Asses' Milk (Donkey's Milk) - Medical Use

Medical Use

Ass milk was also formerly used in medicine. Its healing virtues have been known since Antiquity, when doctors would recommend it to cure diverse affections.

Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC), the father of medicine, prescribed ass milk for numerous purposes, such as liver troubles, infectious diseases, fevers, oedema, nose bleeds, poisonings, and wounds.

In his encyclopedic work Naturalis Historia, volume 28, dealing with remedies derived from animals, Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 AD) proposed it to fight poisonings, fever, fatigue, eye stains, weakened teeth, face wrinkles, ulcerations, asthma and certain gynecological troubles:

Asses' milk, in cases where gypsum, white-lead, sulphur, or quick-silver, have been taken internally. This last is good too for constipation attendant upon fever, and is remarkably useful as a gargle for ulcerations of the throat. It is taken, also, internally, by patients suffering from atrophy, for the purpose of recruiting their exhausted strength ; as also in cases of fever unattended with head-ache. The ancients held it as one of their grand secrets, to administer to children, before taking food, a semisextarius of asses' milk, or for want of that, goats' milk ; a similar dose, too, was given to children troubled with chafing of the rectum at stool. In case where persons have swallowed quicksilver, bacon is the proper remedy to be employed. Poisons are neutralized by taking asses' milk ; henbane more particularly, mistletoe, hem- lock, the flesh of the sea-hare, opocarpathon, pharicon, and dorycnium: the same, too, where coagulated milk has been productive of bad effects, for the biestings,' JO or first curdled milk, should be reckoned as nothing short of a poison. We shall have to mention many other uses to which asses' milk is applied ; but it should be remembered that in all cases it must be used fresh, or, if not, as new as possible, and warmed, for there is nothing that more speedily loses its virtue. When the teeth have been loosened by a blow, they are strengthened by using asses' milk or else ashes of the burnt teeth of that animal, or a horse's lichen, reduced to powder, and injected into the ear with oil. An ass’s hoof, reduced to ashes and applied with asses' milk, is used for the removal of marks in the eyes and indurations of the crystalline humours. Ulcerations of the stomach are effectually treated with asses' milk or cows' milk. asses' milk boiled with bulbs, the whey being the part used, with the addition of nasturtium steeped in water and tempered with honey, in the proportion of one cyathus of nasturtium to three semi-sextarii of whey. The liver or lights of a fox, taken in red wine, or bear's gall in water, facilitate the respiration. The disease called tenesmus, or in other words, a frequent and ineffectual desire to go to stool, is removed by drinking asses' milk or cows' milk. If pains are felt in the breasts, they will be alleviated by drinking asses' milk ; and the same milk, taken with honey, has considerable efficacy as an emmenagogue.

Similarly, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, (1707–1788) mentions the benefits of ass milk in his Histoire naturelle: "Ass’s milk, on the contrary, is a well-tried remedy specific to certain illnesses, and the use of this remedy has been retained from the Greeks until us."

In the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a popular folk belief states that donkey milk can aid infants' immune systems and voice development. However doctors have warned nursing mothers against the practise, citing the potential risk of infection.