Now for something completely different. Guardian UK: The Unusal Uses of Urine

[snagglepuss]

Urine has enjoyed an impressive range of practical and medical uses for much of history, so here's to pee power:)


snip

Sarah DeWeerdt's recent article tells of how "Gerardine Botte, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio University … has developed a technology to generate hydrogen fuel from urine".

Urine has, in fact, had an impressive range of practical uses for much of history. A key area was medicine. In Rome, 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". Anyone indignantly demanding a second opinion would find that Thomas Willis – the richest doctor in England at the time – was instructing a young gentlewoman to drink her own warm urine against "extreme sourness" in her throat.

snip

Boyle, who performed numerous experiments with human blood and urine – including using both as invisible inks – noted how the latter was highly valued by dyers; while the historian Dominique Laporte reminds us of its popularity for the cleaning of hats in France. Then we have cosmetics. 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".



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/10/unusual-uses-of-urine

[aquart]

1. Nurse said: "Urine is a sterile substance."

[TheMadMonk]

5. Yup. It was often used by medics in the trenches of WWI for hand and wound...

...cleaning.

I'd still use it in place of potentially suspect water I couldn't boil.

[aquart]

7. Oh, please God may it never come to that!

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Here is the OTHER name for diabetes which goes into one

of the symtoms...

Doctors used to taste it, and if it was sweet... it was called sweet pee disease.

Why? Sugar will leach into the urine when it is high enough.

Ah the trivia. No I did not learn that from a history book, but a curandera, later confirmed in a history book.

[Solly Mack]

3. You're in control with your information.

[Tumbulu]

4. so why does the urine from boys have so much more ammonia?

The dyers all used it as a source of ammonia. Not men or women's or girls, but boys. Now why is their urine so different?

[ohheckyeah]

6. it's the

snips & snails & puppy dogs tails