Following a recent post on undinism and the value of sentiment within a post-Romantic world [click here], I received the following email from someone describing himself as an alternative-thinking Lawrentian:
"Thank you for a fascinating piece. Around fifteen years ago, I became a vegan and started to think seriously about questions concerning nutrition and well-being. I was eventually introduced by a friend to urine therapy and have since gained a significant insight into this particular subject.
Might you not publish a future post that discusses the amazingly beneficial properties of urine? I believe your readers would benefit greatly if they were to discover how pee is good for hair, skin, eyes, nose, throat and ears and can be used to treat all manner of minor cuts, bruises, and stings thanks to its practical healing powers. There's nothing magical about this - it' simply that urine is rich in nutrients which the body has been unable to absorb.
Finally, can I just add that your pee is only as good as your diet; I wouldn't recommend meat-eaters, sugar-addicts, or consumers of salty junk food to practice urine therapy. The pee produced mid-flow by a healthy, clean-living, organic vegan is ideal - rather lovely tasting, in fact, and it makes a marvellous mouthwash (don't worry either about getting it on your face and hands, as it makes a perfect moisturiser)."
Now, as anyone familiar with this blog will know, this is the kind of tosh that I'm increasingly impatient with. Not only do I think it nonsense, I also think it potentially dangerous nonsense; when, for example, such alternative therapies are not only used to (ineffectually) treat minor ailments, but are also promoted as ancient and natural miracle cures for serious conditions including cancer.
And so, politely, I replied to my correspondent, explaining that whilst I was perfectly happy for him to gargle with piss each morning, I didn't share his beliefs and wouldn't be writing a post promoting urotherapy anytime soon. This brought forth the following:
"May I say how disappointed I am with your ignorant rejection of urine therapy, which betrays prejudice and puritanism on your part. I fear you have swallowed one too many conventional lies and simply don't understand.
Remember, a large and unscrupulous element in the pharmaceutical industry don't want you to be self-reliant and to treat yourself. It's bad for their business. They, and those involved in cruel and unreliable animal research, will do anything to rubbish vitally important alternative therapies and it's only too easy for them to find skeptics like you who will sneer and try to trash uropathy. But before you say something insulting, I would ask you, as one Lawrentian to another, to consider his hostility towards modern medical science and mainstream thinking."
Ok - let's consider Lawrence's position ... It's true that he subscribed to all kinds of crackpot ideas himself and spent a lifetime ignoring the advice of doctors. But it's also true that Lawrence keenly differentiated between bodily flows which, whilst complimentary, are nevertheless utterly different in direction.
Thus, for Lawrence, there are vital forces and creative libidinal flows and, in stark contrast, excrementory functions that result in flows of waste toward dissolution:
"In really healthy human being the distinction between the two is instant [and] our profoundest instincts are perhaps instincts of opposition between the two flows.
But in the degraded human being the deep instincts have gone dead, and then the two flows become identical. This is the secret of really vulgar people and pornography: the sex flow and the excrement flow is the same thing to them."
This is why Lawrence was vehemently opposed to coprophilia and urophilia (or hardsports and watersports) and why he would also, I believe, have had little interest in coprophagy or urophagia (shit-eating and piss-drinking) - whatever the supposedly therapeutic benefits of the latter.
See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Lines quoted are on p. 242.
Note that whilst my correspondent requested anonymity, he kindly gave me permission to quote from his emails, thereby presenting his side of the argument in his own words, for the purposes of writing this post.
Having said that, readers are reminded that all characters portrayed in this post are fictitious: no identification with actual persons outside of the text should be inferred. For a further and fuller disclaimer click here.
