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
Urine was employed as a tooth-wash, alone or mixed with orris powder.
“Farina orobi (bitter vetch) permisceatur cum urina.”—(“Medicus
Microcosmus,” Danielus Beckherius, pp. 62-64.)
A paragraph in Paullini’s “Dreck Apothek,” p. 74, would show that in
Germany the same usages were not unknown. As a dentifrice he recommends
urine as a wash; or a powder made of pulverized gravel stone, mixed with
urine.
Ivan Petroff states that the peasants of Portugal still wash their
clothes in urine.—(Ivan Petroff, in “Trans. American Anthropological
Society,” 1882, vol. i.)
Urine is used on whaling vessels, when stale, for washing flannel shirts,
which are then thrown overboard and towed after the ship.—(Dr. J. H.
Porter.)
Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy, of Rapid City, Dakota, furnishes the information
that Irish, German, and Scandinavian washerwomen who have immigrated to
the United States persist in adding human urine to the water to be used
for cleansing blankets.
“I have observed somewhere that the Basks and some Hindus clean their
mouths with urine, but I do not remember the book.”—(Dr. Alfred Gatchett,
Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.)
Dr. Carl Lumholtz, of Christiania, Norway, states that he had seen the
savages of Herbert River, Australia, in 18° south latitude, with whom he
lived for some months, use their own urine to clean their hands after
they had been gathering wild honey.
The statement concerning the Celtiberians may also be found in
Clavigero.—(“Hist. de Baja California,” p. 28, quoting Diodorus Siculus.)
Diderot and D’Alembert assert unequivocally that in the latter years of
the last century the people of the Spanish Peninsula still used urine as
a dentifrice.—(“Les Espagnols,” etc., reading as above given from “Dict.
Raisonné.” See Encyclopédie, Geneva, 1789, article “Urine.”)
XXVIII.
URINE IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES.
But in the examples adduced from Whymper concerning the people of the
village of Unlacheet, on Norton Sound, “the _dancers_ of the Malemutes of
Norton Sound bathed themselves in urine.” (Whymper’s “Alaska,” London,
1868, pp. 142, 152.) Although, on another page, Whymper says that this
was for want of soap, doubt may, with some reason, be entertained.
Bathing is a frequent accompaniment, an integral part of the religious
ceremonial among all the Indians of America, and no doubt among the Inuit
or Eskimo as well; when this is performed by dancers, there is further
reason to examine carefully for a religious complication, and especially
if these dances be celebrated in sacred places, as Petroff relates they
are.
“They never bathe or wash their bodies, but on certain occasions the men
light a fire in the kashima, strip themselves, and dance and jump around
until in a profuse perspiration. They then apply urine to their oily
bodies and rub themselves until a lather appears, after which they plunge
into the river.”—(Ivan Petroff in “Transactions American Anthropological
Society,” vol. i. 1882.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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