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A Celebration Of Pee Power

By Hank Campbell in Science 2.0
March 10, 2011
Profile picture for user Hank
Submitted by Hank on Thu, 03/10/2011 - 07:44
Old NID
77070

It may not be in favor today but urine was used in medicine for millenia.

In Rome,  Richard Sugg at the Guardian tells us, Pliny the Elder recommended fresh urine for the treatment of "sores, burns, affections of the anus, chaps and scorpion stings", while stale urine mixed with ash could be rubbed on your baby for nappy rash. In early-modern Europe numerous medical luminaries went further. Pioneering French surgeon Ambroise Paré noted that itching eye-lids could be washed in the patient's urine – provided that it had been kept "all night in a barber's basin" first. 

The father of chemistry, Robert Boyle, advised certain patients to drink every morning "a moderate draught of their own urine", preferably while "tis yet warm". 

Read the many and unusual uses of urine

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