“The stale of a cow and the furring of a chamber-pot” to be given, applied locally and externally, for scald head (“Most excellent and most approved Remedies,” London, 1652, p. 80). “The Urine of him that is sick,” externally, for stitch in the side (p. 115); goose dung, externally, for canker in woman’s breast (p. 129); “Urin of a Man Child (he beeing not aboue 3 years of age)” was a component in a salve for the king’s evil (p. 132). For patients sick of the plague, “Let them drink twice a day a draught of their own urin” (p. 143).
“A certain countryman at Antwerp was an example of this, who, when he came into a shop of sweet smells, he began to faint, but one presently clapt some fresh smoking horse-dung under his nose and fetched him to again.”—(Levinus Lemnius, “The Secret Miracles of Nature,” Eng. translation, London, 1658, p. 107, speaking of the effects of sweet and nasty smells upon different persons.)
“The urine of a Lizard, ... the dung of an elephant,” were in medical use, according to Montaigne (“Essays,” Hazlitt’s translation, New York, 1859, vol. iii. p. 23; art. “On the Resemblance of Children to their Parents”). Also, “the excrement of rats beaten to powder” (idem). The above remedies were for the stone.
Doctor Garrett mentions “water of amber made by Paracelsus out of cow-dung,” and gives the recipe for its distillation, as well as for that of its near relative, “water of dung,” the formula for which begins with the words, “Take any kind of dung you please.”[73]
The work of Daniel Beckherius, “Medicus Microcosmus,” published in London, in 1660, is full of the value of excrementitious remedial agents.
Urine alone was applied to eradicate lice from the human head; but a secondary application of dove’s dung was then plastered on (p. 62). Urine was drunk as a remedy for epilepsy, used as an eye-wash, and various other ocular affections, and dropped into the ears for various abscesses and for deafness (pp. 63, 64).
A lotion of one’s own urine was good for the palsy; but where this had been occasioned by venery, excessive drinking, or mercury, the urine of a boy was preferable (p. 64). A drink of one’s own urine, taken while fasting, was commended in obstructions of the liver and spleen, and in dropsy and yellow jaundice (idem); but some preferred the urine of a young boy (p. 65). For jaundice the remedy should be drunk every morning, and the treatment continued for some time (idem).
For retention of urine the remedy was to drink the urine of a young girl (p. 66). Urine was drunk as a remedy for long-continued constipation (idem); for falling of the womb stale urine was applied as a fomentation (idem); for hysteria human ordure and stale urine were applied to the nostrils (idem); the urine of the patient was drunk as a cure for worms (idem); urine was used as a wash for chapped hands, also for all cutaneous disorders (idem); also for “ficus ani” (p. 67). For gout in the feet the patient should bathe them in his own urine, also for travel sores, as he would then be able to resume his journey next day (idem).
One’s own urine was drunk as a preservative from the plague. Beckherius says he knew of his own knowledge that it had been used with wonderful success between 1620 and 1630 for this purpose.