By Eben van Tonder and Christa Berger, 7 August 2025, based on work done by Christa.
Introduction
Saliva has long been treated as both practical matter and sacred essence. Modern biochemistry explains several of its effects, including nitrate reduction to nitrite and a rich set of antimicrobial and wound-healing factors. These mechanisms help to make sense of widespread ritual and technical uses that predate microbiology. Across Europe, Africa, and Asia, spitting, licking, and mouth-mediated processing occur in blessings, oath-sealing, protection from envy, fermentation, and first-aid. The sections below advance the original argument with early manuals, ethnographic archives, and primary texts, while distinguishing firm evidence from plausible hypotheses. Where speculative interpretations are offered, this is clearly signposted and never used as a substitute for sources.
Saliva as preservative and biochemical agent
Modern physiology shows that nitrate in diet is concentrated in saliva, where oral bacteria reduce it to nitrite. Swallowed nitrite forms nitric oxide and related species, but the same salivary nitrite can also contact foods directly [Lundberg et al. 2008; Kapil et al. 2014]. In meats, nitrite binds myoglobin to produce the stable pink nitrosyl complex central to cured colour and flavour, while suppressing Clostridium botulinum and oxidative rancidity at typical use levels below about 150 parts per million [Honikel 2008; Sindelar and Milkowski 2012; Talukdar et al. 2022]. Oral microbiology reports measurable nitrite in resting saliva, which is sufficient to participate in surface reactions on foods that are licked or premasticated [Lundberg et al. 2008]. These facts provide a biochemical backdrop for premodern practices where saliva seems to slow spoilage or redden meat.
Saliva also carries antimicrobial enzymes and peptides. Reviews and experimental studies document lysozyme, lactoferrin, peroxidases, defensins, and histatins. Histatin-1 and related peptides accelerate re-epithelialisation and angiogenesis in mucosal wounds, which helps explain the long-noted phenomenon that oral wounds heal faster and with less scarring than skin wounds [Wong et al. 2009; Oudhoff et al. 2009; van Dijk et al. 2015; Shah et al. 2020; Healey 2021]. These verified properties illuminate why licking minor wounds and spit-based remedies became entrenched in folk medicine.
United Kingdom
Fasting spittle, cures, and oath-spitting
Early modern and nineteenth-century English folklore records “fasting spittle” applied to warts and styes for nine mornings, a rite that persisted well into the twentieth century [Simpson and Roud 2000]. Spitting to seal agreements and to avert mischance was also reported in regional lore, including miners’ customs in the North-East where spitting upon a shared stone signified assent or solidarity [Opie and Tatem 1989]. Pliny’s Roman compendium, which influenced later European practice, already codified multiple spit uses, including apotropaic spitting and spitting on snakebites or one’s chest for luck [Pliny, Natural History XVIII].
Note on “spouting fat” in butchery
Your draft cites a British meat-trade report that butchers once “spouted” warmed fat from the mouth onto carcasses and that a mechanical sprayer replaced this circa 1901 with condemnations of the oral method. I could not locate a verifiable catalogue or trade-press description to substantiate this claim in Douglas and Sons materials or Meat Trades Journals searched. Treat this detail as unverified pending archival confirmation in a named catalogue, advertisement, or inspector’s circular. If you want, I will target Meat Trades Journal volumes from the 1890s to 1905 and Glasgow tool catalogues in a follow-up search and add the exact page references once located.
Germany and Austria
Saliva in curing logic and love rites
The Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens records saliva’s perceived efficacy in binding and love magic in regions including Styria and Baden, where saliva might be added covertly to bread or drink to create a bond. Church penitentials treated such acts seriously, which implies long-standing belief in saliva as a vehicle of personal essence [Bächtold-Stäubli and Hoffmann-Krayer 1987]. In technical terms, nitrate-reducing oral flora and salivary nitrite make it plausible that licking meat surfaces could redden them transiently, a point supported by food science on nitrite chemistry, though direct historical instructions to use saliva in curing are scarce and should be presented as a biochemical plausibility, not a demonstrated historical method [Lundberg et al. 2008; Honikel 2008].
Hungary
Protective spitting and tree rites
Hungarian vernacular tradition includes spitting three times to deflect misfortune and prescriptions using morning saliva on skin complaints. Ethnographic syntheses describe springtime rituals where spitting into a bored tree cavity accompanied charms that transferred illness to the tree, and the application of fasting spittle as a home remedy for warts and boils [Pócs 1989]. These acts align with a wider European pattern of apotropaic triple spitting.
The Balkans
Spitting against the evil eye and at rites of passage
In Greek communities, people often utter ftou three times after praise to block the evil eye. Ethnographies of rural Crete and Greek ritual life document this practice and its embedding within broader honour and envy dynamics [Herzfeld 1985; Danforth 1982]. Across Orthodox Balkan settings, weddings sometimes include real or symbolic spitting upon bride and groom to shield them from envy and curses, and in domestic space elders may simulate spitting on infants after compliments to neutralise praise [Dundes 1992; Danforth 1982].
Russia and Eastern Europe
Triple spitting, folk medicine, and offerings
Russian vernacular practice uses the formula tfu-tfu-tfu, often with a left-shoulder gesture, to ward off bad luck. Standard works on Russian folk belief and learned magic survey spit’s roles in averting the evil eye, treating minor ailments with fasting spittle, and as a component in rites of blessing or malefice [Ivanits 1989; Ryan 1999]. Mothers spitting lightly toward a child after praise belongs to the same apotropaic logic recorded across Slavic and Balkan regions [Kononenko 2007]. In some accounts, people spit on coins before almsgiving or planting them, a way of marking the gift with personal force that resonates with broader European offerings practice [Ryan 1999].
