The Lavatory Reader

Good Riddance to the Farting Cadburys

Much lamenting across Britain with the news that Cadbury (who has been making and selling chocolate since 1824) is to be taken over by the American Kraft Foods, the second largest food and drinks company on the planet. 

 

All very sad, of course, and one must worry whether the takeover will lead to job losses or make a profit for the shareholders but it is worth considering whether Britain might just not be better off without chocolate. Obesity concerns aside, it is a dangerous commodity. Take, for instance, Horace Walpole's account of the death of King George II in 1760.

He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate. A little after seven, he went into the water-closet; the German valet de chamber heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor, with a gash on his right temple, by falling against the corner of a bureau. He tried to speak, could not, and expired.

(Horace Walpole - Letter to George Montagu 25th October 1760)

 

 

When I first read this passage , I assumed the cause of this untimely death was the water-closet. I now suspect that the chocolate at least played a part.

It is also worth remembering that the Cadburys were Quakers. Their dread of hard liquor is part of the reason why they went into the tea, coffee and cocoa business in the first place. I have since learned that these hot beverages have a pernicious, windy effect and, in extreme cases, can lead people to become Quakers themselves - as Jonathan Swift reveals in The Benefit of Farting Explained.

As in sipping of these liquors hot, there is commonly as much wind as water sucked in, which through modesty being debarred a passage downwards when nature offers, recoils up into the bowels, stomach and head, and there occasions all those dreadful symptoms usually ascribed to the vapours – all which one seasonable fart might have prevented. It has likewise been assigned as the first cause of Quakerism and enthusiasm, as Hudibras observes.

As wind in hypochondria pent

Is but a fart, if downward sent;

But, if suppressed, it upward flies

And vents itself in Prophecies.

(Jonathan Swift - The Benefit of Farting Explained 1722)

 

So three cheers for Kraft Foods. They are, unwittingly but at a stroke, ridding the United Kingdom from a substance that has caused the death of kings and led to social humiliation for many a commoner.

Israeli Food Label Row: Not as Nasty as God's Haemorrhoids

British supermarkets have been advised to give more precise information about food products from the West Bank. Previously food was simply labelled ‘Produce of the West Bank’, but DEFRA guidelines recommending two choices – ‘Israeli settlement produce’ or ‘Palestinian produce’.

Israel responded with a predictable hissy fit arguing that they should not be singled out for this sort of treatment. Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor argued on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme (11th December 2009) that there were lots of other regions where labelling could be split but typically refused to be drawn on what those regions might be. The blogosphere has, of course, raced into action, the move being welcomed by some and criticised by others.

 

In any event, this is hardly the first time that exports from the Holy Land have caused trouble for their neighbours. In the first Book of Samuel the problem is much more severe than incorrectly labelled dates or olives and invokes the wrath of God.

Around 1000 BCE, the Philistines, the westerly neighbours of the Israelites, ran off with the Ark of the Covenant and put it in the house of Dagon in the city of Ashdod. It’s the sort of silly thing that the Philistines were always doing and there’s a delightful sense of inevitability to their impending doom. At the end of the Steven Spielberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the pilfering Nazis who steal the Ark are melted down like wax and whisked off to hell.

 

But with this first theft of the Ark, God had something a little different planned…

But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.

And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god.

(5:6-7)

 

Emerods? Emerods? The quaint spelling of the King James Bible masks the full impact of God’s punishment. Haemorrhoids are what we’re dealing with here. Even Wesley admits that they’re good old-fashioned piles and we can only imagine how sore it must be to have God’s hand upon one.

As an unpleasant aside, the word ‘haemorrhoid’ comes from the Greek haimorrhoides phlebes (bleeding veins). ‘Piles’, on the other hand, is thought to come from the Latin pila (a ball), on account of their spherical, grape-like shape.

 Back to the story and the chastened men of Ashdod quite sensibly send the Ark to their neighbours in Gath but God’s not so easily appeased.

