It was believed that a dog would not bark at a man who carried hare’s dung about his person.—(See Pliny, lib. xxx. cap. 53.)
“The therionaca ... has the effect of striking wild beasts of all kinds with a torpor which can only be dispelled by sprinkling them with the urine of the hyena.” (Idem, lib. xxiv. cap. 102.) The hyena was regarded as an especially “magical” animal.—(Idem, lib. xxviii.)
“The magicians tell us that, after taking the ashes of a wild-boar’s genitals in urine, the patient must make water in a dog-kennel, and repeat the following formula: ‘This I do that I may not wet my bed, as a dog does.’”—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 60.)
Some of these ideas would appear to have crossed the Atlantic. In the United States, a generation or less ago, boys were wont to urinate “criss-cross” for good luck, and were careful not to let any of their urine fall on their own shadows.—(Col. F. A. Seelye, Anthropological Society, and others, Washington, D. C.)
In Minden, Westphalia, Germany, boys will urinate criss-cross, and say, “Kreuspissen, morgenstirbstein-Jude” (“Let us piss criss-cross, a Jew will die to-morrow”).—(Personal letter from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
“Nor ever defile the currents of rivers flowing seaward, nor fountains, but specially avoid it.”—(“Opera et Dies,” Rev. J. Banks, London, 1856, p. 115.)
“Sorcerers try to procure some of a man’s excrement, and put it in his food in order to kill him.”—(“Muhongo,” a boy from Angola, Africa, personal interview, interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
“Muhongo” also said that to “add one’s urine, even unintentionally, to the food of another bewitches that other, and does him grievous harm.”
Democritus says of the stone “aspisatis:” “Patients should wear it attached to the body with camel’s dung.” (Quoted in Pliny, lib. xxvii. cap. 54.) The same book tells us that stones of this kind were worn generally by gladiators, Milo of Crotona being mentioned as one. What “aspisatis” was cannot be learned.