Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globeBourke, John Gregory
Religion
Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe
Bourke, John Gregory
Scatology
Cow manure employed for the same purpose by the people of Turkey in
Asia, in the valley of the Tigris, near Mosul, according to George
Smith.—(“Assyrian Discoveries,” New York, 1876, p. 122.)
The “whole fuel” of the Mongols is “cow or horse dung dried in the
sun.”—(Father Gerbillon’s Account of Tartary, in Du Halde, vol. iv. pp.
234, 270.)
The use of cow-dung as fuel in certain parts of the world would seem not
to be entirely divested of the religious idea.
“Firewood at Seringapatam is a dear article, and the fuel most commonly
used is cow-dung made up into cakes. This, indeed, is much used in every
part of India, especially by men of rank; as, from the veneration paid
the cow, it is considered as by far the most pure substance that can be
employed. Every herd of cattle, when at pasture, is attended by women,
and these often of high caste, who with their hands gather up the dung
and carry it home in baskets.
“They then form it into cakes, about half an inch thick, and nine inches
in diameter, and stick them on the walls to dry. So different indeed
are Hindu notions of cleanliness from ours that the walls of their best
houses are frequently bedaubed with these cakes; and every morning
numerous females, from all parts of the neighborhood, bring for sale
into Seringapatam baskets of this fuel. Many females who carry large
baskets of cow-dung on their heads are well-dressed and elegantly formed
girls.”—(“A Journey through Mysore,” Buchanan, Pinkerton, vol. viii. p.
612.)
SMUDGES.
Dried ordure is generally used for smudges, to drive away insects; the
Indians of the Great Plains beyond the Missouri burned the “chips” of the
buffalo with this object.
The natives of the White Nile “make tumuli of dung which are constantly
on fire, fresh fuel being added constantly, to drive away the
mosquitoes.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Baker, p. 53.)
“When they burn it (the dung of a camel) the smoke which proceeds from
it destroys Gnats and all kinds of vermin.”—(Chinese recipes given in Du
Halde’s “History of China,” vol. iv. p. 34.)
Schweinfurth describes the Shillooks of the west bank of the Nile as
“burning heaps of cow-dung to keep off the flies.”—(“Heart of Africa,”
vol. i. p. 16. See also “Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, New York, 1877,
p. 215.)
Such smudges were employed by the Arabians to kill bed-bugs. “Effugatione
Cimicum” effected by a “suffumigium” of “stercore vaccino.”—(“Avicenna,”
vol. ii. p. 214, a 47.)
Rev. James Gilmour describes a mode of extinguishing a burning tent,
observed among the Mongols, the counterpart of which is to be found in
“Gulliver’s Travels.”—(See “Among the Mongols,” p. 23.)
Lucius Cataline, accused by Marcus Cicero of raising a flame in the city
of Rome, “I believe it,” said he, “and, if I cannot extinguish it with
water, I will with urine.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” cap. “Ulysses upon Ajax,”
p. 22.)
HUMAN AND ANIMAL EXCRETA TO PROMOTE THE GROWTH OF THE HAIR AND ERADICATE
DANDRUFF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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