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Doggonit, it’s Christmas

Mervyn D Cobcroft and Charles Pembroke-Corgi
Med J Aust 2005; 183 (11): . || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2005.tb00070.x
Published online: 5 December 2005

A ramble along the byways of medical history

Scatology — the study of excrement — has long fascinated my co-author and me.1 Nevertheless, until our most recent discovery, even we would have conceded that the most dedicated coprophile would be hard pressed to find a link between dog droppings, medicine and Christmas. At the Nativity, despite the manger’s rural setting, was there a dog, let alone dog droppings, to be seen? Cows, goats, sheep aplenty and a camel or three, but Rover seemed conspicuously absent. Rudolph is a reindeer, not a red setter. And, over those 12 days of Christmas, our True Love trucked in a whole aviary of birds but, for some reason, never a dog a-barking.


  • Roma Health District, Flying Surgeon Service, Roma, QLD.


Correspondence: 

Acknowledgements: 

Professor Denis Brosnan, University of Queensland, is responsible for coining the term “interposita”.

Competing interests:

Charles Pembroke-Corgi continues to receive numerous food inducements from all and sundry.

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  • 8. The University of Delaware [USA] Library. Special Collections Department. The Thomas L Gravell Watermark Archive. Available at: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/gravell.htm (accessed Apr 2005).
  • 9. Grieve M (edited by Leyel CF). A modern herbal. London: Penguin Books, 1976: 631, 326-328, 26.
  • 10. Claus EP, Tyler VE. Pharmacognosy. 5th Ed. Philadelphia: Lea & Febriger, 1965: 200.
  • 11. Kiela PR, Midura AJ, Kuscuoglu N, et al. Effects of Boswellia serrata in mouse models of chemically induced colitis. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 2005; 288: 798-808.
  • 12. Hibbert C, editor. London characters and crooks. London: Folio Society, 1996: 17.
  • 13. Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. The extra pharmacopoeia. 24th ed. London: Martindale, Pharmaceutical Press, 1958: 1134.

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