That the Eskimo believed in the power of human ordure to baffle witchcraft would seem to be intimated in the following from Boas: “Though the Angekok understood the schemes of the old hag, he followed the boy, and sat down with her. She feigned to be very glad to see him and gave him a dishful of soup, which he began to eat. But by the help of his tornaq [that is, the magical influence which aided him] the food fell right through him into a vessel which he had put between his feet on the floor of the hut. This he gave to the old witch, and compelled her to eat it. She died as soon as she had brought the first spoonful to her mouth.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in “Sixth Annual Report” Bureau of Ethnology, Washington.)
“Osthanes, the magician, prescribed the dipping of our feet, in the morning, in human urine, as a preventative against charms.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 286.)
Frommann writes that human ordure, menses, and semen were mixed in the food of the person to be bewitched.—(“Tractatus de Fascinatione,” p. 683.)
On another page this list is increased to read that human ordure, urine, blood, hair, nails, bones, skulls, and the moss growing on the last-named, as well as animal excrement, were among the materials employed in witchcraft.—(Idem, p. 684.)
If fried beans be thrown into excrement, for each bean thus wasted a pustule will appear on the fundament of the thrower. “Pisa frixa injecta excrementis tot pustulas in podice excitant quot pisa.” (Idem, p. 1023.) The following passage is not fully understood: “Vesicatorio excrementis adhuc calentibus imposito intestina corrosione afficiuntur.” It seems to mean that the entrails will be affected with corrosion when hot excrement is placed in a bladder, probably after the manner of some of the sausages of which we have elsewhere taken notes. Hot ashes or cinders thrown upon recently voided excrement will cause inflammation and pustules in ano. For the same reason we can cause those who are absent to purge without using medicine upon them. “Cineres calidi, vel prunæ candentes scybalis recentibus injecta inflammationem et pustulas in ano excitant.... Eadem ratione absentes sine medicamentis purgari posse, scribit Tilemannus de Mater. Medic. p. 251. (Idem, p. 1623.) Frommann also adds that this fact was well known to the English and French, as well as to the Germans.”—(Idem, p. 1037.)
Human ordure and urine were burned with live coals as a potent charm. The person whose excreta had been burned would suffer terrible pains in the rectum. But this could be used in two ways, for love as well as hatred could be induced by this means, between married people and between old friends.—(Paullini, pp. 264, 265.)
For the use of urine by the Eskimo to ward off the maleficence of witches, turn back to citations taken from Rink’s “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” where it is shown that they still use it with this object in cases of childbirth. See, also, the notes taken from the writings of Dr. Franz Boas.
A bone from the leg or thigh of a man who had died a violent death, emptied of its marrow, and then filled with human ordure, closed up with wax, and placed in boiling water, compelled the unfortunate ejector of the excrement to evacuate just as long as the bone was kept in the water, and it could even be so used that he would be compelled to defile his bed every night. “Os ex pede, vel brachio, vel femore hominis violenta morte interempti, et hoc exempta medulla impletur cum stercore alicujus hominis, foramina obturantur cum cera et sic in aquam calidam immittitur, hoc quamdiu jacet in aqua calida, tamdiu expurgatur iste, cujus stercus fuit inclusum, adeo ut sic aliquem usque ad mortem purgare possimus, potest etiam fieri alio modo ut quis omni nocte lectum suum maculet, sed est ludicrum.”—(Etmuller, vol. ii. pp. 272, 273.)
The small bones of the human leg are used in the sorcery of the Australians. (See “Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 276; received through the kindness of the Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales, F. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“In order to produce a flux in the belly, it was only necessary to put a patient’s excrement into a human bone, and throw it into a stream of water.” The above is quoted from the medical writings of “Peter of Spain, who was archbishop, and afterwards pope, under the name of John XXI.”—(“Physicians of the Middle Ages,” T. C. Minor, p. 6.)