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
The urine of boys was used as an ointment in some fevers; also as a
fomentation in tympanitis, as a plaster in dropsy, for gangrene and
podagra, in various clysters, in the cure of calculi and cachexy (pp.
78, 79); in some of the plasters cow and dove dung also entered. For
the treatment of anasarca there was a “spagyric preparation of urine.”
To make the spirit of urine by distillation, some took the urine of
a healthy man, some that of a wine-drinking boy of twelve years (pp.
81, 82). This spirit was administered in lung troubles, in dropsy,
suppression of the menses, all kinds of fevers, retention of urine,
calculus, etc. (p. 85); also in eye troubles, strangury, diabetes,
podagra, catarrh, melancholia, phrensy, cardialgia, syncope, dysentery,
plague, malignant fevers (p. 86).
The “spirit of urine” was again distilled with vitriol to make an
anti-podagric remedy (85).
Salt of urine was made by distilling the urine of a boy and collecting
the saline residuum; it was administered in cardiac troubles and to aid
in the expulsion of the dead fœtus; from it were made various empirical
remedies,—moon salt, the salt of Jove, salt of Mercury, spirit of Orion,
mercurius microcosmicus, which were used for all kinds of physical
infirmities (p. 87). The quintessence of urine was distilled from the
urine of a strong, healthy, chaste man of thirty years, who had drunk
heavily of wine for the occasion; by another authority it is recommended
that this happen while the sun and Jupiter may be in “Piscibus.” This
was used in calculi of the kidneys and bladder and in all ulcerations of
those parts; externally, as a lotion in gonorrhæa and external ulcers of
the private parts, for wounds and lesions of all sorts, urinary troubles,
worms, putrid fevers, and as a preservative against the plague, for hard
tumors, etc. (p. 97).
An “anti-epileptic spirit” had the urine of boys as its main component
(p. 95); there was an “anti-epileptic extract of the moon” (p. 96); an
“anti-podagric medicament” of the same components almost. A “panacea
solaris” had for its principal ingredient the urine of a boy who had been
drinking freely of wine (p. 97).
HUMAN ORDURE.
Beckherius cites a case where its use for three days cured a man of
yellow jaundice; dried, powdered, and drunk in wine, it cured febrile
paroxysms (p. 112); it was recommended to be that of a boy fed for some
time on bread and beans.
To smell human ordure in the morning, fasting, protected from plague (pp.
112, 113).
He also gives the mode of preparing “zibethum,” or “occidental sulphur”
(p. 116).
As a cure for angina a mixture was prescribed containing the white dung
of dogs; also human ordure, swallow-dung, licorice, and candy (p. 113).
In cancer, human ordure was applied as a plaster, mixed with turpentine,
tobacco, antimony, powdered litharge, powdered crabs, etc. (pp. 113, 114).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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