Dark-brown flakes discovered inside a 1,900-year-old Roman glass vial are the first direct evidence for the use of human feces for medicinal purposes, a new chemical analysis reveals. The feces were mixed with thyme to mask the smell, and the concoction may have been used to treat inflammation or infection.
"While working in the storage rooms of the Bergama Museum, I noticed that some glass vessels contained residues," Cenker Atila, an archaeologist at Sivas Cumhuriyet University in Turkey, told Live Science in an email. "Residues were found in a total of seven different vessels, but only one yielded conclusive results."
