Traditional healing with animals (zootherapy): medieval to present-day Levantine practice

Abstract

Animals and products derived from different organs of their bodies have constituted part of the inventory of medicinal substances used in various cultures since ancient times. This article reviews the history of healing with animals in the Levant (the Land of Israel and parts of present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, defined by the Muslims in the Middle Ages as Bilad al-Sham) throughout history.

Intensive research into the phenomenon of zootherapy in the Levant from early medieval to present-day traditional medicine yielded 99 substances of animal origin which were used medicinally during that long period. Fifty-two animal extracts and products were documented as being used from the early Muslim period (10th century) to the late Ottoman period (19th century). Seventy-seven were recorded as being used in the 20th century

Seven main animal sources have been exploited for medical uses throughout history: honey, wax, adder, beaver testicles, musk oil, coral, and ambergris. The first three are local and relatively easy to obtain; the last four are exotic, therefore, rare and expensive. The use of other materials of animal origin came to an end in the course of history because of change in the moral outlook of modern societies. Among the latter we note mummy, silkworm, stinkbug, scarabees, snail, scorpion, and triton.

Introduction

Since ancient times animals and products derived from different organs of their bodies have constituted part of the inventory of medicinal substances used in various cultures; such uses still exist in ethnic folk medicine. This article reviews the history of healing with animals in the Levant (the Land of Israel and parts of present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, defined by the Muslims in the Middle Ages as Bilad al-Sham) throughout history.

The article offers a brief introduction to these features in the ancient world, and evidence of medicinal uses of animals in the epoch of the two superpowers of antiquity, Egypt and Mesopotamia, is presented. However, the focus of the article is data collected on these medicinal usages in the Levant from the Middle Ages to the present.

The 21st century is an era in which a great deal of effort and resources are being invested in the research of medicinal plants around the world. These studies are based mainly on historical, ethnic, and traditional sources of information. Scholarly investigation and the study of the medicinal uses of animals and their products, as well as of inorganic materials, should not be neglected and should be considered as an important complementary body of knowledge.

This entails a better understanding of the full-scale picture of the historical, ethnic, and traditional aspects of medicine and Materia Medica. Future scientific projects and decisions based on a comprehensive body of knowledge will lead to better understanding and, therefore, better judgments concerning phytotherapy research, environmental studies, and rules of conservation.

Zootherapy is the healing of human diseases by use of therapeutics obtained or ultimately derived from animals (Costa-Neto, 1999). Prehistoric societies made intensive use of animals and their products. Primarily they were consumed as food; in addition, tools were made out of animal bones and teeth, and clothes out of animal skin and fur. Animals were also used for religious purposes, such as sacrifices, and they played an important part in magic rituals and mysticism (Holland, 1994). No clear evidence of the use of animal parts or products for medicine in prehistoric times has ever been found. But we may assume that they were exploited in that way, as stated by the scholar Marques: “All human cultures which present a structured medical system will utilize animals as medicines” (Marques, 1994).

The phenomenon of zootherapy is marked both by a broad geographical distribution and very deep historical origins. As some authors have shown, animal-based medicines have been utilized since antiquity (Anageletti et al., 1992, Weiss, 1947). Testimony to the medical use of animals began to appear with the invention of writing. Archives, papyruses, and other early written historical sources dealing with medicine, show that animals, their parts, and their products were used for medicine. Data have been found on such usages in ancient civilizations, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, which left their mark on the various societies that later arose in the Levant. Historical sources of ancient Egypt mention the medicinal uses of substances derived from animals, for example, cattle milk, bee honey, lizard blood, ox organs, swallow’s liver, bat limbs, ambergris from the sperm whale, and the glands of the musk deer (Bryan, 1930, Estes, 1989, pp. 139–157; Nunn, 1996, pp. 148–151; Stetter, 1993, pp. 107–122).

