The Lavatory Reader

The Farting Blacksmith

The Whig politician, Charles James Fox (1749-1806) recounted this sorry tale of a man who farted himself to death.

 

The most extraordinary performer in this walk that hath yet come to my knowledge, and which is very well attested, was one Simon Tup, commonly called ‘Bellows Tup’, and by some ‘the Farting Blacksmith’. This fellow was born at Kirkeaton, in Yorkshire; he had the singular and ingenious talent of accompanying any instrument with his farts, which he would perform so admirably in time, tone and tune as to deceive the nicest judges in distinguishing which was the musical instrument or which were the farts. The bagpipe he imitated incomparably, and he performed a solo on the bassoon. This wonderful man found such encouragement that he quitted his business and used to travel about the country, by which he got much money. He farted airs and sung to them – particularly Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away. The fate of this poor fellow was very melancholy: by an uncommon exertion which he made in the famous song Blow High, Blow Low, he unfortunately broke a blood vessel, of which he instantly died.

(Charles James Fox – An Essay upon Wind 1787)

 

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)

 

Apples? Oh Shit!

Wind is, for the most part, manageable. Other food stuffs can have a somewhat more profound effect than merely making you fart. While there are times when this outcome is greatly desired, there are equally occasions when it is absolutely not what the doctor ordered.  

 

We begin with the apple. A safe sort of food one would have thought but not when religion has anything to do with it. The Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838-923), author of one of the earliest commentaries on the Qu’ran, argues that it was eating the forbidden fruit that caused Adam and Eve to defecate for the first time and that this was one of the principal reasons for their expulsion.

 

However, it should be noted that neither the Bible nor the Qu’ran actually claims the forbidden fruit was an apple: this was a later idea stemming from the fact that in Latin translations of Genesis the fruit was described as malus, which means ‘evil’ as an adjective but ‘apple’ as a noun. Other contenders for the original forbidden fruit include grapes, figs, olives, quinces and even wheat.

 

Eve ate first from the tree. Then she commanded Adam to eat from it. It was a tree which made whoever ate from it defecate. But there must be no faeces in the garden…

(Tafsir al-Tabari c.915-923)

 

The danger of apples is underscored in The Pilgrim’s Progress when Matthew falls sick and he was “much pained in his Bowels, so that he was with it at times, pulled as ‘twere both ends together.” When it is discovered that he has been scrumping for apples from a tree that overhung an orchard wall, the doctor is triumphant.

 

I knew he had eaten something that was not wholesome food, and that food, to wit, that Fruit, is even the most hurtful of all. It is the Fruit of Beelzebub’s Orchard. I do marvel that none did warn you of it; many have died thereof.

(John Bunyan – The Pilgrim’s Progress 1678)

 

Louis Boilly – Thirty-Six Faces of Expression (1825)

Thomas More Warns Against Fart Suppression

Sir Thomas More was forthright when it came to the question of whether or not to fart.

 

Wind, if you keep it too long in your stomach, kills you; on the other hand, it can save your life if it is properly let out. If wind can save or destroy you, then is it not as powerful as dreaded kings?

(Sir Thomas More – In Efflatum Ventris 1518)

How a Public Soiling Led to War

In 282 BC, relations were worsening between an expansionist Rome and the Greek city of Tarentum (now Taranto in the heel of Italy). The Romans sent a legation headed by one Postumius to negotiate with them. The insult that Postumius received, as explained below, led directly to the Pyrrhic War and Rome’s eventual supremacy over the Italian peninsula. This version of the story comes from a surviving portion of the eighty-volume History of Rome by Cassius Dio (c.150-c.235 AD).

 

The Tarentines, so far from receiving them decently or even sending them back with an answer in any way suitable, at once, before so much as granting them an audience, made sport of their dress and general appearance. It was the city garb, which was in use in the Forum; and this the envoys had put on, either for the sake of dignity or else by way of precaution, thinking that this at least would cause the foreigners to respect their position. Bands of revellers accordingly jeered at them — they were also celebrating a festival, which, though they were at no time noted for temperate behaviour, rendered them still more wanton — and finally a man planted himself in the way of Postumius, and stooping over, relieved his bowels and soiled the envoy's clothing. At this an uproar arose from all the rest, who praised the fellow as if he had performed some remarkable deed, and they sang many scurrilous verses against the Romans, accompanied by applause and capering steps. But Postumius cried: “Laugh, laugh while you may! For long will be the period of your weeping, when you shall wash this garment clean with your blood.”

(Cassius Dio – The History of Rome)

The Philosophy of Public Defecation Part 2

Crates of Thebes (c.365-c.285 BC) was a pupil of Diogenes and, in turn, taught Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. One of his finest moments (perhaps around 325 BC) was when Metrocles, a rival philosopher of the Peripatetic school, accidentally farted. This excerpt is again from Diogenes Laertius and, once again, the lupini bean is the catalyst.

 

[Metrocles] had been so far corrupted by weakness that, when he had made a breach of good manners in the course of rehearsing a speech, it drove him to despair, and he shut himself up at home, intending to starve himself to death. On learning this Crates came to visit him as he had been asked to do, and after advisedly making a meal of lupins, he tried to persuade him by argument as well that he had committed no crime, for a prodigy would have happened if he had not taken the natural means of relieving himself. At last by reproducing the action he succeeded in lifting him from his dejection, using for consolation the likeness of the occurrences. From that time forward Metrocles was his pupil, and became proficient in philosophy.

(Diogenes Laertius - The Lives of the Greek Philosophers 2nd Century CE, trans. R.D. Hicks 1925)