We are next treated to a feast of big words, in which we learn that on account of its “nitrosity” and “volatility,” it was regarded as a “detersive,” and “penetrative,” while, on account of the alkali it contained, it was a neutralizer of the “fermenting acids,” and therefore applicable in cardialgia, anorexia, gout, toothache, colic, yellow jaundice, and intermittent fevers, either the urine “of the patient himself or that of a wine-drinking boy.”
Boyle, the eminent philosopher, is quoted as saying that, in his opinion, the virtues of human urine, as a medicine, internally and externally, would require a volume by themselves. Boyle is also credited with having published a tract on this subject, in Leipzig, 1692, over the signature “B.”
Lentilius devotes a number of pages of close, logical reasoning to demonstrate the fallacy of supposing that human excreta can be of any possible utility in therapeutics. According to his opinion, Nature voided them from the body because the body had no further use for them; therefore, their re-absorption could scarcely be other than deleterious; this was all the more true in disease, because the patient being in a morbid state, that which he ejected could by no process of correct reasoning be regarded as healthy. This argument, although of great interest and value, is very long and pertains rather to the history of medicine proper than to this essay.
Lentilius concludes by saying that no more cruel threat could be made than that of Sennacherib against the Jews that he would make them eat their own excrement and drink the water which bathed his feet: “Quam futurum esse, ut quisquis sua stercora voraturus, et aquam pedum suorum bibiturus sit.” Esa. 36, ver. 12. “Væ miseris ægrotis, quo rumores ad urinæ potum rediit.”—(In “Ephem. Phys. Medic.” Leipzig, 1694, vol. ii. pp. 169 to 176, inclusive; the pages are quarto, the number of words to the page about 375.)
Lentilius has either stolen bodily from Paullini, or anticipated him; he has all of Paullini’s facts, but seems, in addition, to have been much of a philosopher, which Paullini was not.
Christian Franz Paullini’s “Filth Pharmacy,” Frankfort, 1696, is better known than any other of the works cited, being in German, of small size, and confining itself almost exclusively to a recapitulation of diseases, with the appropriate excrementitious curative opposite each.
Six different editions are contained in the Library of the U. S. Army Medical Museum, in Washington; of these, that of Frankfort, 1696 (268 pages, duodecimo), was selected, and the work of translation entrusted to Messrs. Smith and Pratz; being perfectly familiar with English and German, their interpretation, made slowly and carefully, may be relied on as minutely correct.
Paullini has done nothing beyond collecting his ample list of cases in which the human and animal excreta were employed in the treatment of diseases; he has in no instance ventured upon an explanation of the reason for such use, such as Etmuller supplied.
He treats of the employment of human ordure and urine, and animal excreta, in the following diseases: headache, insomnia, vertigo, dementia, melancholia, mania, gout, convulsions, palsy, epilepsy, sore eyes, cataract, ophthalmia, ear troubles, bleeding of the nose, nasal polypi, carious teeth, dropsy of the head, wens, asthmatic troubles, coughs, spitting of blood, consumption, pleurisy, fainting spells, diseases of the mammary glands, tumors, colic, abnormal appetite, worms, hernia, sciatica, ulceration of the bowels, constipation, diarrhœa, dysentery, obstructions of the liver, dropsy, jaundice, kidney troubles, gravel, stone, retention of urine, excessive flow of urine, impaired virility, swelling of the testicles, uterine displacements, menstrual troubles, sterility, accidents to pregnant women, miscarriages, difficult labor, pains after childbirth, gout of feet, rheumatism, fevers of all kinds, poisons, plague, syphilitic and venereal diseases, abscesses, sprains, contusions, bruises, wounds, ring-worm, felons, itch, freckles, as a cosmetic, for rash, tetter, loss of hair, lice, gangrene, colds, warts, fissure of the rectum, fistulas, corns, bunions, love-potions, and to baffle witchcraft.
For headache, pigeon-dung was used internally, and the dung of a red cow and of the peacock, externally.