Have you ever picked your nose and thought, “Hmm can my stomach have boogers too?”
Of course you have. And the answer is, yes, kinda.
Sometimes, the food you eat doesn’t pass through your body.
Instead, it forms this clump of plants and meat and acid that your body can’t break down.
Over time as you constantly stuff your face, it collects food and grows and grows until
it blocks some part of your digestive system.
Blockages can happen in the stomach, the small intestines, and even the large intestines.
Strangely, this large intestine blockage happens a lot in people who believe that the earth
is flat, that’s why they’re so full of sh--
The name for these clumps is bezoars.
Wait, isn’t that that guy who started Amazon?
No, that’s Jeff Bezoars.
But this video is not about human bezoars.
It’s about bezoars that came from oxen and why people went crazy over them.
They were super expensive and belonged to the rich.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy things that cost a lot of money.
The ox bezoar market saw peak demand in the Heian Period [794 - 1185].
People thought it was some magical thing.
Buddhist monks used it in all kinds of rituals.
It came in yellow lump form and the monk would mix it into water.
The magic juju of the bezoar and the monkish powers of the monk
turned the regular bezoar water into magical bezoar water.
It could then be rubbed on someone’s body, used like ink to draw a magical seal,
or you could even drink it.
Monks created talismans by using the yellow water to draw seals and write spells.
They made talismans that did all kinds of things, like warding off evil,
making people live longer, helping women find husbands, fighting disease, all kinds of things to help people
donate more money to the temple.
These seals were supposed to fight epidemics.
But mostly people used bezoar for baby-related stuff, for all parts of the baby-making process.
A woman who wanted to get pregnant could wear a talisman that boosted the chances of her belly inflating.
There were a bunch of ways to help the delivery go smoothly.
To help royal consorts give birth, they had this method.
Dissolve the bezoar in water.
Use the bezoar water to massage the mother’s stomach and to lubricate the cave in her southern province.
And then have the mother drink it.
All the while, Buddhist monks should be chanting spells and mantras.
This is a womb seal.
Stamp this seal with bezoar ink above and below the mother’s heart if she’s having a hard delivery.
This seal was also used in this weird ritual.
If a monk did a bad thing, if he violated a Buddhist law, like eating meat or going
to a brothel without inviting his master, or something serious like that,
he was supposed to stamp the womb seal on a piece of paper and eat it.
He only needed to eat 100,000 of those, and it would have cleansed him of the violation.
I don’t know if anyone actually did this ritual, but if someone did,
at least he would’ve been rich because he would have probably created a bezoar of his own.
Swallowing a seal during childbirth was also something mothers did.
Another practice was to write Buddhist scripture using bezoar water on a white silk cloth,
and have the mother wear it while delivering.
Medicine was another big use of ox bezoar.
Doctors made it into pills or ointments.
It treated stomach issues like indigestion, cramps, bloating, stomach aches and irregular periods.
It treated issues with the vv, like vaginal coldness.
Does your partner sometimes have a cold vv?
Are you worried?
Why is it cold?
What do you do?
Well, the first thing you should do is check to see if she is alive.
If so, then it’s not a problem.
All you have to do is drink a bezoar pill, or rub a little bezoar water in the area and
it should be warmed up and ready to go to the hospital for a bacterial infection.
During childbirth, drinking a bezoar pill could calm the mother’s mind.
Rubbing it on her belly could ease abdominal pain.
Rubbing it on her vv was supposed to disinfect it because it could tear and bleed during the delivery.
Before the first breastfeeding, there were a lot of things you had to do to make sure
it was successful, including placing a bezoar pill in the baby’s mouth for it to suck on.
It was supposed to be good for the baby’s liver and gall bladder, and supposed to prevent
bad smells and stomach burns.
Bezoar is usually bitter, so doctors recommended giving the baby honey first.
Only after all of this should breastfeeding commence.
So how do you acquire a bezoar? It’s pretty easy.
You just wait for an ox to die, then dig inside its digestive system.
Most of the time you won’t find one, but once in a while you will hit gold.