South Asia
Nazar avoidance, healing, and religious recitation
In South Asian households, especially in the North, a light spit or mock spitting gesture can follow praise of an infant to prevent nazar, often paired with a mild insult or a dab of soot. Anthropological overviews of the evil eye in South Asia and comparative collections describe these gestures within a pan-regional apotropaic repertoire [Dundes 1992; Maloney 1976]. In Islamic healing, ruqya involves recitation with nafth, a light blowing that includes a small amount of spittle, a practice discussed in classical hadith commentaries and contemporary summaries of Islamic medical rites [Sunan Abu Dawud, Book of Medicine; Abu-Rabia 2015]. Traditional advice about morning saliva for minor skin ailments appears in South Asian household medicine manuals and Unani-Ayurvedic vernacular practice, though clinical evidence is limited compared to the oral-wound literature [Nadkarni 1976].
Premastication and intimate saliva exchange
Caregivers’ premastication of foods for infants is documented across cultures and persists in some communities. Reviews argue that premastication historically supported complementary feeding and may transfer immune factors and microbiota along with nutrients [Pelto 2010; Van Esterik 2009]. Intimate kissing shows the degree of tolerated saliva exchange in pair bonding; a controlled study estimated roughly 80 million bacteria transferred during a ten-second kiss and showed increased similarity of salivary microbiota with frequent kissing [Kort et al. 2014].
East Asia
Kuchikamizake and Shinto rites
Mouth-chewed ferments are directly attested. In Japan, kuchikamizake was produced by shrine maidens who chewed cooked rice and spat the mash to sacral vessels, where salivary amylase converted starch to sugars for fermentation. Ethnographic and historical analyses link this to ideas of shared identity and sacred ingestion of essence, later displaced by malt-based saccharification [Ohnuki-Tierney 1993; Kasulis 2004]. In sumo, wrestlers rinse and expel water before bouts, a rite of purification that expels internal impurity before entering the consecrated space, noted in overviews of Shinto and material religion in Japan [Bocking 1997; Reader and Tanabe 1998; Pauly 2008].
Daoist views of saliva and vitality
Classical and medieval Daoist health texts teach exercises to circulate and swallow gathered saliva as a means of nourishing jing, the vital essence. Anthologies and scholarly treatments translate instructions that treat saliva as an elixir-like fluid when ritually cultivated, while expelling spittle can symbolically expel pathogenic qi [Kohn 1995; Kohn 1998]. These ideas frame saliva as a liminal substance that can either be retained for longevity or expelled for apotropaic ends.
Southeast Asia
Betel quid, shamanic spitting, and healing transfer
Across Island and Mainland Southeast Asia, chewing betel quid produces copious saliva coloured red by areca pigments. Betel is central to etiquette, offerings, and healing. In Myanmar, spirit mediumship involves chewing and spitting near or onto the afflicted during nat rituals, with the act interpreted as confronting and expelling the possessing entity [Spiro 1967]. In the Philippines, bolo-bolo healing on Siquijor involves chewing herbs and spitting into water while blowing bubbles through a tube, with the fluid acting as a medium of diagnosis and cure [Cannell 1999]. Malay and Dayak healers chew medicinal plants while reciting verses, then spit the pulp on the affected area or into water for ritual bathing, described as a transfer of spirit energy and the plant’s potency through saliva [Benjamin 1986]. Regional economic history underscores betel’s ritual reach and its role in social exchange and offerings [Reid 1985].
Why spit was seen as powerful
The cross-cultural spread of spit rites is coherent once saliva’s properties are considered. Nitrite chemistry offers a concrete pathway by which saliva in contact with meat could redden surfaces and slow some microbial processes, which communities could observe without theory [Lundberg et al. 2008; Honikel 2008]. Antimicrobial and wound-healing actions of saliva create successful experiences with licking and spit-based first aid, reinforcing beliefs in inherent potency [Wong et al. 2009; Oudhoff et al. 2009]. Finally, as a fluid visibly produced by speech and breath, saliva readily became a carrier of words, intentions, and blessing or curse in ritual logics documented from Europe to Africa and Asia.
A mythic statement of essence
The Norse myth of Kvasir encapsulates the symbolism. After the Aesir and Vanir sealed a truce, each spat into a vessel and from this mingled saliva fashioned Kvasir, the being of supreme wisdom whose essence later became a drink of inspiration. The Prose Edda explicitly attributes his origin to pooled spittle, a mythic acknowledgement that saliva can be the bearer of spirit and knowledge [Sturluson 13th-century, Prose Edda].
Conclusion
The ethnographic pattern is consistent. Saliva appears wherever people try to bless, bind, protect, or transform. Modern science clarifies how some effects arise, while historical and ritual sources explain why people attached moral and spiritual meanings to the act of spitting or the exchange of spit. Saliva sits at the junction of body and word, instrument and intention. That junction made it a tool in curing meats, healing wounds, warding off envy, sealing oaths, and consecrating offerings. Understanding both the chemistry and the cosmologies gives a fuller account of why spitting rituals persisted and why they still surface today.
References
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