I write, I stress over words, I write some more. I love terrible puns, cats, archaeology, folklore, and dinosaurs. I fan over Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who, good horror, good fantasy, and good villains.
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Down the Historical Rabbit Hole: When Renaissance Medicine Left a Foul Taste
As writers, we are often warned that our search histories could land us on a watch list. We spend hours analyzing obscure poison dosages, tracking medieval siege tactics, or studying the exact trajectory of a vintage revolver. Yet, the most surreal moments in research rarely come from the dark or dangerous. They emerge from the deeply strange.
While working on a historical fiction project set in early modern Europe years ago, I needed to figure out how a field surgeon would care for a soldier’s infected sword wound. I expected to read about primitive cauterization, brandy as a disinfectant, or perhaps a few crushed herbs bound in linen. What I didn’t expect was to fall down a days-long, deeply bizarre rabbit hole into early modern dung pharmacology, specifically, the widespread, systematic application of animal and human feces directly into open human wounds.
It started innocently enough with a reference in a digitized 16th-century medical text to a poultice containing "pigeon dung and vinegar." Mildly repulsed, I assumed it was an isolated, desperate folk remedy. But pulling that single thread unravelled a massive, forgotten branch of Western medical history.
The Science of "Stercoraceous" Medicine
During the Renaissance, medicine was still heavily dominated by the classical theories of Galen and Hippocrates, who viewed health as a balance of four primary bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
Disease or infection was interpreted as a systemic imbalance, and treatment often relied on like curing like or using aggressive topical to draw out corruption.
To my horror, I discovered that fecal therapies, known historically as stercoraceous medicine, were not fringe quackery. They were mainstream. Prominent physicians regularly prescribed poultices composed of human feces, dried cow dung, or bird droppings to treat everything from venomous bites and quinsy to deep, hemorrhaging tissue wounds.
The logic behind it was as bizarre as the application itself. Ancient and Renaissance texts argued that excrement possessed powerful "drawing" properties capable of pulling bad humors and heat out of a inflamed wound.
Physicians were even aware that patients found the treatment utterly repulsive. Their brilliant solution? They began mixing the excrement with aromatic herbs like thyme, lavender, or rosewater to make the foul paste more palatable to the patient's nose.
Archaeologists in Turkey even uncovered a 1,900-year-old Roman glass unguentarium--a small bottle typically reserved for perfumes--that chemical analysis revealed was packed with human feces mixed with thyme. The practice was so deeply ingrained in Western medical heritage that it persisted straight through the High Renaissance.
I sat at my desk, looking from my screen to my cup of coffee, utterly fascinated. What we now recognize as a guaranteed recipe for lethal sepsis, tetanus, and gangrene was, for centuries, considered state-of-the-art trauma care.
From Research to the Page: Making the Discovery Work in Drafts
Discovering something shocking in research presents a dangerous trap for a writer: the info-dump. When you spend three days reading academic papers on 16th-century dung unguents, the temptation to force every horrifying detail into the story is almost overwhelming. But effective worldbuilding requires restraint. The goal isn't to lecture the reader. It's to immerse them.
In my original outline, the protagonist's companion suffered a deep blade wound during a tavern skirmish. I had initially planned a standard, romanticized scene where a wise old apothecary cleans the wound with wine, stitches it neatly with silk, and wraps it in clean white gauze.
After my research trip down the dung rabbit hole, I realized that scene was completely dishonest to the era's medical reality. I completely rewrote the chapter to lean into the authentic visceral terror of Renaissance healthcare.
Instead of a clean, pleasant apothecary shop, the scene became claustrophobic and sensory. I introduced the sickening contrast of fragrances: the sharp, sweet scent of crushed thyme and dried lavender fighting against the unmistakable, pungent reek of a freshly prepared dung poultice. The sensory contradiction alone immediately grounded the reader in a historical world that felt alien, filthy, and real.
