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The power of pee -

In 2018, university students in South Africa announced that they had used human urine with lime—calcium hydroxide powder—to create environmentally-friendly bricks. The story again highlighted the uses our pee has enjoyed over thousands of years.

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Historic uses for urine -

Historic uses for urine date back 5,000 years to India, where the drinking of pee for rejuvenation, a practice known as Shivambu, has been described in sacred yogic texts.

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Urine for medicinal purposes -

The ancient Greeks and Romans certainly imbibed urine for medicinal purposes. The application of the golden nectar was also employed in treating a range of ailments. Pliny the Elder, for example, recommended fresh urine for the treatment of "sores, burns, affections of the anus, chaps and scorpion stings."

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Use as a mouthwash -

The Romans used urine as an effective mouthwash, ammonia being the active ingredient to freshen breath.

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Use as a toothpaste -

Similarly, urine toothpaste served to whiten teeth for those who desired a gleaming, snow-white grin, according to the Roman poet Catullus.

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Health benefits of urine -

In early modern Europe, the perceived benefits of urine were championed by several well-known medical luminaries.

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Wounds washed in urine -

Henry VIII's surgeon, Thomas Vicary (c. 1490–1561), seen here receiving a charter from the English monarch, recommended that all battle wounds should be washed in urine.

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Use as a liquid substitute -

On occasion, urine served as a life-saving liquid substitute. In the early half of the 1500s when Portuguese-born Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the world, his crew had a limited water supply and resorted to drinking their own urine.

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Bathing itchy eyelids -

Frenchman Ambroise Paré (1510–1590), the most famous surgeon of the 16th century, advocated urine for bathing itchy eyelids, provided that it had been kept "all night in a barber's basin" first.

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Use as an antiseptic -

The Italian Leonardo Fioravanti (1517–1588), a barber-surgeon who influenced the development of reconstructive surgery, apparently witnessed a man's nose sliced off in an argument, and—believing in urine's antiseptic powers—promptly peed on the fallen organ before stitching it back on.

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Pee and the plague -

Not all physicians hit the mark. George Thomson (c. 1619–1676) recommended the use of urine against the plague. The disease, meanwhile, killed millions.

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Throat elixir -

Noted English physician Thomas Willis (1621–1675), a founding member of the Royal Society, was said to have instructed a female patient to imbibe her own warm urine against "extreme sourness" in her throat.

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Drink while warm -

Knocking back a glass of pee was also advocated by Anglo-Irish chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who advised some of his patients to drink every morning "a moderate draught of their own urine," preferably while "tis yet warm."

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Unadulterated urine -

Sébastien Matte La Faveur (1629–1714) was quite particular in prescribing urine. In 1671, the French chemist was recorded patiently collecting vast quantities of unadulterated children's urine ("about sixty pints [from] little children who drink very little wine") to make a volatile salt from it, presumably to treat wounds.

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The urine wheel -

By the mid-18th century, urine wheel color charts were being published for use by medical students as a guide for the strength and dilution of urine, and its corresponding medicinal applications.

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Use in cosmetics -

Urine played a useful role in the development of early cosmetics. English physician and cleric William Bullein (c.1515–1576) advised those "whose faces be unclean" to wash their skin with "strong vinegar, milk and the urine of a boy."

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The cleansing power of pee -

Urine's cleansing power was such that rather than use soap, early European launderers preferred to use urine for its ammonia to get tough stains out of cloth.

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Use in washing clothes -

Actually, the use of urine for washing purposes was nothing new. In Roman times, vats of urine collected from the public were taken to a fullonica (laundry), diluted with water, and poured over dirty clothes. Next, a worker would stand in the tub of urine and stomp on the clothes, similar to a modern washing machine's agitator.

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Use in dye -

Robert Boyle, mentioned earlier in this list, had also noted how urine was highly valued by dyers. In fact, stale pee was so vital to the textile industry of 16th-century England that huge casks of it were shipped from across the country to Yorkshire, where it was mixed with alum to form an even stronger mordant (a substance that helps bind dye to cloth) than urine alone.

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Strength of ammonia -

Stale urine was preferred by the textile industry because the ammonia in it was stronger, thus producing a more robust dye.

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Pee as a page-turner -

Actually, urine had been used in the manufacture of dye as far back as the 5th century CE. The Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, also known as the Rossano Gospels, was created 1,500 years ago as a Byzantine copy of the New Testament. Analysis of the tome revealed that the pages derived their purple hue from orcein—a dye extracted from the fungus Roccella tinctoria, and then processed with fermented urine.

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Use in tanning -

The tanning industry also used pee in the manufacturing process. Soaking animal skins in urine made it easier for leather workers to remove hair and bits of flesh from the skin. Pictured is an engraving depicting saints Crispin and Crispinian, the Christian patron saints of cobblers, curriers, tanners, and leather workers.

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Use in gunpowder -

Did you know that prior to the early 20th century, urine was used to make gunpowder? Manufacturers took advantage of the nitrogen naturally found in pee to make potassium nitrate, the key ingredient for ballistic firepower.

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Bathing in urine -

The belief by some in urine's cleansing powers was witnessed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark of the 1804–1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition of the Western United States. During their epic trek, the explorers described Native Americans bathing in urine daily.

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Urine gas mask -

In the following century during the First World War, many combatants used cloth patches soaked in their own urine as rudimentary gas masks (the ammonia in the urine counteracting the chlorine in the gas).

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Use of urine today -

Today, this so-called liquid gold is being studied by scientists as a source of electric power. For example, urine-eating bacteria can create a strong enough current to power a cell phone.

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Fueling hydrogen cars -

Technology has also been developed to generate hydrogen fuel from urine. Indeed, pee power could fuel hydrogen cars because urine contains two compounds that could be a source of hydrogen: ammonia and urea.

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Use in creating stem cells -

Recently, adult stem cells isolated from urine, termed urine-derived stem cells (USCs), have attracted growing interest, as they possess many desirable properties for cell-based therapy.

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Use in the manufacture of skin creams -

And in the cosmetics industry, urea, a naturally-occurring molecule found abundantly in mammalian urine and shown to have antibacterial and anti-fungal properties, remains an important ingredient in medicinal skin creams.

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Drinking their health -

Meanwhile, the Hindu belief in urine as a refreshing and rejuvenating pick-me-up was demonstrated as recently as 2020 in New Delhi when members and supporters of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu organization, drank cow urine as they attended a gaumutra (cow urine) party, ostensibly to fight against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. 

Sources: (Smithsonian Magazine) (The Guardian) (Live Science) (BBC) (National Center for Biotechnology Information) (National Institutes of Health)   

See also: Celebrities who died from coronavirus

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