He also gives the formulas for preparing aqua and oleum ex stercore humano (p. 114). In other places the use of ordure and urine in medicine is mentioned as a matter of course.—(See p. 274; also under the headings of “Ass,” “Mouse,” “Horse,” etc.; again, pp. 114, 192 et seq.)
Beckherius gives a list of a number of preparations which to our more enlightened view of such things must appear trivial, and need not be repeated here in detail,—such as one for “extracting the vitriol of metals,” etc. Into the preparation of all these human urine entered.
Potable gold was made with a menstruum of spirits of wine and human urine, half and half (pp. 100-102); there was an “oil of sulphur” prepared from human urine (103); there was a “precipitate of mercury and urine” (idem); there was finally a ludum urinæ, the residuum after the distillation of the aqua or the spiritus respectively, which was prescribed medicinally in the same way as these were (pp. 109, 110).
Von Helmont called the salt obtained by the distillation of human urine “duelech.” (See “Oritrike, or Physicke Refined,” John Baptist von Helmont, English translation, London, 1662, pp. 847-849.) This was the name generally given by Paracelsus to the stone in the bladder. Von Helmont instances a cure of tympanitis or dropsy by a belly-plaster of hot cow-dung, and adds, “Neither, therefore, doth Paracelsus vainly commend dungs, seeing that they are the salts of putrefied meats” (p. 520).
Petræus (Henricus) Nosolog. Harmon. lib. i. dissertat. 13, p. 252, et Joh. Schæderas, pharmacop. med. chym. lib. v. p. 829, “stercus siccatum tritum et cum melle illitum ad anguinam curandam magni usus esse dicunt.”—(“Bib. Scatalogica,” p. 84.)
The ponderous tomes of Michael Etmuller contain all that was known or believed in on this subject at the time of their publication, A.D. 1690. He gives reasons for the employment of each excrement, solid or liquid, human or animal, which need not be detailed at this moment.
Human urine. “Urina calif. exsiccat, resolvit, abstergit, discutit, mundificat, putredini resistit, ideoque usus est præcipue intrinsecus in obstructione epatis, lienis, vesicæ, biliaræ, pestis preservatione, hydrope, ictero.... Exstrinsecus siccat scabiem, resolvit tumores, mundificat vulnera etiam venenata, arcet gangrænam, solvit alvum (in clysmata) abstergit furfures capitis.... compescit febriles insullus (pulsui applicata) exulceratas aures sanat (instillata pueri urina) oculorum tubedine subvenit (instillata) artuum tremorem tollit (lotione) uvulæ tumorem discutit (gargas), lienis dolores sedat (cum cinere cataplasmata).”
From the urine of a wine-drinking boy, “urina pueri (ann. 12) vinum bibentis,” distilled over human ordure, was made “spiritus urinæ” of great value in the expulsion of calculi, although it stunk abominably, “sed valde fœtet.” This was employed in the treatment of gout, asthma, calculi, and diseases of the bladder. (Etmuller, “Schroderi Diluc.,” vol. ii. p. 265.) There are several other methods given of obtaining this “spiritus urinæ per distillationem.”
Then there was a “spiritus urinæ per putrefactionem.” To make this, the urine of a boy twelve years old, who had been drinking wine, was placed in a receptacle, surrounded by horse-dung for forty days, allowed to putrefy, then decanted upon human ordure, and distilled in an alembic, etc. There were other methods for making this also, but this one will suffice. The resulting fluid was looked upon as a great “anodyne” for all sorts of pains, and given both internally and externally, as well as in scurvy, hypochondria, cachexy, yellow and black jaundice, calculi of the kidneys and bladder, epilepsy, and mania.