Whether or not the use of human urine to ripen cheese originated in the ancient practice of employing excrementitious matter to preserve the products of the dairy from the maleficence of witches; or, on the other hand, whether or not such an employment as an agent to defeat the efforts of the witches be traceable to the fact that stale urine was originally the active ferment to hasten the coagulation of the milk would scarcely be worth discussion.
The smoker of opium little imagines that, in using his deadly drug, he is often smoking an adulterated article, the adulterant being hen manure; he is thus placed on a par with the American Indian smoking the dried dung of the buffalo, and the African smoking that of the antelope or the rhinoceros.
In the description of the province of Quang-tong, it is stated that the Chinese hatch eggs “in the Oven, or in Dung.”—(Du Halde, “History of China,” London, 1741, vol. i. p. 238.) See the same statement made in Purchas, vol. i. 270.
In China “their fish is chiefly nourished with the dung of Oxen that greatly fatteth it.”—(Perera, in Purchas, vol. i. p. 205.)
The Roman emperors imposed a tax and tolls upon urine because of its usefulness in many things.—(“Dreck Apotheke,” Paullini, p. 8. See previous statements in this volume and consult Suetonius “Vespasian.”)
There was a cement for fixing the precious metals, which cement was known as “Chrysocollon,” and was made with much ceremony from the urine “of an innocent boy.” There are various descriptions, but the following, while brief, contain all the material points.
Galen describes this Chrysocollon, or Gold-Glue, as prepared by some physicians from the urine of a boy, who had to void it into a mortar of red copper while a pestle of the same material was in motion, which urine carefully exposed to the sun until it had acquired the thickness of honey, was considered capable of soldering gold and of curing obstinate diseases: “Attamen medicamentum quod ex urina pueri conficetur quod quidam vocant chrysocollon, quia eo ad auri glutinationem utuntur, ad ulcera difficilia sanatu optimum esse assero fit autem id figura phiali confecto mortario ex ære rubro habentem pistillum ejusdem materiæ in quod mejente puero pistillum circumages, identidem, ut non tantum a mortario deradedet, etc.” (“Opera Omnia,” Kuhn’s edition, vol. xii. pp. 286, 287.)