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Comment by DanAndersen | Hacker News Reader

We should keep in mind that these tips are specifically chosen because of their unusual and laughable nature, and so should refrain from attempting to generalize about the nature of medieval medicine from a biased dataset.

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Except that any historian of medicine will tell you that pharmaceuticals well into the 18th century were dominated by ideas of "potency" where surely things would have beneficial effect because they have powerful smells or whatever. Uses of animal excrement are exceedingly common in early-modern remedy guides.

I remember learning from a historian that the use of animal excrement was used for all kinds of things; for example "curing" warts. The effectiveness was of course questionable, but that didn't stop people buying in to the hype of the day.

Someone else recently posted about the Templar diet[1], and I thought that was actually quite ahead of it's time. What I find most interesting is how they could have been so ahead of the times in terms of diet and hygiene compared to the "average Joe".

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-the-templar-knigh...

In defense of at least that wart remedy, a wart will turn green/black pretty much right away and then fall off relatively quickly if you keep it saturated with vinegar for a few hours here and there. I am willing to believe that some excreted waste materials could have a similar effect.

"Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), also known as a stool transplant, is the process of transplantation of fecal bacteria from a healthy individual into a recipient. FMT involves restoration of the colonic microflora by introducing healthy bacterial flora through infusion of stool, e.g. by colonoscopy, enema, orogastric tube or by mouth in the form of a capsule containing freeze-dried material, obtained from a healthy donor. The effectiveness of FMT has been established..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_microbiota_transplant

They also omit any reference to religion or what we would call the supernatural, both common in medical texts of the time.

More common than they are today, but there may be survivorship bias happening here - I'd imagine church-housed manuscripts would have a higher chance of surviving into the present day than random texts not church related.

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