Nope, American as corn. Madge was on TV when I was a tyke (late 70’s, early '80s) and I think they revived her recently, but I’m not sure if they used old footage of the now deceased actress or if they’ve got a new Madge. Thanks to DVRs, I rarely watch commercials anymore.
We used Palmolive at home, and more than once, Mom caught me soaking my smooth little preschooler fingers in a dish of it! 
The Mapuche in South America have a tradition where they collect urine, let it ferment and use it as a hair wash. It’s said to make the hair really shiny.
Oh, and with respect to the poop-wiping in absence of TP, that’s why many non-Western cultures consider it an insult to shake hands or otherwise touch someone with the left hand. It’s also considered really disgusting to eat left-handed. Also, many children are prevented from left-handedness even if they tend toward it. When you shake someone’s hand offering with your left, you could literally be giving someone the shit hand.
It seems to make sense to wash your ass after you poop. I was brought up using TP and will continue to do so, but in theory I imagine that thoroughly washing the area after I defecate would be cleaner then smearing things around down there with a wad of TP.
Thanks for that, Erdosain. I still don’t think I’m brave enough to risk advertising to the world via a wet seat-of-pants that I have just undertaken a dump, though.
Is there any sugar in urine to ferment?
Backwash!
If you’re a diabetic, sure!
It’s not fermentation, it’s decomposition into ammonia. That’ll get your hair squeaky clean all right!
I think you’re referring to kava-kava, the traditional intoxicant and social/ritual drink of some Melanesian (not Amazonian!) island cultures. From what I understand (never having been there or sampled the stuff), the chewing-and-spitting routine, besides being traditional, is actually necessary for the drink to have its desired effect – something in human saliva emulsifies and potentiates the psychoactive constituent in the root.
So, yeah, it sounds sorta gross and health-hazardous to Western sensibilities, but for many moons it was all they had that they could get high on, and sometimes you just “gotta do what you gotta do”
Many cultures around the world prepare fermented beverages by chewing and spitting the ingredients. In the Amazon basin, such a beverage is known as chicha, and is made from corn, yuca or plantain:
Nah. Extracts in water just fine. Kava kava was/isn’t routinely chewed (in fact, if you try to chew it, your lips and tongue quickly go numb and you start to drool in a rather undignified manner!), but wrapped in a leaf and pounded with a stone. The goopy mucilage of the leaf extracts the kavalactones. There’s a big ritual element to the whole thing. At one point, kava consumption averaged 1 cup per day for every man, woman and child on the islands - which helps explain why they can support over two dozen tribes with almost no history of warfare! (Source: some ethnobotanist at the AHG conference in '02 - Steven Foster, maybe?)