Medieval Wellness Tips • Hacker News Board

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#31

Post by folli » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #6

chrisjack wrote: post #3

>For a man who’s been painfully beaten >Take cudweed and boil it in fine ale, and drink it first thing in the morning and last thing at night; and make the patient a bed in a pile of steaming horse dung, and lay him in it. Sleeping in a pile of horse sh*t... I don't see any hygenic problem with that, let alone the smell...

If you smell like sh*t, people will not come near you, and hence this keeps possible human infectious diseases away.

Assuming that there are no infectious pathogens in sh*t, which is laughably wrong.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#32

Post by justtopost » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

I wonder if anyone is going through these old texts to discover things. Perhaps rabbit bile contains something unique. Always makes you wonder... thats all for now, got a warm bed waiting for me.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#33

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #11

tomcooks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

[deleted]

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#34

Post by folli » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

pcmaffey wrote: post #26

edmanet wrote: post #4

Seems to be a lot of horse dung involved.

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.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#35

Post by rebuilder » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

mscasts wrote: post #24

> For to be invysybell Someone should try it. It is proven! But the issue is, those who proved it are long dead so we need some new evidence.

The recipe requires you to put frog bones in a stream and pick out the bone that moves against the stream... You might run out of frogs before finding such a bone!

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#36

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

markatkinson wrote: post #15

Not dissimilar to a couple modern wellness tips I have come across...

I've seen some posts about fermenting your own urine and such. Ew.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#37

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #19

gnulinux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe an old phrase meaning "rabid dog" or "raged dog". Rabies was probably orders of magnitude more common of an occurrence back then (which is non-existent in most Western countries right now).

Presumably you would then test the theory. You'd have to attach the parchment with the words to the rabid dog.... then attack the rabid dog with a sword, gun or any other weapon. This seems inadvisable ;)

Think like a process control engineer. Roll the parchment around an arrow or bolt and shoot the dog with it and you've just removed a step.

At "across the street" range it shouldn't affect accuracy very much

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#38

Post by duxup » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #37

duxup wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you would then test the theory. You'd have to attach the parchment with the words to the rabid dog.... then attack the rabid dog with a sword, gun or any other weapon. This seems inadvisable ;)

Think like a process control engineer. Roll the parchment around an arrow or bolt and shoot the dog with it and you've just removed a step. At "across the street" range it shouldn't affect accuracy very much

I like that idea.

Should also eventual test to see if parchment attachment time matter, penmanship on the words, etc.

Gonna need a lot of parchment, rabid dogs... swords, etc.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#39

Post by Joeri » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

chrisjack wrote: post #3

>For a man who’s been painfully beaten >Take cudweed and boil it in fine ale, and drink it first thing in the morning and last thing at night; and make the patient a bed in a pile of steaming horse dung, and lay him in it. Sleeping in a pile of horse sh*t... I don't see any hygenic problem with that, let alone the smell...

He’ll forget he got a beating though, so consider this a medieval painkiller with severe side-effects (1).

(1) side-effects may include nausea, vomiting and loss of sense of smell

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#40

Post by Tor3 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

spicymaki wrote: post #25

blauditore wrote: post #12

> If you doubt this’ll work, test it on a dog which is completely red. This really confuses me. Why does the dog need to be red? Also, if someone ever tested it, it should be obvious to not work...

It is probably hard to find a dog that is completely red, so there is no way to verify the cure beforehand. People must have thought the cure was rubbish even in medieval times.

And as the cure involves a bone moving upstream it's probably a "safe" recipe.. very difficult to actually test it.