“A new-born babe was not considered fully prepared for life’s journey until its stomach had been filled and emptied by a potation of molasses diluted with the vesical secretions of the first youngster that could be secured for the purpose.”—(“Professional Reminiscences,” Benjamin Eddy Cutting, M. D., Curator of the Lowell Institute, Boston, Mass., 1888, p. 40.)
OTHER EXCREMENTITIOUS REMEDIES.
It was not enough that the urine and ordure of men and animals should be employed in pharmacy; everything that could be taken from the bodies of men or animals, wild or domesticated, living or dead, was enlisted to swell the dread list of filth remedies.
Etmuller supplies the following list of remedies; “sumuntur ex corpore vivente:” Hair, nails, saliva, ear-wax, sweat, milk, menses, after-birth, urine, ordure, semen, blood, calculi, worms, lice, caul (of infant), ... and these “ex partibus corporis demortui.” ... The whole corpse, flesh, skin, fat, bones, skull, moss growing on a skull, brain, gall, heart. Gall of animals has been used by the Indians of North America as a stimulant. (See Etmuller, Michaelus, “Opera Omnia,” vol. ii. p. 265, Schrod. “Dil. Zoöl.”)
He also recites that the following parts of domestic kine were used in medical practice: horns, bile, liver, spleen, blood, marrow, tallow, fat, hoofs, urine, ordure, testicles, milk, butter, cheese, phallus, and bones.—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 248 et seq.)
HAIR.
“The first hair cut from an infant’s head will modify the attacks of gout.... The hair of a man torn down from the cross is good for quartan fevers.”—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 7.)
“The smell of a woman’s hair, burnt, will drive away serpents, and hysterical suffocations, it is said, may be dispelled thereby. The ashes of a woman’s hair, burnt in an earthen vessel, will cure eruptions and porrigo of the eyes ... warts and ulcers upon infants ... wounds upon the head ... corrosive ulcers ... inflammatory tumors and gout ... erysipelas and hemorrhages, and itching pimples.”—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. c. 20.)
Schurig commends the use of human hair in cases of baldness, applied externally in salve, chopped fine or in ashes; for the cure of yellow jaundice, it was powdered and drunk in some suitable menstruum; it was employed in luxation of the joints, for hemorrhage from wounds: “Ad canis morsuum, infantis capilli cum aceto impositu morsum sine tumore sanant et capitis ulcera emendant.”—(Sextus Placitus, art. “De Puello et Puella Virgine.”)
Flemming advised that it be powdered and drunk in wine as a cure for yellow jaundice; woman’s hair, powdered and made into a salve, with lard, was of general efficacy; men’s hair was burned under the nostrils of those suffering from lethargy; and was drunk for “suffocation of the womb.”—(“De Remediis,” etc. p. 8.)