SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This next story has it all - ancient texts, modern science and poop. What? You want more context? OK, fine. Researchers have found hard evidence of an ancient medical remedy involving essential oils and human excrement. Here is science reporter Ari Daniel.
ARI DANIEL: Some of the oldest writings, including those of ancient Rome, are perfume recipes.
RANA CELEBI: These substances could be used, like, in the temple for ceremony, but also you can take the same aromatic recipe and use it as a antidote.
DANIEL: That is, as medicine, says Rana Celebi, a medical historian at Istanbul Medipol University. But it's rare to find physical proof that confirms such recipes were actually prepared. That's why Celebi leapt at the chance to work with an archaeologist with access to a special set of ancient Roman bottles.
CELEBI: These beautiful, exceptionally well-preserved glass vessels.
DANIEL: They were nearly 2,000 years old and housed at a museum in western Turkey, and they still had residues of their former contents.
CELEBI: So in that moment, we thought, what if those residues could still speak?
DANIEL: And reveal what these vessels once contained. So Celebi and the archaeologist teamed up with a chemist, and they traveled to the museum for a special mission.
CELEBI: A police officer actually escorts you to the door, like a massive bank safe's door. We were opening these drawers, picking up vessels, looking at them. They were beautiful.
DANIEL: The trio selected nine of them and scraped out their residues.
CELEBI: We were very nervous. They're so delicate. What if we break them?
DANIEL: Back in Istanbul, the chemist analyzed the residues in the lab. Celebi says most of the bottles didn't contain anything that interesting, but one of them...
CELEBI: Ended up revealing something even more surprising and medically significant. It turned out to be feces.
DANIEL: Human feces.
CELEBI: The use of fecal matter was all around ancient medical literature. Everyone wrote about it, even the Egyptians. Excrement of donkeys, dogs, gazelles.
DANIEL: And, rarely, people. Feces were considered a potent treatment for a broad range of infections and inflammation. But there was something else in that ancient bottle - trace amounts of aromatic compounds, likely from thyme or oregano, perhaps, says Celebi, to mask the odor of the poo. And this recipe of feces plus fragrance can be seen in the writings of Galen, the famous Greek physician of antiquity - only now it's not just a written recipe.
CELEBI: Yeah. I mean, it is real. We found it. It wasn't a perfume. It was something totally opposite.
DANIEL: In fact, Galen lived in the place where these bottles were found around the time when they would have been used. It's worth noting that medicinal poop isn't just a thing of the past. Some modern physicians are using it for a hard-to-treat bacterial G.I. infection as a kind of reset of the gut microbiome. The study on ancient treatments was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
MARIA PERLA COLOMBINI: This is the first scientific proof which sustain what is written in ancient books.
DANIEL: Maria Perla Colombini was a chemistry professor at the University of Pisa who wasn't involved in the research. She's impressed by the rigor of the analysis, but she can't be sure whether the contents were once used for medicine.
COLOMBINI: This residue contains a lot of information, but we are not able to know everything.
DANIEL: As for Rana Celebi, she says early on, before she and her colleagues knew exactly what was in that bottle, they considered hosting an event to recreate the ancient recipe for participants to smell and even taste.
CELEBI: That was, like, our dream for this research, but because now we have fecal matter and oregano (laughter), we're not able to do this event.
DANIEL: Next time, she says, she hopes to find a sweet-smelling perfume instead of option No. 2. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
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