For the answer to this question, we turn to one o the weirdest books in my collection: End Product: The First Taboo by Dan Sabbath and Mandel Hall. These two guys really (forgive me, but it’s unavoidable) knw their shit.
On page 253 we read:
“Terrified as we are of the turd, most of us remain unaware of its tastiness. Occasionally, however, like the happy unfortunate who discovered the pleasures of roast pig when his barn burned, someone stumbles upon truth in the midst of calamity. So one physician tells of a young girl who, having soiled her bed, devoured the evidence of her accident. When her paents asked how she could have done such a disgusting thing, she shrugged and answered that she had rather enjoyed the flavor – that it was strong but sweetish.”
(All together now – Ewwwwwwwww!)
I suspect that there is a great deal of variation in the properties of excrement with the state of our diet and our health, but I’m not curious enough – by a long shot – to find out.
As for disease, they note:
"…‘It’s poison! Cholera. Typhoid. Dysentery. Ths stuff can kill!’
…Nice try, but no cigar. Sewage, stewing in the sun or mouldering in airless pits, does breed germs and transmit disease, but a turd taken piping hot from your own rectum will not infect you with someone else’s polio…
…Our daily output of p-aminobenzoic acid, biotin, folic acid, and pantothenic acid is greater than our intake…The daily turd contains over sxty percent of the ecommended daily dietary reqirement of calcium, and eight hundred forty percnt that of ireon…Your shit contains over sixty percent of th recommended daily adult requirements of riboflavin an vitamn C, and fifty-five percent of thiamine…"
“Coprophagy does have it drawbacks. If you are ill with dysntery, you an reinfect yourself. Scientists have demonstrated that diet ith too many feces wears down the teeth. Most damning of all, refection of vitamins in the ntestines is acompanied by the prduction of cholesterol. Shit, like alcohol, must be consumed in moderation if good health is to be maintained. But shit i not poison. Many inmates of mental institutions have been disproving that old wives’ tale for years.”
Just a couple of weeks ago I had a very depressing conversation with a woman of my acquaintance who has recently resorted to prostitution while her disability claim is pending. A “client” of hers was paying to watch her eat his body waste.
IAMNA doctor, but I offered that E. Coli, the bacteria which is essential to digestion, can be deadly if exposed to the blood stream. A quick search under “toilet slavery” (I couldn’t stomach a longer one), suggests that some people claim to have engaged in such behavior for years, but it strikes me that a person who has an ulcer or a cut of any kind in their digestive tract would be placing themself in serious danger from such behavior.
My acquaintance renounced the practice shortly after I expressed my fears to her. She said that she was doing this on a weekly schedule, and that on some–but not all–weeks during her brief period of activity she felt run-down and ill until her next session. As this did not occur all of the time, I am guessing her symptoms were not psychosomatic.
The thought also occurs that body waste exposed to the air is a tremendously fertile breeding ground for disease. It is said that prior to the American Civil War it was typically the case that more soldiers died in a war from diseases contracted from poor sanitation in camp than from injuries sustained in battle. Cholera comes to mind as one disease which has been largely eliminated from the western world because of the prevalence of flush toilets.
Ever hear the expression “eat shit and die”?
This is unsound medical advice from an unsound and uninformed source.
Hello, McFlies…There’s a reason why excrement is so utterly and uniformly revolting–so you WON’T EAT IT. This lesson is usually picked up by about age 2 or before, so how anyone reaches adulthood still having questions about it is beyond me.
A little good-natured whoring is one thing, but when you’ll admit somebody is able to convince you to risk dysentery and hepatitis for a few bucks, you’re WAY beyond the need for money.
I don’t think that is right; the distribution of bacteria throughout the digestive system is by no means uniform; the ones from the bottom end can wreak havoc if they are introduced to the top end in significant number.
Who wishes to sacrifice their friends for the sake of science? Break your toilet, let a friend go in to take a dump, scoop it up, and then put it in their burger, ask how it tasted and report back.
Hey, it’s just a thought.
