Beaver for headache. Really.

File this under "I bet you didn’t know that".  Ever thought of beaver as a migraine remedy?  What part of the beaver, you ask?  Well, the scent glands in the beaver’s rears contain a substance called castoreum.  For hundreds – no, thousands of years castoreum has been a remedy for everything from migraine to hysteria to epilepsy to tuberculosis.

As a matter of fact, according to historian Peter C. Newman (in Empire of the Bay), it is said that King Solomon used it himself to relieve his migraines (and Solomon preferred to wear beaver fur as well – tradition said that he also rubbed the animal oil on his head an spine to increase mental ability.  And here we thought he got his wisdom from God!).

Castoreum is a rare treatment today, but it’s still used for headaches and some other conditions (usually listed as a "homeopathic" treatment, though I don’t think it technically qualifies).  Castoreum extract is also still used in perfumes, and as a flavour ingredient in things such as chewing gum (that’s right, you might have eaten this stuff!).  It’s one of those generally recognized as safe (GRAS) food products.

After all those thousands of years, modern science has discovered that castoreum actually contains acetylsalicylic acid – that’s right, aspirin.  Is that the secret of its curative powers?  Or are there more ingredients that science has yet to understand?  Should we try it?  You first.