Dentem atque russam defricare ginginam.”
(Catullus, “Epigrams,” 39.)
The manners of the Celtiberians, as described by Strabo and others, have come down through many generations to their descendants in all parts of the world; all that he related of the use of human urine as a mouth-wash, as a means of ablution, and as a dentifrice, was transplanted to the shores of America by the Spanish colonists; and even in the present generation, according to Gen. S. V. Bénèt, U. S. Army, traces of such customs were to be found among some of the settlers in Florida.
The same custom has been observed among the natives along the Upper Nile. “The Obbo natives wash out their mouths with their own urine. This habit may have originated in the total absence of salt in their country.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, p. 240.)
In England likewise there was a former employment of the same fluid as a dentifrice.
“‘Nettoyer ses dents avec de l’urine, mode espagnole,’ dit Erasme.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, quoting Erasmus, “De Civilitate.”)
Urine was employed as a tooth-wash, alone or mixed with orris powder. “Farina orobi (bitter vetch) permisceatur cum urina.”—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” Danielus Beckherius, pp. 62-64.)
A paragraph in Paullini’s “Dreck Apothek,” p. 74, would show that in Germany the same usages were not unknown. As a dentifrice he recommends urine as a wash; or a powder made of pulverized gravel stone, mixed with urine.
Ivan Petroff states that the peasants of Portugal still wash their clothes in urine.—(Ivan Petroff, in “Trans. American Anthropological Society,” 1882, vol. i.)