Four years after leaving the navy, Jouan penned a letter to US army captain John Bourke, detailing some of the strange cultural practices and medical treatments he had encountered, both at home and abroad. Among them was an Indian habit of rubbing a cow’s genitals, then one’s face, for luck:
“During a stay of three months in Bombay, I saw frequently cows wandering in the streets and Hindu devotees bowing, and lifting up the tails of the cows, rubbing the wombs of the aforesaid [cows] with the right hand and afterwards rubbing their own faces with it.”
No less bizarre was a remedy for toothache from his native Brittany:
“In our province when somebody in the peasantry has a cheek swollen by the effects of toothache, a very good remedy is to apply upon the swollen cheek (as a poultice) freshly expelled cow dung, or even human dung, just expelled and still smoking, which is considered much more efficient.”
Another Jouan encountered while in the port city of Cherbourg:
“In 1847, I was then 26 years old… once an old woman in Cherbourg came to me with a washing pan and asked me to piss into it. She told me that the urine of a stout, healthy young man was required to wash the bosoms of a young woman who had just delivered a child.”
Source: Letter from Captain Henri Jouan to Captain John G. Bourke, July 29th 1888. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.