The dual cannons and fortified site built by the Edo Shogunate (1603-1867) to defend Kyoto at the end of Japan's feudal era are no longer a historical unknown after city officials announced an excavation verifying the Kajiwara Battery's existence.

Forget “eye of newt and toe of frog/wool of bat and tongue of dog.” People in the 16th century were more akin to DIY scientists than Macbeth’s three witches when it came to concocting home remedies for everything from hair loss and toothache, to kidney stones and fungal infections. Medical manuals targeted to the layperson were hugely popular at the time, according to Stefan Hanss, an early modern historian at the University of Manchester in the UK. “Reader-practitioners” would tinker with the various recipes, tweaking them as needed and making personalized notes in the margins. And they left telltale protein traces behind as they did so.

Hanss is part of an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, chemists, historians, conservators, and materials scientists who have analyzed trace proteins from the fingerprints of Renaissance people rifling through the pages of medical manuals. The team reported their findings in a paper published in The American Historical Review. It’s the first time researchers have used proteomics to analyze Renaissance recipes, enhanced further by in-depth archival research to place the scientific results in the proper historical context.

“We have so many recipes of that time, [including] cosmetic, medical, and culinary recipes, as well as handwritten recipes passed down for generations,” Hanss told Ars. “It’s really a key element of Renaissance culture, and [the manuscripts] are all covered with scribbled marginalia of [past] users. Experimentation was everywhere. It’s not only about book-learned knowledge but hands-on practical knowledge. It’s a key change in the way people constructed knowledge at that time.”

Photograph taken by Vassil in 2011 during an exhibition in the Musée des Arts Premiers in Paris.

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The Great Temple at Abu Simbel, which took about twenty years to build, was completed around year 24 of the reign of Ramesses the Great (which corresponds to 1265 BC). It was dedicated to the gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah, as well as to the deified Ramesses himself. It is generally considered the grandest and most beautiful of the temples commissioned during the reign of Ramesses II, and one of the most beautiful in Egypt. In the sanctuary are rock cut sculptures of four seated figures: Ra-Horakhty, the deified king Ramesses, and the gods Amun Ra and Ptah, the main divinities in that period. It is believed that the axis of the temple was positioned by the ancient Egyptian architects in such a way that on October 22 and February 22 (allegedly the king's birthday and coronation day, respectively), the rays of the sun would penetrate the sanctuary and illuminate the sculptures on the back wall, except for the statue of Ptah, a god connected with the realm of the dead, who always remained in the dark. People gather at Abu Simbel on these days to witness this.

Photographer: Diego Delso

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Now, in research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers describe chemical evidence of a medicinal recipe penned more than 2 millennia ago by Galen, the famous Greek physician of ancient Rome. It involves a blend of human feces and fragrance. Such an arresting combination mirrored Galen's instructions for masking the odors of certain foul-smelling medicines.

"It was a remarkable moment of interdisciplinary work," says Rana Çelebi, a medical historian at Istanbul Medipol University who contributed to the research, "to produce a uniquely tangible window into the ancient medical practice."

Medicinal poop isn't just a thing of the past. Some modern physicians have started using it as a kind of gut microbiome reset for those struggling with a debilitating kind of GI infection caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile, and are researching it for other uses. Rather than mixing it with aromatics to make it more palatabl