By Col Sudhir Rana (Retd)
Recently in a parliamentary discussion, an entitled MP called an illustrated and widely respected Indian scientist a “Mootra Visheshagya” (Urine expert) . This comment was totally out of place and meant to hurt the feelings of a religion, with an eye for humouring her own potential vote bank. We also keep on hearing such comments from our adversarial neighbouring country. Even so called PhDs anchors like Dr Fiza Khan and company uses the term ‘’gomutra peene wale kafir”, etc., in the course of their spewing venomous speeches directed towards the Hindu faith. In our history of Mughal and European rule, the missionaries and mullahs of Abrahaminic religions have derided our Deities and practices. Their aim was to promote a feeling of shame and inferiority amongst followers of Sanatan Dharma. The above statement of the MP has led me to search about history of this practice of use of urine in human history and interesting facts tumbled out.
Whether the urine is your own, someone else’s or even obtained from an animal, people have been drinking pee as medicine for thousands of years. In Indian Ayurvedic medicine, urine was used to treat asthma, allergies, indigestion, wrinkles and even cancer. Panchagavya or panchakavyam is a mixture used in traditional Hindu rituals that is prepared by mixing five ingredients. The three direct constituents are cow dung, cow urine, and milk; the two derived products are curd and ghee. These are mixed and then allowed to ferment. The Sanskrit word panchagavya means “five cow-derivatives”. When used in Ayurvedic medicine, it is also called cowpathy. Drinking urine for rejuvenation (Shivambu} has been described in scared Hindu texts that are over 5000 years old and is still practiced today.
In other text from around the world, beginning with the Book of Proverbs (5:15), “…drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well”, evidence exists for the consumption and use of urine for health reasons. In 1945, British naturopath John W Armstrong published a book called “The Water of Life: A Treatise on Urine Therapy”. He claimed that drinking one’s own urine and massaging it into the skin could cure major illnesses. In medieval times, Avicenna in The Canon of Medicine noted that a mixture of camel milk and urine can be beneficial for some diseases such as dropsy and jaundice. During ancient Roman times, Pliny the Elder, used urine for treeing sores, burns, anal afflictions, scorpion stings and baby rash. Dr Ambroise Pare, the most famous surgeon of the 16th century advocated its use for bathing itchy eyelids. Lewis and Clark in 1806 described native Americans bathing in urine daily. Numerous medicinal uses of urine were reported well into the 1900s. Cultural and medical practices in Egypt, China, Thailand and the Aztec empire also advocated its use. The Roman poet Catullus believed urine helped to whiten teeth – possibly due to its ammonia content. There are reported cases of using urine for home remedies to treat seizures in children in Nigeria. The China Urine Therapy Association claims that drinking and washing with urine can cure constipation and skin sores. Virgin boy eggs are a traditional dish of Dongyang, Zhejiang, China, in which eggs are boiled in the urine of young boys, preferably under the age of ten. China has had a long history of food preservation methods. Tea eggs were originally developed to preserve the food for long periods of time. While the boy eggs may not have necessarily had the same origin, their development comes from a similar cultural background. Urine was connected to religious traditions attracting the interest of the people as “the elixir of long life”. Indeed, it seems that urine was not considered as a waste product but rather as a distilled product selected from the body. Many different sources (the Sanskrit book ‘Shiwambu Kalpa’, Sumerian, Assyrian- Babylonian, Egyptians, Essenians, Jewish-Christians, Greek and Roman philosophers) reported a number of evidences not only regarding uroscopy but also about the use of urine as therapy. Persian scholar Avicenna (980–1037), author of the book Al-Qānūn, where he reports “for the Bedouin people, camel urine remains an important natural remedy for different health problems” (Al-Abdalall 2010).
