Pliny claimed that seminal fluid was a sovereign remedy for the sting of a scorpion. Male urine cured gout, and urine also cured eruptions on the bodies of infants, corrosive sores, running ulcers, chaps upon the body, stings inflicted by serpents, ulcers of the head, and cancerous sores of the generative organs .… Every person’s urine is the best for his own case.
Pliny also gives a huge list of remedies involving the dung of different animals and birds (60). For example, badger-dung, cuckoo-dung and swallow-dung, taken internally, cure the bite of a mad dog; cat-dung, rubbed on the neck, removes bones from the throat; poultry-dung — but only the white part — is an excellent antidote to the poison of fungi and mushrooms; it is also a cure for flatulence and suffocations, which is bizarre since if any living creature only tastes this dung, it is immediately attacked with griping pains and flatulence. Ashes of mouse-dung, raven-dung and sparrow-dung were plugged into carious teeth, and used externally for all tooth troubles. Mouse-dung was good for imparting sweetness to sour breath, while pigeon-dung was used as a gargle for sore throats. Moose-dung, used externally, was good for swelled breasts. A dose of goat dung in the nappy could calm hyperactive children.
Dioskorides also had lots of tips involving dung — for instance, crocodile dung was in high repute as a cosmetic, though purchasers were warned that it was frequently adulterated with the excrement of starlings fed on rice.
Sextus Placitus, a fourth century AD author, claimed that the urine of a virgin boy or girl was an invaluable application for affections of the eyes; also for stings of bees, wasps and other insects. As a cure for elephantiasis, the urine of boys was to be drunk freely, while the crust from human urine was useful in burns and in bites of mad dogs.
Paracelsus, a sixteenth century alchemist, wrote:
the olde Physitians made very many medicines of most filthy things, as of the filth of the eares, sweat of the body, of women’s menstrues, of the Dung of man and other beastes, spittle, urine, flies, mice, the ashes of an owle’s head, etc……I call to mind a storie…of Herachio Ephesio, which being sick of a leprosie, despising the help of Physitians, anoynting himself over with cow-dung, set himselfe in the sun to drie, and falling asleepe was torn to pieces by dogges (61).
Other remedies listed by Pliny involved ear-wax; woman’s milk, especially of a woman who had just borne male twins (‘if a person is rubbed at the same time with the milk of both mother and daughter, he will be proof for all the rest of his life against all affections of the eyes; mixed with the urine of a youth who has not yet arrived at puberty, it removes ringing in the ears’); human sweat (if the perspiration of a fever-stricken patient was mixed with dough, baked into bread and given to a dog, the dog would catch the fever and the man recover); tartar (impurities from the teeth and the dirt from soiled stockings were a remedy for nose-bleed); and human blood — Faustina, the wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was anxious to have a child, so she drank the warm blood of a dying gladiator, and then shared her husband’s bed — she at once became pregnant and brought forth the cruel Commodus; epileptics would sometimes drink a draught of the warm blood caught gushing from the neck of a decapitated criminal.
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Human flesh, from corpses, was administered under the name ‘Mummy’; it was preferably from a malefactor, hanged on a gibbet, never buried, and the age should be between 25 and 40, of good constitution, without organic or other diseases, and gathered in clear weather.
In ancient Egypt, the use of contraceptives was known: one of the earliest methods, described in the Kahun papyrus, was to mix crocodile dung into a paste, which was made into a sort of tampon and inserted into the vagina. Another was to make a kind of tampon with honey, which is indeed a mild spermicide.
King Pyrrhos of Epiros had a big toe which was allegedly capable of curing diseases of the spleen when rubbed on the infected area. … His toe did not burn when the rest of his body was cremated.
Sahagún gives details of the ancient Mexican formula for eradicating dandruff. It began by cutting the hair close to the root, and washing the head well with urine… Hippocrates recommended dove-dung, applied externally, in the treatment of baldness. Pliny claimed that the urine of the foal of an ass would thicken the hair, while camel dung, reduced to ashes and mixed with oil, would curl and frizzle the hair.
Human seed was often employed as medicine. Some credited it with a wonderful efficacy in relieving inveterate epilepsy, or restoring virility impaired by incantation or witchcraft; for which purpose it was used while still fresh, before exposure to the air, in pottage. The Albigensians or Cathars of medieval France are alleged to have sprinkled human semen on the eucharistic bread, possibly with the idea that the bread of life should be sprinkled with life-giving excretion.
Nature’s Viagra: For impotence and loss of virility, Paullini recommends drinking the urine of a bull, immediately after he has covered a cow, and smearing the pubis with the bull’s excrements; and also to piss through the engagement ring. Another cure for this infirmity was that the bridegroom should catch a fish, forcibly open its mouth, urinate into it, and then throw the fish back in the water, upstream; then try to copulate, taking care to urinate through the wedding ring, both before and after.
For sterility, Pliny recommends the application of a pessary made of the fresh excrement voided by an infant at the moment of its birth, while the urine of eunuchs was considered to be highly beneficial as a promoter of fruitfulness in females. Hawk-dung, drunk by a woman before coitus, insured conception; and goose or fox dung rubbed upon the pudenda of a woman aided in bringing about conception. But such remedies needed to be used with care — one woman applied the dung of a wolf to her private parts, and soon after bearing a child found him possessed of a wolfish appetite!
Dioskorides prescribed both human ordure and the dung of the vulture to bring about the expulsion of the foetus, and Pliny prescribed goose dung for this purpose; but according to Avicenna, the dung of the elephant or menstrual blood prevented conception.
The Roman statesman Cato the Elder provided some highly entertaining remedies – for example, placing a sprig of wormwood in the rectum prevents saddle sores (62). Pliny reckoned that kissing a she-mule’s nostrils stops hiccups (this is probably true!), while gout can be cured using a toad’s ashes mixed with stale grease. More encouragingly, he also claimed that sex was the best remedy for lower back pain, weakness of the eyes, and depression!
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Finally, Pliny cites the method of curing a bad cough by spitting into the mouth of a toad (63).
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