Elizabeth Howell
For the fourth-consecutive year, the Hannah Chair explores some unusual and unexpected practices as part of the History of Medicine lectures.
The history of medicine is full of controversial cures. Drinking urine or eating dung, for example, causes many people to turn up their noses. That even holds true for the interlibrary loan librarian assisting Matthew Ramsey, a Vanderbilt University historian, fascinated with the persistence of these practices in folk medicine.
“I would ask him for some obscure text, and he would say, ‘I will try to sniff it out for you,’” says Ramsey, who will speak at the University of Ottawa on March 7, as part of the History of Medicine lecture series that runs from February until late March.
Repugnant as these practices may be to most, the tradition of the Dreckapotheke — literally “filth pharmacy,” the use of excrement for medicinal purposes — could be found in cultures across Europe and Asia. Ancient Egyptians prized crocodile dung, which is also a commonly used ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine.
“What interests me is how this made sense in other cultural contexts,” Ramsey says. “Why did people, including learned physicians, think they could be cured or their ills alleviated by ingesting dung, urine and other things that we would think are too filthy?”
Ramsey is also interested in the use of human body parts in early modern medicine, a practice no one thought to condemn as cannibalism.
“A very long tradition in Western medicine,” he says, “considered the human body a pharmaceutical treasure house.”
In early modern Europe, almost every part of the body had its therapeutic uses. The most celebrated of human-derived products was mummy, supposedly taken from the embalmed bodies of ancient Egyptians. It was commonly used to treat wounds and injuries sustained in falls. For most cultures, both the Dreckapotheke and “medicinal cannibalism” died out in the early 19th century. Scientists were obsessed with isolating pure substances and using them in medicines. It was difficult to find the active ingredients contained in dung, urine, or putrefying mummy – although, the smell was bound to clear any clogged noses.
This was not the end of the Dreckapotheke, however. It persisted in popular medicine. Even today, there are those who believe in “urotherapy” — purifying oneself by drinking one’s own urine. This tradition has an Eastern connection; also called amaroli, it is an import from India.
“This is one of many reminders,” Ramsey says, “that what people do to preserve or restore health depends on what they believe — and not everyone believes the same thing.”
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