THE VIEWS OF GALEN.
Galen disapproved of the pharmaceutical use of human ordure on account of its abominable smell, but he assented to the employment of that of domestic cattle, goats, crocodiles, and dogs; he makes known, moreover, that human ordure was taken internally, as a medicine, by very many persons.
“De Copro, Stercore, Copros, sive Copron, sive Apoptema, apellari velis perinde est. Scito autem hanc substantiam vim habere vel maxime digerentem. Verum stercus humanum ob fœtorem abominandum est, at bubulum, caprinum, crocodilorum terrestrium, et canum, ubi in ossibus duntaxat vescuntur neque graviter olet, et multa experientia non tantum nobis, sed et aliis medicis me natu majoribus comprobatum est. Siquidem Asclepiades cui cognomentum erat Pharmaceon, et alia omnia medicamenta collegit, ut multos impleret libros, et stercore ad multos sæpe affectus utitur non modo medicamentis, quæ focis imponuntur commiscens, sed iis quoque quæ intro in os sumuntur.”—(Galeni Claudii, “Opera Omnia,” edit. of Dr. Carl Gottleib Kuhn, Leipsig, 1826, vol. xii., pp. 290, 291.)
Dog-dung, especially of an animal “sola ossa cani edenda exhibens duobus continuo diebus, ex quibus durum, candidum, ac minime fœtorum stercus proveniebat.” Such dog-dung was administered in angina, dysentery, inveterate ulcers, etc., in milk or other convenient menstruum.—(Idem, vol. xii. p. 291.)
The urine of boys was drunk by patients suffering from the plague in Syria, but the year is not given.—(See idem, vol. xii. p. 285.)
Galen did not believe that calculi had the slightest value for effecting a reduction of calculi.—(Idem, lib. xii. p. 290.)
Galen could not bring himself to agree with Xenocrates, who recommended the internal and external employment of sweat, urine, catamenial fluid, and ear-wax in medicine. (Idem, lib. xii. p. 249.) “At potis sudoris aut urinæ aut mensium mulieris abominanda detestandaque est, atque horum in primis stercus, quod tamen scribit Xenocrates, si oris ac gutturis partibus inungatur et in ventrem devoretur, quid præstare valeat.—Scripsit etiam de aurium sordis devorandis. At ego ne has quidem morbo deinceps liber degerem. Atque his etiam magis abominandum puto stercus. Estque probrum gravius homini modesto audire stercorivorum quam fellatorum aut cinædum.”
He shows that it was used by some physicians in “psoras,” and in “lepras,” in the washing of ulcers, affections of the ears and genitalia, as an embrocation and a liniment for scald and scabby head, and by rustics in the alleviation of the pains of sore feet. (Galen, lib. xii. p. 285 et seq.)
Galen instances the ordure of a boy, dried, mixed with Attic honey, given as a cure for consumption. “Stercus pueri siccum cum melle Attico ad lævorem tritum.” (Idem, lib. xii. p. 294.) The boy was to be fed on vegetables and well-cooked bread, leavened, made with a little salt, in a small oven (Clibanus, Dutch oven?). The boy was also to be temperate in drink, using only a small quantity of good wine.—(Idem, lib. xii. p. 294.)
Wolf-dung was given in drink, in the intervals between the paroxysms of colic; the white excrement ejected after eating bones was regarded as the stronger, and especially that which had not touched the ground,—a thing not difficult to find, because he says the wolf has the same disposition as the dog; that is, to eject its urine and ordure upon rocks, stones, thorns, and bushes, whenever possible, etc.—(Galen, “Opera Omnia,” Kuhn’s edition, lib. xii. pp. 295-297.)
Goat-dung was useful in the reduction of inveterate hard tumors and boils. Galen used it with great success when made into a cataplasm with barley meal. “We also use it,” he adds, “in dropsy” (“aquam inter cutem”). It was also employed in “lepras,” “psoras,” and other skin affections. It was applied as a plaster in tumors and other swellings and in abscesses of the ear; also in bites of vipers and other wild beasts (“aliarum bestiarum”). It was drunk in wine as a cure for the yellow jaundice, and applied as a suppository, mixed with incense, in uterine hemorrhages. But Galen thought that the internal employment at least of such disgusting curatives is of questionable expediency, especially when more agreeable remedies may be available. This objection would, of course, apply with special force in cities, although he admits that travellers, country people, and those suffering from poison, must use the first thing within reach (vol. xii. p. 299). Bull-dung was regarded by Galen as of value in the cure of the stings of bees and wasps (see notes on the same subject taken in the State of New Jersey). In Mysia, a country near the Hellespont, physicians ordered it to be smeared on the skins of dropsical patients in the sun. The same treatment was supposed to help consumptive patients, if the dung was that of grass-fed stock; but he repeats that such remedies are better adapted for rustics than for the inhabitants of cities (lib. xii. p. 301).
Sheep-dung was used for all kinds of warty and excrescential growths externally, either raw or burnt, and in the latter case was often mixed with, or superseded by, goat-dung (lib. xii. p. 302).
The dung of wild doves was preferred to the excrement of the domestic pigeon; administered internally, generally mixed with the seed of the nasturtium, in all inveterate pains affecting sides, shoulders, skull, loins, kidneys, in vertigo, head-aches, etc. It was used just as frequently in cities as in rural communities (lib. xii. p. 302).
Mouse-dung seems to have been extensively used in medical practice, although Galen ridicules the fact, and does not mention the purposes of its employment (lib. xii. p. 307).
The dung of barn-yard fowl was used for the same purposes as dove-dung. Some people thought that the dung was more efficacious if dropped by a fowl that had been stuffed with mushrooms. Galen here takes occasion to remark that all animals must differ in the character of their excreta as they do in their food; the same animal, by a change of habitat, and consequent change of food, must cause a perceptible variation in the qualities of its excrement (lib. xii. p. 304). Galen flatly expresses his disbelief in the medicinal value of the excrement of the goose, stork, eagle, or hawk, although he admits that they were used internally by many practitioners of good standing, in difficulties of the respiratory organs; but he says these same authorities are wont to extol the merits, in the treatment of the same diseases, of such absurd remedies as night-owl’s blood, human urine, etc.—(Galen, lib. 12, p. 305.)
Lucian, in his treatise upon remedies for the cure of gout (“tragopodagra”), makes mention in several places of excrementitious remedies,—as, for example, “dung of mountain-goat and man,”
“And Bones, and Skin, and Fat, and Blood, and Dung,
Marrow, Milk, Urine, to the fight are brought.”
—(Edition of William Tooke, F. R. S., London, 1820, vol. i. p. 741.)