Frommann quotes Ratray as saying from his own observation that there was a “sympathy” between the patient’s urine when enclosed in a glass vial and the condition of the patient himself,—a sort of “barometrical” sympathy, as we would term it. At an earlier period of culture the urine would have been placed in the horn of a goat, or in the bladder of a hog.
The methods of effecting these cures by placing the patient’s urine in an ants’ nest, in any manner, are all given by Johannes Christianus Frommann (“Tract. de Fascinat.,” pp. 1004 et seq.); also the method by boiling an egg in the urine and placing the egg in the nest of ants (p. 1005); also the method of making bread with the patient’s urine, and giving the bread to a dog to eat (p. 1005). In Italy there was a variant of this custom, consisting in giving bread made with the urine of a male patient to a male dog, and that made with the urine of a sick woman to a bitch (idem). Yellow jaundice was cured by boiling a piece of meat in the patient’s urine and giving said meat to a dog (idem); for the cure of rupture the patient should soak some barley in his urine, and then bury the barley in the bark of a tree (p. 1007). Another mode of cure by transplantation was for the patient to urinate in a vial of glass, stop it up with a linen rag or a paper wad, and bury it in the earth (p. 1010). For the cure of yellow jaundice, the patient dug a hole in the ground and urinated therein before sunrise (pp. 1010, 1011); for the cure of dysentery the patient deposited his excrement on a piece of ash and left it in a hole (p. 1011); fever patients threw their excrement in a stream (idem). Other modes were to make a mixture of the urine of the sick man, mixed with ashes, let the mass dry in the sun, and then put it by the embers of the kitchen fire to bake (p. 1012); the ordure of a man sick from “incantation” was applied to the place of the spell, and then hung up (enclosed in a hog’s bladder) for three days in the smoke of the chimney (idem).
In his long and most interesting chapter upon the cure of diseases by the use of human ordure, “magically or sympathetically,” Schurig relates many quaint and curious methods of employment of the alvine dejections of those supposed to be almost in articulo mortis. For example, the ordure of the patient was taken, placed in the hollow of a dead man’s bone, which was then thrown into boiling water. This remedy, if we can trust Schurig, seems to have been of the highest efficacy. Another mode was to mix the ordure with the lees of wine and the pounce of cherries, and let the mass ferment together; or the ordure was collected and thrown into running water.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” pp. 783, 784. The whole chapter “De Stercoris Humani Usu Magico seu Sympathetico,” No. xiii. should be read.)
Goat-urine was applied to sore eyes; but a more certain cure in grave cases was additionally effected by hanging some of it in a goat’s horn for twenty days. “Si cum cornu capræ suspenditur diebus viginti.”—(Sextus Placitus, “De Med. ex Animal.,” article “De Capro.”)
Beckherius has a “sympathetic” cure for the yellow jaundice. Make a poultice of horse-dung and the patient’s own urine, and hang it up in the chimney. “Fimum equinum cum urina ægri sic misce, ut pultis referat consistentiam, hæc linteolo excipe, et in camino suspende ut fumo semper sunt exposita.” (“Med. Microcos.,” p. 65.) Another was to hang the urine of the patient in a bladder in the chimney; as the urine evaporated the patient was to recover. “Propriam urinam vesica suilla excerpisse et hanc in fumo exposuisse seque observasse ad exsiccationem. Urina in vesica ipsum quoque icteritiam evanuisse.” (Idem, p. 65.) Another cure of yellow jaundice was a dose, morning and evening, of a mixture of human urine and horse-radish. (Idem, p. 66.) There was still another “sympathetic” cure: the patient urinated in a vessel, which was allowed to evaporate by the fire, and this was continued for nine days.—(Idem, p. 66.)
For consumption Beckherius gives a “sympathetic” cure (already noted from other sources) of boiling an egg in the patient’s urine until it hardens, and then burying it in an ant-hill. (Idem, p. 75.) The same cure was employed in fevers. (Idem.)
A pinch of salt, the size of a big bean, was wrapped in a linen rag, and dipped in the urine of the patient for a whole day; then heated in the fire until it became reddish in color; some of this was sprinkled on bread, and the patient rubbed with it morning and evening.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” pp. 75, 76.)
A fresh egg was boiled in the sick person’s urine, and then thrown to the fishes. “Recens ovum in urina ægri quod in piscinam ubi pisces sunt conjiciatur, et momento febrem cessare dicunt.”—(Idem, p. 78.)
Still another was to make a cake out of flour moistened with the urine of the sick; throw this to the fishes. The fishes who ate it would take the disease, and the patient recover. “Subige farinam cum urina ægri ad formam placentulæ; coque hæc in forno, instar panis objice piscibus, ut ab iis devoretur; abit febris, maxime quartana.”—(Idem.)
Frommann devotes a long chapter to cures by “transplantation.” He cites from Pliny the method of curing a bad cough by spitting into the mouth of a toad (tree-toad; see notes already taken), and also gives another in which the urine of the patient made into a dough with flour, was given to a dog or hog.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.” p. 1002.)