
Woodcut of Ge Hong, a 4th-century Chinese physician, by Gan Bozong. (Photo: Wellcome Library)

Chinese woodcut of the anatomy of the large intestine, 1537. (Photo: Wellcome Library)

Lithography of 17th-century Italian anatomist Girolamo Fabrizio (a.k.a. Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente), by P.R. Vignéron. (Photo: Wellcome Library)

Line engraving, by Christian Franz Paullini. (Photo: Wellcome Library)

A man with cholera experimenting with remedies, by Robert Cruikshank, 1832. (Photo: Wellcome Library)

“The ascending douche,” an engraving from
The Water Cure Illustrated
, 1869. (Photo: Wellcome Library)

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This post originally appeared on Mosaic as “Poo: Past and Present” and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.