Archaeologists just proved that ancient Romans really did prescribe human feces as medicine. A sealed 2,000-year-old glass vial unearthed in western Turkey still contained dried flakes of human poop mixed with thyme, the first hard evidence that doctors actually handed this stuff to patients instead of just writing about it.

The discovery happened at the ancient spa town of Allianoi, near modern Bergama (once Pergamon), inside a small Roman unguentarium that had stayed airtight since the second or third century CE. When researchers finally opened it in a lab, there was no stench at all, the thyme had done its job perfectly for almost two millennia.

What the Lab Actually Found

Chemical analysis detected high levels of coprostanol and 5β-stigmastanol, compounds produced only when human gut bacteria break down cholesterol. In plain language: this was definitely human feces, not animal dung.

The vial also contained carvacrol and thymol, the main active ingredients in thyme oil. Lead researcher Cenker Atila told reporters the herb was clearly added to kill the smell. “When we broke the seal, we smelled nothing unpleasant,” he said. The mixture had dried into dark brown flakes that still clung to the glass.

The Doctor Who Lived Right There

Pergamon was home to Galen, the most famous physician of the Roman Empire. He personally recommended feces-based remedies for everything from sore throats to childbirth complications. Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides wrote similar prescriptions.

Roman doctors usually preferred dog, goat, or crocodile dung, but they did list human feces for certain conditions. They even had polite code names like “human album” or simply called it “the bitter remedy.” Until now, modern scholars assumed most of these recipes stayed on papyrus and never made it into actual vials.

This find proves the recipes were real pharmacy products.

Why Would Anyone Use Poop as Medicine?

Ancient doctors noticed that some people who worked with dung (tanners, farmers) seemed less prone to certain infections. They were accidentally observing antibacterial properties we now know come from microbes in feces.

Feces also contain bile acids and steroids that can reduce inflammation when applied to skin or taken internally in tiny amounts. Modern science has rediscovered some of these effects; doctors today use fecal microbiota transplants to cure deadly C. diff infections. The Romans were two thousand years ahead, just in a much cruder way.

This Changes How We Read Ancient Medical Books

Because organic material rarely survives, archaeologists have found almost no physical proof of the hundreds of dung-based remedies mentioned in ancient texts. Many experts quietly assumed the writers were exaggerating or copying older sources without ever mixing the stuff.

One sealed vial has overturned that view.

“This is the first time we can say with certainty that a feces-based medicine described by Galen was actually produced, stored, and probably administered,” the research team wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (June 2024).

The unguentarium was buried with its owner, possibly as a final dose for the afterlife or simply because it was valuable. Either way, someone carried it to the grave believing it could heal.

That single object bridges the gap between ancient theory and daily practice, and it forces us to take Roman medicine more seriously, gross as it sounds.

Two thousand years later, a tiny glass bottle still smells faintly of thyme and quietly proves that our ancestors were willing to try anything to feel better, even the most revolting options imaginable.

What do you think when you hear this? Would you have taken the Roman poop pill if a trusted doctor handed it to you in 200 CE? Drop your thoughts in the comments.