The historical reality built instant, high-stakes conflict between the characters. When the surgeon brought out a wooden paddle slathered with a steaming, greenish-brown paste, my wounded character didn't passively lie back. He panicked. The scene transformed from a dry medical pause into a desperate, physical struggle. The protagonist had to actively fight off the well-meaning doctor, terrified that the "cure" was going to kill his friend faster than the blade.
My research also led me to a fascinating paradox of the era: the "Powder of Sympathy" or "Weapon Salve." Because patients frequently died of horrific infections after surgeons applied dung poultices to their wounds, some Renaissance thinkers claimed that treating the wound itself was too traumatic. Instead, they invented a magical salve applied directly to the weapon that caused the cut, while the actual wound was simply washed with clean water and wrapped in clean linen.
Unsurprisingly, the patients whose wounds were just washed with water and left alone survived far more often than those slathered in bird droppings. In my draft, I had a street-smart rogue protagonist reject the official physician’s expensive dung poultice, opting instead to pay a charlatan for a sympathetic weapon salve.
Ironically, by falling for a superstitious gimmick, the protagonist accidentally saved his friend's life simply by keeping the doctor's foul remedies away from the open flesh.
Falling down the Renaissance medical rabbit hole changed more than just one chapter of my manuscript. It reshaped my entire approach to historical fiction. It reminded me that the past is not just the present with cooler clothes and candlelight. The people of the past operated under radically different logic, paradigms, and daily horrors.
When we allow ourselves to explore the truly strange corners of history, our stories stop feeling like modern reenactments and start feeling like living, breathing, beautifully bizarre worlds.
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One of them got too far from the group. Paralysed him and took his form.
Returned to the ship. Everyone keeps asking me where my pants are.
Day 2 of infiltrating the crew.
We have taken off. I have explained that one of the 'native lichens' made me allergic to pants. The rest of the crew seems to accept this.
Day 3 of infiltrating the crew.
I have been helping out around the ship while learning its secrets. And also trying to figure out where my quarters are supposed to be. Got it right fourth time. Managed to talk my way out of three awkward encounters.
Fourth one, not so much. I think I'm dating Crewman Eloise now.
Day 4 of infiltrating the crew.
Brought Eloise some breakfast and used my cunning skills to pump her for information.
So successful that I contrived to bring everyone else breakfast. I am a genius.
Day 5 of infiltrating the crew.
The captain keeps asking for Crewman Vitsie. They are obviously incompetent and lazy and have not responded. Captain sounds very irate. Perhaps I should find Vitsie and eat him to improve crew morale.
Day 6 of infiltrating the crew.
... I'm Crewman Vitsie. Got yelled at by the captain. Grovelled handsomely and explained that I am incompetent and lazy. I think I got away with it.
Day 7 of infiltrating the crew.
Space pirates. Why is it always space pirates?
Replicated one of them, infiltrated the ship, ate their captain. Very greasy.
Swapped back to my Vitsie disguise and pretended I snuck on board and shot the captain.
Luckily nobody asked about why I now weigh 50% more
Day 8 of infiltrating the crew.
Captain mentioned he knew I was a shiftshaper. Now hiding in an airduct. I'm not crying. That's... just... OK I might be crying. Eloise was going to put on a movie and I was really looking forward to it.
Day 9 of infiltrating the crew.
Captain has been yelling into an airvent for the last hour. They say they figured it out immediately.
Turns out Vitsie was an asshole, and they just liked me better.
NGL, feeling kind of proud.
Captain says since I saved the ship from greasy space pirates, they'll call it even if I promise not to eat any more crew.
Asked if that includes Robins from Engineering. Captains says Robins included because he's the only one who knows how to fix the toilets.
This is reasonable.
Day 10 of infiltrating the crew.