…after they had carried it about, the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts.

(5:9)

 

The men of Gath send the Ark on to Ekron. The Ekronites are less than happy about this but they too have to be struck down by haemorrhoids before the Philistines see sense and work out how to send the Ark home…

And they said, If ye send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty; but in any wise return him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.

Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.

Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice…

(6:3-5)

 
Syrian fresco from 3^rd century CE showing the Ark being dragged home by a team of oxen.

 

Bizarrely, this seems to do the trick. God is presented with replicas of the five lords’ piles - made in gold, mind you, and with some mice to boot - and the Philistines are free to carry on their mischief another day.

Whether the ongoing crisis in the Middle East could be solved by the Palestinians offering up golden haemorrhoids to the Israelis obviously remains to be seen. My preferred peace offering would be this remarkable bronze of a giant enema bulb, here shown being unveiled outside the Maskuk Akva-Term spa in Zheleznovodsk, Russia (see here for full story).

 

Psychedelic Urine Drinking and Sycophantic Toad Eating

My friend Lucy Cooke, aka the Amphibian Avenger, is in the Amazonian jungle to investigate the deadly Chytrid fungus that threatens the very survival of the world’s frogs and toads.

 

Hearing of her mercy mission, I felt compelled to discover whether amphibians and fungi had ever before crossed scatological streams, as it were. I was delighted to find this description of tea drinking amongst the Turkic Tartars of the 18^th century. Just as in Great Britain at the time, tea was highly prized and its consumption was initially limited to the richer members of Tartar society. The difference between the Tartars and the British, however, is that the Tartars made their tea from psychedelic mushrooms and the poorer Tartars would catch and drink the urine of their social superiors. This uriposia was because the psychoactive elements in the mushroom tea would still have a considerable effect when consumed a second time.

 

The Russians who trade with [the Tartars of Koraki] carry thither a kind of mushroom… These mushrooms the rich Tartars lay up in large quantities for the winter; and when a nobleman makes a mushroom feast all the neighbours around are invited. The mushrooms are prepared by boiling, by which the water acquires an intoxicating quality, and is a sort of drink which the Tartars prize beyond all other. When the nobility and the ladies are assembled, and the ceremonies usual between people of distinction over, the mushroom broth goes freely round, and they laugh, talk double-entendres, grow fuddled, and become excellent company. The poorer sort, who love mushroom broth to distraction as well as the rich, but cannot afford it at first hand, post themselves on these occasions round the huts of the rich, and watch the opportunity of the ladies and gentlemen as they come down to pass their liquor, and holding a wooden bowl, catch the delicious fluid, very little altered by filtration, being still strongly tinctured with the intoxicating quality. Of this they drink with the utmost satisfaction, and thus they get as drunk and jovial as their betters.

(Oliver Goldsmith – The Citizen of the World: Letter XXXII 1762)

 

The amphibious reference comes further down in this same passage.  Its connection to fungi is somewhat spurious but fascinating nonetheless. Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) refers to sycophants as toad-eaters (from which we get the word ‘toady’). This usage first appears in 1629 and derives from the fact that all toads were thought (erroneously) to be poisonous. Quack doctors would hire an assistant to eat a toad in front of an audience and then ‘cure’ him of the poison; so unpleasant was the job of this assistant, that to be a toad-eater became synonymous with the type of person who would do anything for a superior. Of course, some toads are indeed psychoactive...

 

 ‘Happy nobility!’ cried my companion, ‘who can fear no diminution of respect unless seized with strangury, and who when drunk are most useful! Though we have not this custom among us, I foresee that if it were introduced, we might have many a toad-eater in England ready to drink from the wooden bowl on these occasions, and to praise the flavour of his lordship’s liquor. As we have different classes of gentry, who knows but we may see a lord holding the bowl to the minister, a knight holding it to his lordship, and a simple squire drinking it double-distilled from the loins of a knighthood?’

