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
Among the Navajoes of Arizona it is customary for the women to wear a
strip of sheep-skin, called a “chogan;” when the necessity for its use
has disappeared, the woman goes outside of the village and conceals it
in the forks of one of the cedar or juniper trees so numerous in the
mountains. The author once found one of these; but the people with him
were impressed with the idea that no good would come from being near it.
At another time he knew of a young boy who had been hit by a “chogan”
which had been dislodged by a wind-storm. He was almost frantic with
terror, and devoted three or four days to singing and to washing in a
“sweat-bath.”
The Ostiaks of Siberia would seem to have the same ideas on this subject
as the Apaches and Navajoes have.—(See Pallas, “Voyages,” vol. iv. p. 95.)
Danielus Beckherius informs his readers that menstrual blood was used
in medicine (pp. 23 _et seq._); philters were prepared from it (idem,
p. 341). “Zenith juvencarum sc. sanguines menstruum” were given for
epilepsy,—that is, the first menses of a girl (idem, p. 42). The lint
of the napkin itself was thus given also (idem),—“litura pannorum
menstruorum datur patienti sanari morbum comitialium.” The first napkin
used by a healthy virgin was preserved for use in cases of plague,
malignant carbuncles, etc., dampened with water and laid on the part
affected; also used in erysipelas (idem, p. 43, “Med. Microcosmus”).
Dried catamenia were given internally for calculi, epilepsy, etc., and
externally for podagra; they were also used in treatment of the plague,
for carbuncles, aposthumes, being placed thereon with a rag wet with
rosewater or oil, into which menstrual fluid had been poured; it was good
as a cosmetic to drive away pimples (p. 265).
To restrain an immoderate flow of the menses a napkin was saturated with
menstrual blood, and then kept for a certain time in an aperture made in
the bark of a cherry-tree. “Ad immodicum menstruorum fluxum cohibendum
sunt qui pannum menstruum sanguine imbutum certo tempore cerasi radice
in cortice apertæ indunt, incisuramque iterum operiunt.”—(Etmuller, “Op.
Omnia;” Schrod. “Dil. Zoöl.,” vol. ii. p. 265.)
Paullini prescribes the “dried catamenia of women” for the cure of kidney
diseases (pp. 142, 143), also for ring-worm, felons, menstrual troubles.
Frommann gives the same cure for immoderate menses, by placing the napkin
in a cherry-tree.—(See “Tract. de Fascinatione,” p. 1006.)
“Excoriationi conferunt ... sanguis menstruus.”—(Avicenna, vol. i. p.
388.)
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