In Islam, description of camel and sheep urine therapy is found in Sahih al-Bukhari 5686 and Sahih Muslim 1671 CE, stating that people from the Ukl or Uranah tribes fell sick in Medina, and the Prophet directed them to the state camels to drink their milk and urine until they recovered. The old name of urine in Arab history is wazr, and in pure Arabic is bawl. It was used as a treatment for women’s hair, for stomach pain (mixed with milk), for gums and toothache, eye infections, skin injuries and infections, snake bites, camel mange, for pregnant women, liver tumour, to assuage thirst and hunger and to wake up a drunk man (Baesmel 2004). The folk-medicine use of camel milk and urine is reported in the pre-Islamic era and it appears in various written Islamic sources. In Yemen, camel urine is consumed and used for treating ailments, though it has been widely denounced. Some salons are said to use it as a treatment for hair loss. The camel urine from a virgin camel is priced at twenty US dollars per litre, with herders saying that it has curative powers. It is traditionally mixed with milk.
In the 1500s, when Magellan circumnavigated the world, his crew had a limited water supply, and resorted to drinking their own urine. Stories of survivors of catastrophic events have circulated with claims of drinking their own urine to survive. In Siberia, drinking urine helped potentiate the hallucinogenic effect of psychotropic mushrooms.
Famous people who practiced urine therapy included TV star Ben Grylls, who says he does it for survival – and teaches his reality show contestants to do the same. Mexican boxer Juan Manuel Márquez practiced this therapy to train for his 2009 fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr (he lost). Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai claimed a daily glass of the stuff was a remedy for many diseases and contributed to his longevity.
Urine has several surprising applications: across agriculture, science, and history, most notably as plant fertiliser, medical hormone extraction, and biochemical energy research. It has been used in tanning of leather. Because the urea breaks down into ammonia, creating a bath used to soften and prepare animal hides. In textile dyeing, urine historically acted as a mordant, helping cloth fibres capture and tightly hold vibrant colours during the dyeing process. Routine urinalysis remains a core medical diagnostic standard for detecting metabolic changes, kidney function, and pregnancy. Rabbit’s urine has been marketed as safe and useful in gardening. Many rabbit farmers bottle and sell the urine to local crop growers—often priced around Sh100 for 5 litres or up to Sh500 per liter—creating an extra revenue stream alongside rabbit meat. Safe Preparation: Typically fermented for 7 to 10 days and heavily diluted with water (usually a 1:20 ratio for foliar application) to prevent scorching or burning plant leaves. Urea-containing cream, also known as carbamide-containing cream is used as a medication and applied to the skin to treat dryness and itching such as may occur in psoriasis, dermatitis, or ichthyosis. It may also be used to soften nails. Conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs), sold under the brand name Premarin among others, is an estrogen medication which is used in menopausal hormone therapy and for various other indications. It is a mixture of the sodium salts of estrogen conjugates found in horses, such as estrone sulfate and equilin sulfate. CEEs are usually taken by mouth, but can also be given by application to the skin or vagina as a cream or by injection into a blood vessel or muscle. Urine also contains dehydroepiandrosterone, a steroid hormone produced by the body that declines with age, which has been marketed as an anti-ageing ingredient – but there isn’t enough data to demonstrate its efficacy.
In the cosmetics industry, urea remains an important ingredient in medicinal skin creams. Urea has also been shown to have antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. Multiple medical products have been obtained from urine and urea including diuretics, fertility agents, and estrogens.
Most claims about urine therapy are based on anecdotes or ancient texts with no robust scientific evidence to support the benefits of urine therapy. Mainstream medical communities do not endorse urine therapy as it lacks scientific evidence. There is evidence to show that drinking urine has a number of health risks.
To conclude, I can advise Hindu hating Dr Fiza Khan not to drink cow urine but she can partake of camel urine for treating her allergies, abdominal pains and use it as face wash. The product is freely available online. As for the honourable Indian MP, I have a request that she should enquire from her Saraswat Brahmin brother, whether he consumes Panchgavya when he visits the holy Hindu shrines in India.