(Oliver Goldsmith – The Citizen of the World: Letter XXXII 1762)

Dramatic Claudio from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Eating Faeces and Drinking Urine - It's All in the Bible!

Eating faeces and drinking urine are considered distasteful by most people yet they both have a long history. Coprophagia is usually practiced by sexual deviants or as a form of bodily mortification. Imbibing urine, on the other hand, is regarded by some as a legitimate medical practice... although not always.

In 701 BCE, for example, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, was poised to capture Jerusalem. Rab-shakeh, Sennacherib’s emissary, threatened the Israelites on his master’s behalf.

 

But Rab-shakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

(2 Kings 18:27)

 

Proverbs, on the other hand, appears to be giving advice rather than trying to intimidate.

 

Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.

(Proverbs 5:15-17)

 

Pondering this, John Armstrong, a consumptive living in Britain in the 1920s, wondered whether this really was a reference to the body's own water. Ignoring the prevailing medical opinion of the day, Armstrong began drinking his urine, cured himself of consumption and eventually wrote a best-seller on the subject, The Water of Life (1944). However, this practice has been going on in India for centuries.

 

The prophet Ezekiel, on the other hand, was ordered by God to cook some rather strange bread.

 

And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

(Ezekiel 4:12)

 

It’s debatable as to whether this means that the faeces should be mixed in with the barley cakes or whether it should be used as fuel but, in either case, Ezekiel balks at this part of the recipe. Quite reasonably, he points out that his soul is not polluted and he has no intention of putting something so abominable in his mouth. God duly allows Ezekiel to use cow’s dung instead.

Roald Dahl - How Fizzy Drinks Make You Fart

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) has once again been gaining attention - most recently because of the film version of his book, Fantastic Mr Fox.

In The BFG, he describes frobscottle, a fizzy drink where the bubbles fizz downwards instead of up. Upward-fizzing bubbles make one burp, something the giants in the book find ‘filthsome’. Sophie, the heroine, takes issue with the alternative.

 

“With frobscottle,” Sophie said, “the bubbles in your tummy will be going downwards and that could have a far nastier result.”

“Why nasty?” asked the BFG, frowning.

“Because,” Sophie said, blushing a little, “if they go down instead of up, they’ll be coming out somewhere else with an even louder and ruder noise.”

“A whizzpopper!” cried the BFG, beaming at her. “Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping is forbidden among human beans?”

“It is considered extremely rude,” Sophie said.

“But you is whizzpopping, is you not, now and again?” asked the BFG.

“Everyone is whizzpopping, if that’s what you call it,” Sophie said. “Kings and Queens are whizzpopping. Presidents are whizzpopping. Glamorous film stars are whizzpopping. Little babies are whizzpopping. But where I come from, it is not polite to talk about it.”

“Redunculous!” said the BFG. “If everyone is making whizpoppers, then why not talk about it? We is now having a swiggle of this delicious frobscottle and you will see the happy result.” The BFG shook the bottle vigorously. The pale green stuff fizzed and bubbled. He removed the cork and took a tremendous gurgling swig.

“It’s glummy!” he cried. “I love it!”

For a few moments, the Big Friendly Giant stood quite still, and a look of absolute ecstasy began to spread over his long wrinkly face. Then suddenly the heavens opened and he let fly with a series of the loudest and rudest noises Sophie had ever heard in her life. They reverberated around the walls of the cave like thunder and the glass jars rattled on their shelves. But most astonishing of all, the force of the explosions actually lifted the enormous giant clear off his feet, like a rocket.

“Whoopee!” he cried, when he came down to earth again. “Now that is whizzpopping for you!”

(Roald Dahl – The BFG 1982)

 

Bukowski - The Joys of a Good Beer Shit

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) is one of the great scatologists of the 20^th century – so much so that it is hard to know which of his writings not to quote from. Those wanting to more about him can do no better than to visit bukowski.net.

