Two Singaporean women recently contacted police after being conned out of $S1,450 ($1,080) by a man who sold them nine small bottles of “holy water” which he claimed could cure their bad luck and solve all their problems.

We’ve all heard of cunning snake oil salesmen using their power of persuasion to sell fake cures to gullible people, but it takes a special kind of talent to sell a small quantity of water for a small fortune. Well, either that or you need to find potential customers naive enough to fall for your lies. In retrospect, 30-year-old Ms. Yang, from Singapore, admits that she and her sister probably should have thought twice before spending a total of $S1,450 on nine small bottles of water just because the seller told them it was capable of turning their luck.

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Residents of Jinshicun village in China’s Hunan Province have discovered a rather crappy way to keep healthy. They’re actually drinking a revolting concoction of mashed cow dung and goat poop that they think is a miracle cure for cancer and other illnesses.

The villagers say they stumbled upon the medicine when an elderly local woman suffering from cancer woke up one day with a bizarre request – she asked her son to collect as much animal feces as possible. Her son complied, without the faintest idea of what was she was up to.

“I was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last January and despite going in and out of the hospital nothing was helping,” explained 66-year-old Ma Shuang. “And then I had a dream where a voice was telling me to mix the dung of a cow with the droppings of goats. When I woke, I instructed my son on what he had to do and although clearly thinking I had lost my mind, he went and did it anyway.”

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