When the High Patriarch of the Christians in Constantinople made a motion, the priests would diligently collect it in squares of silk and dry it in the sun. Then they would mix it with musk, amber, and benzoin, and, when it was quite dry, powder it, and put it up in little gold boxes. These boxes were sent to all the Christian kings and churches, and the powder was used as the holiest of incense for the sanctification of Christians on all solemn occasions: to bless the bride, to fumigate the newly born, and to purify a priest on ordination. As the genuine excrements of the High Patriarch could hardly suffice for ten provinces, much less for all Christian lands, the priests used to forge the powder by mixing less holy matters with it; that is to say, the excrements of lesser patriarchs, and even of the priests themselves. The imposture was not easy to detect. These Greek swine valued the powder for other virtues. They used it as a salve for sore eyes, and as a medicine for the stomach and bowels. But only kings and queens, as well as the very rich, could obtain these cures, since, owing to the limited quantity of raw material, a dirham-weight of the powder used to be sold for a thousand dinars in gold. So much for it.

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol. I, London and New York: Routledge, 1964, p. 442.