 

There was nothing really as glorious as a good beer shit - I mean after drinking twenty or twenty-five beers the night before. The odor of a beer shit like that spread all around and stayed for a good hour-and-a-half. It made you realize that you were really alive.

(Charles Bukowski – Ham on Rye 1982)

 

Spa Water is Filthy Shit

Spa water, if it contains pollutants, can have a violent effect on the digestion. This excerpt from Rabelais suggests one should only ever bathe in spa water and never drink it.

 A short time after this the good Pantagruel fell ill, and was so afflicted in his stomach that he could neither eat nor drink. Also, since misfortunes never come singly, he was taken with a hot-piss, which pained him more than you might imagine. But his doctors came to his aid and most successfully. For with plenty of lenitive and diuretic drugs they made him piss his complaint away. But his piss was so hot that it has not grown cold since that day, and you will find some of it in different places, in France, according to where it flowed. These are called hot baths, as at Cauterets, at Limons, at Dax, at Balaruc, at Néris, at Bourbon-Lancy and elsewhere; and in Italy at Monte Grotto, at Abano, at San Pietro Montagnone, at Sant’ Elena Battaglia, at Casanova, at San Bartolommeo, at La Porretta, in the province of Bologna, and in a thousand other places.

(François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantaguel: Second Book 1534)

Pantagruel’s urine was still causing havoc at the end of the century when the Swiss physician Thomas Platter the Younger visited Balaruc near Montpellier.

 

After drinking [the spa water of Balaruc], you go for a walk in the countryside. Ladies of elegance walk leaning on the arms of their servants or of their gallants; and as the water acts promptly, and causes abundant stools, it is a curious spectacle to see everyone firing off in full view, and even vying with each other; for there is no bush or tree to give cover.

(Thomas Platter the Younger – Diary 1595)

The spa water was no less powerful in Britain. In this satire, John Mennis (1599-1671) notes how the countryside around Epsom Wells was covered in excrement and strewn with paper torn from books with which people had wiped themselves. The medicinal qualities of Epsom’s water were only discovered in around 1640 and the spa was in terminal decline by the 1730s – perhaps because of the build-up of filth. The traveller to Epsom, according to Mennis, actually competed to see who could defecate the furthest.

 

‘Tis here the people farre and neer

Bring their diseases, and go clear.

Some drink of it, and in an houre,

Their stomach, guts, and kidneys scowre…

Close by the Well, you may discerne

Small shrubs of eglantine and fern,

Which shew the businesse of the place;

For here old Ops her upper face

Is yellow, not with heat of summer,

But safroniz’d with mortall scumber.

But then the pity to behold

Those antient authors, which of old

Wrote down for us, philosophy,

Physick, musick, and poetry,

Now to no other purpose tend,

But to defend the fingers end…

Here no Olympick games they use,

No wrestling here, limbs to abuse,

But he that gaines the glory here

Must scumber furthest, shite most clear.

(John Mennis – Upon a Journey to Epsam-Well 1656)

 

A painting of the Epsom Well Building in 1795

 

The Rabelaisian Death-Fart

Inevitably, François Rabelais satirised the belief that a failure to fart could result in death. In one story, Pantagruel finds himself on the Island of Ruach where the inhabitants eat nothing but wind and suffer terribly from colic: “they all fart as they die, the men loudly, the women soundlessly…”

Here, Rabelais describes a man who literally explodes.

 

The host had been a sportive fellow in his time, a great lover of good foods, a mighty man for onion soups, a great watcher of the refectory clock, and an eternal diner, like the landlord at Rouillac. Having for the last ten years blown out an abundance of fat, we were told, he had now come to his bursting-time. So, according to the custom of the country, he was ending his days with a burst, since his peritoneum and his skin had been slashed for so many years that they could no longer contain his guts. In fact they could not prevent their pouring out like wine from a burst barrel.

