Theophilus, 12th Century German Artist, on Uses of Piss
Chapter 21. More on the Same
Another method of hardening is also carried out in the following way for those tools with which glass and the softer stones are cut. Take a three-year-old goat and tie it up indoors for three days without food; on the fourth day give it fern to eat and nothing else. When it has eaten this for two days, on the following night shut it up in a very large jar perforated at the bottom, and under the holes put another vessel, intact, in which you can collect its urine. When enough of this has been collected in this way during two or three nights, let the goat out and harden your tools in this urine.
Tools are also made harder by hardening them in the urine of a small red-headed boy than by doing so in plain water.
The footnote wonders "why only goats or red-headed boys can provide the necessary fluid."
(Hawthorne and Smith, Dover edition of 1979, pg.95)
I wonder how many diverse uses for urine could be documented......Do you smell an Ithra class coming? (would they call it the Urinary Track? )
Inspired by fragmentsofnim and not_justagirl