The followers of the Grand Lama, as already noted, make use of his dried excrements as snuff, and an analogous employment of the dried dung of swine retained a place in the medical practice of Europe until the beginning of the present century, and may, perhaps, still survive in the Folk-medicine of isolated villages.
The people of Achaia say “that the smoke of dried cow dung, that of the animal when grazing I mean, is remarkably good for phthisis, inhaled through a reed.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. xxviii. cap. 67.)
Dung is also used in Central Africa. “A huge bowl is filled with tobacco and clay and sometimes with a questionable mixture, the fumes are inhaled until the smoker falls stupefied or deadly sick—this effect alone being sought for.”—(“Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, p. 266.)
“In Algeria, gazelle droppings are put in snuff and smoking tobacco; the Mongol Tartars mix the ashes of yak manure with their snuff.”—(Personal letter from W. W. Rockhill.)
Mr. Rudyard Kipling shows in his “Plain Tales from the Hills” (“Miss Youghal’s Sais”) that the native population of India is accustomed to use a mixture of one part of tobacco to three of cow-dung.
XXX.
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.
“To multiply and replenish the earth,” was the first command given to man; to love, and to desire to be loved in return, is the strongest impulse of our nature, and therefore it need surprise no student who sets about investigating the occult properties attributed to the human and animal egestæ to find them in very general use in the composition of love-philters, as antidotes to such philters, as aphrodisiacs, as antiphrodisiacs, and as aids to delivery.