Watched "The Thing" with Eloise. Didn't sleep all night. That was terrifying!
guys its july 20th, the day humans first ever made it to the moon. its moon day. everyone wake up its moon day. the first time humankind set foot on a celestial being that wasn't earth was 55 years ago today. probably culturally significant i think. happy moon day everyone
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Nephew's 4th birthday party yesterday. Did it in my parents apartment, like twenty kids and a corresponding number of parents squeezed into a tiny space. Pandemonium. Then. The magician shows up. Magic Al. He's been doing this for decades (he did MY fifth birthday party. He said it was good to see me again and gave me a hug 😭 🥹. Thank you Magic Al love you Magic Al). He puts on the coat. takes out the wand. Thirty five kids are ENRAPTURED. They are cheering and yelling and SITTING DOWN for an HOUR LONG SET. There's a real dove. He sneezed out two donuts. He's basically doing Kid Standup Comedy with a little sleight of hand. Parents are amazed – "I can't get her to sit down for three minutes, how is she still paying attention."
The real magic is some kind of "keep the kids' attention" superpower. Forty years of doing kids birthday parties and he has it down to a SCIENCE. He's like those sushi chefs who can fillet a tuna blindfolded, but for making fifty kids face in the same direction for an hour. somebody needs to get a grant to study this guy . We should restructure our entire early childhood public education system around Magic Al's techniques. What a legend.
I spent a couple of years as a teacher's assistant for kids this age, and really, the thing that fascinates kids is when you do things deliberately. I could have kids giggling something fierce during lunch just by Eating Very Precisely (which I had to be careful with because they wouldn't eat their own lunches).
And obviously, being a magician is taking that skill and honing it to perfection, because every move is very particular and specifically designed to direct your audience's attention.
Still, keeping that up for an hour? That's incredibly impressive.
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
I scheduled this in 2025 to give you all a week to make Moon Day Monday preparations! I think I will order a little rocket cake or bake some moon phase cookies!
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So "currying" a furry animal means grooming or brushing it with a currycomb, which in turn comes from the Old French correier meaning "to prepare [something]", because you prepare a horse for riding by brushing it; it's most commonly applied to horses but you can get e.g. currycombs for dogs.
If I understand correctly, medieval French folk tales considered chestnut-colored horses to be deceitful and tricky; the Old French word for a chestnut or dun horse was fauvel, and so the Old French expression correier fauvel, literally "to brush the chestnut horse", meant lying or being hypocritical for personal gain. This turned into "curry favel" in 15th-century English, and then mutated into "curry favor" over the next few centuries as people forgot about the horse.
So "currying favor" is really "brushing the Horse of Lies", and the reason you can't curry goodwill, or love, or hatred, or even disfavor is that we didn't have Horses for those.
And it follows that we can gain the ability to curry other things by assigning them to Horses.
#google is backing you up on this (via @oldguardians)
I realize, looking back on this post, that regular readers of my blog may have thought I made this up. Making up a ridiculous etymology is certainly the sort of thing I might do; in fact I've been meaning to start a sideblog dedicated solely to sufficiently accurate etymologies, and have a notebook with dozens of them jotted down, I just haven't had the time to do anything with them.
But I want to stress that this is not one of those cases. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the very real etymology of the phrase "curry favor".
The Old French fauve or falve referred to the light-brown color that's sometimes called "fallow" in modern English, but since it also sounded similar to faux, meaning "false", it was also associated with deceit and trickery ; the idiom estriller Fauvel literally meant "to groom the fallow one" but idiomatically meant "to lie or trick people".
Then in the 1300s we get the French poem Roman de Fauvel, a satirical poem about a fauve horse, whose name is derived both from the color and from the fact that FAVVEL is an acronym of Flaterie, Avarice, Vilanie, Varieté, Envie, Lascheté (Flattery, Greed, Vileness, Fickleness, Envy, and Cowardice) - all the different vices that this horse embodies.
Fauvel (purportedly modeled after Enguerrand de Marigny [source], an advisor to King Philip IV) is a sinful, conniving, and very rich horse who has various religious and secular leaders fawning over him and brushing him; it was well-known enough that "grooming Fauvel" came to mean "sucking up to someone powerful" more than just "being evil", and when it was translated into English the grooming was translated as currying, which specifically is grooming a horse with a curry comb [wiktionary]. From this we got the Middle English expression "currying Fauvel", which then mutated via folk etymology (in the "reinterpretation of unfamiliar words as more familiar ones" sense, not the "people are wrong about etymology" sense) into "currying favor".
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