It’s the same procedure for human bezoars.
Sadly, you didn’t know from the outside which ox was hiding a precious bezoar, but
they had a solution for this called making s--t up.
One idea was that an ox with a bezoar had a glossier hide and red eyes.
Another idea was that when an ox developed a bezoar, it would cry and growl,
so it was a good idea to watch for oxen making loud noises.
Once extracted, they left the bezoar to dry in a dark place for 100 days.
A medical text said that bezoars came in 3 shapes.
Loose bezoar was small, like beans or seeds.
Mellow bezoar was creamy like egg yolk and was found in the liver and gall bladder.
And round bezoar looked like a big lump, also found in the liver or gall bladder.
Once in a blue moon, an ox would scream and moan and people would be like,
what’s going on with it?
And eventually they would behold a rare and magical sight.
With one last grunt, the ox would poop out a bezoar.
This type of bezoar was the rarest and most potent, straight from the butt of a live ox,
much more potent than your common kind found in dead oxen.
Like how a baby delivered without the mother dying is more blessed,
a bezoar is more blessed when it’s delivered without the ox dying.
It was called “living yellow.”
People associated the color yellow with a life giving force.
Now when we see a bezoar, we’re like “Ew.”
But when people back then saw it, they were like “Mmm.”
It was precious. It was like yellow diamond.
The thing with bezoars was that you couldn’t farm it or make an ox grow one in its belly.
Like, you couldn’t feed an ox weird indigestible foods like pineapple pizza or something to make bezoars.
Now, except for women, everyone poops.
But an ox is a master poop making machine okay.
Anything that goes into its mouth passes right through and turns into poop.
Grains? Poop.
Grass? Poop.
Poop? Poop.
So most of the time you had to wait until an ox died and hope that this was the one.
Being so rare made it precious.
In a time when monks and sorcerers fought for the patronage of noble families,
having rare materials was another way to compete against other temples and shrines.
Apparently, wrinkly brained individuals found ways to make fake bezoars.
It became good practice to scrape a little bit of the surface of bezoars before buying,
so that you could see its authentic yellow color.
China already used bezoars as a miracle drug before the idea came to Japan.
People couldn’t wait to get their hands on that nasty, precious substance.
Surrounding countries and regions sent bezoars as tribute to the Chinese capital.
It circulated between Korea and Japan too.
The bezoar network was vast.
In Japan, provinces sent bezoars to the capital.
The capital also gifted them to different provinces.
It made great gifts for powerful people, especially if a noble family was expecting a child,
since it could be used for so many things related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Commoners probably never saw a lump of bezoar in their lives.
Except for the lowest of the low commoners.
There were people who did jobs that were considered impure.
The Japanese had this idea of purity and pollution.
Death was polluting, so people who handled dead animals were just swimming in pollution,
snorkeling in it, just drinking in that pollution.
Society made them outcasts because who would want to talk to those people.
Some of their pollution might rub off on you, and you just had your kimono washed.
Problem was, you needed those people.
Temples and government officials were known to keep horses and oxen.
The issue with animals was that they died occasionally,
and you needed people to get rid of their dead bodies.
Now you could get rid of a dead ox yourself, but then you’d have to call a monk and schedule
a long purification ritual, and the local monks always snuck weird looks at your son,
it was a hassle.
It was better to just pay Bobunaga’s Carcass Removal to remove that carcass for you.
These dirty outcasts took dead oxen and cut them up,
separating the organs for sale or private use.
Since bezoars were so valuable, people probably told these professionals
to send back any bezoars they found.
Bezoars straight from the ox were often black.
They had to be cleaned and polished to reveal their yellow color.
Most nobles never saw the black bezoar, only the finished product.
And so it was the dirty outcasts who supplied medieval Japanese society with one of its
most valuable commodities.
For more Japanese history videos, check these out.
Okay we have some new patrons on Patreon: qcgreen, adalsindis1, Maura Burns, and Victoria.
Thanks so much you guys.
Alright I love you, and spread the knowledge!