Wacky bedwetting cures from the past
May 20, 2009
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Jennifer Wilson-Speedy
PARENTCENTRAL.CA
While today we know that the best approach to bedwetting is to be loving, supportive and patient, the approach to this common childhood problem wasn’t always so informed.
Here are some of the wacky ways bedwetting was “treated” in the past — and folks, please don’t try these at home!
Mice …
Fried, boiled, roasted or burned to a crisp and powdered, mice were relied upon in many forms to help children stay dry all night long.
This furry cure dates back as early as A.D. 77, when, according to the Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence, Pliny the Elder recommended feeding supplements of boiled mice to children who wet the bed.
In the United Kingdom, the Encyclopedia of Folk Medicine says, “Mice, burned to a cinder, powdered and mixed with jam, were given to children in Sussex to cure them of bed-wetting.” This mixture was also used to treat diabetes.
Other documented remedies include boiling the mouse for the child’s tea, to drink before bed, or eating a boiled mouse sandwich, fried mice, three roasted mice, fried mouse pie, or white field mouse baked into pancakes.
There was also a particularly nasty cure which involved wrapping the head of a mouse in a cloth and tying it to the child. In some references, this method also involved the child biting the head off the mouse.
… And other beasts
Hare, hedgehog testicles, roasted pig penis, baked umbilical cord of a sow or the powder of a burned hog’s bladder were all ingested in an effort to keep the sheets dry at night.
In Newfoundland, according to Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience, kids who wet the bed would spend the evening collecting snails, which would be fried for their breakfast the next morning. This would continue until the bedwetting stopped.
Animal manure was also occasionally picked as a treatment, with references to dog dung and a really unappetizing sort of sandwich comprised of bread, butter and horse poop.
Live animals played a role too — licking the hooves of a newborn lamb was also expected to keep the sheets dry, while another cure called for a frog to be tied to the child leg.
Herbs and mixtures
Historians have uncovered ancient Egyptian records, dating to 1550 B.C., which suggest a cure of cypress, juniper and beer.
Eggshells were another popular treatment, whether toasted and pulverized or ground and mixed with milk and water. If eggshells weren’t handy, parched corn from a red ear of corn was considered a good substitute.
Some parents would give children two spoonfuls of soot, collected from a candle with a snuffer, or a mixture of volcanic oil and sugar.
Slightly more familiar treatments included eating — or drinking tea made with — marjoram, sea lavender, red bark, corn silk, wintergreen, prince’s pine, gum bark, watermelon seeds or St. John’s Wort.
In Saskatchewan, frustrated parents opted for tea made with pumpkin seeds, while in North Carolina sumac berry tea was the cure of choice.
Sumac berries were also considered a bedwetting cure in Cherokee culture, where children chewed the berries to help them stop wetting the bed. Another chewable cure was pine gum.
A spoonful of honey before bed, a remedy which still appears in some alternative medicine recommendations today, was also suggested.
Urine
According to the UCLA Folklore Archives, children were encouraged to urinate in a variety of places in an attempt to stop bedwetting.
Peeing on a hot brick, while sitting under a bridge or during a funeral procession are two options, but the most popular seemed to be either urinating in or burying a bottle of urine in an open grave.
Some parents forced their children to wear the soiled sheets until they dried in the sun.
Another, even more unsettling cure was to make the child drink the urine squeezed out of soiled bedding, sometimes mixed with milk or water.
Stop it before it starts
In certain cultures it was believed that marching around the house with a newborn baby, before it was bathed, would keep that child from ever wetting the bed.
Another belief was that proper care of the umbilical cord after birth could keep the child dry throughout the night. If the umbilical cord was laid down after it was cut, the child would wet the bed, while if it was burned right away it would never be a problem.
Circumcision was also touted as a cure. In Dr. P.C. Remondino’s History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present, published in 1893, he wrote that the foreskin caused bedwetting, as well as a variety of other afflictions ranging from syphilis and tuberculosis to night terrors.
Children were also told not to play with fire, due to a common belief that children who played with fire would wet the bed.
Another thing to be avoided was dandelions, for which the name in French, “pissenlit” means urinate in bed. A common playground story, the belief was that touching, smelling or handling the weed would make the child wet the bed that night.
Thankfully, modern medicine continues to research and move forward
on treatments for bedwetting, providing children with more patient,
palatable and effective cures!
Selected resources: UCLA Folklore Archives, Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence, Encyclopedia of Folk Medicine