“Vice-Admiral of the Narrow Seas.” “A drunken man that pisses under the table into his companion’s shoes.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811, article as above.) This use of urine as a tooth-wash has had a very extensive diffusion; it is still to be found in many parts of Europe and America, of boasted enlightenment. The Celtiberii of Spain, “although they boasted of cleanliness both in their nourishment and in their dress, it was not unusual for them to wash their teeth and bodies in urine,—a custom which they considered favorable to health.”—(Maltebrun, “Univ. Geog.,” vol. v. book 137, p. 357, article “Spain.”) From Strabo we learn that the Iberians “do not attend to ease or luxury, unless any one considers it can add to the happiness of their lives to wash themselves and their wives in stale urine kept in tanks, and to rinse their teeth with it, which they say is the custom both with the Cantabrians and their neighbors.” (Strabo, “Geography,” Bohn, lib. iii. cap. 4, par. 16, London, 1854. In a footnote it is stated that “Apuleius, Catullus, and Diodorus Siculus all speak of this singular custom.”) The same practice is alluded to by Percy, and also by the “Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences,” Neufchatel, 1745, vol. xvii. p. 499; and the practice is said to obtain among the modern Spaniards as well. “Les Espagnols font grand usage de l’urine pour se nettoyer les dents. Les anciens Celtibériens faisoient la même chose.”—(Received from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, London, June 18, 1888.) “Bien que soigneux de leurs personnes et propres dans leur manière de vivre, les Celtibères se lavent tout le corps d’urine, s’en frottant même les dents, estimant cela un bon moyen pour entretenir la santé du corps.”—(Diodore, v. 33.) “Nunc Celtiber, in Celtiberia terra Quod quisque minxit, hoc solet sibi mane Dentem atque russam defricare ginginam.” (Catullus, “Epigrams,” 39.) The manners of the Celtiberians, as described by Strabo and others, have come down through many generations to their descendants in all parts of the world; all that he related of the use of human urine as a mouth-wash, as a means of ablution, and as a dentifrice, was transplanted to the shores of America by the Spanish colonists; and even in the present generation, according to Gen. S. V. Bénèt, U. S. Army, traces of such customs were to be found among some of the settlers in Florida. The same custom has been observed among the natives along the Upper Nile. “The Obbo natives wash out their mouths with their own urine. This habit may have originated in the total absence of salt in their country.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, p. 240.) In England likewise there was a former employment of the same fluid as a dentifrice. “‘Nettoyer ses dents avec de l’urine, mode espagnole,’ dit Erasme.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, quoting Erasmus, “De Civilitate.”)