Category Archives: Bodily functions

1745: Invading Scots beshit the streets of Macclesfield

John Stafford was a lawyer and the town clerk of Macclesfield, near Manchester, at the height of the Jacobite uprising in 1745. Led by the ‘Bonnie Prince’, Charles Stuart, the Jacobite rebels invaded England in November 1745. By the end of the month, the Jacobite advance had reached Macclesfield, where it was warmly welcomed by most townspeople.

John Stafford, a Hanover loyalist, was much less enthusiastic about their presence. Nevertheless, Stafford took an interest in the arrival of the ‘Pretender’s forces, recording observations about their numbers, their personnel and Charles Stuart himself.

Stafford was also required to provide lodgings for two Scottish soldiers. One was a young officer, “exceedingly civil” and a “person of sense and account” who charmed Stafford’s daughters. His second guest was a “very ordinary fellow” who “tried all the locks in my bureau and in my wife’s closet” and pilfered several small items from the Stafford house.

After enduring a sleepless night, Stafford walked across the road to visit his neighbour, who was hosting more than 50 Highland soldiers and their camp followers. To his horror:

“The house floor was covered with straw, and men, women and children lay promiscuously together like a kennel of hounds, some of ’em stark naked.”

Stafford then took a walk around the neighbourhood and discovered that it had been befouled by the visiting Scots:

“As soon as it was daylight the streets appeared in the Edinburgh fashion, being beshit all along on both sides, from one end to the other.”

To Stafford’s “great joy” the Jacobite contingent left the following day and pushed on towards Derby. They passed through Macclesfield again a week later, this time in retreat. In April the following year, Charles Stuart and his army were conclusively defeated at the Battle of Culloden.

Source: Letter from John Stafford, December 2nd 1745. 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.

1658: Cure bad breath by holding your mouth over the toilet

Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) was an English writer, diplomat and a courtier to King Charles I. Digby was also something of an amateur physician. One of his better known medical texts, republished several times, suggested recipes for the ‘weapon salve’ or ‘powder of sympathy’. This bizarre early modern medical theory was based on the premise that a victim’s wound could be treated by applying ointment to the weapon that had caused it.

Digby also believed in Galenic concepts of physiological balance and harmony. These principles were reflected in Digby’s suggested treatment for bad breath:

“Tis an ordinary remedy, though a nasty one, that they who have ill breaths [should] hold their mouths open at the mouth of a privy [outhouse] as long as they can… by the reiteration of this remedy, they find themselves cured at last, the greater stink of the privy drawing unto it and carrying away the lesser stink, which is that of the mouth.”

Source: Kenelm Digby, A Late Discourse [on] Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy, London, 1658. 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.

1305: Cure lovesickness with an old hag and a menstrual cloth

Bernard of Gordon was a French physician and academic of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Born into a noble family on the French Riviera, just north of Cannes, he studied and then lectured at the University of Montpellier.

Bernard’s best known written work, Lilium Medicinae, was one of the most trusted medical encyclopaedias of its age, describing scores of diseases and their causes, symptoms and suggested treatments. It even explored less well known areas of practice, such as speech therapy and psychological problems.

One chapter of the Lilium even offered a treatment for male depression caused by unrequited love or ‘lovesickness’. According to Bernard, the treating physician should deal with this problem by locating:

“…an old woman with a hideous appearance, big teeth, a beard and ugly disgusting clothing.”

The old woman should appear before the patient, telling him that the woman he loves is promiscuous, alcoholic, unclean, lazy, mentally deranged and wets the bed. If this does not work, the old woman must:

“…take out an old cloth soaked with menstrual blood and show it before him, lifting it before his face. Then shout before him: ‘Look, your beloved is just like this cloth!”

Source: Bernard of Gordon, Lilium Medicinae, c.1305. 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.

1841: Stick your diseased finger in a Chinese frog

In April 1841, Doctor Peter Parker gave a lively address to the Boston Medical Association. Dr Parker was reporting on his experiences as a medical missionary in Asia. He arrived in China in 1834 and spent several years there, helping with the institution of charitable hospitals in Macau and elsewhere.

A good deal of Parker’s address focused on the “medical quackery” he had observed in China. A Chinese dentist, Parker claimed, will keep the teeth he has extracted and string them onto his horse’s reins; this serves both as advertising and “evidences of his skill and extensive practice”.

Dr Parker also recorded seeing:

“…a man with his whitlowed [diseased] finger thrust into the abdomen of a [live] frog, the poor writhing reptile being tied on to cure the disease.”

Parker report mentioned many other bizarre treatments. Local doctors attempted to revive a drowned child, Parker said, not by draining and massaging the lungs but by blowing air into the rectum with a hollow feather. Another Chinese physician, treating a merchant’s wife for constipation, sent a messenger to the hospital asking if he could borrow a corkscrew.

Source: Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol.24, April 21st 1841. 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.

1867: Karl Marx plagued by painful genital boils

History’s most famous left-wing collaboration, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, kept very little from each other. They corresponded prolifically and their letters touched on a great number of topics: from politics, economics and history, to cookery, gossip and dirty stories.

In a 1853 letter to Engels, Marx paused from discussing British foreign policy and domestic politics to a particular habit of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III:

“That angel suffers, it seems, from a most indelicate complaint. She is passionately addicted to farting, and is incapable, even in company, of suppressing it. At one time she resorted to horse-riding as a remedy. But this was later forbidden [by her husband] so she now vents herself. It’s only a noise, a little murmur… but then you know that the French are sensitive to the slightest puff of wind.”