Other evidence of zootherapy has been found in archives of several civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, mainly the Assyrian and the Babylonian. These contain descriptions of fish oil, bee wax and honey, mongoose blood, turtle shell, goat’s skin, gazelle sinew and even sheep, deer, and bird excrement and animal fat (Powell, 1993, pp. 47–50; Ritter, 1965, Thompson, 1923). In ancient China, among many other substances of animal origin, the glands of the musk deer were used (Gordon, 1949, pp. 355–390; Kremers and Urdang, 1976, pp. 3–5). In India, the Hindu religion has used five products of the cow for purification since ancient times (Simoons, 1974).

The Bible and other Jewish sources, mainly the Mishna (1st–3rd centuries CE) and the Talmud (4th to 5th centuries CE), that is, the literature of the Jewish Sages, mention several animals and their medical uses: honey was used to treat bulimia and goat milk to cure coughing. Snakes, human urine, pearl, mammal’s glands, and several other substances were used for different medical conditions (Preuss, 1983, pp. 435–437).

Classical medical literature also indicates animals as remedies. In the 5th to 4th centuries BCE Hippocrates (Gillispie, 1973, VI: pp. 418–431) included among many other animal substances the use of cattle milk, chicken’s eggs, mammal’s horns, and sea sponge (Riddle, 1987, p. 60). About 10% of the substances mentioned in Dioscorides’s (1st century CE) Materia Medica; (Gillispie, 1972, V: pp. 119–122) were body parts and products of animals (Gunther, 1959, Riddle, 1985, pp. 146–147). Such uses on a smaller scale were common in the Byzantine Empire (Francis, 1846).

The neo-Aramaic medical tradition, which evolved in the Near East during the Byzantine period, conserving classical medical knowledge, made great medical use of animals (Budge, 1913, Mingana, 1935). This knowledge was conveyed further and translated, becoming an important part of the new Arab medical and pharmaceutical profession (7th century CE).

Arabic medieval literature has ample information about animals in general and their medical uses in particular. The ‘medicine of the prophets’ (tibb al-nabawi) indicates intensive medicinal use of chicken eggs, cattle cheese, and bee honey (Shabbir, 1986), for medicinal uses of foodstuff were common in the Middle Ages, as they still are in folk medicine (O’Hara-May, 1971). Early Muslim physicians, such as the 9th-century al-Tabari (Gillispie, 1975, XII: pp. 229–231) and al-Kindi (Gillispie, 1978, XV: pp. 261–267) describe the medical uses of several animals, in Iraq and Iran, such as bear, beaver testicles, camel, cattle fat, coral, crab, dog, fish stone, horse, lizard, medical skink, mouse, pearl, pigeon, rabbit, rhino and goat horns, scorpion, snake, squid, turtle, and wolf, and animal products, such as honey, wax, milk, and eggs. Together these comprise about 7% of all medicinal substances (al-Sidiqi, 1928, pp. 420–440; Levey, 1966). More information on such uses can be found in general encyclopedias, such as that of the 13th-century al-Qazwini (Gillispie, 1975, XI: pp. 230–233; al-Qazwini, 1981, Stephenson, 1928). al-Damiri, the 14th-century Muslim zoologist (Gillispie, 1970, III: pp. 548–549), describes in his lexicon hundreds of animals (Jayakar, 1908), tens of which were used for remedies (Somogyi, 1957).

Some of the animals mentioned so far were wild and were sometimes hunted especially for remedial purposes, for example, the adder. Others were domestic animals, such as cows and chickens, whose products and body parts were readily available to humans and were also used for food, agriculture, and industry. The rarest and most expensive of these substances were the body parts of animals, such as the testicles of the beaver, which were imported from distant lands along the trade routes (Lev, 2002c). Various historical sources describe the use of human products, such as mother’s milk, male sperm, urine, and semen, which are commonly used in present-day traditional medicine as well.

The importance of animal parts in the history of pharmacy in general has been studied since the beginning of the 20th century (Tschirch, 1932, pp. 788–890); other works deal with groups of animals and their uses in medicine, for example, marine animals (Benoist, 1951). The present study takes a new approach to the use of animals in medicine in the Levant; as far as I know, it is the first comprehensive research on the topic of zootherapy in this region.