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
Human excrements, under the name of “botryon,” were used by Æschines of
Athens, for the cure of quinsy. (Pliny, lib. xxviii. c. 10.) Æschines
lived between 389-317 B.C.
“Serapion of Alexandria flourished B.C. 278, forty years after the
date of Alexander the Great, and was one of the chiefs of the empiric
school.... He in epilepsy prescribed ... dung of crocodiles.”—(“Saxon
Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. xiv.)
The next in chronological order would be Pliny, from whom can be
extracted a veritable mine of information on this point; then
Dioscorides, who lived in the latter years of the first and the opening
ones of the second centuries of the Christian era; and then Galen, born
at Pergamos, in Mysia, 130 A.D., “the most celebrated of ancient medical
writers,” and “appointed by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the position
of medical guardian of his son, the young prince, and later on Emperor,
Commodus.”—(Encyc. Brit.)
The classical authorities will conclude with Sextus Placitus, from whose
works much of importance has been extracted.
Each author will be allowed to speak in his own words, and the necessary
deductions will be made afterwards; only the remarks bearing upon
love-philters and child-birth have been assigned to the chapters devoted
to the treatment of those subjects, and this merely to reduce the chances
of repetition.
The following remedies are taken from Pliny, from the books and chapters
given opposite each case:—
“A plant that has been grown upon a dung-heap in a field is a very
efficacious remedy, taken in water, for quinsy.”—(Lib. xxiv. c. 110.)
“A plant upon which a dog has watered, torn up by the roots, and not
touched with iron, is a very speedy cure for sprains.”—(Idem, c. 111.)
“Camel’s dung, reduced into ashes, and incorporat with oile, doth curle
and frizzle the hair of the head, and taken in drinke, as much as a man
may comprehend with three fingers, cureth the dysenterie; so doth it also
the falling sickness. Camel’s piss, they say, is passing good for Fullers
to scour their cloth withall; and the same healeth any running sores
which be bathed therein. It is well known that the barbarous nations
keep this stale of theirs until it be five years old, and then a draught
thereof to the quantity of one hermine is a good laxative potion.”—(Lib.
xxviii. c. 8.)
Goat’s dung good for sore eyes.—(Idem, c. 11.)
For “Skals in the Head” the Romans used “Bul’s Urine.” Stale chamber-lye
was also considered good. “The gall of buck goats, tempered with Bul’s
stale, killeth lice.” Dog-dung and goat-dung also were prescribed.—(Idem,
c. 11.)
Wolf’s dung is mentioned as good for cataract.—(Idem, c. 11.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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