Feces therapy

Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? Feces therapy is a legitimate medical treatment, a potential experimental medical treatment, and a woo alternative medicine. The differences are in the methods and claimed benefits.

Fecal transplants
Fecal transplants (or fecal microbiota transplants, FMT) are used in medicine primarily in an attempt to treat problems in the gut microbiome with transplants from people with healthier microbiomes. The first fecal transplant reported in a scientific journal was in 1958, but research was minimal until 2012.

Treatments
Treatments have addressed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), colitis and Clostridium difficile infection. In such cases a plausible rationale for such treatment exists, and some treatments have had success. Transplants have often used suppositories, but oral pills of extracted bacteria seem to provide the safest method. In other words, researchers started with a bottoms-up approach and have now moved towards a top-down approach.

Efficacy and safety
Fecal transplants have a 90% cure rate for treating C. difficile, far more effective than antibiotics. In a small study of 55 patients with both IBS and inflammatory bowel disease, only 52% were cured or had decreased symptoms after treatment with FMT. In a smaller study of 13 patients with IBS only, 70% reported improvement of symptoms after treatment with FMT.

FMT is not without risk. "Autoimmune disease (rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren syndrome, idiopathic thrombocyto-penic purpura, and peripheral neuropathy) developed in 4 of the 77 patients" in one long-term study. Even if you think you have your shit together and you already have everything you need to do an FMT, do not try this at home.

Probiotics
Raquel Rubio et al. won the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize in Nutrition for their study on infant fecal bacteria used as probiotics in sausages. This is one kind of sausage that you absolutely do not want to see being made. Unless...

Alternative medicine
The difference between the alternative medicine treatment and the medicine treatment is that:
 * Alternative medicine fecal samples are generally not screened for pathogens.
 * Alternative medicine claims tend toward a wide variety of implausible applications.

China
Human and animal feces are in the Chinese Materia Medica, and have a long history in traditional Chinese medicine. "In the 16th century, Li Shizhen detailed a variety of fecal preparations called 'yellow soup' to be given for diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting, and constipation." It can even be found for sale online as Excremento Hominis in a preparation called ren zhong huang (人中黄) or (licorice with human feces). The laundry list of indications for ren zhong huang includes "erysipelas, sores, polydipsia with high fever, typhoid with heat disease, macula due to heat-toxin."

Ren zhong huang (as jen chung huang) appears in the Chinese Materia Medica as treatment for: Epidemic fevers, delirious fevers, mushroom poisoning, and abscesses. Osteomyelitis, hematemesis [vomiting blood], epistaxis [nasal bleeding], regurgitation. For unerupted smallpox. Antiphlegmatic. The smell will induce insects to crawl out of any of the body orifices and relieve irritation. The ash is applied to genital sores in children, prolapse of the uterus after childbirth is best treated with roasted feces.

Knife wounds in the abdomen with extrusion of the bowel should be dressed with the dried powdered material.

Bleeding needle wounds are dressed with the ash. Snake bite should have a thick dressing of feces. it is an antidote internally to all kinds of poisoning, either in the form of ash, or the clear liquid feces is given.

Plain human feces are given: For epidemic fevers, incoordinated gait, as an antidote for poisons, given in the form a soup made from the dried and powdered material.

Given with water for typhoid. Applied to boils, in one day they will burst. For carbuncles and smallpox sores which are undeveloped. For osteomyelitis.

Animal feces are also used in a variety of treatments, including that from the pig, dog, sheep, mule, camel, lion, tiger, tapir, deer, wolf, rabbit, otter, and rat.

India
In 2015, Shankarbhai Vegad, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician and a Member of Parliament, claimed that cow urine and cow dung can cure cancer. He said,

I am witness to it, cow dung and urine are a 100 per cent cure for cancer.

Korea
In Korea, a "wine" has traditionally been made from human feces called ttongsul (똥술). Ttongsul is still available in Korea, but it is not as popular as it once was. Thankfully.

Spain
In Spain, two biology students, Fernando Cervera and Mariano Collantes, claimed to have invented their own pseudomedicine in 2010, called fecomagnetismo, as a part of one social experiment. The pseudomedicine was supposed to use human fecal samples with magnets, and diluted by homeopathic procedures. The experiment ended three years later, after they appeared on important webpages, events and promotional publications about pseudomedicines. They appeared on national TV in 2017, as a part of a critical show about how pseudomedicines are created.

To cure homosexuality
Feces has been used in reparative therapy. The gay male client bottles his feces, and when he experiences desires for sodomy, he opens it up and takes a whiff. The aim is to "remind (gay men) where (they) stick their penis" and that "homosexual relations are not pleasurable."