Nobody tell TikTok about this, please.
Guzzling piss, politely known as “urophagia” in the medical literature, seems to have universal appeal to those in the know. Writers, pop singers, ancient Chinese medical practitioners, MMA brawlers … the urine therapy rabbit hole goes way deeper than we have time for. If you happen to be one of the millions who indulge in the practice, well, that’s cool, just please never, ever tell us about it. We’ve read way too much about the subject as it is now, and we’re starting to have weird dreams.
Why is all this important? Urine, it so happens, has a glorious track record in the annals of science. The analysis of urine, a tradition that goes back as far as written language, has foundations in legit science. Inspecting pee is a huge part of kidney specialists’ jobs today. Fortunately for all of us, they don’t drink it like their predecessors did. The hard business of researching and uncovering new discoveries is inseparable from the art of quackery. In the Middle Ages, the two were basically the same. And, hot damn, did people really like water sports back then.
It’s the deep, dark secret that your chemistry professor politely omits from class. For alchemists and healers in search of the philosopher’s stone, there was no more potent or affordable test material than the muck in the chamber pot. People had been trying methods to create gold for centuries before him, but until German alchemist Hennig Brandt started boiling his waste, no one had produced anything to show for it. It still didn’t work. Instead, he made a glowing gelatin. His plan to use the glowing green goo as a cheap, renewable light source failed, but not from lack of effort. Mainly, it smelled too damn bad. The first attempt at devising an alternative fuel source was foiled, but from his work, the strike match was created. Don’t judge the guy. How many urine-soaked old men do you know with their own portrait in a museum?