Marx was also forthcoming about his own medical conditions, including constipation:

“I would have written to you before now, but when the whole person is clogged up for days, in my case a posteriori… it makes him totally incapable of action.”

And a complaint that plagued Marx for several years, painful boils around his genitals:

“I shan’t bore you by explaining [the] carbuncles on my posterior and near the penis, the final traces of which are now fading but which made it extremely painful for me to adopt a sitting and hence a writing posture. I am not taking arsenic because it dulls my mind too much and I need to keep my wits about me.”

Sources: Letters from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, dated March 23rd 1853, August 11th 1877, April 2nd 1867. 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.

c.1210: Daniel of Eccles offers advice on privy use

Urbanus Magnus (‘The Civilised Man’) was written by Daniel of Eccles in the first two decades of the 1200s. Written in Latin, it contained approximately 3,000 lines of advice for the modern medieval man. Among topics explored in Urbanus Magnus are issues of protocol, personal conduct and sexual morality. It also offers advice on manners, including how to behave in church, how to conduct oneself at the dinner table and how to entertain guests of higher and lower rank. There are also information about ablutions and privy etiquette. Daniel tells readers that only the lord or host was permitted to urinate in the great hall; all others should step outside. “Clearing the bowels” should occur in “secluded places” outside, with the backside presented “into the wind”. Daniel also provided advice to those attending the king or lord at his privy:

“Go before [him] carrying sufficient light. When your lord enters his inner chamber, check that the privy is free of soil. When he sits on the privy, take in your hands hay or straw. Take up two large clumps of hay in your fingers; press them tightly together. Give them to your patron as he requires them. Let the wads be given to him [as you] stand, not on bended knee.”

Also, if sharing a communal lavatory, Daniel says it is good manners to stay until your partner is also finished:

“If two together are sitting on a privy, one should not rise while the other is still emptying himself.”

Source: Daniel of Eccles, Urbanus Magnus, c.1210. 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.

1670: For leprosy, swallow gold bullets – over and over

Hannah Woolley was a mid-17th century writer – and possibly England’s most prolific public author of household guides. Woolley’s most famous work, published in 1670, carried the long title The Queen-Like Closet or Rich Cabinet, stored with all manner of Rare Receipts for Preserving, Candying and Cookery. Much of The Queen-Like Closet was concerned with cooking, household management and other useful tips for housewives, picked up during Woolley’s time in domestic service. She also offered some homespun medical cures. For example, for shingles Woolley says to:

“…Take a cat and cut off her ears and her tail, and mix the blood thereof with a little new milk and anoint the grieved place with it, morning and evening, for three days.”

For “morphew” (scaly skin) or freckles:

“Take the blood of any fowl or beast and wipe your face all over with it every night when you go to bed, for a fortnight… and sometimes hold your face over the smoke of brimstone for a while.”

And for leprosy, Woolley suggests swallowing gold bullets. And when they work their way through your system and emerge at the other end, swallow them again:

“Swallow every twelve hours a bullet of gold, and still as you void one, wash it in treacle-water and at the hour swallow it again… continue doing this a long time and it will cure.”

Source: Hannah Woolley, The Queene-Like Closet, &c., London, 1670. 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.

1742: New Jersey man makes himself “an eunuch”

In November 1742 the Boston Evening Post reported that Mister John Leek of Cohansey, New Jersey had:

“…after twelve month’s deliberation, made himself an eunuch… it is said for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake… He is now under Dr Johnson’s hands and in a fair way of doing well.”

According to the Evening Post, Mr Leek was following the example outlined in Matthew 19:12 which reads:

“For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others. And there are those who choose to live like eunuchs, for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Source: The Boston Evening Post, November 8th 1742. 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.

1751: Cardiff doctor perishes after his toilet collapses

In 1751 London’s Gentleman’s Magazine, along with several Welsh newspapers, reported the death of Doctor William Parry, a well regarded Cardiff physician. A coronial investigation later concluded that Doctor Parry had died from suffocation. According to evidence tendered at the inquest, Doctor Parry was sitting “astride his privy” when the structure collapsed, sending the doctor tumbling “into the murk of his own cesspit”. The collapsing seat caused the entire building to fold and it “fell in with him”, preventing Parry’s escape. It was an ignominious end for a man described as:

“…a gentleman of distinguished character in his profession, a most religious observer of truth and zealously loyal in the late rebellion.”

Sources: The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vo. 21, 1751; Coronial Reports for 1751. 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.

1688: Portsmouth mayor abused with turd slur

In 1688, word reached the aldermen of Portsmouth that the city’s mayor, Mr Robert Hancock, had been subjected to a torrent of abuse outside his home. The alleged perpetrator was one William Hale, a servant of Mr William Terrell.

Hale and an accomplice turned up at Hancock’s home late in the evening, pulling boards away from its front and making a loud ruckus. Hancock appeared in the street and challenged the intruders. A witness reported that Hale gave the elderly mayor a frightful torrent of abuse. In doing so he also refused to doff his cap, saying that:

“..he would as soon pull off his hat to a turd as to Mr Hancock.”

There is no record of any sanction or penalty imposed on William Hale.

Source: Portsmouth City Council, Borough Sessions records, 1688. 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.