Every bathroom cabinet needs a bottle of eau de beaver. The Romans found the creatures immensely useful. According to Pliny the Elder, the David Attenborough of his day, a secretion taken from glands near a beaver’s anus had miraculous properties. Cramps, vertigo, stomach ache and sciatica could all be relieved with a dash of this foul “castoreum”. Mix it with honey and it sorts out eye trouble; use it as a hair tonic with rose oil to beat insomnia (don’t forget the rose oil or the stench will keep you awake); and if someone feels faint, a waft of beaver sweat up the nostrils soon brings them round. You don’t get this in the Narnia books.
The ancients certainly knew how to get the
