Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXVIII. REMEDIES DERIVED FROM LIVING CREATURES., CHAP. 13.—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE HUMAN EXCRETIONS.

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CHAP. 13.—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE HUMAN EXCRETIONS.

In Greece, where everything is turned to account, the owners of the gymnasia have introduced the very excretions¹ even of the human body among the most efficient remedies; so much so, indeed, that the scrapings from the bodies of the athletes are looked upon as possessed of certain properties of an emollient, calorific, resolvent, and expletive nature, resulting from the compound of human sweat and oil. These scrapings are used, in the form of a pessary, for inflammations and contractions of the uterus: similarly employed, they act as an emmenagogue, and are useful for reducing condylomata and inflammations of the rectum, as also for assuaging pains in the sinews, sprains, and nodosities of the joints. The scrapings obtained from the baths are still more efficacious for these purposes, and hence it is that they form an ingredient in maturative preparations. Such scrapings as are impregnated with wrestlers' oil,² used in combination with mud, have a mollifying effect upon the joints, and are more particularly efficacious as a calorific and resolvent; but in other respects their properties are not so strongly developed.

The shameless and disgusting researches that have been made will quite transcend all belief, when we find authors of the very highest repute proclaiming aloud that the male seminal fluid is a sovereign remedy for the sting of the scorpion! In the case too, of women afflicted with sterility, they recommend the application of a pessary, made of the first excrement that is voided by an infant at the moment of its birth; the name they give it is "meconium."³ They have even gone so far, too, as to scrape the very filth from off the walls of the gymnasia, and to assert that this is also possessed of certain calorific properties. These scrapings are used as a resolvent for inflamed tumours, and are applied topically to ulcers upon aged people and children, and to excoriations and burns.

1 See B. xv. c. 5.

2 "Ceroma." A mixture of oil and wax.

3 Properly, "poppy juice."

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 13.—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE HUMAN EXCRETIONS.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 13.—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE HUMAN EXCRETIONS.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.