A piss-poor history of urine

In 1666 the physician George Thomson was recommending it against the plague; I’m not sure how effective it might have been but given that London had the highest mortality rates due to the Plague in the world you might conclude… not very but probably better than again Thomas Vicary who thought tying a shaved but living chicken, “behind first” to a plague sore might help.

Urine even has a place in French history with its seemingly endless preoccupation with perfumes. In 1671 the chemist Matte la Faveur was patiently collecting vast quantities of unadulterated child’s urine (“about sixty pints [from] little children who drink very little wine”) to make a volatile salt from it which could be used by the rich such as on the 13th June 1685 when Madame de Sévigné told her daughter of how, “for my vapours I take eight drops of essence of urine”.  Because she was worth it no doubt!  It’s interesting that you don’t see these perfumes advertised by the famous Parisian perfumeries.

Urine was also used freely in France for cleaning hats whilst in London it was used almost on an industrial level in tanneries to soften leather hides.   The famous Idiom Piss-Poor can refer to a rather shoddy job at doing something such as writing this blog post but originally if you were piss-poor it meant you were so poor and without skills that your only source of income was to sell your urine for use in the leather trade.

The Elizabethan surgeon William Bullein advised those “whose faces be unclean” to wash their skin with “strong vinegar, milk and the urine of a boy”.

In 1675 The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight in Preserving, Physic, Beautifying, and Cookery told of how one’s own urine was “very good to wash the face withal, to make it fair” and in some remote areas of Britain even in the 20th century babies would have their faces wiped by nappies soaked with their own urine which was apparently a good way to prevent acne according to some and some ladies still do so today.

Thankfully my mother would only dab a tissue with her own spit before wiping my face clean, not quite as bad but still a bit archaic and it makes you wonder how far we have come from Roman women who would rub human excrement onto their faces as a beauty treatment and the sweat and oil of gladiators for bravery.

It wasn’t just those combatting the plague who used urine in a matter of life and death, British soldiers during WW1 famously  used cloth patches soaked in their own urine as rudimentary gas masks (the ammonia in the urine counteracting the chlorine in the gas).   Whilst not in any way a laughing matter on a lighter note in  The New Confessions, William Boyd’s errant hero, John James Todd, has a memorable experience of this when, as night sentry, he yells a gas warning and produces a collective deluge of urine (and urine-damped faces) – only to then find that he has actually sighted nothing more poisonous than a drift of thick mist.

That really is taking the piss!