30. Poop Was Used in Medical Treatments
Although disgusting, dung is widely available, and at some point, some ancient decided to use it as a medicine. Whether for better or for worse, the exact details of how somebody first arrived at that brainstorm are lost in the mists of history, but it must have been an interesting tale. However it came about, by the time civilization arose, poop was frequently used in treating maladies. For example, the ancient Egyptians swore by the healing properties of gazelle, donkey, dog, and fly dung, and the ability of those animals’ droppings to ward off evil spirits. They also used animal poop to heal their wounds. On the one hand, that might have caused tetanus and other infections on occasion, especially when applying poop to wounds. On the other hand, the microflora in some animal dung contains antibiotics, so the remedy might actually have worked every now and then.
However, fly dung, in particular, raises a fascinating question: just how did the ancient Egyptians, long before microscopes were invented, even manage to spot, let alone gather, tiny fly turds? The ancient Greeks borrowed a lot from the Egyptians, including the medical prescription for using crocodile poop as birth control. Ancient Greek women believed that inserting crocodile dung in their vaginas would serve as a powerful contraceptive. Who knows: perhaps it actually worked, at least in the sense that encountering a vagina full of crocodile poop might have been such a huge turn-off that it averted sex from occurring in the first place?