“But tell me, my good people,” said Panurge, “couldn’t you neatly bind up his belly with good stout girths, or strong hoops of sorb-apple wood, or of iron, if need be? If he were bound up like that he wouldn’t throw out his cargo so easily, or burst so soon.”

Panurge had no sooner finished speaking than we heard a loud, piercing report in the air, as if some mighty oak were splitting in two. Thereupon the neighbours said that the bursting was over, and that this report had been his death-fart.

(François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantaguel: Fifth Book 1564)

 

Rhubarb, Constipation and War

Rhubarb has a laxative effect. In the 19th century, China exported rhubarb to Britain for this very purpose: Britain, for her part, was flooding China with opium – which shows a marked disparity between the philanthropic intentions of the two countries. When the outbreak of the First Opium War looked inevitable, the Chinese Commissioner, Lin Tse-Hsü, believing that the British would die of constipation en masse if deprived of rhubarb, threatened to halt the export of the vegetable. For unknown reasons, Queen Victoria apparently never had the letter translated so we will never know if rhubarb could have prevented the Opium Wars.

 

I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries – how much less to China! Of all that China exports to foreign countries, there is not a single thing which is not beneficial to people: they are of benefit when eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when resold: all are beneficial… Take tea and rhubarb, for example; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day without them. If China cuts off these benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive?

(Lin Tse-Hsü – Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria 1839)

 

Figs Make You Poop Yourself

Figs have long been valued for their laxative properties. They are also regarded as aphrodisiacs which could lead to some messy love-making. In ancient times, the very best of them were said to come from Greece.

 

Amitrochates, the king of the Indians, wrote to Antiochus [one of the Seleucid kings], entreating him to buy and send him some sweet wine, and some dried figs, and a sophist; and that Antiochus wrote to him in answer, “The dried figs and the sweet wine we will send you; but it is not lawful for a sophist to be sold in Greece.”

(Athenaeus – The Deipnosophists early 3^rd century CE)

 

The Spanish Moors also praised the fig – although they recognised that eating too many of them could have a very bad effect on the constitution.

 

Abu Merwán Ibn Zohr was exceedingly fond of green figs, and used to eat immoderately of them; Al-fár, on the contrary, never ate any, or if he did it was only once a year: he used to say to Abu Merwán Ibn Zohr, whenever he saw him eating that fruit, “If thou persist in eating green figs thou wilt soon be attacked with a very bad na’lah,” a word meaning ‘an abscess’ in the language of the Western people. In reply to this, Abu Merwán used to say to him, “if thou do not eat figs thou wilt be subject to fever, and wilt at last die from a constipation in the bowels.” Ibn Zohr’s words were prophetic; Al-fár died of the disease which Ibn Zohr had announced to him. But the most extraordinary thing was that Ibn Zohr himself died from an abscess in one of his sides. This is, no doubt, the most remarkable instance of prophetic sagacity ever known of two physicians.

(Ahmed ibn Mohammed Al-Makkari – History of the Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain 1843)

 

Lois Bourne, an occult writer and coven leader, recalls being liberally dosed with syrup of figs as a child.

 

My mother had a positive mania for regular bowel movements which she said was the basis of all good health, and the doctor did nothing to discourage her by constantly asking to see my tongue on his rare visits. This merely served to confirm her aberration to purge me within an inch of my life. Even today I cannot view a bottle of syrup of figs without wanting to heave, and my stomach contracts with spasmodic horror in remembrance of the griping pains of yesteryear.

When many years later I asked her with the benefit of some medical knowledge, “Did you ever read the label, mother? – you were only supposed to dose me with two teaspoonfuls, not the whole bottle!” I would berate her with my profound and newly-discovered erudition about the dangers of the liberal use of purgatives, and she would reply, “Nonsense, a good clean-out never did anyone any harm.”

(Lois Bourne – Witch Amongst Us 1979)