Hacker News Reader

Comment by edmanet | Hacker News Reader

Seems to be a lot of horse dung involved.

It's free, and if your 'cure' doesn't work you can imply the person didn't try hard enough.

Same reason why most 'magic potions' include hard to achieve steps (steal church parchments, estract the liver of a dog, etc.).

>steal church parchments, extract the liver of a dog

How are these "hard to achieve"?

Big and heavy - requires anatomic knowledge (you know there was no Wikipedia showing exactly where that dog carries it’s liver)...

its liver

Thanks! Very important!

You don't need academic knowledge of anatomy if you grow up in a culture (that of medieval peasants) where hunting, cleaning, and cooking animals was likely common. Much can be inferred from analogy, in the way the non-human dissections were (and still are) used for training surgeons.

Many assumptions about the knowledge of the persons who shall apply the guidelines - but might be right.

Probably in the same place as a sheep or a pig. A butcher would have no problem finding it. ;)

Probably. Clearly if you happen to have a butcher at hand to get you the liver. Not sure if nowadays you could just bring a random dig to a butcher and ket him extract the liver for you - might be hygienic standards preventing to do it. Earlier might be the belief that dogs are dirty etc. but i don’t know...

Humans are one of the only animals that don’t eat poop. The benefits of poo exposure is an increased diversity of gut bacteria and biome, which we are just starting to understand the benefits of.

This is one big benefit of having a dog.

Given the hygiene standards in the middle ages, humans were very much exposed to poop of all kind of sources, so I doubt that additional exposure would be of any benefit.

> This is one big benefit of having a dog.

You get to eat its poop?

It eats it's own poop and then licks your mouth, or your fingers which you then eat with.

Well, it's probably warm and soft?

Unless you have a lot of horses crapping in the same place at the same time it's going to be cold.

You mean, like in a stable or a barn?

It will start to compost and get warm. Think of a smelly heat pad.

It is not that dumb. Eating camel dung for example helps with serious stomach infections, its old and well known Bedouin trick (tested by Wehrmacht soldiers in Africa during WWII).

Apart from parasites and bacteria shit could be beneficial in theory - as its full of minerals and could help to regenerate skin etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com