped up in bread, and given to a sick child, will cure the
whooping-cough; another remedy of the same kind is to take clippings from
the child’s own head, mix them in butter, and give to a dog, which will
take the disease from the child; still another was to mount the sufferer
upon the back of an ass, and lead him nine times round an oak-tree.—(See
Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 288, art. “Physical Charms.”)
The Romans attached certain omens to the manner, time, and place of
cutting the nails and hair.—(See Pliny, lib. xxviii. c. 5.)
The ancients believed that “no person in a ship must pare his nails, or
cut his hair except in a storm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 239,
art. “Omens Among Sailors,” quoting Petronius Arbiter.)
“When a man has his hair cut, he is careful to burn it, or bury it
secretly, lest falling into the hands of some one who has an evil eye,
or is a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict him with a
headache.”—(Livingston, “Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 47.)
Etmuller relates that in his time women suffering from retention of the
menses were in the habit of plucking the hair growing on the pubis, which
would promptly cause their reappearance, but whether by the irritation
or by taking the hair internally, is not clear:—“Mulieres suffocatæ ex
utero soleant vellicare in pilis pubis, ut citius et felicius ad se
redeant.” Finger-nail clippings were drunk as an emetic, especially
by soldiers while on campaign:—“Ungues infusi in vinum vel potum cum
vehementia cient vomitum et purgant per fecessum ... propinavit pro
vomitorio et purgante militibus ungues proprios infusos per noctem in
vinum calidum.”—(Etmuller, vol. ii. p. 269.)
“The hair and nails are cut at the full moon.”—(Grimm, “Teutonic
Mythology,” Stallybrass, London, 1882, vol. ii, p. 712 _et seq._)
The Patagonians “all believe that the witches and wizards can injure whom
they choose, even to deprivation of life, if they can possess themselves
of some part of their intended victim’s body, or that which has proceeded
thence, such as hair, pieces of nails, etc.... And this superstition is
the more curious from its exact accordance with that so prevalent in
Polynesia.”—(“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. ii.
p. 163, quoting the Jesuit Faulkner.)
“Which is the most deadly deed whereby a man increases most the baleful
strength of the Dævas, as he would by offering them a sacrifice?”
“Ahura Mazda answered:—‘It is when a man here below combing his hair or
shaving it off, or paring off his nails, drops them in a hole or in a
crack.’”—(Fargard XVII. Avendidad, Zendavesta, Oxford, 1880, p. 186.)
Beckherius states that the clippings of the finger-nails made an
excellent emetic. “Vomitorium non inelegans ex iis paratur.”—(“Med.
Mic.”)